Paul

To me, it sounds so completely obvious that Joseph Smith was a confidence trickster. That stuff about the golden plates nobody ever saw, for example; the book written in "old-timey" (even for the time!) language for no readily apparent reason other than to seem more "authentic"... It reeks of an imaginative but poorly executed scam. That he tried the same thing in several states before it worked, and his life and behaviour up until his death (shot falling from the window of a jail, fleeing an angry mob) likewise do not lend credibility to the story.

I'm not writing that to upset you guys, or to make a rhetorical point; that's how it looks from this outsider's perspective. I will never experience anything other than complete unbelief in the man and his religious claims. So what I'm asking is how all this is viewed by an insider. Do Mormons really think Smith was legit? Or do they suspect otherwise, but sort of think that it doesn't matter because the moral lessons and peace felt in Mormonism justify it in and of themselves, irrespective of its origin?

Or are you told a completely different, more favourable story about Joseph Smith, or just not told much at all?

I'm genuinely curious what Mormons think of Smith and the birth of their religion.

Well, I mean aside from the obvious "if you do anything even vaguely like the Nazis, then you too are a Nazi! Even if it's something laudable (there were a few, hidden amongst all the awful things), like banning vivisection!" Everyone loves a Reducto Ad Hitlerum fallacy.

But what gets me is that it isn't even true. Nazi Germany actually *relaxed* regulations on firearm ownership, from an outright ban following the Treaty of Versailles and a really, really strict regulation policy when the depression started to ease up. The Nazis binned the regulation of long guns like rifles and shotguns, lowered the age at which you could own a handgun, and tripled the length of a permit to three years.

Why do people feel the need to outright lie like this? I'm not defending Nazis, you understand, more like... defending history. If you want to make the analogy at all, you should be claiming that those in favour of banning firearms are like the German government following the Versailles Treaty, which *was* doing it because it feared armed unrest. Not the Nazis, who gave guns to people like candy, by comparison. But, I guess, that wouldn't sound as good as the lie that anything you personally find bad is akin to Nazism, therefore Nazis definitely did it too.

The product is called Veerappan, who was an Indian bandit and sandalwood smuggler, who maintained a private army, was wanted for the murder of something like 184 people, kidnapped a bunch more, and was eventually killed by police in 2004 after a 20 year long campaign of murder and douchebaggery.

The weird thing from Lush's point of view is that, with their commitment to animal rights and using natural ingredients, they would choose to honour a guy like this who also killed something around 200 elephants for their ivory. I do not understand.

He did, I guess, have a truly epic moustache, but surely even that isn't enough to redeem him. =/

I mean, in addition to all the stuff that's already in the Quran and Hadith. That's sort of a given, right?

I found myself watching a video on beards in Islam, and it struck me that the Hadith the video quoted all seemed to be about differentiating yourself from people who are not Muslim. Apparently wearing a moustache and no beard was common at the time, so for Muslims, it was everything but the moustache.

Do you think there are similar "do the opposite of everyone else" rules Muhammed would stipulate if he lived among us today? What would they be?

Or.. feel free to tell me if you think it would be wrong to put words in his mouth, too. Totally a reasonable position, all things considered. I wouldn't like it if I were him, come to think of it.

Just an idle curiosity, really. How important is it to the Biblical story is the carpentry thing? Is that profession of engineering and creation important? Does it say much to you about the characters of those concerned? Would it be a substantially different book if Jesus or his Earthly father had been a farmer or merchant?

For that matter, how important do you think other professions in the Bible, when they are mentioned? The fact that a bunch of the Disciples seems steeped in significance, for example. Would the meaning change if they were shepherds?

There's no rhetoric going on here. I'm just interested to see what you have to say. Atheists can pitch in too (and since you're going to anyway, might as well add this caveat) - this question essentially deals with the Bible as a work of literature rather than solid fact, so whatever your beliefs it's all fair play. :)

Can it drive otherwise sane people to acts of barbarity?

Or are the perpetrators psychopaths who would find any reason to kill some poor sod, and Islam is convenient?

Or is it some toxic mix of the pair of them? Would dangerous individuals perhaps be kept in check if their religion and some less salubrious practitioners of it didn't provide a seemingly legitimate outlet?

Is it something else?

Personally I don't think they could give that much of a toss about their religion, or its status, since every act of violence erodes public opinion, however genial it started out. I also don't think it's Islam per se - plenty of extremism has been perpetrated by people of other religions, using equally messed up interpretations of those religions as justification.

I just saw a question that started "if evolution is real", which is always going to go to crazyland. It asked that if humans and apes are so closely related then why not take blood from apes for transfusion into humans. Now, I'm no doctor but I suspect there are a few problems with that idea.

But it got me thinking. We have the ability to create a number of different body tissues from stem cells; would it be possible to create human blood cells and pump them in plasma, or even maybe just saline solution, into people that need it.

Perhaps it could only be used as a stopgap until they can get some real blood, to keep their blood pressure up, but it'd still be incredibly useful.

I see a bunch of psychics whose primary deal is to be the medium of communication between the dead and their surviving loved ones, who have a secondary ability in prophesy, and publish, among other things, annual world predictions for the coming year. And they'll also do personal prediction services.

So is there any explanation given in psychic circles for the apparent interconnection of these two, to my mind, entirely distinct abilities? What mechanism allows for a gift in both these areas, and why do we (or I, at least) hardly ever see psychics who profess to only being able to do one thing?

There is, of course, a fairly obvious sceptical answer to these questions, and - cards on the table - I am a sceptic, so I've thought this already. So if you're thinking of answering "they're expanding their market for more delicious money" then you'd be kind of wasting your time. But I am genuinely interested in and curious to see what psychics or those who believe being a psychic is a thing have to say about it.

I mean, it bears all the hallmarks of truth as applied to the Bible: It is composed of various letters and diary entries scraped together from multiple sources. It features many places which actually exist, such as the coastal town of Whitby and the mountains of Transylvania. And most conclusively of all, it says it's an accurate report of the events which unfold within its pages. Would you call Jonathan Harker a liar? I trust him.

There's a lot of excitement about Halloween, and much more in America than here. Which is odd in a way because America is much more fervently Christian than where I live. You see the odd fundamentalist raining against the festivities saying it's all demonic and so forth, of course, but I never see anything about November the First.

All Saint's Day, the feast day for every single saint, all at once, seems like it should be a bigger deal than completely ignored. But I only partially care because I'm an atheist, and therefore also don't really know.

Do Christians celebrate All Hallows Day at all? Or is it all about the precluding day these days?

Well, the time has come for me to move from my trusty Ethernet cable to the no strings attached magic of "N" wireless, since we're finally getting a new router upgraded from G.

My desktop is pretty far from the router, though, and the signal from the current router is kind of feeble up there. I hear N tends to have greater range, so are internal cards with their big antennas going to provide any noticeable increase in connectivity over those USB ones with their tiny, admittedly sleek form factors? I've got lots of USB sockets going spare on the back of the case, and I'm sure I can find room inside for a wireless card (basically the antenna is going at the back), so space isn't an issue here. I just want the best, fastest connectivity I can get.

I'm a bit lost on all this wireless stuff. I liked my cable. Knew where I was with that. But it's got to go, apparently, so any advice would be great :)

Yes, this is a nutty, impossible planet, but it's my hypothetical and we're doing it anyway.

Seems to me that you could technically break the light barrier just by building a tall enough structure on a spinning object (or two, one on each side, to keep the centre of gravity in the same place), especially if it was really belting around to begin with. However, I'm also pretty sure that it'd be impossible, so what mechanism would come into play to stop you from doing this? I guess the rotation would slow down, but I'm too derpy with my physics to understand why.

So, uh, why? Or would it? I dunno. that's... why I'm asking ;)

"1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so."

So says the opening of the world's second most inexplicable bestseller (seriously Twilight fans, what the hell?).

It says pretty clearly that the universe is full of water, and that the Earth exists in kind of a bubble, the firmament, between the water "out there" and the water that makes our seas. This was a common belief of the time and is repeated throughout ancient literature.

My question, then, is for Biblical literalists who believe every word of the Bible as fact, and would rather go with the Bible than any kind of evidence or scientific framework, and is thus: The Voyager probes are now 19 billion kilometers from Earth and have yet to reach the other end of the firmament, and find all this water. How far away is it? Or is the Voyager mission a hoax?

So this is a little odd. I'm getting a sort of electrical interference buzzing from the speakers and, when it's plugged in, headset. Normally I'd suspect some sort of external hardware thing like the mains cable being improperly shielded, except for two things:

- This started relatively recently and I haven't altered my configuration for ages, and

- When I'm in the sound options window in Windows 7, it stops. But only if I'm looking at the Recording tab. The moment I close the window or go to the Playback tab, for example, the noise returns.

I can't have the Recording tab up for ever, so how can I permanently fix this?

Okay, all the R&S Pagans, I know there are a few of you, at least. I was recently in Scotland and everywhere was still covered in bunting from, I learned, the just-gone festival of Beltane. What did I miss, and what was it for?

Because Google would be too easy ;)

I'm not saying for one second that it actually *is* a psychological disorder. But throughout the history of psychology we've had some pretty spurious disorders - even one, of which I cannot remember the name, describing the condition of a slave not liking being a slave; a persistent runaway (the "cure" was, completely unsurprisingly, a beating).* I mean, why wouldn't a slave want to remain a slave? o_O

So it seems entirely in keeping with that style of thinking that a society, such as that of the USA, which both loves to medicalise things which it considers wrong and considered interracial partnerships wrong - illegal, no less! - well into the twentieth century would possibly have diagnosed interracial love as a mental disorder. I'm wondering if it did, and if so, what would it have been called. And, while I think about it, what would treatment have been, and (if you're feeling especially knowledgeable, you clever, extremely handsome answerer, you) how many were diagnosed?

For no reason other than to satisfy my own perverse curiosity.

*I got that thing about the slavery from the excellent show QI, and have no idea what I'd even search for to find the name.

Wasn't so good for Jesus, unless he's some kind of super-Masochist, it looked like the end of his burgeoning new interpretation of Judaism (because the whole Resurrection thing hadn't happened), it just seems like the opposite of good all around.

I would call it Awful Friday.

Seriously, though, I'm genuinely interested in the reason why it's called Good Friday.

So for a while now my 20 year old 2L W201 Mercedes has been really hard to start in the morning. It turns over absolutely fine, but refuses to fire, until it gets the message that I'm not giving up. Then it misfires for a good few minutes (seriously I think it's down to like 2 cylinders) before eventually it warms up and becomes absolutely fine.

Also, the ABS warning light comes on, but again has been known to turn off again when the car is warm - as the problem has developed, though, I've been noticing the light on for more and more of the time.

After much, much research on the Internet, it looks like it's either the Over-Voltage Protection relay, or the voltage regulator in the alternator. Would I be right in thinking of these things, and are there any more likely suspects you could think of?

And if it is one of the above components at fault, how should it work and how is it causing the above effects by not doing so now?

Things I know it's definitely not:

Spark plugs (changed them, no effect on problem)

Distributor cap (just paid an extortionate amount for a garage to change that, to no avail either).

Any help at all would be appreciated, even if it's only reassurance by someone who has a clue what they're doing. Thanks in advance :)

I just now learned that Rosanne Barr, of Rosanne fame, is running for President of the United States with the Peace and Freedom Party. Much as I would dearly love for her to win, it seems fairly obvious that only Obama and Mitt Romney have a snowball in Hell's chance of doing so.

So what's the point? What does she, and the many others like her, stand to gain from running at all? They can't really expect to win. Is there, like, a runner-up prize or something?

Forgive me, I'm not really au fait with the American democratic process. Here, it'd be about winning seats in the Government for your party. Does a similar thing apply there?

In the US, statistically roughly every third person you meet is obese, and since it's a predominantly Christian nation...

You guys honestly think you'll fit through the narrow gate?