It's odd, I remember trying to buy games from the store before and it didn't allow BTC payments (I'm in the UK).

However it does allow BTC payments for the "Pay what you want" Bundles - I just bought the comics bundle they have at the moment with BTC: https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Basically just click the "Pay What You Want" button, put in your email, click the little "Bitcoin Payment" button at the bottom, scan dat QR code and BOOM!

EDIT: also fill in how much/little you want to pay, the default is $25 I think.

Yeah they're actually a decent charity, once you get past the McDonalds affiliation. I sponsored someone doing a fundraiser for them, after their friends baby was born with heart difficulties and the family had to spend months next to the hospital while operations etc. were performed. They provide a much needed service, good stuff.

Received key, tipped you a beer, cheers 

This looks interesting, will watch when I get some time. I remember a BBC documentary about living cells discussing how abiogenesis may have come about, fascinating stuff.

Here's a very interesting related article in New Scientist: Synthetic enzymes hint at life without DNA or RNA

@ the joint, thanks for your detailed explanation, you make some very valid points. While I agree that the concept of a "theory of theories" would indeed constitute a priori knowledge from which we could properly investigate the nature of reality (and whether a god exists), I'm not sure that such a concept could ever practically exist. You've certainly given me something to think about though!

From what I can gather, the guy who wrote this is comparing modern domesticated plants with older wild plants, and saying that there was a very drastic jump between the two. Is he implying that, rather than an "intelligent designer", there was an "intelligent tweaker" that changed the plants very quickly or created new plants alongside the wild ones that already existed? It's a poorly written article in my opinion, I'm finding it hard to see the points the author tries to make (although they may be valid).

I shall have another look in the morning, I'd appreciate a more coherent source if you have one, cheers  

Americans, British and most of the rest of the world act like they do because of the media. Fluoride has nothing to do with it - there's no fluoride in the water where I live and the majority of people are just as dumb. Some hippies I know don't even use fluoride toothpaste and they're dumb as fuck - keep talking about "making a stand", then just watch shit like X factor and Ancient Aliens on TV all day, loving it.

@the joint

I think it was earlier in this thread that you were discussing the FSM analogy and how it was invalid when referring to a monotheistic god, as a monotheistic god relies on a priori as opposed to a posteriori knowledge. I've been thinking about this a little and I still don't fully understand where you're coming from, I was hoping you could be a bit more specific as to what sort of a priori knowledge a monotheistic god would require, as opposed to a polytheistic god.
 

Now this is a different topic, but I think what cooldgamer said here is key to debunking what a lot of creationists believe - that "the diversity of life and the fact that we exist is so unlikely (even impossible) that it could only have occurred with the help of an intelligent designer."

Although I don't believe in the "big crunch" theory (this has been disproved by the Hubble telescope/redshift analysis recognising that the current Universe is actually accelerating outwards rather than slowing down, leading to the "dark energy" theory), I believe this idea that it could only have happened by design to be a logical fallacy. We don't even need multiple universes for this to be a valid point.

We can only comment on our current existence as this is the only data point we have. As far as we know, of the millions of life-forms we know to exist (let alone the ones that may or may not exist elsewhere in the Universe), humans are the only life-form to actually advance enough to question our own existence. If we had more than one data point (for example if we found self-aware life on another planet), then we could start to estimate the probabilities. Until then, we can only say "It's quite unlikely, and probably requires a planet to be X distance from a star, the planet to be tilted to create seasons/climate patterns, an atom like carbon/silicon that can form many atomic bonds and complex molecules etc. etc."

To say that, for example, a cell is so complex that it 100% MUST have been designed, is fallacious in my eyes. And when we look at life in detail, we find certain characteristics that certainly point to natural selection - ways in which we are flawed by evolution. Things like, why do humans have an appendix and a coccyx, the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, blind mole rats, wings on flightless birds etc.

Now of course all of this (exhaustive though it may be) does not prove evolution 100%, it certainly supports the previous idea that creation is not the only possible way that all this diversity could have occurred, and that evolution from a single common ancestor is certainly possible, if not probable.

Journey.



I am into these art-piece games at the moment, Flower is great as well.

Have you heard, Bitcoin network just got taken down with a 51% attack!!

It was Chuck Norris with an abacus.

You're right, many animals (battery chickens come to mind) are bred in very poor conditions, and I don't agree with this. I try to eat free-range and organic meat where possible, to support the practice of better conditions for animals and also because it tastes better.

This is one area where I think a small amount of government intervention could be a good thing - a true free market system would favour the cheapest (and therefore worst) possible living conditions for animals.

While rape does happen in the natural world (humans/apes/dolphins etc), we have not evolved to exhibit traits designed to facilitate rape specifically. However we have developed traits to specifically eat and digest meat, such as our teeth. Therefore I don't think it's a fair comparison.

 

Haha these militant veggies are pretty funny. It's natural and healthy for us to eat meat, the canine teeth in my mouth prove it.

This is cool and all, but what's your point?

Yep think so hahaha.

http://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/campaigns/10-top-tips-to-end-rape/

probably not this but it's a nice tune anyhow!

Pendulum - Back 2 You

Before Pendulum went mainstream 

Was about to reply to your apple comment, but I don't quite know what you mean by this.

Are you saying that things only appear random while we are ignorant of their cause? eg. Apples appear to fall at random time intervals to the ignorant, however when we find the causes of the falling apples (wind/deterioration of the stalk/increasing weight/gravity etc.) then what once appeared random now becomes predictable and a pattern can be made?

I agree with this, however many quantum effects are truly random, which is very rare in nature. So (according to current quantum theory) we can never predict these effects with certainty, just with various probabilities.

Well that website is a big horrible mess.

Not only does it look like it was made in the mid 90s by a schoolkid who just found out about html color tags and MSpaint, but it just seems to be some guy ranting at quantum physicists because he doesn't believe them. From what I could read before I got a headache, he doesn't have many good arguments to prove them wrong. One section is dedicated to disproving Special Relativity, which has been shown to be accurate in real life situations multiple times (eg timing of GPS satellites).

Yeah I've read a bit about Penrose, I'm not sure about his idea that human thought and consciousness cannot be explained through known scientific effects, so he says it must be a result of unknown quantum effects. Seems like a pretty outrageous claim without some really good evidence (but I will read some more about his work, as I'm not very familiar with it.