If you guys are going to continue this whole discussion could you refrain from insulting half the US population with generalities and stereotypes please? Sure there are churches and denominations where thinking isn't very high on the totem pole but there are also churchs who believe the part of the bible where God is quoted as stating "For lack of knowlege, my people perish" and they encourage thought and study and even... gasp... science!

Quote - ...but there are also churchs who believe the part of the bible where God is quoted as stating "For lack of knowlege, my people perish" and they encourage thought and study and even... gasp... science!

Well they must not encourage it too seriously becasue I can't for the life of me see how anybody who has put any serious thought into it all could come away from it still believing in God, if they're really trying to learn about it all.

There simply is no evidence for God's existence, and on the contrary there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of scientific and historical data that strongly indicate whoever wrote the creation story and the whole Jesus thing simply made it all up.

A few things that society has always needed in all our history:
A Creator or Creators, Gods and overseers, and a path to salvation and eternal life. Those themes have been found existing in many forms long before the Judao-Christian thing began. All religions have simply borrowed the ideas they like best from the earliest and most ancient and have added their own flair and new details to them. In all its forms, collectively, it's the oldest story in human history.

It's myth, legend, fantasy... hope.... but it's anything but real.

Just IMVHO of course. :D

Quote - I never found God and then rejected Him.  This may be a surprise to our American members here, but most Brits don't believe in God.  We're very much a secular country and the few who do believe are generally regarded as being a bit weird.  I'm not making this up, btw.

 .

Hyacinth Bucket's Sheridan would be appalled! ;) 

Sorry, but the ahem gravity of this thread has left what remains of my brain cells quite giddy. 

I'd like to also add that I think that religion in all its forms would have long ago died out if it didn't have the potential for giving its leaders such vast amounts of power, control and money.
They would have long ago lost interest in trying to sell it if people didn't need it so badly.

Aliens are anti-biblical. God created the Universe as a habitata for man. The fall of man doomed the Universe to decay and eventual death, and that would kill off any aliens. If God is fair he would not create a race of beings that were more than puppets and doom them to death. Jesus came as a man to redeem original sin, and that salvation is for man alone. Therefore , no aliens.

Thor, Odin, FSM and IPU would not have this conflict. Cluthu is just mean so he might.

FSM = Flying spagetti monster - long may his noodly appendages wave
IPU = Invisible pink unicorn

Global ocean warming is caused by a lack of pirates.

Quote - I'd like to also add that I think that religion in all its forms would have long ago died out if it didn't have the potential for giving its leaders such vast amounts of power, control and money.
They would have long ago lost interest in trying to sell it if people didn't need it so badly.

I would say the same thing about politics, while still believing in a government.

"God" and "religion" aren't synonyms.

Quote -
The problem with that is, most religious people - at least the ones I personally know, couldn't care less about metaphysical this intersecting physical that...

They believe because they were told to believe, raised to believe, and told that to doubt is to put one's soul in jeopardy.
To think about it all too much is skirting dangerously close to damning oneself to an eternity of fire and brimstone (in spite of the fact the Bible clearly says that Hell is only for Satan and his evil minions, but that's a whole separate argument altogether), so thinking is discouraged.

That's simple specialization.  Most people in a given society won't be philosophers or prophets, and so the masses rely on the best minds to sort these things out, just as we expect our doctors or lawyers to know more about those subjects than the average person.  You shouldn't assume that people wouldn't question these things if more felt qualified to do so, nor should you take for a fool every farmer or soldier throughout history for happily carrying on their forefathers' faith simply because they had more important things to do than ask unanswerable questions.

Many theists are quite aware that God can't be (dis)proved but don't see themselves as the person to tackle that problem.

Quote -

That's simple specialization.  Most people in a given society won't be philosophers or prophets, and so the masses rely on the best minds to sort these things out, just as we expect our doctors or lawyers to know more about those subjects than the average person.  You shouldn't assume that people wouldn't question these things if more felt qualified to do so, nor should you take for a fool every farmer or soldier throughout history for happily carrying on their forefathers' faith simply because they had more important things to do than ask unanswerable questions.

Many theists are quite aware that God can't be (dis)proved but don't see themselves as the person to tackle that problem.

Well you're right about that, but consider the context in which I wrote that which you quoted and replied to. I wasn't just saying that out of the blue - what I wrote was a direct response to someone who had written ".... theists conceive of a metaphysical that intersects the physical...."
A theist is simply a believer, so I was replying that your average believer doesn't concern himself about such things, i.e., the "metaphysical intersecting the physical"

many just believe, period, and don't ever even think about exactly why they believe, don't ever question it, just go with it as if it were a given fact.

Quote -

Well you're right about that, but consider the context in which I wrote that which you quoted and replied to. I wasn't just saying that out of the blue - what I wrote was a direct response to someone who had written ".... theists conceive of a metaphysical that intersects the physical...."
A theist is simply a believer, so I was replying that your average believer doesn't concern himself about such things, i.e., the "metaphysical intersecting the physical"

I am the person who wrote that, as it is a partial description of how I understand the universe to work.  The relationships of the metaphysical and the physical are precisely what theists concern themselves with, not just in hopes of finding salvation or redemption but also to honor and give appreciation for all of nature and life's "mysteries". 
 

Quote -

many just believe, period, and don't ever even think about exactly why they believe, don't ever question it, just go with it as if it were a given fact.

Well, most people would neither understand proof nor disproof if it were provided.  Who are you referring to?  Creationists?  Theists in general?  Scripture itself is full of stories of faith being tested, and those people you are referring to actually apply them in their lives.  They may question whether they have brought something bad up on themselves.  They might question whether god loves them or it trying to lead them to a particular choice or opportunity.  And given enough time to question they may also conclude that there indeed is no god. 

I questioned it, and I learned much I did not know.  I did not become an atheist, so I can't conclude that all questioning leads to that decision.  I studied anthropology and cosmology in public school, never once seeing science at odds with faith.  Then again, I was never taught that earth as a planet was only a few thousand years old.  When I later looked into scripture to see why people believed that,  I was hardly surprised to learn that scripture never even says such a thing.

one other item:  there's an old joke from LEXX about how a planetary civilisation on the verge of
producing the higgs boson is in its terminal phase, which would explain why humans have never
received visitors nor messages from more advanced species. 

but it's more an allegory for the problem that they may spend so much of their resources on
technical minutiae that the rest of society goes bankrupt and the civilisation collapses as a result,
as in the egyptians, romans, persians et al.  IOW the civilisation can only proceed so far until it's
crushed under its own weight, like a beached whale IMVHO.

Most of what's in the New Testment was written long after Jesus was dead, and not by folk who knew him, except perhaps one Gospel
And they were all edited and censored ot hell and back.

He was just a man, beloved of God a prophet but that's it and that's all he needs to be, it's what he SAID and *did *that was important, not who he was.
Alas, the early Christians needed to make him a "god" to make him "authentic" versus the Roman "gods". Doh!

So, aliens, like our Moslem poster well said, ain't our affair, but between them and God, just as it is between us and "God" (and whatever "God" is).
To think the entire universe was made for Homo Sapiens is the most appalling, typical, horrible arrogance of our species :/
Jeesh, our religious stuff is like two fleas arguing over which of them owns the Man who owns the dog they live on! :P
Get on and live a righteous life, leave the spiritual dimension to God, and leave how to work out how the universe works on a practical level to practical research and help ensure the ethical use of such knowledge.

I bet UFO's are inter-stellar joy-riders, buzzing us, shouting out *"RETARDS! Catch us if you can!"

• It's that or they regard us as watching "Big Brother", not sure which is worse... :P

First of all, space travel along interstellar distances requires so fundamental scientific breathrus that I bet it is just impossible; as a proof, there are no evidences of ETs roaming on Earth for at least all human recorded history (nearly 10 millenia) and this makes the initial question immediately pointless.

Anyway, just to make a useless thread grow longer (like an appendice owned by roughly 50% of the presumed intelligent overlords of Earth),  let's assume that they come here.

Should we meet aliens, the question won't be whether they accept to worship a mythological figure of ours but which of the following options is true: they find us...

1. ...cute pets;
2. ...tasty and crunchy, especially when covered with ketchup;
3. ...varmints obnoxious enough to deserve a formal extermination;
4. ...varmints neglegible enough to deserve nothing more than a casual extermination.

They must have been safe enough to have time to waste in things like technology and space travel so they must be the apex predator of their planet, like we are. The most capable killing machine of their planet, like we are. In addition, they have manged to control their internal aggression instinct, so they must have steered towards other species. Last, they are terrifingly more advanced than us in science and technology, something which requires rationality, a concept in total, unreconcilable odds with religion.

Anyway, don't worry. They won't come here. They have exterminated themselves long time ago, by wars and the destruction of the environment of their planet, like we are doing now. They are dead, like we will be in a short time.

Bye...

Alex
hey, it's not extinction on the way, it's Ragnarok, 'cause only the gentle, non-greedy sociopathic folk will be left and all the corporate monsters and rabid zealots will be dead!!
GO GO THOR! ;)

on other point
what I HATE about many scifi films, especially "Avatar" is that there is one super weapon we on Earth can't do jack squat about: mass drivers.
Millions of asteroids out there to smelt metals from, and fire at ultra high speed down on our silly heads.
Any species capable of interstellar travel could be millions of years old (civilization wise that is) with compmensurate tech
chunk of steel size of a Man's head fired from orbit could vapourize a city.
Their tech would be so far ahead of ours as ot appear to be magic.

compare a World War 2 battleship to Stone Age headhunters...or rather, Word War Three warship with railguns and Phalanx Cannons and MetalStorm...

Quote - chunk of steel size of a Man's head fired from orbit could vapourize a city.

A chunk of steel the size of a man's head would burn up before hitting the ground!

Not if it's a rod, not if it's fired at the right trajectory, and hey, they'd face it with ceramic ablatives anyway ;)
or use depleted uranium or tungsten, hehe

Leaving aside the religious question, I believe interstellar travel is well within our capabilities right now but it would take a level of cooperation beyond anything the world has ever seen.  I'm thinking of generation ships here, btw, not some pie in the sky FTL drive or space warp technology.  

As to why aliens have never visited/contacted us:

We're not interesting enough or we're too far off the beaten track to make it worthwhile.  I have a feeling any serious undertaking would most likely go toward the galactic centre, where there seems to be a lot more fun stuff happening.   I know I'd probably do the same, given the chance.

The galactic centre has a super massive black hole++, fun for lemmings...but I'd steer away from the bathtub drain myself.

As to god, for me it's a radio frequency ya catch now and again, some places the reception is good, others not so much, regardless though it's out there, I think it's more of a mental image of unity than an actual 'thing'. Sometimes, it's clear, but like a song being played on a radio frequency, ya talk to yer mate about it
'love the line, 'and ya happy with everything', that's so true...'
"uh, that isn't what they are saying in that song, it's 'and the taffy with everything' like a pizza with everything on it but it's sweet..."
'what?!'
"google it, you'll see..."

On aliens, I recall a youtube with michau kakau?(sp?) and he was talking about levels of civilization, and something about if you were 'intergalactic' you'd send a robot to make a factory to make more robots.  Which sat fine in my mind, and then my brain thought, why do they have to be our size, and ya wonder about the sudden introduction of certain bacteria, or mitochondria (and the Eve), or the sideline genetic code instruction set we got a short time ago and yet shouldn't have as it is outside ancestry models, and ya come to the idea(not really a conclusion) that they have been here since go. something in everything and everyone and totally overlooked as we point our telescopes up wondering 'where are they?'

yeah, alien to me, means non-human, which also goes non-biped, etc etc etc...

If a cell is a living thing, and two is a more, and 1 billion is a fractional amount on a teaspoon, what do they sell to make rent?

Quote - "I guess you have your work cut out for you to prove all this."

Actually no, many more tangible facts about the universe, our world, and existence in general has been proven by scientific study than by religious study. Religious people often say that science has the burden of proving that there is no God - no, the religious has the burden of proving that there is a God, heaven, hell, and everything else we cannot see, and all they seem to have are the writings of people who didn't know a whole lot about how things worked back then.**

**If I told people that little atomic-sized aliens followed me around and protected me from harm, they would obviously ask "where are they?" and "how do you know they're really there?". If I said "I just know they are!", I'd be ridiculed and branded a lunatic. If I said they were guardian angels or our Lord watching over me though - no problem. No fair.

SnowS

Actually, who ever makes the accusation has the burden of proof. You can make whatever claims you want and people can ask you to prove them true. But whether or not you do is a choice you make. On the other hand, If I accuse you of lying or telling a falsehood, the burden is on me to prove that my accusation is true.

How do you prove something to anyone who won't accept anything you show them as evidence? And that question can go either way.  Athiest or religious.

Quote - > Quote - chunk of steel size of a Man's head fired from orbit could vapourize a city.

A chunk of steel the size of a man's head would burn up before hitting the ground!

Something moving at even a small fraction of the speed of light (say 0.05c) would only take a few seconds to pass through the atmosphere.
Something small enough could turn completely plasma, but that wouldn't really limit the devastation caused, and could quite possibly might make it worse.

Ground burst vs. air burst? just check a place called Tunguska :biggrin:.

Dear silverblade33, I love you. For once, somebody who is conscious of the most destructive weapon realistically conceivable (blackholes and strangelets do not apply, obviously). For some info about kinetic weapons, see this page. For some info about the nightmarish capabilities of the relativistic weapons, check this page.

My personal favourite extinction technology are bioweapons. Stealthly kidnap some earthlings and study their immune system. Stealthly sample the environment for existing pathogena. Engineer half a dozen of super contagious superbugs and release them using tiny drones, attacking all major towns of this planet at the same time. Wait one year for the plagues to do their work and then land on a nearly empty Earth (remaining earthlings can be an interesting subject for hunt-the-humans safaris). The scariest part of this scenario is that the capability of engineering superbugs is probably already within reach for the the most advanced biowaepons labs on this planet. Wait for this technology to spread and then... imagine a Heaven's Gate bunch of wackos decide that humankind has to disvest itself from the meatbag in order to attain the next level of consciousness... yet another good way of self destruction, don't you think so?

Bye... as long as we are still alive.

Quote - Stealthly sample the environment for existing pathogena. Engineer half a dozen of super contagious superbugs and release them using tiny drones, attacking all major towns of this planet at the same time. Wait one year for the plagues to do their work and then land on a nearly empty Earth (remaining earthlings can be an interesting subject for hunt-the-humans safaris).

That's essentially the plot of Moonraker.

Science works by DISPROVING things, not proving them, by the way
Or as a fictional detective so perfectly put it:
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"

 The word sin in Spanish means without.

The idea that a human could be in a state without God is crazy if one's idea of God is a being without limits that is everywhere at all times. 

How could anyone conceive of being outside of everything, unable to get back in?

Perhaps someone seriously high on drugs, like say, a group of protohumans dining on psilocybin for many generations.

Locked in a cycle of first seeing God and the infinite fabric of time and space deconstructed and reconnected during a series of short circuits  across their right and left hemispheres (dexter and sinister)  and then the next morning, feeling like Hell and wondering, "Where did God go?".

And then one day, a shaman of one particular tribe saw these parties were getting out of hand and, if continued, could threaten the tribe's survival.

So this shame man told the tribe that this particular fruit was forbidden because it let you know God and led to knowing lots of others as well, some that might also be promised to the Chief or his brothers. Eating it would be punished by being expelled from the tribe. 

But it was too late, by the time this first philosopher could conceive of these notions of the structure of the Universe and how he might be connected or disconnected (sin) from all the other creatures who didn't seem to have his worries his prefrontal lobe was developed. He realized that eating the magic mushrooms had changed his people forever. Even those born who had never eaten the forbidden fruit were born different from the animals of the world. Where once they had roamed with all creatures in the garden now they could only see themselves as separate. They were now humans.

Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin nor do they have a central nervous system by which to develop a cognitive network of experiencing existence and yet they get on quite well with each other. 

Acknowledgements to Terence McKenna and the movie Altered States. 

Quote -

As to why aliens have never visited/contacted us:
We're not interesting enough or we're too far off the beaten track to make it worthwhile.  I have a feeling any serious undertaking would most likely go toward the galactic centre, where there seems to be a lot more fun stuff happening.   I know I'd probably do the same, given the chance.

There's an even better reason than that, IMO. They might just simply not notice us. Imagine if someone throws a single grain of sand  somewhere onto a million square mile asphalt parking lot, and asks you to find it. ;-)

On the other hand, we've been looking for other planets for a while now and haven't actually seen any. The only way we know for sure that a star might have planets is by observing minor gravitational effects that indicate other objects. So while we know it's very likely that there are planets around certain stars, all we know is that something is there, with no indication whether it's habitable or some kind of hellhole.
And until we can actually see and test other planets, it's hardly worth making the enormous effort to go there.

Could be all the aliens within reach just have the same problems we do. There could be a highly advanced civilization just 20 light years away who would love to meet us, but have governments that don't want to fund it, for all we know.

Then again, maybe the aliens just aren't interested. ;-)

I'd say it's more likely though that the only way aliens are going to find us is by accident, some ginormous navigational blunder on their way somewhere else. We barely exist by the size standards of just our galaxy, let alone the universe as a whole. For all intents and purposes, we're pretty much invisible and extraordinarily insignificant compared to everything else out there.

Could also be that there are thousands of alien races out there, all hanging out with each other, but we're simply not invited because we're not cool enough to be part of their clique. ;-)

Just to add to the above, why should we assume that aliens would even want to bother with us even if they were fully aware of us?
There could be millions of alien species out there that have found our planet, but just have no interest. They could have maybe observed us, maybe taken pictures, maybe even learned a little about us, but overall found us not interesting enough for their time.

How many people bother to get to know the ants living in their backyards? ;-)
The only attention we ever give our anthills is to regularly poison them to get rid of them. If they weren't a nuisance, most of us would barely even care enough to notice them. Sure there are those who study ants, but half or more of them are entomologists working on better poisons. ;-)

Anyway, life in the universe could be so widespread that aliens have their choice of who to study and mingle with and who to ignore. Could be we're just a bunch of uninteresting ants to them. ;-)

 ..............oooooooor.... and this is just something to toss out there, but what if, what if... they can't get to us anymore than we can get to them.? 

I'm just saying. Hey, if the Universe was all created at the same time, there's no reason to believe that Aliens have conquered space travel any better than we have.

Yes there is. Statistically speaking, the likelihood that the nearest 100 alien races are roughly at the same species/technology age is incredibly low. We are only a few hundred years past the invention of printed books. We are only about 100 years past reliable flight (airplane) technology. General purpose computers - less than 60 years.

It is far more likely (far more) that if a nearby alien race developed such technologies as well, they did so more than 100,000 years ago. Consider how our technology has changed in the last thousand years. Now imagine that interval extended another 99 times. In 100,000 years I expect we have computers built into our heads with the ability to access all known information as if we already know it, we'll have lifespans measuring 10,000 years or more, and the ability to harness incredible energies will be trivial. In such cases, space travel becomes pretty easy.

In fact, I suppose that if I was already alive for 5,000 years, I might think it would be a nice relief from boredom to get on a "life ship" and leave this planet and go larking about looking for something new to do.

According to space.com, while we don't yet know how to actually build them, we have anti-matter engine "designs" that could allow travel to nearby stars. A trip to the nearest would be about 200 years. To a group of bored future humans who plan to live 100 times longer than that, well such a trip is not out of the question.

 Yeah, you're assuming a lot of things though Bill and most of it benign and positive. Yeah, there's the possibility of life on other planets and yes, there's the possibility that some have been around a lot longer than we have. but there's also the fact that we live on a planet with literally hundreds of other species of life and yet we're the only ones that have evolved enough to even contemplate  space travel even though some of those species have been around for a lot longer than we have.

You are falling into the a logic trap. Being aware of something as incredibly unlikely, you conclude it is incredibly unlikely.

Consider this: I design computer networking protocols - how machines talk to each other. Often, people designing such protocols ignore network communication errors because they believe (rightly) that they are so rare it isn't worth the effort of augmenting the protocol to get around them. Further, the network itself has error recovery in it. But I can't disbelieve in failures.

So - the likelihood that any single message sent on the net gets lost is around 1 in 10 billion. But in the systems I design, there are typically 10,000 to 100,000 users. In such systems, the likelihood that somebody experiences a communication failure is so high, that it happens around once every hour, or about 25 times a day. My customers do not accept my excuse that the chances of a failure are 1 in 10 billion. Failures happen all day long, every day.

What's my point of this story?

Consider a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars. Are we the only intelligent life in all of that? Doesn't seem so. Just as somebody loses a network messages every hour, so does the universe produce a new intelligent species EVERY HOUR.

What are the odds that a single person experiences two failures in the same day? Astonishingly low. Yet 25 such failures happen every day.

What are the odds that a single planet produces two intelligent species in the same million years? Astonishingly low, and indeed we are the only such species on our planet. Yet, around the universe, 25 such species are produced every day.

 I'm not arguing the numbers with you. I concede to your argument about intelligent life and the universe. the problem I have is that you have nothing to base any of that on other that statistics and theory. In other words, it's all conjecture. so while all of that works out well in theory, one thing I have  realized is that  in real life it doesn't usually work that way.

The other thing I have a problem with is your definition of intelligence or at least the level of intelligence. There are several intelligent species on this planet. As far as we know though, we may be the MOST intelligent on the planet and for that matter, the universe.

sorry. you can't trust the Dolphins and the Mice....

 Yeah, i know. It's those beady eyes!

Quote -  ... the problem I have is that you have nothing to base any of that on other that statistics and theory. In other words, it's all conjecture. ...

Well, that's true, but I was only responding to this:

Quote - .. if the Universe was all created at the same time, there's no reason to believe that Aliens have conquered space travel any better than we have.

As I said, yes there is reason to believe that. The simultaneous creation of the universe in no way leads to the conclusion that mulitple races are in synchronized states of development. While it is conjecture, I still say the likelihood of universal synchronized evolution is so unlikely that any presumption that other races are at the same stage as us is preposterous.

Nowhere in that statement is a belief that intelligent aliens exist. I'm just pointing out that if they do exist, they are not at the same stage as us.

Quote - > Quote -  ... the problem I have is that you have nothing to base any of that on other that statistics and theory. In other words, it's all conjecture. ...

Well, that's true, but I was only responding to this:

Quote - .. if the Universe was all created at the same time, there's no reason to believe that Aliens have conquered space travel any better than we have.

As I said, yes there is reason to believe that. The simultaneous creation of the universe in no way leads to the conclusion that mulitple races are in synchronized states of development. While it is conjecture, I still say the likelihood of universal synchronized evolution is so unlikely that any presumption that other races are at the same stage as us is preposterous.

Nowhere in that statement is a belief that intelligent aliens exist. I'm just pointing out that if they do exist, they are not at the same stage as us.

/Okay, but going back to that same quote, my original premise still holds. An alien race could be hundreds of years ahead of us in evolution. There is no proof that they are ahead of us in space travel. In fact, they could lag us, for all we know.

These aliens? Who need 'computer things' ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lxIL1WlxSQ

Quote -

/Okay, but going back to that same quote, my original premise still holds. An alien race could be hundreds of years ahead of us in evolution. There is no proof that they are ahead of us in space travel. In fact, they could lag us, for all we know.

To add to that - which I already mentioned before, more or less:

We could be farther along in space travel than we are, but we're not. Our brain evolution reached its current point somewhere around 50,000 years ago, but first we had to develop civilizations and science and the desire to learn and do things, and then technology. That took a good while, but just when it was really kicking in, you have The Church going around and doing things like persecuting scientists for "heresy" and creating the dark ages where nothing useful got done. ;-)

Had The Church not interfered, we could very well be a few centuries ahead of our current progress, we could have had these computers, cell phones and Poser back in 1700, and we might have developed starships by now.

Also, we could be alot further along in our space conquest than we are now aside from the exorbitant cost of it all, and a history of governments unwilling to fund such projects and unwilling to cooperate. As I said before, there could be an alien race only 20 light years away that's 10,000 years ahead of us in technology, but unable or unwilling to fund a massive space exploration project.

Evolution of technology and intelligence doesn't at all infer that space travel will automatically follow. Their culture and their means and priorities are more likely to dictate whether they set out for the outer limits or not.

Anywho, we've been enjoying some sun and fun so I'm just catching up  here.

Oh, nothing new I see.

Carry on.

Ralphie

Quote -
Hey, what'dImiss?  Things were getting a bit cold so I put the idea of a vaca in fla in the mind of my human companions.  They're so easy!

In other words, you're uncomfortable with this topic, have nothing to contribute to it, and seek to derail it, hoping maybe the other pet-picture-posting people will follow your example, like you've already tried at least twice in this thread.
Is that about right?

In other words, your "contributions" are more valuable than mine.

That about right?

Quote - In other words, your "contributions" are more valuable than mine.

That about right?

That would depend on if you were actually involved in the discussion and replying on topic. So until you do that, yeah, my contributions are in fact more valuable than yours in that I'm at least staying on topic.
You on the other hand have made at least a couple attempts to derail it, offering nothing even remotely along the lines of being involved in the discussion, and I would call that thread trolling at its worst, but unproductive at its least.

I wouldn't normally say my contributions were any more valuable than anyone else's but in the case where someone isn't even following the topic and posting simply for a need for... whatever, I don't know... then the contributions of everybody who is staying on topic are more valuable.

Klebnor contribution without value? Well, in a topic about mythological beings (aka god/s) and non-existent entities (aliens) a post about a wet dog is the most realistic and sensible contribution up to date :lol:

Quote - Klebnor contribution without value? Well, in a topic about mythological beings (aka god/s) and non-existent entities (aliens) a post about a wet dog is the most realistic and sensible contribution up to date :lol:

Since the whole thread is based on a hypothetical, seems like a post about a wet dog is irrelevant.

I think there are points all around that are being made, in fair statement.

On the one hand, we are all free to post in the forum, and, sometimes, thread derailments are a fun way to de-stress a stressful thread where people are just fighting back and forth.

On the other hand, there ARE times when the thread derailment is disrespectful to those participating in a discussion (whether fruitful or not).  

When weighing what to post and when, it's important to take into account the audience, and whether or not what your posting will be well-received.  

I would like it if those who had a problem with this thread contact me, or another member of the Poser team.  To date, I have heard that 2 community members have complained about this thread.  We all have the right to our opinions, and there will always be someone who will disagree with any point of view.  

The reason that this thread was allowed to stay open is that we believe that this isn't just a forum to talk about a program.  This is a small part of a huge community.  Part of being a community is learning to deal with things like disagreements.  If you disagree with your next door neighbor, do you build  fence?  Do you go to your city council and demand they be reprimanded?  

Or, do you find other ways to avoid confrontation?  There are many ways one can avoid confrontation.  

This thread has been left open, for 15 days and 10 pages, because of the respect people  have shown to each other and each others' points of view. (Note Disagreeing with a set point of view or belief is NOT disrespect.  There are thousands of religions worldwide, and many sects within those faiths.  You will never get everyone to agree 100% on anything regarding the existence of God, creation, or the hereafter.)

The fact is, the simple growth of the conversation into what it has become shows us that there are more people willing to have an actual respectful conversation with people they disagree with shows us that this community is about more than just pushing pixels and hitting the "make art" button.  

Renderosity hosts forums, galleries, freestuff, and a marketplace.  You guys make the community what it is.  It is, and always has been, up to you to make it what you want it to be.

Just for the record I wouldn't have written what I did had Klebnor not said "Hey, what'dImiss?" which was followed up by "Oh, nothing new I see."

So in essence, Klebnor popped by for no reason other than to dismiss 8 pages or so of discussion as unworthy, for no apparent reason.

That was pretty much an insult to everyone who has been posting here, and a much different thing than taking the time to disagree or discuss. I just happend to be the first person to say something about it.

Just explaining myself and all. ;-)

please don't be insulted for me. I can do that for myself.... and I'm not insulted at all.

Quote - please don't be insulted for me. I can do that for myself.... and I'm not insulted at all.

I wasn't being insulted for you. I was just pointing it out. Regardless of whether or not anybody felt insulted, it was an insulting thing to do to come along and just say in essence "I see this is still going on but it looks like nothing has really been said".

I'd rather not have to defend myself for simply pointing out the obvious, whether it was a nice thing to do or not. I get sick of that sort of thing happening and I see it alot in threads at several forums where somebody just feels compelled to drop by and toss in their 2 cents about the thread content - not to discuss the topic, but just to say what they think about the thread. It's pointless and it's annoying.

The point of my post wasn't to facilitate the pointing of fingers, it was to maybe make people think before they post; not just in this thread, but EVERY thread.  I don't want to end up locking a thread that has had members opening up to each other, but I will if it degenerates...it'll be the hardest thing I've done, so far, on staff at Renderosity, and done with much heartbreak, but I'll do it. 
Basically, if this were a discussion in a diner with the person across from you, would you say what you're going to post?  So far, this thread has been THAT discussion, with very few exceptions.  Nothing would make me more proud of this community than for it to stay at that level of discussion. 

Any and all trolling posts ARE being deleted.  

Quote - That was pretty much an insult to everyone who has been posting here, and a much different thing than taking the time to disagree or discuss. I just happend to be the first person to say something about it.

Agreed.