To go back to the original question, I would rephrase it: If God/dess/es exist/s, why do/es t/s/he/y* work so hard to give the impression t/s/he/y do/es/n't?

*This is getting to look like one of those international adapters that fits any plug to any socket, but none of them very well.

Seth wrote:

hackenslash » Mar 29, 2010 4:19 pm wrote:

Seth » Mon Mar 29, 2010 11:57 pm wrote:
Dunno, that's for the scientists to figure out, and aren't "if," "why," and "how" the essence of science? One posits that the questions of if God exists, how God exists and why God exists ought to be of significance to science.

You know better than that. If science were to investigate every whacky notion ever proposed, no real research would get done. Research into the possibility of god is not, and can never be, justified, until or unless some set of circumstances arises that requires supernatural intervention for its existence. There is simply no good reason to consider the idea.

Funny, the proposition that there is some really powerful entity somewhere in time and space capable of manifesting itself on earth from time to time is a rather important question for science.

No it's not. Not at least until some evidence or NEED points to it. At the moment there is neither.

Seth wrote:

byofrcs wrote:

Seth wrote:And you think that documentation will survive when cockroaches or some other organism evolves to replace man?

Wot, you just watched District Nine, and now you're afraid of prawns.....

Seth wrote:

byofrcs wrote:

Seth wrote:

This is false because there is nothing in our understanding of genetics that precludes the possibility of intelligent design or manipulation of genetics through time. We do know for a fact that it is possible to tamper with genetics to deliberately and intelligently design organisms for a specific purpose. Intelligent design is absolutely true because we puny humans have achieved it. What this means is that since our puny intellects can, with relative ease, manipulate genes to create flourescent rabbits, that an intelligence not all that much more advanced than ours could EASILY have done the same thing throughout history. A nudge here, a snip there, to end, split or modify a genetic line. A minor perturbation in the orbit of an asteroid in the Oort Cloud 65 million years ago to reset the genetic clock at the KT boundary. Any of these things are perfectly possible and completely in accord with known science, and none of them require, or preclude a god-like intelligence from existing or choosing to intervene in our planet's history. Is such an explanation "necessary" because, as Dawkins says, it's so much more elegant (and atheistically satisfying) that nature does it by random acts of evolution? No, it's not "necessary,", but then again neither is BT corn, and it exists and stands as proof of the possibility of intelligent design.

And there are very clear fingerprints left by deliberately influencing genetics as opposed to natural processes.

Really? Are you telling me that ten million years from now someone who has no knowledge of the genetic manipulation of BT corn will be able to tell that it's artificially manipulated? How?

Yes; It is patented so the sequences are documented.

And you think that documentation will survive when cockroaches or some other organism evolves to replace man?

That is a problem. High fidelity storage and retrieval of information is a concern. At best today we can theorize to get 1000 to 1400 years (based on MTBF of systems such as Pergamon disk array). That is still 1/100th of a percentage of what is needed but given storage technology doubles every year or so then it won't take that many years to get MTBFs into the millions of years.

Man evolves to replace man and even then whatever replaces us inherits our technology.

That aside the sequences for the Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (cry1A(b)-gene) will be in the genome and it has a promoter and a marker.

Again, ten million years from now, will that promoter and marker exist, and if they do, what ensures that they are not interpreted simply as non-operative junk DNA?

You gave the example as Bt corn and I said why it would be noticeable. If the promoter and markers do not exist then it won't be Bt corn i.e. it won't be your example.

It should stick out like a sore thumb given 10 million years we'll have real-time sequencing and matching to existing sequences.

"What do you mean "we," you squishy meat-sack?" said Doctor Cockroach as he preened his exoskeleton.

Why are you specist and also why are you transferring your hatred into this other species even though it is hypothetical ?

As a subspecies of a naturally-occurring bacterium with markers then it would be unusual if the gene sequences were found transferred in such a way.

And, might that be interpreted as, *gasp*, evidence of intelligent design?

Now, given all the genetic material in literally every organism, can you say with certainty that zero number of those amino acid combinations were manipulated by intelligence at any time in the past 15 billion years? Are "markers" and "promoters" inexorably necessary to direct manipulation of amino acid pairs, or is it just the technique we puny humans use?

The beauty of science is that it need not go off on every wild goose chase and include every imaginary creature that people invent. There is only one reality.

On the other hand if some suitable advanced intelligence did muck around with genomes then it would probably be obscured by time and no matter what the purpose of the intelligence, evolution happens and it is not predictable because the problem landscape is not predictable. Over time the intelligence has been erased and natural selection has diluted whatever distant influence could have ever happened. Evolution is still true and the designer is irrelevant.

Then there is the question of the origin of these intelligences. Are we to assume they evolved or they too were designed ? Adding a designer increases the complexity of the system far beyond what is needed and it is up to the person proposing this to present the extraordinary evidence to support their claim.

No doubt you'll argue that God would be so crafty that his handiwork would be indistinguishable from the natural processes, but in that case, what's the difference?

Well, the difference would be than in one case,it's a non-intelligently directed process and in the other it is.

Meaning that you can't actually tell the difference. Unless the designer is interfering at every generation then the processes of natural selection will undo any work of a designer. They are so irrelevant.

Without understanding the purpose it would be impossible to see the difference. Unless you claim to understand God's purpose ?

Well, that you or I may not understand God's purpose does not mean that there is no purpose, and while it might be difficult to see the difference, the difference could be substantial. For example, an intelligent decision that Neanderthal was not quite what God was shooting for, resulting in genetic manipulation of another line, or the creation of several overlapping lines of evolution as a deliberate and intentional program for the advancement of human intelligence would be an important difference to naturally-occurring evolution.

No, it just means that you have no evidence, you can never have any evidence and you are making up examples.

If the result looks like it could have happened be natural means, why invoke God?

Because if God did it, that's what science would require.

Others don't require that starting point.

It's not a starting point, it's a search for truth.

Then you are in the wrong industry; try maths.

Why is it then that people who research the supernatural with the aim of showing it to exist are so unreliable and full of fail ?.

They're not very good at it?

You realise that naturalistic explanations are 'satisfying' because they explain so much more, and they also improve our lives.

That's not science, that's social philosophy.

Philosophy without science is pointless.

I wouldn't say it's pointless at all, because not all things that are pondered by philosophy are matters of science. There is, for example, no particle called a "moron" that causes morality, and yet morality exists.

Philosophy without science is definitely pointless. Morality has evolved. As a philosophical question there is science to support what is pondered.

It's not 'atheistically satisfying' because it actually advances our understanding, rather than paralyse it by insisting that we have faith in the assertions of thousand year old books.

No one is asking science to have faith in anything.

He didn't say "science" but "we". Theologians say "we" should have faith in the assertions of thousand year old books. Not that long ago Theologians demanded that "we" should have faith in the assertions of thousand year old books and not long before that Theologians enforced this faith in the assertions of thousand year old books through bodily harm.

Who cares? Ignore them.

Well we can (just) now in Western countries - in Muslim countries they still kill people for ignoring Theologians. Theists on this board rave about how many believers in God there are and they don't fully realise the numbers are fraudulent.

What single improvement has a purely belief-based explanation ever achieved? And I'm not just talking about feel-good things like "oh, you'll see your loved one again on the other side".

What's wrong with "feel-good things?" They are of utility to humans are they not?

Seth wrote:

Personal experience of God(s) is meaningless, as that implies an over reliance on the accuracy of that lump of grey meat in your skull.

It's only meaningless to you because you choose not to acknowledge the fact that there is nothing in science that precludes intimate, brain-to-brain contact or communications from an incorporeal, but entirely natural, albeit possibly extra-universal intelligence to our own brains.

And we may one day show that these things are possible. But for now all test have falsified them.

Precisely.

So how long do we wait ?. It's been 25,000 years or so.

We don't wait, we go looking.

Don't you think that with the amount of funding religion receives then it would at least come up with something a little bit more concrete ?.

Not if God doesn't want it that way.

And you know this how ?. You do seem awfully conversant with what God says, wants, does and desires.

A dog with no bark may still intrude on our consciousness when we step on some of it's "doggie-do", so what excuse has god got for not saying "Hi" ????

Darwinsbulldog wrote:A dog with no bark may still intrude on our consciousness when we step on some of it's "doggie-do", so what excuse has god got for not saying "Hi" ????

I thought I stepped in some goddie-do once, but no one answered when I asked "who left this mess here" so I just shrugged and cleaned it off.

hotshoe wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:A dog with no bark may still intrude on our consciousness when we step on some of it's "doggie-do", so what excuse has god got for not saying "Hi" ????

I thought I stepped in some goddie-do once, but no one answered when I asked "who left this mess here" so I just shrugged and cleaned it off.

Therefore Dog ?.

Seth wrote:

Don't you think that with the amount of funding religion receives then it would at least come up with something a little bit more concrete ?.

Not if God doesn't want it that way.

...and by that, we're back to the faith thing, the refuge for the intellectually weak. A god that has pretentions on our reality could at least have the fucking courtesy to manifest itself occasionally, instead of playing coy. Burnt toast doesn't count...

What's wrong with "feel-good things?" They are of utility to humans are they not?

Don't you think that with the amount of funding religion receives then it would at least come up with something a little bit more concrete ?.

Not if God doesn't want it that way.

We already have a science that studies these sorts of questions. Its called Psychology. It investigates why people believe things based on zilch evidence and the answers are precisely things like, it makes them feel comfy. It studies things like why people make things up and further why some of those people take some of the made up things and need to believe they are literally true. It may even investigate why some people want to investigate some made up things but not others and why one person believes some made up things but doesn't believe other made up stuff. Generally, it doesn't work from the premise that every delusional piece of nonsense it comes across has existence beyond the person's mind and why should it? It would never have gotten anywhere wasting time on "You can't prove that every delusion ever conceived isn't true just because there's no evidence". It may explore why this guy believes in leprechauns but not unicorns. All you are demanding is some special regard for one particular delusion in its various forms.

And then we go around the circle again. "You're dismissing it out of hand because of your biases." Whatever. It has been investigated as naseum regardless of your claims.

Seth wrote:Nonsense. No one is preventing science from investigating God but scientists. They choose not to do so for many reasons, not the least of which is that when someone actually does so, they tend to have their scientific careers destroyed by the scientific establishment.

This is red herring derail from your part, Seth. You were discussing how "Supernaturalism" is tautologically defined as anti-scientific, a priori. I said, that is theologians doing. Now you say that scientists choose not to study god, which is just wrong and irrelevant to the point at hand. There are many good neuro-scientists studying religion and belief systems, but how can one study a field (supernaturalism) that is defined as anti-naturalistic? How will you study something that, by definition, escapes any measuring device?

Hint, you can't. In science you have to have a good question, an empirical question. You DON'T have these questions in Supernaturalism, unless you think that SN invades Naturalism. Many studies have been made that show that prayers, for instance, have no discernible effect whatsoever in reality, for instance. Your accusation is therefore false.

Back to the tautology. It doesn't matter what theists claim about God. Dawkins himself said that the question of whether or not God exists is absolutely a question of science. Either God exists or he doesn't, and science will eventually be able to make a determination in that regard.

No it won't. Because all we have done is dismiss a certain type of gods. The type of Gods that answer to prayers, that influence our world in a supposedly perceptible way. You cannot determine ever if demiurges do not exist. All you can do is a "beyond reasonable doubt" arguments, such as this.

Perhaps not right now, but eventually. What theists claim about God should be ignored in favor of constructing experiments to determine the existence and nature of God independent of what they claim.

Good luck with that. I'd rather try to find a needle in fucking mars.

Seth wrote:
Well, clearly one can posit, "There are claims made about the existence of some entity called 'God,' so let's try to come up with a working definition of what a 'god' might be and how it might interact with the physical world using as a basis some of the claims of physical interactions of this thing they call God with the universe, and work from there on a methodology to refine the definition and proposed characteristics of an entity that might be able to perform those physical manifestations, and then try to construct experiments to see if we can find evidence of such an entity."

Just about every scientific investigation into "supernatural" or "paranormal" events comes up blank. This includes miracles, apparitions, answered prayers and faith healing. The people reporting such things turn out to be mistaken, misquoted, mad or bad. I can't think of a single case where objective investigation of this kind of thing has yielded a conclusion of hmm, something so far inexplicable really is going on here.

You get exactly nowhere if you simply reject the whole idea out of hand because of an existing bias against the very idea of God.

I don't. I reject it for the same reason that Sagan rejects the idea of garage-dwelling dragons. If every test you can think of comes up blank, the things that you can't test make no sense, just how dead does the horse have to be before one can reasonably stop flogging it?

It's a poverty of imagination that blinds science to the possibilities for investigating God.

I'd say it's the other way round. The poverty of imagination on (some parts of) the religious side, blinds religion to the possibilities of investigating the idea that maybe God didn't do it after all.

God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

Mister Agenda wrote:God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

We can readily see the problems with those whole thing. Seth exemplified the problems.

Scientist: There is no evidence for unicorns.

Unicorn worshiper: That doesn't prove they don't exist.

S: Fine but if they exist, why is it we don't see them?

UW: Well, they are invisible.

A: We'll use infrared scanning.

UW: When I said invisible, I meant to everything. But I'm sure if you devised a new method to detect them, I wouldn't insist they were invisible to that too- until you tested with the new device and didn't find them. Then I'd just again assert that they are invisible to that too and your failure to find them doesn't prove they don't exist.

One can see what a waste of time this would be since every test would only result in a redefinition of what the unicorn is. Because that is what has already happened with our "unicorn" over and over and over as science drives it more and more into the gaps.

Mister Agenda wrote:God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

All of this may be true, but it's irrelevant to the question of whether he exists or not. Again, this is resort to tautology.

God could be just a really powerful, really smart and completely evil fucker with a narcissistic streak and megalomania that causes him to want people to worship him.

But it would still be useful to know if he exists. In fact, the worse he is, the more imperative it is that we figure it out, so perhaps we can create defenses.

Moonwatcher wrote:

Mister Agenda wrote:God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

We can readily see the problems with those whole thing. Seth exemplified the problems.

Scientist: There is no evidence for unicorns.

Unicorn worshiper: That doesn't prove they don't exist.

S: Fine but if they exist, why is it we don't see them?

UW: Well, they are invisible.

A: We'll use infrared scanning.

UW: When I said invisible, I meant to everything. But I'm sure if you devised a new method to detect them, I wouldn't insist they were invisible to that too- until you tested with the new device and didn't find them. Then I'd just again assert that they are invisible to that too and your failure to find them doesn't prove they don't exist.

One can see what a waste of time this would be since every test would only result in a redefinition of what the unicorn is. Because that is what has already happened with our "unicorn" over and over and over as science drives it more and more into the gaps.

Then quit asking the theists about it and get on with independent research.

Seth wrote:

Moonwatcher wrote:

Mister Agenda wrote:God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

We can readily see the problems with those whole thing. Seth exemplified the problems.

Scientist: There is no evidence for unicorns.

Unicorn worshiper: That doesn't prove they don't exist.

S: Fine but if they exist, why is it we don't see them?

UW: Well, they are invisible.

A: We'll use infrared scanning.

UW: When I said invisible, I meant to everything. But I'm sure if you devised a new method to detect them, I wouldn't insist they were invisible to that too- until you tested with the new device and didn't find them. Then I'd just again assert that they are invisible to that too and your failure to find them doesn't prove they don't exist.

One can see what a waste of time this would be since every test would only result in a redefinition of what the unicorn is. Because that is what has already happened with our "unicorn" over and over and over as science drives it more and more into the gaps.

Then quit asking the theists about it and get on with independent research.

Science has made that independent research into God claims. It's done that thousands if not millions of times. It's done it since the very earliest days from Galileo to Darwin to Einstein up to today. And so far all the God claims have turned out to be untrue.

What's more, all claims of anything supernatural have turned to be untrue (as well as never having any basis in reality in the first place).

2000 years ago it my have seemed reasonable to believe in Gods & miracles (at a time when almost nobody on earth had the faintest idea how the world around them really worked). But to continue believing that nowadays is simply moronic.

Ian.

Luis Dias wrote:

Seth wrote:Nonsense. No one is preventing science from investigating God but scientists. They choose not to do so for many reasons, not the least of which is that when someone actually does so, they tend to have their scientific careers destroyed by the scientific establishment.

This is red herring derail from your part, Seth. You were discussing how "Supernaturalism" is tautologically defined as anti-scientific, a priori. I said, that is theologians doing. Now you say that scientists choose not to study god, which is just wrong and irrelevant to the point at hand. There are many good neuro-scientists studying religion and belief systems, but how can one study a field (supernaturalism) that is defined as anti-naturalistic? How will you study something that, by definition, escapes any measuring device?

Hint, you can't.

Tautology. Use a different definition. Assume that theistic explanations are misinterpretations of actual recordable phenomena and figure out how those phenomena might have occurred, then test...if you're able. Take for example the "Miracle of Fatima." Thousands of people saw this occur. Was it mass delusion? Perhaps, but then you have to show how such a mass delusion can happen. Was it some unknown phenomena performed by an intelligence? Maybe. Think about how a mass of people could be convinced that a military tank could disappear....er, the sun could dance in the sky.

How could such an illusion be created, and what sort of physical properties would an entity creating such an illusion need to have to make it happen?

Nobody said it was easy, but the real point here is not that God is going to be testable any time soon, if ever, it's the failure in the logic of those who dismiss any potential that God exists merely because theists claim that God is supernatural, when in fact God may be entirely natural, but makes use of natural principles and effects that we do not yet understand.

I really don't care if God exists or not, and I agree that if he wants me to believe, he ought to drop by for coffee sometime. What I'm analyzing is the failures in reasoning of those who bash theists for failures in reasoning. Pseudo-reason in the pursuit of science doesn't seem to be a useful idea. If you're going to reason your way past God, then for God's sake use actual reason, and logic.

I point out the tautology because that's what it is. It's a weak argument in response to theistic claims. Whatever God is, or isn't, the entirely scientific question of his existence is not going to be answered by resort to tautology. One has to start from the premise that theists believe what they believe for a reason, that it's not simply universal human delusion, but that such beliefs exist as a result of causation. Whether the stories of religion are true or not, they exist for a reason, and they persist for a reason, and they were based in some series of events, the true nature of which we are unsure about. Simply dismissing thousands of years of claims seems somewhat short-sighted. Rather than just say "Oh, God didn't erect a pillar of fire or part the Red Sea because that requires supernatural powers" I prefer to think about how God could erect a pillar of fire and part the sea, and what such a God might look like. True, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, nor should science, in reality. But science should be open to the possibility that something important actually did happen, rather than simply dismissing it all as "supernaturalism."

I point this out at all merely because I find resort to tautology and weak arguments against theism to be intellectually incompetent, and people who purport to be intellectually competent and indeed intellectually superior to the theists whom they bash ought to at least see and understand the flaws in their own logic. Which is why I point them out.

In science you have to have a good question, an empirical question. You DON'T have these questions in Supernaturalism, unless you think that SN invades Naturalism. Many studies have been made that show that prayers, for instance, have no discernible effect whatsoever in reality, for instance. Your accusation is therefore false.

Did it occur to you that prayer is not like testing the efficacy of a new antibiotic? Did it occur to you that prayer depends on the actions of the receiver of the prayers, who might not want a scientific investigation of prayers to succeed? If you say, "we're going to examine John's behavior for signs of criminal activity," and you tell John this, might John perhaps decide to refrain from criminal activity during the research?

Now, this is not to suggest that prayers do work, though many people claim they do, it's meant merely to point out that you cannot make the assertion that you do; "Your accusation is therefore false." The core point is that what you, or anyone else thinks is "supernatural" may simply be unexplained natural phenomena that we are currently unable to explain. This fact must always be kept in mind when discussing such things.

Back to the tautology. It doesn't matter what theists claim about God. Dawkins himself said that the question of whether or not God exists is absolutely a question of science. Either God exists or he doesn't, and science will eventually be able to make a determination in that regard.

No it won't. Because all we have done is dismiss a certain type of gods. The type of Gods that answer to prayers, that influence our world in a supposedly perceptible way.

Which is wrong, because there is nothing in our knowledge of the physical universe that precludes such an entity from existing.

You cannot determine ever if demiurges do not exist. All you can do is a "beyond reasonable doubt" arguments, such as this.

The problem with such arguments is that they are based in ignorance. Our knowledge of the universe is imperfect, therefore we cannot conclude, even to a reasonable doubt, that no entity capable of performing some, if not all, of the act that have been attributed to God, can possibly exist in this, or any other universe.

This does not mean that legions of scientists must be assigned to the search for God, only that science ought not make proclamations and determinations that it is not qualified to make, nor should pundits try to misuse science in their arguments attacking theism. Theists may be wrong. They are quite likely wrong. But anti-theists cannot PROVE that they are wrong, and should never form their arguments as if it's a valid conclusion that God does not, much less cannot exist based only on the claims of theists about the nature of God. That's tautology and it's unreason and illogic, and it does not serve intelligent debate well to use is. Those who disbelief in God have plenty of ammunition in their quivers when it comes to debunking specific claims and the reasoning of theists. But they weaken their intellectual rectitude by resorting to tautology as a convenience.

Seth wrote:

Then quit asking the theists about it and get on with independent research.

Sorry, Seth, but you're going round and round in circles. I just don't need any kind of divine intelligence to make the world work. You're asking me to try very, very hard to find the invisible, intangible fifth roadwheel on my car.

Seth, we don't CARE about the fucking possibilities. Put forth the evidence. Until then, all you HAVE is POSSIBLITIES. Guess what? It's also possible that William Hung is the next Pavarotti, but I wouldn't bet my fucking money on it.

Seth wrote:

Moonwatcher wrote:

Mister Agenda wrote:God should provide evidence for his existence if he wants us to believe in him. If omnibenevolent, God wants everyone to believe in him if that is a condition for salvation. Being omniscient, God knows what evidence would convince any given individual. Being omnipotent, God can provide that evidence (AND communicate with cockroaches).

God does not provide this evidence, therefore: God does not exist OR God is either not omnibenevolent, not omniscient, not omnipotent, or believing in him is not a condition for salvation.

We can readily see the problems with those whole thing. Seth exemplified the problems.

Scientist: There is no evidence for unicorns.

Unicorn worshiper: That doesn't prove they don't exist.

S: Fine but if they exist, why is it we don't see them?

UW: Well, they are invisible.

A: We'll use infrared scanning.

UW: When I said invisible, I meant to everything. But I'm sure if you devised a new method to detect them, I wouldn't insist they were invisible to that too- until you tested with the new device and didn't find them. Then I'd just again assert that they are invisible to that too and your failure to find them doesn't prove they don't exist.

One can see what a waste of time this would be since every test would only result in a redefinition of what the unicorn is. Because that is what has already happened with our "unicorn" over and over and over as science drives it more and more into the gaps.

Then quit asking the theists about it and get on with independent research.

You are correct. There is no telling what sort of anti-human agenda those invisible, non-corporeal omnipotent unicorns that can completely erase every trace of evidence for their existence might have. We should all unite and build a defense against these creatures that can do anything and change their entire nature at a whim. But we cannot do it right now as we have too much money committed to the LSD (the Leprechaun Defense System). But right after that and the unicorns, "God" is our next target. And don't think we've forgotten about vampires and their magical ability to cloak themselves from all detection and erase all evidence either. We've got your number too, Dracula. We even have your novel- which is evidence.