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US No Longer Technology King
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum the US has lost the leading spot for technology innovation. The new reigning champ is now apparently Denmark with other Nordic neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway all claiming top spots as well. "Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."
It appears it's mostly based on that... but then we all know this country sucks there in regards to Europe and Asia. As soon as the FCC stops sucking up to the big telecom corps and opens up the spectrum, the game is on again.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I for one... aaaaahhhhh, nevermind.
I'm sure the RIAA and/or MPAA and/or Microsoft are to blame for this somehow.
Since the eighties, when Japan began to take over U.S. role on technology, and U.S. started to focus more on services, this was something predictable. Sometimes people forget that there is no way to be prosper doing each others laundry
Or Al Quaeda or Bin Laden or /bin/sh or anybody... just don't blame US
Everybody else is ganging up on US because they hate our freedom.
When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
...welcome our new Scandinavian overlords.
At least we know how to make missiles and $1 million terrorism response vans in the USA. Thank God for our advanced technology.
This is not something that can be tolerated. Time to invade Denmark. I am sure that President Bush would agree.
One small think they left off -- marginal tax rates. High rates like Sweden positively drive innovators away.
The reason why is that we are quickly sending our manufacturing elsewhere. As long as America continues to do that, it will make it much more difficult to do small scale start-ups. As it is, I have been trying something none-technical, and am finding that lack of manufacturing capability is making this difficult. Interestingly, I hear from all potential sales that I should send the manufacturing to china, but never to another country. Sad state of affairs. It is good that EU and Japan have figured it out that they need manufacturing it (and good schooling).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When the "world" ranks the tech of a country by its "politics" and "regulatory environment" then we have to judge the world. IMO, tech exists outside of said constrictions. Gee, would anyone consider say Indonesia ahead of China technologically? By politics and regulatory environment they may - heck, in China there is limited democracy and the gov't owns most of the businesses. I would still put China ahead of Indonesia in tech. though ;-)
We don't need no stinkin' lead....
[b o r k !] [b o r k !] [b o r k !]
oh for the love of god just please shut up!
I can't decide which I hate more: Slashdot, or myself (for reading Slashdot.)
If anybody doubts that we have lost our edge in the technology arena let me ask you one question:
Name one complete sub-assembly inside of your computer which had the majority of the R&D and Fabrication done in the USA.
Of that sub-assembly (assuming you have named one), which components are utilizing NEW technology developed here in the USA.
I would like to know why the USA (given a dedicated effort) could not take back the crown of technology power house without doing so by stifling our competition over seas.
There has to be enough room in the future technology development for us to foster and train our citizens to come up with new concepts which will not rely on foreign brains, labor, or money to develop, market, and sell.
Until the US fixes its priorities we're going to continue to fall. Perhaps the US can keep buying talent from other nations, with H1-B visas, but unless the scientists are given fruitful environments they simply aren't going to come up with anything new or revolutionary. What encouragement do the nation's thinkers have to keep improving their ideas when the laurels and rewards are going only to the people who manage them like a column of assets? It's plain demoralizing to continually refine a product for a year only to see executive support lost and funding slashed. Graduate students and post-docs, while they provide a significant source of intellectual labor, cannot compete with happy and eager experienced scientists in other parts of the world.
Extreme levels of government regulation, oversight, interaction, and micromanaging are probably a significant contributor to the death of American technological innovation as well.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The first thing I would critique about this (amongst many others) is that it is a ranked list. At least in the BBC summary, it doesn't describe the objective rankings of the countries.
For example, if it was on a 100 point scale, the US could have slipped from, say, 99.9 to 99.8, and that would have been enough to slip from first to seventh. Or maybe the objective score would have been a much larger slide. Maybe the US objectively climbed, but just not at the same rate as the other countries. Being that all ten of the top countries have the same mature technological apparatus, I am imagining that whatever shuffling took place in the ratings was rather minor. The actual differences between technology adaption between the US and Iceland might be almost indistinguishable.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I don't want to look like a troll or (gasp) anti-american (read enemy combatant). But you had it coming for a long time now. All that "sue your family and your dog, while we're at it", all that "pay us royalties or die" crap, all that "if i can't have it, than nobody will", all that "crush the little guy to protect our margins", all that "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" mentality, all these are finally taking their toll. Mix this with lots of ignorant people, that could care less about life itself if they have their hi-def plazma tv sets and the oprah or football channel, and there you have it.
This is not news, it's reality.
funny pics
My wife has been mentioning this for years: it seems like the 'owners' have been cutting back on educational funding, industrial infrastructure, etc.
I am starting to agree with my wife, given evidence like: Bush family buying massive amounts of land in South America, Dick Cheney primarily investing his own money overseas, etc.
I believe that people with real power in the USA are "cutting loose" the middle class and lower class. I write about this in my blog a lot: the best thing to do is to invest heavily in yourself: education, personal learning, pay off debt, invest, and save.
... the extent to which government policy ...
This isn't about technology, it's about politics. This is a damning of Bush, not of the American scientific and tech communities.
Ho-hum, it gets so tiresome. Wah wah America we hate you, you suck..... (can we have some more money?)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Only missed it by 5 minutes.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I think if the US wants its competitive edge back it needs to buy the dark fiber and make sure it's super cheap if not free.
Namaste
Isn't it a global marketplace now? Who cares what 'your country' is doing. Just be the best you can be in your field and you'll be fine. Life will go on even if you can't wave a big flag saying your country is better than somebody else's. Be proud of what *you* can do.
I live in the Sillicon Valley and we use to be the big Tech center, after the Dot Com burst people began shunning Technology based companys. Now the big focus in the area seams to be BioTech companys. They are quickly out pacing the IT companys in the area. But thanks to short sighted politicians there are to many bans and restrictions in this country on this type of technology.
Something like only 20% of the availble stock of Stem Cells are still viable but the government makes it illegal to harvest more. Maybe I missed something, but every article I have seen on the process seams to make it appear no life is destroyed getting the stem cells. Its simply the old Science vs. Religion debate and the Religious Zeolots are winning and running the country into a sad deluded existance.
I read that part as well and the most prominent thought in my mind was to wonder at what level that focus on innovation is being counted. Sure, the US purports to spend lots of money on some of the important things but very little of that actually makes it to the level of the researchers who would actually do something with it. Most of the venture capital is perpetually recycled back to the upper levels of people who invest it thanks to the "sophistication of financial markets".
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The US has made a lot of remarkable technological advancements, but a lot of their power lies in their ability to make things economical. Take steel manufacturing, railroads, electricity, the automobile industry, telephone systems, and the internet - the US is a true powerhouse for getting these industries spread far and wide by making them cheaply available to everyone. There's innovation that goes hand in hand with their development, but most of the process is just improving efficiency. The US is a great model for how to industrialize a nation to develop enormous infrastructure - once these are in place and spreading ideas and technology around, then the brilliant minds in the population have access to the science behind them and use them as their own springboards to advance the sciences further and further. Other nations have profited from the model we established for industrialization; what we're getting now is the unique advantages of each national community having their own perspectives and areas of expertise. Nation A may be good at Science A, and now has the tools to pursue it, while Nation B may be good at Science B, but couldn't truly revolutionize it until it had the infrastructure to back it up. The United States made a lot of things easily accessible for the global community, which was no small feat. And mind you, there's still no dearth of creativity flowing out of the US at present day when it comes to science and the arts.
What exact technology sectors are these people looking at?
From this:
"Denmark, in particular, has benefited from the very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory environment and large availability of e-government services,"
(leaving off the question of how seriously we can take someone who uses a term like "e-leadership")
It seems like when they say "technology" they mean "information technology". Which of course, to most people, maybe especially on Slashdot, seems like a given. But of course there is technological innovation beyond informational technology. Did they take into account advances in medicine, agriculture, construction, aeronautics, machinery, or fabric production? These technological fields aren't perhaps growing at the exponential rate that information technology is, but they are still very important.
It seems like this study might have been paid for by an electronics industry group.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
All the electronic design + manufacturing for phones, PDAs, MP3s etc can readily be outsourced to China etc, leaving the branding to be done by the US company. As companies get more and more profit driven and offshore design/manufacturing services become more prevalent this trend will strengthen. There is already a huge market driven by rebranding with companies like LiteOn doing all the product design/ developmnet/ manufacturing and the US OEM just designing the badge and putting in an order.
This is a highly effective strategy for many companies since much of the commercial value in the product is just in the brand (eg. Coke, ipod,...).
In the long term it means a significant reduction to western geekdom.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
is Corruption King.
I hope this helps the criminal indictments.
Seditiously,
K. Trout, C.E.O.
here
Thanks to companies such as Comcast (for example), we're falling so far behind the rest of the world, this comes as no surprise to me.
It's interesting to see that Denmark and Sweden understand they need highspeed broadband to make things happen. Now they are seeing the benefits of this investment.
Here is one report talking about public ownership of fiber to the home. If our Government could only understand the concept of fiber to the home, we may be able to recapture the number 1 spot. It's like roads. Having public roads was the big thing in the 20th Century IMO that pushed us forward. I'm thinking fiber to the house should be our focus for the 21st.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I don't know if they came up with the unified theory of global warming.
But they did come up with this.
http://www.speedbandits.dk/ (flash)
I, for one, welcome our new DMCA-crippled, outsourced-market underlords.
Like software, Education and Immigration should be free and open. Providing innovation a fertile breeding ground.
I think that the cost of Education in the US has a big impact on this too. Sadly, a college degree has become a status symbol in the US for "upper class" citizens. A lot of people can't afford a student loan that is sometimes more than their mortgage!
A lot of European countries offer good incentives for people to study, including paying a state allowance for university students.
I'm not up to date on European immigration policy, but I'm sure it would be much more relaxed than the US when it comes to skilled labor. I couldn't imagine it being any more tighter.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth anyways...
"Denmark, in particular, has benefited from the very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory environment and large availability of e-government services,"
(leaving off the question of how seriously we can take someone who uses a term like "e-leadership")
Indeed...someone definitely needs an e-slap
I'm sick of everyone throwing this ... into every topic
That whole 'big picture' cause and effect thing is kind of lost on you, isn't it?
"The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:
R eleases/gitr_2007_press_release2 0Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm
- environment for ICT offered by a country or community
- readiness of the community's key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
- usage of ICT among these stakeholders."
http://www.weforum.org/en/media/Latest%20Press%20
http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%
Gosh even after pouring over their press materials, just a simple general idea of how their three proprietary parameters of "ICT" are actually calculated is suspiciously elusive. Are these Europeans being intentionally discreet?
Pfffft. The fact is, the per capita 'ICT' output and gross 'ICT' GDP of United States of America is stunningly far ahead of even her runner up, the aggregate of all of Europe, "EU" as they call themselves now....
Ask yourself what their motives are before believing a byte of it.
Say for example if we beat up all of our prominent researchers here and then send their ideas to research groups overseas? It'd be great for the profit margin but terrible for morale.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Vote republicans DOWN from power.
whenever democrats get the power, you go forward, and do some astonishing things, like internet. Whenever republicans come, you go into some sort of small scale war, your budget deficit increases and there is turmoil in your economy.
This is broad as daylight even when we look from here, Turkey, tens of thousands of miles away. It is curious that you are not able to see the picture while you are living in it.
Read radical news here
No matter the naysaying on slashdot, the United States of America is still the mightiest, richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world. So I guess we're doing something right.
Yeah, right. Our military can't even find one crazy old man suffering from kidney failure in a cave. Remind me again how powerful we are?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Maybe Iran testing nuclear weapons? Just a thought, who knows...
During the late 80s and early 90s, I remember industry pundits proclaiming Japanese dominance in all aspects of innovation based on their capture of the entire DRAM manufacturing industry. Not only that, but Japan had the world's fastest supercomputer at the time. Based on these two data points, therefore, predictions abounded (especially from international professors in the U.S.) that the U.S. should submit and take their back seat in the technology race... hasn't quite happened like they wanted it.
Let the money follow the child, like it does in Nordic countries and our schools will get better. As long as the Unions and politicians control our public education system our children will learn to be stoopid
Guess I really should have checked that link for the old man in a cave
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
But hey, our handicapped students are better socialised and that is all that matters right?
US tech leadership is NOT dead! It's just pining for the Fords!
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Uh ok, well i guess this is a highly liberal site, where mob mentality is what drives the scoring of comments. It must be fun to engage in blatant hyperbole, and then cap it off with a masterbatory round of slapping on the back with mod points. Slashdot is truly elite!
A link to the WEF would help a lot. They published it, after all.
Was the US ever the Technology King?
One small think they left off -- marginal tax rates. High rates like Sweden positively drive innovators away.
Given the rate at which the Europeans are NOT making babies, within another generation or two, Europe, as we once knew it, largely will have ceased to exist.
Just within northern Europe:
Iceland: 1.92 TFR (2006)
Norway: 1.78 TFR (2006)
Denmark: 1.74 TFR (2006)
Finland: 1.73 TFR (2006)
Sweden: 1.66 TFR (2006)
Belarus: 1.43 TFR (2006)
Estonia: 1.40 TFR (2006)
Germany: 1.39 TFR (2006)
Russia: 1.28 TFR (2006)
Latvia: 1.27 TFR (2006)
Poland: 1.25 TFR (2006)
Lithuania: 1.20 TFR (2006)
Ukraine: 1.17 TFR (2006)
A Total Fertility Rate [TFR] of 2.10 [per woman per fertile lifetime] is necessary just to break even [you need the extra "0.1" mostly to account for children who don't survive to adulthood].
While US companies are judged solely on profit, this trend will continue because it is the most lucrative way to bring something to market.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is the third news article this afternoon that I read on the BBC website this morning...where's the old cutting edge that had Slashdot before other feeds for news?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
>> "The extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."
I would happy being last on the so called list if our government would stay out of business. We don't need more regulations in technology we need less.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/ 5819/1646
1 3/750
Two powerful champions of biomedical research blasted the White House's proposal to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 and invited research leaders to vent their own frustrations at a Senate hearing this week.
Another story last month
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/58
*Research Rises--and Falls--in the President's Spending Plan*
Just as he has stayed the course in Iraq, President George W. Bush has stuck to his guns with his budget proposals. On 5 February, he sent Congress a 2008 budget request for science that favors a handful of agencies supporting the physical sciences and puts the squeeze on most of the rest of the federal research establishment as part of an overall $2.9 trillion plan that clamps down on most civilian spending....
Look out, here they come! Valhalla, I'm coming!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I don't think that public ownership is an answer to your problems. It has not been the answer in Finland nor in Sweden nor in Denmark. What the government in here has done is that it has defined certain rules to telecom companies on how they should operate and how they should act with other telecom companies. To give you an example: a local phone company owns the lines to my house, if some other company would like to use them to deliver me in example Internet or phone connection, the local phone company would have to rent the lines for the other company, the rent price from line usage would have to be the same that the local phone company uses in it's internal pricing. This same system has worked in Internet access and mobile communication markets. It's fair in that the local phone company gets rent from the line that is beneficial to it from renting lines to others, it's beneficial to new comers in markets because they don't have to make extensive investments to networks and can start as virtual operators, like Saunalahti did.
So I don't believe in that public ownership of last mile would resolve anything. What would resolve the problem would be breaking of natural monopolies and setting rules and guide lines that enable competition in a field.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
I am an American citizen. But, I am perfectly willing to accept that the USA has lost the technology crown. No problem, if another country has earned the crown, I say "good for them."
But, is the "World Economic Forum" just another one of those USA hating jack-off organizations? I read TFA, as far as I can tell, they are just making this stuff up as they go.
India is in 4th place? Ever been to India? A huge percentage of the population have never used anything as technologically advanced as a toilet. I mean not even an outhouse - they go right outside.
This is precisely what has kept me from pursuing a graduate degree. I'd be okay with taking a standardized test or two to demonstrate that I have the scholastic aptitude to absorb the content material but I have absolutely no interest in filling out reams upon reams of paperwork for application for admission to the school, application for admission to a particular program, application for funds to cover housing, application for funds to cover tuition, application for funds to cover materials... and then keeping track of all the deadlines.
I've been looking for a "Hey! You sound like you might be the right man for the job!" type of opportunity for eight years. If I wanted to be an expert in jumping through endless volumes of someone else's paperwork hurdles I wouldn't have chosen to study as a scientist.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Feh.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Denmark, has your country landed on Titan in the last 36 months? Does your country even have a single freakin spaceport?
Listen, dork, the EU is not an "aggregate of all of Europe". The EU is a club of some European countries, 27 out of 49 actually.
Some Christians can't believe in evolution, etc, because they fear it might mean there is no God. In those cases where science (using the same methods) produces theories that aren't God-threatening they don't mind. That's hardly surprising. Once the church thought that Galileo's theories were a threat to their faith, so they denounced them and him. Now that they don't think it's a threat anymore, his theories have become magically valid.
Getoutahere. When did this happen? I didn't see the memo.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm sure the RIAA and/or MPAA and/or Microsoft are to blame for this somehow.
:-)
Can't pin this one on them, I'm afraid. A shame.
But they are a very visible symptom of the malaise indicated in TFA, because in a technologically-oriented country the studios would have taken technical measures to ensure that their profits continue into the future. And under the "classic American way" they would have sought future profit by making a better product and competing.
Instead, they have taken what is perceived as the "modern American way" to overcome problems in business, namely the lawsuit. This truly highlights just how low we have sunk.
In many ways, this is a problem of the definition of "wealth creation" in the US today --- it's perceived as an increase in money, even if nothing has actually been created.
Well that's the mark of downfall for any country, since the wealth of a society is not its power of acquisition but its power of production. And local production is well on its way to stopping entirely here.
(No, assembly from foreign parts is not production of a type that counts --- you ride on the shoulders of giants, but you're not a giant yourself.)
It's sad. But while we can't blame the RIAA/MPAA directly, we can certainly blame ourselves for giving lawyers more respect for babbling words than a plumber gets for doing something real, and paying them the outragious fees that has resulted in country with more lawyers than ants.
Give me a break. The scores are very, very close. There is no mention anywhere on the freely available downloads of how they can assure statistical significance of the ratings. At best, there might be tiers of difference, but to claim that two countries are significantly different based on minute differences in the scores is absurd.
These guys are full of it, and their strategy is to create controversy so that people buy their report for $130. Let's see them post their data online, so that any researcher can assess it.
Because it's a tech queen.
stop the presses...
... Beuller? Beuller?
Their key metric is
"the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development"
TechnologicalInnovation != PolicyInnovation
Denmark is one of the most beurocratic countries on earth. Anyone know of any startups going public from Denmark this year? Anyone?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Take for example Cola. There are many Colas out there that people would not be able to tell apart from Coke in a blind taste test. While you can sell the Coke for $2 you will struggle to sell the arbitrary branded product for $1. The Coke brand is worth $1 in that sale.
While offshore sourced products are "crap", there will be an advantage to US design/manufacture. However, that advantage is being heavily eroded as Chinese manufacturing and design improve and provide better product + services to the brand names. This trend is very rapid. Just compare the sophistication of Chinese manufacturing/development services now to, say, three years ago to see the difference.
True, ipod and heavily designed goods are probably not quite there yet, but given a concept drawing of an ipod, Chinese engineers could design and manufacture the device as well as a US-based team.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Estonia is not in scandinavia. Estonia is not a rich country. But we have e-voting(vote without leaving home), e-police(you dont have to carry your drivers license with you if you can id yourself). We have a website where every estonian can log and and check his/her drivers license, passport, id-card, you can do your taxes automatically, check if you own cars, houses, boats etc. Check your high school final exams scores and you can even apply to a university over the net. I think Estonia should be one of the technology kings. Btw we have wifi on buses and trains and almost all of Estonia is covered with wireless internet. 12Mbit/s internet connection is available for almost everyone for 38$. Beat that:)
The word is "pantywaists". It referred originally to a child's undergarment.
~ Leilah
you pay for your "free" education every time you receive a much-reduced paycheck, I can't imagine that you are smart enough to make any real innovations.
Btw, American master's and PhD students in the sciences, engineering, etc almost universally receive stipends (better than those in Europe or Japan, btw. I have worked/studied in both locations and seen your paltry checks) and free tuition. So do large numbers of students in other disciplines, usually in exchange for teaching.
can i mention patents here ? that patent office (us pto) employee needs to buy there church a new building and for more patents awarded means more bonus and thus a bigger church to pray in to so that people get told the world is flat.
That must stifle things when the product you could have made you cannot because patent troll 'x' will sue you for using a computer chip (rim), or business method (amazon), or software sort method mentioned in an very old text book on a computer langauge has been registered.
That surely does not help.
Maybe this issue is the one that will spur a major rethinking of prohibitive American IP laws. If you can't innovate, guess what, you get left behind. (Unless you're Microsoft, but that's another rant)
I'm curious as to what kind of IP structure Denmark has, as well as the other top tech countries, even China. Do all these governments get their IP laws dicated to them by big money corporations?
I don't buy this playing with numbers. If there was any merit to this the large population centers in the US should have had much better Broadband access. New York alone contains more people than all of Sweden and Norway combined. I am sure New York City takes up far less space than Norway and Sweden combined. So why don't cities like LA, New York and Chicago have at least as good broadband penetration as nordic countries? From what I read they don't.
I am sure that TrollTech's HQ in Norway has absolutely no influence on this... Or, inversely, will this have some effect on TrollTech?
It can't just be a coincidence that TrollTech sprouts up and US loses its position. TT vs MS... I know which one I prefer!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
At most, it should be called "Potential Innovation". How much have those countries innovated, compared to the U.S.? I can have all the sprockets and Cogs in the world, and the laws that allow me to build anything I want, but if I'm not building or inventing something, then it means nothing. The standards they used judge, are crap. It's just a pissing contest, and like all pissing contests, they all stink.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
What Nordic countries have technology that can compete with AMD and Intel processors, or nVidia and ATi GPUs?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
One thing i think that has been overlooked in this discussion is the number of amazing institutions. If you compare the number of elite research institutions in the United States to anywhere else the US does extremely well. While this is certainly only one factor in a nations "technology ranking" the amount of research these universities generate and the highly educated people they churn out is undeniable a huge positive force for the US.
See the rankings (PDF). Though the article says the U.S. is ranked seventh, you'll notice that the U.S. has the same score as the "#6" Netherlands, 5.54, so we are tied for sixth place. Countries with tied scores are ranked alphabetically.
For those of you giving the "haha" tag to this story, I'd like to point out that France is #23, and Russia is down on the second column at #70, three spots below that hi-tech powerhouse Botswana, which is tied with the Dominican "Silicon Island" Republic. :-)
Appropriately, Israel is recognized as 18.
Franklin was a Deist, not a "very religious Christian". He thought Christianity had some good ideas, but had doubts as to the divinity of Christ.
Let us see how many Jewels that are in our crown:
Revolver
Developed mass production.
Put men on the moon, and brought them home alive.
Out built the USSR.
Developed the internet.
That's just off the top of my head.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The nordic countries all have long, cold winters. Most people spend this time in front of their PC playing games and surfing porn. This creates huge bandwidth demands and drives innovation. There is also much of the competitive spirit in these young lads, and the challenge of having the most porn spurs them ever onwards. Of course, to avoid getting in trouble off their parents, they spend a bit of time here and there inventing new CPU designs, producing innovative mobile phones and other high-brow stuff, but in the end it's just porn.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Guess this explains why Intel, AMD, and IBM are all located in the US. Also, probably explains why many of the best universities are located in the US, and why so many people from other countries want to study at them. So many innovations are coming from everywhere else.
I don't want to belittle the other countries, and I'm sure much ground has been made. However, with the momentum of the US tech sector, and the sheer volume of it, another country can't just overcome it. While these countries may have a higher percentage of people in the tech industries, or something on that scale, they don't have the raw population to match the US. China would have a shot at easily surpassing the US, however their totalitarian government is a big stopping force. They can create a massive manufacturing economy, but it's hard to get the movers and shakers to stick around and actually keep improving on inventions etc.
As has been pointed out many times previously on Slashdot, it is the Last Mile that counts. Putting down a few thousand kilometers of fibre in rural areas isn't that expensive. What costs is connecting each and every user of the network to the hubs.
This is where European cities have a big advantage. Most people live in apartments with sometimes hundreds of families living in the same block of flats. The cable companies can just connect the whole building to a hub and draw the cables inside the house. In the US, where most people live in their own houses they have to draw the last mile outdoors. That means digging up roads and doing a separate installation for each household they want to connect. Of course that is going to be much more expensive.
That and subsidies. The Nordic countries try very hard to bring high speed access to everyone.
Football Odds
Stifling innovation leads to decline in advances... Duh?
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
I think humanity has better things to do than spend 24/7 making "our country" #1. How about:
- ensuring our children grow up healthy, happy and well balanced
- helping people in other countries share our good fortune
- improving the environment
- building a just and equitable society
- fixing that bloody leak in the ceiling right above my desk (flat roof problems)
Don't be slaves to the politicians, industrialists and economists. Wanna be #1 is their goal which serves their interests (e.g. "my knob is bigger than yours" bragging rights at pointless G8 meetings), not yours. And don't believe for a second that their interests are the same as yours.
Rise up citizens - your destiny is in your hands.
focusing research onto military technology is a huge waste. why dont you just argue that the 300 bilion we spend every year on the military should instead be spent on civilian technology, like clean fuel, efficient cars, medical imaging, drug development, nutritional research, disease study, etc... and then the military can have what is 'spun off' of this industry? well, first of all, because being able to prevent cancer doesn't make bigger guns that shoot faster, which is what alot of military 'research' is about. killing more people faster. secondly because you probably make money off the status quo, thats why, and thats why millions of other americans thinkt he same as you. shut down a b52 base in north dakota (yeah those russians still might invade), save billions of dollars... but oh wait, those people need jobs! congrats, you anti-socialist right wingers have set up the largest socialist welfare system in history - the US 'defense' industry.
The constitution forbids us from being a king. Or at least it forbids us from kinging ourselves, so we'd be terrible at... er... one-player checkers.
n ited_States_Constitution#Section_9:_Limits_on_Cong ress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_U
Go look it up, he said stuff like this. He didn't want to build the superconducting supercollider. All technology he cared about was to defeat the Soviet Union, with a massive military, which is why he spent us into being the worst debtor nation in history, and his foul mouthed off spring (Cheney, etc) are doing the same under Bush. Maybe Carter didn't know his butt from a peanut but acting like Reagan supported technology and innovation is just dumb. Futhermore, acting like one party or the other , or even the office of presidency, really is 'responsible' for this is kind of crazy. Reagan had a democratic congress, and Clinton had a republican congress... neither branch gets anything done without the other branches having a say so.
...as long as it remains Plow King.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
In every survey about every subject under the sun the Nordics always claim they are #1 in everything. Best countries, best political system, best economies, most freedom, best education, best technology, most innovation, and on and on and on and on.
It doesn't have shitstain to do with technological.
What we have in the USA is institutionalized beauracry running everything. It doesn't have anything to do with sceince or scientists or religion or anything like that. That's a red herring.
WE have Unions choking the profitability out of the people that employ them. They are paid to sit on their ass and if they don't get what they want they go on strike instead of getting a different job. They are litigating their ways out of a job. If it's not profitable to hire workers then workers don't get hired.
We have mega corporations running by paperwork alone were innovation and creativity have no outlet. They are run by people whose job it is to make sure nothing bad happesna and to hold the status quo. They do not have any competition and are institutionalised by government protections and government subsidies. They DON'T WANT INNOVATION BECAUSE INNOVATION WILL PUT THEM OUT OF A JOB.
We have a media that is obsessed with their own little political agendas. They are news people are paid to sell movies and TV shows. And as a end result you have dipshit rappers, druggies, and basketball stars who couldn't get a GED or graduate vocational school on their own are making millions of dollars and are held up as artists and celebreties. You have braindead morons like Britney spears or Paris Hilton as people of some consiquence or singificance when in reality they have could easily be replaced by a anatomically correct mannequines AND NOBODY WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
No science is ever promoted. Nothing remarkable is ever proprosed to the public.
You have a patent system out of control.
Software patents are destroying innovation in the industry. On a DAILY basis you have literally HUNDREDS of software patents. This doesn't make any fucking sense. Meanwhile countries without software patents are eating American's company's lunch.
And it's only going to get worse.
People are taught that creativity is just being different for different sake. That somehow the type of haircut they have or how they dress is more important to them then their personality.
That the type of car you own matters. That if your pretty it will make a bigger difference to your life then if your smart.
That getting rich is lucky, that it's more like the lotto. That your desire to get something entitles you to getting it right now irregardless of the debt you aquire. That people are defined by what sort of stores they buy or coffee they drink.
Double latte, fat-free cream please makes you a better person, makes you healthier then somebody that drinks instant.
That hard work is pointless. WE are taught that it's pointless to give a shit aobut how things work. That if things are difficult they aren't worth doing. That easier is better and the less you know to get by the more time you have to have fun.
That feeling bad about something or protesting against something bad makes you a better person then somebody who doesn't do that. (hint: it doesn't).
That nerds only give a shit about stuff works. That Mechanics are low class. Engineering is something hire somebody else to do.
That the color of the walls in your house is important.
Complete BULLSHIT.
All of it.
This is what our culture is turning into. Completely vacent. Totally self-centered, youth obsessed. Shallow bullshit.
It used to be if you were a scientist you were a fucking hero. A Doctor, Scientist, Researcher. These people _mattered_. You were a complete asset to the USA. Top of the line individuals.
You were like kings. People looked up to you. People worked their asses off to get to be a scientist.
Now nobody gives a shit. Remember that hardwork is pointless.
Nowadays the best thing that you can do with your life is to get rich as 25 making a fancy website and retire to a life of leasure and trivia. Football stars are the most important to our culture now.
The problem is fucking society is turning to shit.
Well an issue is what makes something American. If Intel manufacturers and design all their chips outside of the US, are they still an American company even if the HQ is in the US? Now this is not the case at the moment. But just food for thought, because a lot of research by these companies are not done in the US. E.g. whole lines of microprocessors by intel were developed in Israel. A lot of research centers exist in China and India. And what are the American universities best in? Educating or doing research? As far as I know the rankings are usually based on research. A number of universities in the US today are being blamed for neglecting education in favor of research.
There's an even better answer. To wit, "How do you know there was a Jesus? Were you there?"
There is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Jesus. The earliest mention of Jesus is in the context of remarks made by Josephus, a man born about 7 years after Christ's supposed death. Then there is Tacitus, who was born about 55 AD. There are a couple more that come at about 80 AD and 100...110AD and then as the Christians gained followers, more and more mentions. The key thing, though, is that there is no mention anywhere in the records we have from 0 to 30 AD of Mr. Christus, and no mention by anyone whose personal timeline crossed that of Mr. Christus.
"What about the bible?" I hear the apologists winding up to ask. Well, what about it? There are no books of the bible that are any older than 300AD. The earliest documents we have - the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Alexandrin manuscripts - come from 300AD or later; they are supposed to be copies of earlier works, but as no such works have come to light, and of the 5,000 or so documents that went into the mix to be used as a basis for the bible (compared against one another and so on), these three are by far the best ones and the most used... we can pretty much limit the scope of trust to literally hundreds of years after Christus was supposed to have lived - in other words, the bible is actually less authoritative than either Tacitus or Josephus, and as I pointed out, those fellows never even knew the man.
A lot of people take the actual existence of Christ as a given, and then proceed to argue about his divinity. However, examining the history, it turns out there is no reason to even presume the man existed. We know there was a group of people - Christians - who were being a pain in the government's rear by the end of the first century AD. That's all we know.
One more step down the ladder - the argument that "because there were Christians, there must have been a Chirst." I point you to Scientology. Must there have been a Xenu? I point you to Mormonism. Must there have been golden tablets, an angel named Moroni? I can even point you to the wall of your veterinarian. Must there have been a "rainbow bridge"? I could go on (for pages!) but I think I've already made the point. These types of organizations are known to arise for reasons entirely aside from the claims that underlie the mythology. There is no need to assume truth because an organization arises based around certain ideas; quite the contrary. The ideas themselves are what need to be looked at, not the organization. And in the case of Christus, it turns out that there are no more convincing records of him than there are of Xenu.
As the claimant, the burden of proof falls upon the Christian. Presently, there is no historical evidence that backs up their claims; that pretty much cuts the feet right out from under any argument they might make. Much more to the point than the flood. Floods are known to happen. Divine children aren't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
>> from Seattle (where I live) to San Francisco - the nearest big city
... "Whats Vancouver?"
> As Pretzeldent Bush would say..."You forgot Portland!"
As half of Americans would say,
Countries were judged on ... the extent to which government policy creates a framework ...
In other words: Government meddling in the economy and industry gives a "better" score, hands-off gives a "worse" one.
For instance:
- The government-mandated pre-divestiture ATT monopoly was "better" than ATT+Sprint+MCI+... and the "seven dwarves" CLECs.
- Government building the internet infrastructure is "better" than a gaggle of backbone peers and a herd of mom-and-POP ISPs.
- Government picking (and subsidizing) particular hardware and software vendors is "better" than letting them fight it out with each other (and a crowd of of FOSS teams with a handfull of licenses and ideological battles).
Look how well (terribly) that last one worked in Japan.
Do YOU really think The Cathedral is "better" than The Bazaar?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
almost famous....
If you don't welcome us properly we'll get in our longships and row our tall, blond asses over there and.... um.... ... start buying up your internet infrastructure manufacturers.
Oh, wait. We're already doing that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
nonsense
people are very complex - they are quite capable of believing superstitious nonsense (like religion, homeopathy or intellignet design) in one part of their life, and still do good sceince in some other field.
go read some oscar wilde
This is bogus, and here's why.
1)technological advancements in general business. "General Business" is a really generic title, but should be read "companies using computers/internet etc." along with...
2)infrastructure available. Read "internet bandwidth available" How does bandwidth make you an "engine of technology innovation?" Easy answer, it does not.
3)...government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development. As pointed out, the US is the CLEAR winner here.
What I get from this is that the rankings are penalizing the US for fostering a healthy economic environment populated with many small businesses that do not need high technology to flourish. I've issued the challenge before, and I'll do it again. Name me a piece of technology that was invented after 1900 in a country besides the US. Certainly there are many, but it takes a while to think of one.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
The Swedes and Danes have no problem getting innovators. I don't recall Erik the Red having any problems whatsoever getting anything he damn well wanted. Taxes are solved the same way. Why else do you think they've been working on stealth ships?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The NSA has been touting this for a while.
http://www.nsa.gov/coremsgs/corem00002.cfm
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Ever been to India yourself? A sizable portion of that rural population goes right back in their home, such as it were, and watches soap operas on their honest-to-goodness cable TV. From my last visit, I have photos of coax strung on bamboo poles on the side of the road between two fields of rice paddy between two villages that I couldn't route you to with anything better than GPS coordinates.
That having been said, it saddens me to watch the US slipping as supporting innovation -- consider the credence that junk-to-non science has received in recent years, taking time, focus, and funding away from scientists who could be doing innovation in the meantime. Even if the statistics lie, your instincts are telling you this is really happening, aren't they?
P.S. How much more work do you think it would take to get them all cable internet?
Yea, all the whiney stuff about losing our tech edge... really man, get over it. How about something that really counts, like high scores on Grand Theft Auto? We rule dude. When it comes to whacking cops and hos and stealin stuff, we are like so totally NUMBER ONE! We are the numero uno video game nation! The USA is also top of the heap in pizza, and drinks with cool names like "cocaine", and shopping malls. And stuff like SUVs and MP3 players. You Euro-smack talkers ever look and see where your iPod comes from? Silicone valley usa, dude. And where do you think Star Wars came from? France? Sheesh. They're not even allowed to use cameras anymore. Where else can you see American Idle or a Billy Ray Cirrhosis show? Huh? Not London hon. No way. Cause we are just too bitchin.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
They're rejection Christianity and Science!
The country is *literally* going to hell in a hand basket!
I always knew we were going to hell, but I was hoping for a ferrari, or maybe a hover craft. But a hand basket, I never say that coming.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Ok, so what's you're answer to the question? Why should we use the threat of the gun to fund "intellectual curiosity?" Why should someone who's not interested in figuring out the universe be forced to pay for someone else's desire?
If your argument is that these projects wouldn't get funded otherwise, you're really not even a tenth of the way there: If no one is interested enough to pay, why should the projects commence at all?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Then how come American cities, even more dense than European countries, don't have as much broadband penetration as outside European and Asian cities, let alone inside them?
The NYC "service area" has about 20 million people living and working in and around it, more than nearly any European country, in an area smaller than nearly any European country. How come broadband costs more for so much less bandwidth? How come so many fewer people have it? See the previous question, I guess.
And we've got other municipal centers, like Chicago, LA, Miami, Boston, Philly, all with the supposedly critical required density.
It's clear that the difference is that those other countries have technology growth policies that encourage broadband adoption, and the US doesn't. We used to, when we invented the Internet, but we don't. Instead we have government censorship of science and favoritism for monopoly technology corporations. And new politics that cut off the brain drain we used to pull on foreign countries.
We are responsible for creating our competition and failing to compete with them. It's not geography, but economics and political science that we're failing.
--
make install -not war
I've always found it interesting that when an article comes out about how the traditional leaders in cellular and wireless technology also have governments that have ALWAYS had strong funding of communication technology, that this is first a surprise and second some indictment of the US in general.
Not only that but the Euro-wienies and elitists from other countries come out of the woodwork and try to lecture people in the US on topics ranging from government to their general superiority. What the actual reality is is that the US still performs more research and development (in dollars) than every other nation on earth combined and the US also provides more breakthroughs in science on whole than all the rest of the world combined and there are more scientists devoted to basic research and development than any other country on a per capita basis.
Yea, we know Bush is a fvcking retard, yes we are going to be rid of him in 2008 and possibly even sooner. But NONE of that has ANYTHING to do with basic research and development. Yes, the US has been exporting a lot of basic manufacturing. No, that isn't relevant to the US lead in Research and Development because even if we don't build it, we invented it, our engineers perfected it, our banks finance it and all the executives and most of the white collar jobs are in the US. Ever seen an article where China complains about being only basic manufacturing with no higher level sustainable jobs?
Do you realize with high fuel prices China's advantage as a basic manufacturer will evaporate when their wages move beyond slave rates, in that high fuel and transport costs will hurt all globalization in basic blue collar jobs. And for all the European's trash talk, lets not forget that 90% of the worlds hot zones these days, including Iraq, Palestine, and Iran, tie back to what European colonialization (primarily British) for the previous 300 years has done to the world.
We may not be the "Technology King" (at least, according to the World Econimic Forum), but we did figure out how to file lawsuits faster than the speed of light!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Half the USA wants evolution out of the classroom and ban scientific research.
Next they'll take the telescopes away because they are 'Tools of Blasphemy!'
Kansas, not a scientific powerhouse?
Remember to have some BONG HITS 4 JESUS !
Social democracy > Capitalism
We now have a President who is "Born Again", and recognizes Christ as his personal saviour. His old Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a devout Assemblies of God member, used to anoint himself with oil. We have many members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House, who are ordained ministers in their churches. Some are LDS Bishops. I would venture to say that the percentage of devout Christians holding office in various levels of government in the US exceeds that of the general population. Which oath do they hold to? Their duty to country, or to a church?
You've got people who firmly believe that the US Constitution states that the USA is a Christian nation. I've got in-laws who used to believe that I was damned to Hell because I was raised Catholic and not a member of the Church of Christ.
We have a member of the Texas House who firmly believes that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and that we never landed a man on the moon, and that satellites are held in orbit by magnetism, not gravity - because Newton's Laws are wrong and he can prove it. http://www.fixedearth.com/geosynchronous_sa.htm (I had to post that link because it's a hoot. His proof is that a LaGrange point is where gravity stops because it's where it balances out. Give the man a Nobel!)
We had an Army General (2 star?) who fervently believed we would win in Iraq because his God is greater than their God, Allah. Someone forgot to tell him they're one and the same. Jehovah, too.
These are the people who've been running this nation for the last dozen years or so. Their's are the people who backed a "Crusade" in the Middle East, thinking we'd set them "free".
Oh. And that CUNY study? Does it take into account that many black Southern Baptists are becoming Muslims? And the biggest immigrant groups in the US today are Hispanic Catholics (and Protestants) and Muslims from the Middle East and SE Asia?
Just because the percentage of people identifying themselves as Christians has gone down (how accurate is that study) does not mean that the number of people who identify themselves as religious has gone down. Or that the percentage who identify themselves as Born Again has gone down.
I don't need to cite references. All you need to do is get out of your ivory tower (sorry, that actually sounds religious!) and look around. Wake up. You're missing an entire country out there!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Something tells me that if they cared about evidence it wouldn't be called faith...
...where someone says "I, for one, welcome our new, technologically superior Nordic overlords?"
We were convinced was lapping us in all things that glitter, then it was the Japanese, then for a time it was the EU, now our paranoia has moved on to China and India..
As the Greek once said, fortune rarely stays in one place very long..But we've done pretty good so far:)
People do exactly the same things now: running around, claiming to be deific, claiming they can perform miracles, forming personality cults, etc. In fact, the existence of Scientology or David Koresh and his lackeys demonstrates just how easily this can happen. Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, it stands to reason that these folks existed. Are the stories about them true? Doubtful ... except for the story of Confucius, it's just too plausible to deny; a failed beauracrat who died penniless and ignored by everyone. What's not to believe?
I think this on should be marked 'Informative' -- it illustrates the American Way. As an American, I completely understand this. What's bad, is where assholes take this kind of attitude. With guns.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
oh yeah.. those guys that overtook us on the technology front..
hmm.. i wonder what's crushing technological innovation?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And someone always argues along these lines. Yet Canada has a larger percentage of rural population, similar geography, and has a higher percentage of broadband use.
The article says:
"India was four positions down on last year to 44th, suffering from weak infrastructure and a very low level of individual usage of personal computers and the internet.
China was knocked to 59th place, nine positions down, with information technology uptake in Chinese firms lagging."
Why is this surprising in any way? India and China offer cheaper workforces, and hundreds of thousands of skilled techies. For every techie out there, there's probably one million people who don't need or use anything more complex than a cellphone. I can just imagine poor Mr. Wong sitting out there by his paddy fields furiously bidding on e-bay, transferring ten thousand yuan between his online bank accounts, chatting away on skype, paying his taxes online and purchasing an apartment on the web.
Technology penetration doesn't mean much to most people. It is just a yardstick used by the 10% of the world which is considered "first-world". I mean, broadband penetration means nothing to you when you're at Wat Ba Pong monastery in northern Thailand or out in the paddy fields of India.
Whoa, whoa. You were doing ok until here, where you slip up. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Buddhists, that there was a Buddha. Was he in fact in possession of all of the traits they attributed to him? Probably not, from a skeptical outlook - most likely, he was just a very smart, insightful and charismatic individual. Likewise Jesus. The scant evidence does not prove he exists, but the simplest explanation is that such a person - not necessarily a divine one - did, in fact, exist. Don't mix up the existence of the supernatural Christ with a human Jesus. Don't compare the existence of the human Jesus to the existence of Xenu, these are completely different issues.
Scientology - there was a Ron L. Hubbard. Mormonism - there was a Joseph Smith. Religious movements nearly always start with a powerful leader figure. As skeptics, we would view those people as ('merely') exceptional human beings, not divine or supernatural as the adherents of those faiths would. But let's not deny the likely existence of the individual itself.
But neither Hubbard nor Smith claimed to be the central figure in their own religion (though clearly they were important, and knew it). This comparison is more like saying that for Christianity there was Paul, who seems to have defined much of what we consider to be Christianity. Now that doesn't mean that he invented Jesus (I happen to think not, though I'm not a Christian), but it also doesn't make the existence of Jesus a given. In fact, assuming that elevates Christianity - the 'simplest' way to explain Scientology is to assume Xenu by that reasoning; we don't because Xenu is inherently an unsimple answer, as is a man who is the offspring of God, performs miracles and can't truly die.
But everything interesting comes from Asia :D
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
As you say, Xenu is a non-simple answer, and so is a son of god who rises from the dead. But a charismatic and insightful human being called "Jesus" is a very simple answer.
I for one welcome our new Danish overlords - hey, wait, I'm Danish.
-- Make America hate again!
No. Let's retarget your comment, and see what happens:
You are conflating characters in a story with the authors of a story. There is no such relationship that automatically arises; that is only the case when the story is a history, and my entire point is that there is no evidence that confirms the bible's role in telling about Jesus as a historical one. Jesus did not write the bible (or anything else, even according to the bible.) The only conclusion you can draw from Jesus' presence in the stories in the bible is that since these are claimed to be tellings of history, then the reasonable thing to do is go searching elsewhere in history to get confirmation. That confirmation has, to date, not been forthcoming. This leaves the status of the bible as history unconfirmed. No matter how you want to cast Christ's role - human, hybrid, divine, alien - all you have to go on is what the bible says, simply because that's all we've found. The fact that the bible says something is not enough to come to the conclusion that said something represents a factual retelling of history. There are many books, many claims of divine and supernaturally powerful figures, many claims of humans who figure in those stories. This is the actual situation from which you pull your assertion that it is reasonable to presume there was a Christ.
People make up stories. You simply have to factor that in.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Precisely. However, when they attempt to argue in the mundane world, and attribute events (like the flood, or the genesis of the universe itself, or the existence of a divine being named Christ in the real world) to stories in their books, then they are attempting to use non-faith tools (argument from a stance asserting real-world truth) to counter arguments made from established evidence. This makes responding to them using the facts and tools of science and history perfectly reasonable.
No one argues with a person who says nothing; an internal faith should not, one would imagine, require argument with other people. If it does, then it must submit to responses that take the real word into account. That's only fair. So if one wishes to "witness", one had better wrap one's head around the idea that the other person(s) may have witnessed something else. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Should have been: "that take the real world "
Sigh. Apologies.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
His point is that maybe someone claimed that Jesus existed, not that he existed and he created his community of believers ... someone could come and claim that he existed in order to bring a new religion.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
It is simpler to assume a human being (not a divine entity) existed called "Jesus", rather than that someone else convinced other people that such a person existed. Both are possible, but Occam's razor favors the first. Anyhow, these are both minor variations on a skeptical reading of history, the difference is negligible.
True, but if Paul (or whoever) invented the son of God bit, and the miracles bit, and the resurrection bit, then inventing the actual person seems trivial. If I tell you that I took my penknife and chopped down 4 trees, whittled them into a huge ladder, and climbed up to the clouds to take a ride, I doubt it's wise to assume that I really did have a penknife just because that part of my story is plausible.
No. Jack Ryan isn't supernatural. You did exactly what you accused me of; you said "all of your examples" and then proceeded to ignore one of them. But I didn't do that to you. I addressed your point as made, and gave you a mundane example to chew on quite intentionally.
My point is that just because Jesus (a divine, supernatural figure in the story) is in the story, is not sufficient reason to extend the idea that he was a real figure - divine or otherwise. For that, we need some confirming historical evidence... and there isn't any, at least, to date.
I'm not arguing that the bible didn't have an author or authors. You, however, seem to be arguing that because Jesus is a character in the bible, he was probably a real person. To that I simply say, show me why this should be accepted; I know of absolutely no confirming historical evidence. My guess is that you have been conditioned to assume that Jesus was real, and you don't even know why. Is a character's presence in a story enough to make you think it was real? Does the story simply have to be old? Did David then exist, because he was in a story with Goliath? Do you see how empty that kind of reasoning is?
I say, if the bible says Jesus existed, then we should be able to find many mentions of him in history outside the bible; he was no "bit player." We have not - as yet - found any such mentions, and my response to that situation is to doubt his actuality as an historical figure. I don't assume he was real because a book mentions him; that seems entirely too gullible. Add in the assignment of supernatural characteristics, and I'm flat out of credulity. You, however, like the idea that he was real. So I simply ask, why? Could this simply be vestigial politeness to Christians? Seriously - why?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Clouds! I see clouds! It must be TRUE! It's not just about the penknife!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And Japan and South Korea nowhere in the top ten.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
I agree that this is arguable, and both scenarios are possible. I would say that the simpler explanation is that a human being called "Jesus" did exist, simply because that is how religions seem to start (when we do have enough evidence to know); someone founds them (and is later said to be divine, and so forth). But, in the specific case of Jesus, we will probably never know the truth, barring some remarkable archaeological find.
First, you are right, I didn't respond to your example of Jack Ryan. Apologies. You did keep it last, though, so I assumed the first 3 out of 4 were your essential claim. I guess I misunderstood.
Note: I haven't been conditioned into believing Jesus existed (as human or divine); I an not a Christian, nor even from a mostly-Christian country, actually (not that it matters).
Now, as to the matter: your point is fair, that Jesus appears as a character in the texts, and that that alone is not conclusive; we need corroborating evidence. There is no such clear evidence, as you say, just some highly-controversial tidbits (e.g. certain passages from Hebrew texts of that period have been interpreted as referring to Jesus).
My argument is not that someone called Jesus existed, but rather that that is a simple explanation for the stories about him - a charismatic figure can generate a following, which later writes stories about him/her. In fact, that is how religions form, when we have enough evidence to actually investigate them: Islam, Bahaism, Scientology - all have a crucial founding figure. Some of those figures are later said to have had various 'supernatural' qualities and/or attributes (even if those qualities are simply 'he talked to god'). So, I believe that the simplest explanation is that someone called "Jesus" existed, and generated a following around him; those followers later wrote texts about him. Is an alternative possible? Sure. Will we ever know? Probably not.
You are right that there is an element of 'politeness' towards Christianity in the West, people don't like to doubt his existence. This is, however, completely unrelated to my reasons for preferring my theory to the alternative (however small that preference is). I hope I explained why clearly enough in this post.
Threaded moved to Denmark several years ago, so small wonder it is now the technology hot spot of the world.
threadeds blog
That's why I think Paul is such an interesting character - it's possible (though I doubt it) that he 'founded' the religion in the same way that Hubbard or Smith did, and that Jesus is an invention. More likely, I agree, is that there was a Jesus, but how much of a part he took in founding 'his' religion is open to debate. Thanks for the discussion!
Damn, you got me. There goes my secret identity as superwhittlerman
I wish I had mod points.
More people should see this. I couldn't even imagine some people think like that...
Very good; thanks for your detailed response. Now, one last question: Isn't it simpler to assume that some person in a story did not exist, thereby accounting for the actual evidence (no mention in contemporaneous history), as opposed to assuming they did exist, yet somehow managed to avoid being recorded anywhere - especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen?
If we're going to use Occam's razor, let's cut everything in sight. "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." We can explain the bible without Jesus, given that there is nothing that requires we explain it with Jesus. Personally - I'm not ruling his existence out - but I surely am not going to accept it on the word of the bible alone.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The next sputnik will be gene manipulation technologies. The hassles with stem cell and other research in the USA will bite them in the ass; it's only a matter of time before the Chinese or Russians advance in this area.
What will be amusing to watch, is all of the bullshit reasons those in power come up with to import the miracle cures said technology can offer us, dispite being so "ethically troubled" by the baseline research that brought them about.
..don't panic
So, the lack of evidence proves nothing either way, it is consistent with both skeptical views, that there was some guy called "Jesus" who had a small following, and that there wasn't. (Note that it is of course inconsistent with a literal religious interpretation of history, we are in agreement there.)
As for "especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen" - I don't think having miracles associated with him makes him less likely to have existed. Every religious figure has some supernatural folklore around him/her (even the last Pope!). I would be surprised if he did exist, found a religion, and not have all sorts of wild stories told about him. So this doesn't change things either way, IMHO.
I was saying that this made him more likely to be recorded by history, actually. But I take your point.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
. Even if a flight is only 2 hours, but you need 1 hour pre-flight and one hour post-flight, you still lost a lot of time. Sure, no 8 hours, but travelling by train is marvelously relaxing..../i.
Ah, that is a really good point. I am currently living in the UK and, if you make a comparison between, say a flight from Liverpool to Southhampton, the flight duration is One hour. But, you must be One hour (one and a half really) before the departing time. You also have to consider that the airports are usually outside the city, hence, you will have to drive to and from the airport (say One hour in total). That makes it 3 hours, and then, after you arrive you must wait almost another hour while the plane taxies and you can get out of the terminal, that is 4 hours in total.
If you compare that to the time in train 4:30 hours it is almost the same real time. The difference is that, if you go by train you can spend that time working in whatever you are doing peacefully seated at the train, whereas if you go by plane you spend half of that time worrying about what will be the new *great idea* of the security guards at the airport and wondering if they will allow you to pass your new metallic pen.
I definitely love trains (it might be because I am from Mexico and there are almost no passengers trains over there), unfortunately they are quite expensive IMO.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The problems with thinking you can live for ever off doing each other's laundry are many.
Sure, it can be a working momentary bubble. But the question is: will it last? Extrapolating that just because something worked for a year or a decade, it can continue for ever, is just inviting proof that you're wrong. The Dutch also thought that they could live for ever off speculating on tulip bulbs, and the 90's dot-com bubble also had people arguing that having a product or income is officially obsolete and you can live for ever off speculating on dot-coms. Needless to say, they were wrong.
The root problem is that _someone_ has to produce the stuff for you, so you all can concentrate on doing each other's laundry. At the end of the day, someone has to bake the bread you eat, make the shoes you wear, make the computer you use, build the car you drive, refine the oil you use in that car, build the house you live in, etc. An economy that's all services, implies that someone else is willing to give you all the other stuff, basically, for free, without getting anything tangible in return. Some other countries have to be basically the slaves that send you their grain and shoes and oil, but suspiciously there are no ships bringing something _back_ in payment.
That's a very fragile situation by itself. It can go pear shaped in a variety of ways, some more fun than others. E.g.,
1. You can just lose that technology edge. A lot of the intangible stuff America controls is, basically, technology. People are willing to pay big bucks for hi-tech stuff, or for the technology itself, but get paid ridiculously low prices on the low-tech stuff they have to export to pay for those hi-tech imports. You _don't_ want to discover what it's like to be on the other end of that relationship.
So, yes, looking at the topic, you can start worrying now. Unless you maintain that technology edge, the whole economy built on doing each other's laundry may well crumble in record time.
2. They can just decide they don't want to give you their stuff for free any more. A lot of that paying tangible Chinese goods for intangible American technology and management, is actually based on some very artificial IP treaties. All it takes is everyone deciding they've had it with paying America for the privilege of being allowed to make a 3G cell phone... which they already know how to make, they're just not allowed to without paying through the nose.
From the perspective of a second or third world country, those treaties do nothing for their own economy or inovation. They're pretty much some colonial treaties in which the powerful colonial nations told the rest of the world, "see, you have to send us whole ships worth of ore, oil and manufactured goods to buy your right to do some things our way." It's like telling your neighbours, "I used a lawnmower first, I patented it, so all of you who want to use lawnmowers too, have to pay me a bunch of money and products as a license fee."
Now I'm not against patents or IP as such, and they serve their role... in a first world country. But everyone else sees no benefit, and is just forced in basically a vassal condition for no tangible benefit. They make shoes for us... just so we allow them to make TVs. It's not very different from, say, the salt tax the British used to levy and enforce in India: India produced that salt, but had to pay to the UK to be allowed to actually use it. You can bet (and see in various interviews) that a _lot_ of people in those countries overtly think "why the fuck should we keep paying for intangible IP?" already.
3. A lot of what the USA "exported" was just money, which created an artificial bubble. A lot of products came into America, and all they got in return were bits of paper. That's what trade deficit means. It created an illusion that you can happily live off doing each other laundry, because a lot of the tangible products were basically coming in for free. Some african or asian country was perfectly happy to send you some cars or sho
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I live in a rural area about 20 miles away from a major US city. When Verizon hooked up fiber to my house about 18 months ago, it took a crew of 6 men all day to go from the pole at the road to get the fiber to my house. They had 4 pieces of heavy equipment.
And they had to spend that much time at the 9 houses on the same road as me. So 6 men spending 9 days gets 9 families connected to fiber.
By the way, "analysts" are now criticizing Verizon for spending so much time and money to get that last mile hooked up. What the chances that anyone else would invest that much in infrastructure? Especially now, since the money guys are now skittish about spending big to get fiber back to homes?
I think one of the previous posters said it best... people who criticize the US don't understand the scale of what has to be done here.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Hum... I hope i will not be modded flamebait, but i don't think the US have ever been the absolute and undisputed "technology king" of the world. The US once was the industry king, and is stil the economic and military king but it's not the same thing...
Sorry, english is not my mother tongue
but I know that Americans with surely have more toys, bigger homes/apartments, and are more likely to own a car than Europeans (OK, I lived in Austria, from which I am drawing my experience) and Japan. It's because we have far larger paychecks, of course, and more room to spend them in. On the other hand, we don't get your "free" health care from the government, have to pay for part of our own college education, and don't have very good public transportation.
The problem with the European system is that it encourages free riders. What was that statistic about the fraction of Swedish adults who were on some form of disability? I can't remember it exactly, but I remember it was sickening the number of poor Swedes who were just do sick (errr, lazy) to work.
Always nice to see my little country mentioned in international news :-)
A small note on what Denmark is like:
We do have cities here, they are like large villages. Our capital is the largest village. We don't have mountains. The highest point is 147 meters (yes, that's less than 500 feet for you non-metric users of old British imperial measures).
We don't even have an empire anymore - been there, done that - we are all just farmers and fishermen (educated ones, that is), and we are plugged in.
So why climb mountains, when we don't have any? Why spend time on city-life, when everything is villages anyway?
It's more fun to use the Internet for something useful instead :-)
These kind of articles are fairly common, and for a time they even had me look into Japan, India, Europe to find interesting research being done in my specialization field (AI) but every time, I finish up reading publications or thesis from an American university. A lot of them are written by foreign researcher (a lot of Indians I have observed) but the funds and the place are American.
Scandinavian states have a decent education and a very good IT infrastructure. If you take the infrastructure into account to have a sort of "technology" value, maybe the "per capita" value of Sweden is better than US'. But innovative researches has all to do with the universities exchanges and relations within a single entity. The Behemoth size of the US makes it the leader right now. Too many European universities don't have the habit of publishing in English instead of one of their numerous language (Disclaimer : I am French and really I can see it, many researcher write their publications to get fundings and help their career, so they naturally use their boss' language)
Of course ten years from now, it may be more important to publish in Chinese...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Take that, India!
...it's all due to our extra vøwels. While your puny alphabet goes to 26, ours goes to 29! That's a difference of 11.5%, which, needless to say, is just søøøøø much better. Go Nørway!!!
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
I always assumed that there were bandwidth restrictions concerning how many active sessions you could have on a single satellite. You probably get assigned a timeslice or frequency to the satellite and there is a fixed amount of bandwidth available, like a cell tower. There is only so much spectrum available, which costs money. It's not like you can just lay more wires (DSL) or upgrade your cable plant to fiber. Probably the only way around it would be to put more birds into orbit, which costs an arm and a leg.
On top of that, I hear the latency is pretty high (>500 msec). So much for online gaming, eh?
I never considered satellite to be a serious competitor for broadband for those reasons.
In my experience of german and dutch language,
understanding them - at least in a written form - lets you access a lot more geeky stuff
The post forgot to mention The Netherlands BTW.
ciao
Tax rates as-is really don't matter. It's what's being done with those taxes, and what kind of environment it creates that does matter. And the most important thing is often overlooked. As an example, if I compare the work a friend of mine in the US does and the work I do, we're doing virtually the same thing. However he nets less that I do (quite a lot less actually) despite the tax rates in the US being a lot lower than here.
Also if I'm without a job, part of my taxes come back to me in the form of an intermediate payment done by the government to help me bide over the time between jobs (if you don't have too much own capital, that is)
Also taxes are used for things like for instance health-insurance. I pay $160 per month in health insurance, and have rather extensive coverage. Comparing the same sort of coverage to what it would cost in the US (done this 3 years ago), it'd came to $540 for the cheapest option.
So just 'tax rates' is not something that you can compare between countries.
Splut.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I think these arguments about the population density are kind of missing the point. For a moment, forget about the fact that Farmer Joe out in rural Idaho can't get a DSL line or cable modem. Look at the state of broadband in major cities.
I live in Kansas City so I'll just use my experience as an example. I can get a cable modem from Comcast for something like $50 a month. I believe that gives me 6 megabits down, 384k up. Comparably priced DSL is a bit slower but not my a huge amount. I live in an upscale neighborhood that is also densely populated. If population density is a primary argument, I think it falls short in metro areas like where I live. Why is it that our speeds (in particular upload speed) are so craptacular and expensive compared to what you would pay in Europe, Japan, or Korea?
Here's a good example of why. There is a competitive cable company in my area called Everest. They have been around a few years now, and seeing as how there is no CLEC-style regulation forcing the cable companies to share their lines, Everest went to the trouble of actually laying cable and building their own infrastructure from the ground up. When Everest went live, they offered a then-unheard of package of cable, Internet, and voice for a reasonable price. Undercutting Southwestern Bell (now AT&T) and Time Warner cable by a decent margin. Time Warner's response was to cut their prices in Everest's admittedly small territory. Just by virtue of living in Everest territory you can get HUGE discounts on Time Warner that aren't available anywhere else in the city. I guess it's good to be king.
In summary, it seems to me that if you want to see why we don't have good broadband, it's because there is no incentive for the telcos and cable companies to really compete since they have effective monopolies. And when an upstart comes along and tries to win, they get muscled out of the market. I really don't know what the answer is, but if you want to know why the state of broadband is so poor (and you live in an urban area) look in your own backyard.
From the article:
That comment says it all right there. This has nothing to do with technology innovation and everything to do with the members of the World Economic Forum and their collective opinion of the current US administration.
Oh.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Look, US based companies are at a tax disadvantage. They pay taxes on profits earned here and abroad while foreign based companies don't.
I was under the impression that the government was supposed to be responsible for education? What, its not? Oh, thats right, when you can villify a corporation its best to do so, regardless if it doesn't make a bit of sense.
Profits? Wow how dare they. Look, they make profits to pay for their expansion and research. Don't try and tell me that these companies are not pouring a sizeable percentage of their profits back into their business. If they don't they get supplanted by those who do or have to buy those who do. Worse they get bought by others.
We have had decades of politicians successfully embedding the idea that corporations are some kind of mad evil organization to be reviled when they make money. They point to profits but never the margin as is famously done with oil companies. They point out the millions made and such all the while hoping you don't see all the taxpayer money they waste buying votes by building bridges to nowhere and research butterfly diseases.
Don't go putting the blame elsewhere. The blame starts with us. We elect politicians who don't do what we want them to do and we just reelect them. Worse many elect politicians not based on their ideas to improve society but instead on "what they can do for me", "who they can take money from because its unfair someone has more", "whom they can make laws against because they don't think like me", or far worse, which political party they are.
It isn't the corporation that is responsible for the US slowly sinking in technology. Its the people of this country who no longer hold themselves or their government accountable. They want freedom but only so much, it usually stops when it gets hard then they run to the government to "make it alright". Build in a flood zone and get flooded, well the government can pay. Can't sell your art because it sucks, well the government can make those ignorant savages pay for it. Someone makes too much money, well the government should step in make them "contribute a fair share".
Damn, its this reliance on government that is our failing, not some damn CEO of a company most of us will never interact with except maybe through our 401Ks.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I didn't like how dismissive you were here of the parent post. When you said you wanted to mark it "funny" it sounded to me like you were belittling it. If that is the case you completely missed or did not understand the parent post's point of view.
Basically the parent clarified the larger point that in the US the system of lobbying and campaign finance is responsible for a lot of mismanagement in government. I agree with your assessments about large organizations and their tendency to go with "what's comfortable", but the parent post pointed out the larger systemic fault of private financing for public campaigns and the role of lobbying in the states.
Your statement that if one wanted to change these systemic problems, voting for Clinton (!) would do it is to me a clear sign you lack a complete understanding of the American political system and hence the parent's whole point ! Out of all the democratic presidential nominees it is exactly Clinton who is the MOST connected to the dysfunctional system of special interest influence. She basically lives and breathes Washington political influence.
If you REALLY wanted to start to change things you would want to support organizations like publicampaign.org and if you're after a political candidate maybe Obama has the best shot/willingness for large scale change, but even he can't do it alone. Publicampaign.org has pushed through numerous campaign finance reforms in individual states and they have proven that reform can be achieved.
Just clarifying, because I felt you missed the parent's political point and since you didn't understand it (probably due to lack of experience with the American political process) were dismissive of it.
This report is nothing new. Forget it!
s -weaknesses.pdf
The European Commision did release a similar report (EIS2006) two-three weeks ago.
The Report is available from:
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/doc/EIS2006_strenght
In Brief:
The leading European (EU) states are:
Sweden, Finnland, Denmark, Germany (Ordered)
In the (absolut) international:
Sweden, Finnland, Israel, Japan, Germany and swiss.
Well USA is in these Report somwhat lacking to the leading states,
but not realy that much and ahead of UK-- of course.
The leading innovating states are very close to each other
( Japan, Germany and USA are more like a single block), except for Sweden!
As the claimant, the burden of proof falls upon the Christian. Presently, there is no historical evidence that backs up their claims; that pretty much cuts the feet right out from under any argument they might make.
Proof? Faith? What?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
How is this news? It has always been Europe. They breathe it, eat it and legislate it. Science is even the real religion there. The US as tech king is just hype -- a marketing ploy of spin doctors. Europe never made such pronouncements because history can speak for them. They shut up and work.
Has anybody found Yesus' birth record? I think the bible said that his birth was recorded, so if it exists, Yesus must exist.
It looks to me, for the most part, that the US lost out due to an over-regulatory environment rather than "tax revolts" or "evil Republicans"... which sounds about right.
There is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Jesus. The earliest mention of Jesus is in the context of remarks made by Josephus, a man born about 7 years after Christ's supposed death. Then there is Tacitus, who was born about 55 AD. There are a couple more that come at about 80 AD and 100...110AD and then as the Christians gained followers, more and more mentions. The key thing, though, is that there is no mention anywhere in the records we have from 0 to 30 AD of Mr. Christus, and no mention by anyone whose personal timeline crossed that of Mr. Christus.
"What about the bible?" I hear the apologists winding up to ask. Well, what about it? There are no books of the bible that are any older than 300AD. The earliest documents we have - the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Alexandrin manuscripts - come from 300AD or later; they are supposed to be copies of earlier works, but as no such works have come to light, and of the 5,000 or so documents that went into the mix to be used as a basis for the bible (compared against one another and so on), these three are by far the best ones and the most used... we can pretty much limit the scope of trust to literally hundreds of years after Christus was supposed to have lived - in other words, the bible is actually less authoritative than either Tacitus or Josephus, and as I pointed out, those fellows never even knew the man.
Don't you realize that the works of Tacitus and Josephus that we have today are also "supposed to be copies of earlier works"? But no one particularly doubts in those cases that the original manuscript once existed, that the attribution of authorship is probably correct, and that the copies are mostly accurate transcriptions, with perhaps a few editorial additions, accidental omissions, and so on.
Consider the concrete example of one critically important work: The earliest and most important copies we have of Tacitus' "Annals" are a partial copy of books 1-6 made in about 850 AD in a German abbey, and a partial copy of books 11-16 made in about 1000 AD in an Italian monastery. Because they don't overlap, we can't even compare them against each other to see if any monks inserted hoaxes, practical jokes, etc. No surviving copies that contain any part of books 7-10 have been found. Unless some great discovery is made, that portion of the history is lost entirely.
So as far as document preservation goes, the Bible has done quite well compared to many other important and trusted copies of ancient works. Furthermore, the copies that you mention are complete copies. There are also fragmentary copies that survive, including this fragment, which was probably written during about 125-160 AD, and almost certainly sometime during 100-200 AD.
This is why most historians think that the New Testament that we have is a pretty good representation of what was written by its original authors over a period sometime during 60-140 AD. So it is strange that you attack the provenance of the documents, rather than what is written in them.
Throw out all of human history, then.
The New Testament texts are more reliable than pretty much any other texts from that time period. Whatever criteria you use to throw them out as invalid will also apply to pretty much every other document from that time period or earlier.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
I say, if the bible says Jesus existed, then we should be able to find many mentions of him in history outside the bible; he was no "bit player."
What is your basis for this statement?
Of course he was a "bit player", to everyone who you consider a reliable source. Messiahs were a dime a dozen back then. Another one being executed to keep the people from getting any stupid ideas about insurrection was not a momentous occasion.
The only people with an incentive to record his story were his followers. It appears they did so.
You do not think they are credible. Fine. That is your right.
But to expect to find a lengthy official record about someone who was of little note to the authorities of that time, and when there was very little documentation of anything, compared to today, and when very little of that documentation has survived until today, is quite silly.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Umm, if you were raised Catholic (as I was) then you would KNOW that you are damned to Hell. Guilt is one of the guiding tenents.
As far as I am concerned, if you believe in Hell, then I am for sure going and no, we don't have the time to discuss it. I am not repenting, I am not sorry. I accept the fact that I am going to your Hell. Now fuck off and leave me alone.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Given the story in the bible, even without supernatural powers, Jesus interacted with the government and the merchants and the people a great deal. There were many writers active during that time who would, I think, have been very likely indeed to have made note of Jesus's activities if he really existed, yet didn't say a word in all their writings - and we're talking about a lot of writing! Here are some of those authors:
Philo-Judæus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Pruseus, Paterculus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Pliny the Younger, Justus of Tiberius, Apollonius, Quintilian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Hermogones, Silius Italicus, Statius, Ptolemy, Appian, Phlegon, Phædrus, Valerius Maximus, Lucian, Pausanias, Florus Lucius, Quintius Curtius, Aulus Gellius, Dio Chrysostom, Columella, Valerius Flaccus, Damis, Favorinus, Lysias, Pomponius Mela, Appion of Alexandria, and Theon of Smyrna.
So I strongly disagree both on the bit player position, and on the "would be documented" position. Thanks for your reply, though.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
(a), yes I do realize they are copies, and (b), I take them with considerable doubt, as do most people who study this subject, and (c) should those writings be false, and there certainly are indications they have problems, that casts even more doubt on the proposition that Jesus existed as a historical person. I was simply giving the writings the note of at least existing outside the bible itself, which they in fact do. You're quite wrong when you say "no one doubts" those writings. I suggest you do a little research; for instance, Jospehus was a Pharisee, and his writings are criticized on the basis that he is attributed things scholars think no Pharisee would have written. Tacitus got his facts wrong, called a prefect (Pilate) a procurator and so forth. Many people, including myself, believe that Tacitus' writings on this are a forgery by Johannes de Spire circa the 15th century. So don't mistake my courtesy for ignorance. The most important fact regarding those writings is that they exist outside the literary tradition of the bible, and in that, they stand as the earliest such records, even as flawed as they may be, that exist. Even giving them the most possible room, as I did above, they still come from a time after Jesus was supposed to be extant, and that is the real problem - they're not records of Jesus at all, even with all the leeway one can hand them. They're records of the cult of Christ, which is something else again entirely. Throwing Tacitus out, my position becomes even stronger - or in other words, there is even less contemporaneous data to verify the story of Christ. We have records of the cult of vampirism and the cult of Hannibal Lecter; but we know these are fictional characters. Lecter in particular is at risk for turning into a pseudo-historical figure, but vampires don't seem to exceed the credulity of some people, and it is clear we can't rule out either Vlad the Impaler or the vampire Lestat as candidates for future shenanigans.
No. Both the Vatican and the Alexandrin manuscripts are missing large sections. Only the Sinaitic is complete (and in fact, it contains two more books known as "The Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas") But it is from about AD 400, which is one heck of a gap from being an original document.
In fact, reasonable dating range for that fragment extends to about 250 AD for several reasons, one of the most telling being that it is a codex fragment, not a roll. Even the article you linked to mentions this. In any case, that is almost 300 years past the time when Christ was supposed to be extant. There is no certainty at all that the dates you quote - still over a century after the purported events - are accurate, but even if they are, they're still not contemporaneous, they're well into the "I head it this way" of centuries-old storytelling. They could still be accurate, but that is where comparing historical sources comes in, and as we know, that effort yields nothing, and I consider that to be a bell-ringer in terms of casting doubt on the whole story - even without the ridiculous supernatural nonsense that would surely have been noticed by the writers and historians of the day - for instance, when Christ was resurrected, I think they'd have
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think it is fine that people have increased opportunity to chat with each other with various gadgets. On the other hand it seems absurd to equate that with technological leadership. I don't see why there is anything to investigate other than the quality of a nation's research universities and the availability of capital to create new enterprises. How many great research universities are there in all of the first six countries listed? Even if you combine all of them they are dwarfed by California, Texas or Massachusetts individually. Of course this is mainly an historical anomaly which will change to a less radical distribution over time but it will not be the result of teenagers texting each other in pursuit of getting laid.
This article is nothing more than an attempt to affect government regulatory policy for consumer electronic products and services. These matters have their own importance but it has very little to do with technological leadership. If you want to get a picture of meaningful penetration of internet access (relating to technological leadership) take a look at the distribution of nodes for Folding@Home: Folding@Home
When did the US think it WAS the technology king?? In the 60s and 70s perhaps?
But in the USA, while you'll buy a Motorola, you might not but a YinYangCaller. In a few years you might if the YinYangCaller brand establishes itself.
The development of the industry moves steadily up the value adding chain: Start with manufacturing (lowest value) a few years back, now they're into design (higher value). In a few more years they could get into branding (highest value).
Many Japanese companies like Sony managed to do that (though they've now trashed their brand a bit), so there is nothing stopping Chinese company doing the same. In many ways it is easier now since there is better globalisation and less NIH. Then there are all those Samsungs and similar that have managed to establish a brand.
For an interesting look at how this process unfolds, look at Kyocera - how they started out making ceramics then IC packaging and slowly grew the value into branding cellphones etc http://global.kyocera.com/company/summary/history/ until1979.html
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That is absolute and utter nonsense. The NT texts check well with themselves; the problem is that for the story told therein, there is no corroboration. "All of human history" is replete with examples of multiple instances of history told from different viewpoints within different cultures. We don't just know about the Greeks from the Greeks; we know about them from the Romans, from all over Europe in fact. There is no one book, published by a cult, that contains the Roman story. Likewise, we know about the Greeks from similar multiple sources. We know even more about them because when we look at the writings they left and they say "there is a library here... a royal barge there... a temple here..." we actually find these things. History is an area that fails to have multiple sources only at the very fringe events (which I personally think Christ's advent would not qualify as) or at bunkum/superstitious events (David and Goliath, Moroni and the Golden Tablets, 99.999% of UFO sightings... if not 100%, the 3-hour darkening of the skies)
To put "all of human history" in the same basket with the biblical tales is to insult historians the world over, and to demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of how history is collected, understood, and evaluated.
They have been determined to be reliably the same story, from codex to today's KJ. That is entirely distinct from being "good history." You've confused the two. The NT is by all indicators a very low quality history (or an outright historical fiction); authors reporting the same event within the book don't even always agree, and the events themselves have no corroboration in other records, at least, as yet, so you can't even side with one or the other.
No. The criteria used for grading historical information is multi-sourcing, of which there is plenty for much of history. The bible, however, fails this important, nay, critical, aspect of historical validation. So one can easily disregard the bible without, for instance, presuming the Greeks were a myth, that the Vikings did not ply the seas, or that the Christians did not burn witches, rack dissenters, and stone women. The bible is known to have not changed since about 300 AD. It contains some broad strokes - kings and kingdoms, largely - that are historically accurate. It also contains a great deal of supernatural event reporting, some of which serves to handily disqualify it as a true record of history. One specific event is reported in Matt. 27:45. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour... This is not something that would have gone either un-noticed or un-reported if it happened. Yet it did; that's a prime indicator that the bible is telling fibs. Entirely aside from the supernatural character of the event, which of course is another, and of which you can find numerous examples in the bible. Most biblical events can be shrugged off as being too local or minor to find their way into other histories, but not that one.
So it is critical to keep straight what we mean when we say that the bible is true to itself. What it means is that the text we have today closely matches the text of 300 AD. That is all it means. It doesn't mean that the bible is a historical document; it doesn't mean that actual historical documents are less trustworthy because they have survived in poorer shape, or have been translated more times; the latter are often far better records than anything in the bible simply because there are many other accounts that corroborate what they say, for instance, Cleopatra isn't just a Shakespeare
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We can deduct part of the cost from tax. It is subsidized, through tax and county net, and it is possible, in US as well. On the countryside it is different even here, as houses are very separated. I would not say the problems in US is very different than here, it is more that they trying to solve it without subsidies.
And I think a major part of the question in the U.S. is "do we really want to subsidize it?"
I'm a big supporter of broadband, and I think the government could do a lot more to spur development in this area, but even I draw the line when it comes to using direct tax revenue to subsidize consumer broadband access. That doesn't seem like a legitimate function of government to me. Particularly when you add in all the other things that I'd like the government to deal with first (either to spend money on, or stop spending money on), broadband probably isn't even in the top 5 or 10.
Add to that the seemingly utter incapability of our government to find ways of funding that don't involve more taxes, and I'm further disinclined to support subsidies. I'm not going to pay more on April 15 so that my next-door neighbor can get better WoW pingtimes. Providing broadband to a lab that does cancer research might be different, but I'm not going to pay for other consumers' access -- if they want broadband, they can buy it. As long as we create competition, so that people have multiple options of who they want to buy it from, I'm content to let the market fix the price of what's essentially a luxury itself.
The only exception to this which I'd support, would be on very local levels; e.g. local municipal broadband. But I probably wouldn't support it on a state, and certainly not a Federal, level -- as you get further away from the voters, responsiveness and responsibility decreases (I think it's some sort of inverse-square law, or maybe 1/x^3). And even in the case of a local municipality, I probably wouldn't support any direct financing, only low-interest loans using the municipality's bond rating to get startup capital.
The major problem we have in the U.S. is that the telcos have basically colluded with government and got a lot of protective legislation passed, that makes it difficult to compete with them. "Broadband in every home," like 'a chicken in every pot,' may be a nice sentiment, but I'm not going to help pay for it. As long as there is full and open competition, with the least barriers to entry as possible, the rest is up to consumers to decide if they want to buy it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
We have similar educations. We are both lucky enough to afford the toys we want. I make ~10% more than you at our day jobs (after less than a year after my post-doc), while living in an area with a cost of living far below Copenhagen or any other major city, and paying a marginal tax rate in the thirties (including taxes for the retirement system). If I were to include my health care in that, it might crack 40% total. I do admit that I work more - 5.5 weeks of vacation and around 42 hours a week. My experiences in both Austria and Japan were in graduate schools (the first as a study abroad, the second as a post-doc). In both cases, I was spending most of my time with people who had similar educational backgrounds and aspirations as myself. In both cases, I either owned or was capable of owning far more things (ie, being materially rich) than my counterparts overseas. Whether we are "culturally richer" is another matter entirely, but it is clear from a broad swath of data that Americans are both the most productive and work the most (or close to it), giving us the most money to buy stuff with. I agree with some of your criticims of our purchase choices, however. I have always hated suburbia and hate it more now that I am stuck living in it.
I don't think you spend much time with poor people, as I have my whole life (I grew up in, and my family still resides in, a very poor rural area). I have met few people in my life who were poor because of a "temporary setback". Virtually all of them, in contrast, were poor because of the logical results of a series of poor choices stretching back most of their lives. Your near-hypothetical crack baby has a golden ticket to college here in the US, btw, financed without the use of force by private scholarship donations. Frankly, any American who cannot figure out how to pay for college is probably not smart enough to benefit from college in the first place. Btw, did you know that Americans donate FAR more money to charity (both religious and secular) than Europeans, or anyone else for that matter. Even stranger, donations (and volunteering) correlate strongly with being both religious and politically conservative. Most people expect the opposite. Probably something to do with the difference between talking and walking.
You're quite wrong when you say "no one doubts" those writings.
Use quotation marks more carefully. I said "no one particularly doubts".
My point is that you are being very particular in subjecting anything written about Jesus to this level of scrutiny that is generally not applied to the very many other historical figures who are known only through Nth generation copies of written accounts.
If you don't even understand what I am saying, futher discussion is useless.
I am being very particular. Extraordinary claims require, if not extraordinary evidence, as Sagan would have it, then at least the same standard of evidence as everything else. Therefore, without corroboration, the bible, a veritable fount of extraordinary claims, does not rise to the standard of a historical document.
With regard to Jesus: If you tell me you have a horse, I will not begin with doubt. If, however, you tell me your horse is bright green, flies, and can heal the sick, then you're going to have to show me your horse and its abilities because again, you'll find that I've all of a sudden become quite particular. If you consider this an unreasonable stance, that's fine. I'm not accountable to you. You should have found someone more gullible to present your equine entertainment.
Fine. Change my text to: "You're quite wrong when you say 'no one particularly doubts' those writings." I particularly doubt them. So do many others. No need to change anything else I said, either in specific or in the sense of it. You're still 100% wrong.
Rest assured, I understood you perfectly. You were simply wrong. You're still wrong. Anything else you want to cover?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I am being very particular. Extraordinary claims require, if not extraordinary evidence, as Sagan would have it, then at least the same standard of evidence as everything else.
All I'm saying here that there is historical evidence which indicates that Jesus existed. It's not an extraordinary claim. Lots of people existed back then. Remember, you started this out by saying that "there is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Jesus."
I've never heard someone say something like 'there is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Socrates.' I have heard plenty of doubt that Socrates' sayings and actions were accurately recorded. But his existence? As far as I know, it's pretty uncontroversial.
Yeah, yeah, you're right, this is way more interesting.
Even a Dyson Sphere has it's limits- even I know enough physics to know that sunlight is only 400 w/m^2.
.. BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA! Ok. LOL!!! BAHAHAHAHAH!
.. which you ignored .. is WE CAN GENERATE THE NECESSARY AMOUNT OF ENERGY. Screw whether it's by solar or not.
.. not the kilowatts consumed every hour or something)
.. it's 120,000,000,000,000,000 Watt hours IN ONE HOUR.
.. lets say that's TRIPLE the amount (which btw, there is no way in hell it can be). You go find the numbers ... I guess as a marxist you can't deal with real math ..only speculation.
.. and you can provide all the energy for 10 billion people FOR THE WHOLE YEAR. Now go fuck yourself.
.. without even building all the power plants we can.. imagine if China built more energy plants etc.)
.. if the system can work for 500 - 5000 years (and yes we DO have enough fuel nuclear fission & coal for that)that's good enough for me .. because only some loony would think that future generations won't find newer energy sources. I did the math ... and you didn't .. are you void of scientific analysis?
.. that's LESS (1/4) than the 454,223,744,292 per hour of electricity the US uses. The R.I power can only generate for 8 hours .. so it works out to be the same. Yeah I assumed solar panels produce 400 w/m^2 and were 100% efficient.. Even though, by the way that average of 400W m^2 includes the night time 0's.
A dyson sphere captures all the solar energy a sun generates.
Do you really think a Dyson sphere can't EASILY support 7-10 billion people living current US Quality of Life
Solar isn't even enough to completely replace current American usage even if you covered the entire world in 100% efficient solar panels.
Ok, the original point
Anyway, as was proven, educated & well off population tends not to increase (i know this contrasts directly with marxist philosophy so u have a hard time understanding it)
Second,
for the whole of 2005, including factories, manufacturing crap, residential BS etc. we used 3,979,000,000,000,000 Watt hours (that is TOTAL watt hours used over the ENTIRE year
Now, if I calculated how many watts can be generated if we covered the whole world with solar panels
(300,000,000,000,000 m^2 * 400)
YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!!!
So yeah, i left out energy produced in non electric forms (say in automobiles etc)
YOU STILL CAN GENERATE ALL THE ENERGY THE US NEEDS FOR ONE YEAR IN 12 MINUTES. Run it for 5 hours
GOSH, you are such an idiot. I don't expect a reply from you since you're probably going to get off on some pedantic BS. A combination of solar, wind, and nuclear plants can provide enough energy for everyone else in the world (after all we ALREADY produce enough electricity for ourselves
Anyway, like I said
* About rhode island
1,600,000,000,000 watts per hour can be generated if we covered two rhode islands with solar panels
We don't just know about the Greeks from the Greeks; we know about them from the Romans, from all over Europe in fact.
I only wish to point out that the Greeks were an entire nation. Jesus was a single individual. Easier to expect corroboration of the existence and exploits of a nation than a single individual.
Kings and generals and such are exceptions, of course. This is because they stand in as proxies for large groups of people in historical narrative, "Xerces marched on the Persians" or whatever. I think this also applies to Cleopatra, for example.
when we look at the writings they left and they say "there is a library here... a royal barge there... a temple here..." we actually find these things
I'm pretty sure a lot of things cited in the Bible have been found where the Bible says they are. I think you concede as much later in your post.
One specific event is reported in Matt. 27:45. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour...
A fair criticism. A good question to ask a skilled Christian apologist sometime. I admit I have yet to do so, and do not have an immediate explanation.
What it means is that the text we have today closely matches the text of 300 AD.
My understanding is that many (most?) historians believe that much of the text of 300 AD reflects accurately much of what was written much earlier, at least 70AD, maybe earlier.
I'm glad you also acknowledge:
The bible is known to have not changed since about 300 AD. It contains some broad strokes - kings and kingdoms, largely - that are historically accurate.
There's a lot of critics of Christianity that do not acknowledge even that, or claim that the Bible is the result of a centuries long game of "telephone". If you reject outright as unreliable any claim to supernatural events, that is your right, and I acknowledge you make some good criticisms. I think it is reasonable to agree to disagree about how much other writers of the day would have been interested in Jesus while he was living. I suppose you've given me a good amount of homework to do with your list of writers from that period.
Well, fun discussing this with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Really? Ok, out with it then. Seriously. If you are privy to this information, I'm sure the entire world, Christians and non-Christians alike, want to hear it. What do you know about this? Come on: Exactly what is this "historical evidence"?
I am perfectly ready to be proven wrong. By all means, do so. All you have to do is back up that one statement. Over to you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Certainly. However, this doesn't go any distance at all towards validating the story of Jesus, any more than mentioning the CIA in a Jack Ryan book proves the existence of Jack Ryan. Background history is easily accessible to any author of a serious work of fiction, of course.
No. There is nothing available from that time period; the earliest texts are from 200-300 AD at best, and that's if you're being generous. We have not one original document with regard to the NT. Which is really too bad. We know - because what we have are copies - that the stories are at least one document generation older than the oldest documents we have, but that's all we know for sure.
I don't. I hold them to be extraordinary claims, and I expect those claims to be justified by extraordinary evidence; a complete lack of evidence I find to be unacceptable. The 3 hours of darkness is a good example because it was country-wide. The lack of a record of this I find to be rather telling. Such records are typically easy to find. There are other events that I think would evince similar notice, such as feeding a multitude from a single loaf of bread. But I don't assume they're impossible; the story makes those claims and asks to be taken seriously. Fine. I do. But then I can't find any evidence of this; It is the lack of such note that causes me to doubt the whole thing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Some people - educated, well socialized - have broad sets of interests, and often conduct conversations that range far and wide. When you move out of your mother's basement, you may meet some of these people. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to bring the conversation back to its starting point over and over again; most people will find that cute once or twice, and after that, simply an indicator that you are socially retarded. You won't be invited back, and then where will you get your pizza? Run along now.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. There is nothing available from that time period; the earliest texts are from 200-300 AD at best,
OK, what do you make of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible#Ap proximate_dates
I know Wikipedia is not infallible, but where did they get those dates from? Thessalonians is dated at 50 A.D., about 20 years after the normally accepted time of Christ's death.
Or this?
http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data1/dg/text/fragment .htm
"The importance of this fragment is quite out of proportion to its size, since it may with some confidence be dated in the first half of the second century A.D., and thus ranks as the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any language."
Hoax?
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Sorry, I thought it was clear what I was getting at. The historical evidence is first, the existence of Christianity, and second, the New Testament and various other writings. (Are we going around in circles yet?)
Quite a lot of history has to do with studying and interpreting these kinds of documents, so yes, they are a kind of historical evidence.
And sure, you could imagine the existence of Jesus to be a falsehood perpetrated by a conspiracy that was put across in 250 AD, or 40 AD, or at some other time. You could also imagine that Socrates was a fictional character invented by Plato, Xenophon, and a few other pals. But these scenarios are both pretty unlikely. As explanations of history, they are unnecessary extrapolations, and they introduce more problems than they solve.
Historically speaking, none of that qualifies as proof. The NT documents are 200 to 300 years younger than the time during which Christ was supposed to live. The earliest record we have of the Christians themselves is about 80 to 100 AD, which is 50 to 70 years after Christ lived. The evidence from that time is from people who were not even born when Christ was supposed to be alive. This is what we mean when we say that there is no historical evidence - nothing from Christ's time. We have stories in a book from centuries later, and we know the cult was around 50 years or so after the time in which he was supposed to have been around. That's not very strong in general, and historically speaking, it is nothing. And yes, you're going around in circles. This has already been covered, in detail, elsewhere in the thread.
Regarding the trouble a false story causes, keep in mind that hasn't stopped others - Mormons, Scientologists, Hindus, Crystal gazers, Astrologists, UFO abductees, Phrenologists, Faith healers, Voodoo cultists, Politicians, etc, ad infinitum. Because we know falsehoods are very common in religion and politics, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that Christianity is similar to the rest of that list in this regard. What would be of interest would be contemporaneous (meaning, same time in history) independent records of Christian doings, and particularly, Jesus' doings. There aren't any that have come to light so far, and that's a definite warning sign for falsehood. Not definitive by any means, but certainly a caution flag.
Yes, but not the kind that can validate the truth of the existence of Jesus Christ. The study of biblical documents in order to get them straight is called "textual criticism" and it serves only to keep the bible true to itself. Look into it. I highly recommend the "Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism: Revised Edition" by J. Harold Greenlee. You can find it on Amazon.
Conspiracy? Perhaps. Have you ever played "telephone"? That's all it takes for stories to mutate in wondrous ways, and there were many, many decades before the stories in the bible came to light. Or it could have been a schism, a copycat religion (there is some evidence for this, there are numerous similarities between Christianity and earlier religions) or even parody. The point is, we don't know, and it is foolish to guess; it is better to point out we don't know, and then go looking for what is missing. We can weigh the evidence as we go. Starting now, there isn't any. I'm sure everyone involved would like to find some. It's only a hobby for me, and I am very curious about what went on. I can hardly imagine the state of a devout Christian upon hearing that they found actual records of Christ - of any kind - from a source like the government, or even a supplier of crosses or the poor sod who catered the last supper. Anything! And if that "anything" was a real, bona fide artifact - the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas, the order for his crucifixion, a complaint from the money-changers at the temple, a record of the darkness during his resurrection - there'd be worldwide notice taken. And for good reason.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Those dates are the dates of the times the stories appear to have been written, judging by the style of the writing and the issues that can be cross-referenced to the culture of that time. Not the dates of the books; there are no such books, only copies. The books themselves are much more recent. The three primary sources are:
There are over five thousand different historical (old enough to be used as source references) manuscript copies of the New Testament. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, and some in Hebrew. These generally date somewhere between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Of that number, most are incomplete copies; sometimes this is due to loss of some of the manuscript, but it is often simply a consequence of the actual bulk of the various ancient transcription mediums (papyrus, vellum and parchment). Often, the New Testament was issued as a series of separate documents, for instance broken into The Four Gospels, the Acts and General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
With regard to the fragment, again, this has already been covered, but: Refer to the wikipedia article on it. It is a lot better; there you will find the honest assessment that it is much later than the page you linked to claims. One of the ways we know this is because it is part of a codex, and codexes weren't in use early on. If it was that early, it would have been from a scroll (a roll, not a bound book, or a codex.) The fragment is most likely from about 250 AD, which means it is basically contemporaneous with the rest of the bible's oldest copies.
However - for the sake of looking at this in the most generous way possible - let's assume that it dates from 150 AD. There is no way that can be so, but let's just run with it. This is 120 years after Christ. No one who wrote this document, even if written in 150 AD, was one of his peers. So it is a story written about "the old times", if you will, not a contemporary alternate source of information. What we're looking for here is something from the government, from a writer (there were tons of them), a note about the 3 hour blackout when he was resurrected, that sort of thing that comes from a source that is not the bible. We already know what the bible says. We can't look to it to confirm its own content, we need another source. That, in a nutshell, is what is missing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Those dates are the dates of the times the stories appear to have been written, judging by the style of the writing and the issues that can be cross-referenced to the culture of that time.
Yes, that is what I was saying.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
I didn't say it was proof. All I'm saying is that historical evidence exists.
The works attributed to Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, together with the existence of a particular philosophical tradition, are evidence that Socrates existed.
The Elements, the existence of the geometric tradition, and some few mentions by historians living centuries later are evidence that Euclid existed.
The Bible, together with the existence of the Christian tradition, are evidence that Jesus existed.
We don't have the cup that Socrates is supposed to have drunk hemlock from. We don't have birth records for Socrates, or any kind of genealogy. We don't have any contemporary sculpture of Socrates, or coins with his name or image on them. Socrates wrote no works, and the only surviving copies of works which do describe him were made hundreds years after he died. But that doesn't mean that we don't have evidence of Socrates' existence.
Plato was a contemporary of Socrates. According to various documents, he knew Socrates pretty well. Plato's Dialogues may not always accurately represent the teachings or agenda of Socrates, but they are evidence that Socrates existed.
Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. They were around at the same time. According to Paul's letters and according to the Acts of the Apostles, he knew the Twelve Apostles quite well, and they in turn knew Jesus quite well. Paul's letters are evidence that Jesus existed.
No. Here's your problem: Plato provides contemporaneous, different-sourced confirmation of Socrates (as do many others.) Paul is a character of whom we know nothing other than he appears in the same book as Christ; because he does not, as far as we know, exist outside the bible, he no more provides another source of confirmation than does Cathy Ryan provide proof that John Ryan was real in a Tom Clancy book. You're trying to make the snake eat its own tail here.
The bible is one source. Everything in it is part of that same source. It is a doubtful source for several reasons, not the least of which is it reports supernatural events. Also, there are no originals, there are no records of originals, there are no records of events it reports that it says were country-wide, it contradicts itself, and it has highly visible ulterior motives for existing that have nothing to do with Christ, that is, control and political power, as amply demonstrated by various Christian political acts over the last 2000 years.
Because the bible is doubtful, it is imperative that additional confirming sources be discovered if we are to be expected to take it seriously. At no time would it be appropriate to lose sight of the fact that so far, not one of the events involving Christ, or even the very existence of Christ himself, have been independently verified by anyone outside the Christian tradition, or anyone at all who lived when Christ is reported to have lived. Given that, Occam's razor says it's most likely a historical fiction.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You guys are reading this as if I were an Evangelical Christian, which I am most certainly not.
The religious right were wielding way more influence than they should, and now it's apparent that the neo-cons hitched their wagon to a team of horses they can't control.
I'm beginning to think that I should move from annoyance at Evangelicals to downright disdain such as Richard Dawkins does, but that may be a little too extreme.
The point of my posting is that we shouldn't just ignore Evangelicals thinking they'll just go away.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
about 35000 dollars. The US's is around 42000, and I wouldn't even consider that a fair comparision, as Denmark is so small. How about we compare Denmark to Massachusetts, Delaware, or another small New England state of roughly the same size. Now you are up against a GDP of over 50,000 per year. While we are at it, we can compare some poor state like Alabama to a poor European nation...how does Romania sound? I won't bother to look but I am sure we win again.
Btw, I grew up in a trailer. Doing fine now. Also, I would rather live in a trailer on a half acre than be crammed into a tiny box (err, apartment) like your poor are. Crime rates between the US and Europe are converging. It is simply a non-factor in our lives for the most part, just like yours.
Yeah... if only there were a number of religious communities which claim to have established and/or visited by Cathy Ryan some decades ago, and if there were a substantial body of written work attributed to Cathy Ryan, and other letters and commentaries by various other people who (in their writings) claim to have known Cathy Ryan and her friends.
The bible is one source. Everything in it is part of that same source.
No, it is a collection of several writings which have many different authors and many different dates of composition. Different authors
Plus, there are a number of other Christian or quasi-Christian writings from the same era that are not included in the Bible.
It is a doubtful source for several reasons, not the least of which is it reports supernatural events.
Greek and Roman histories are loaded with supernatural events. In describing a major disaster, the author often uncritically recounts the various omens, auguries, dreams, and prophecies which are alleged to have occurred. Long quotation from Lives of the Caesars:
Oh, also, thanks for explaining your position in such detail.
And I still think that, if you are to be consistent, you should say that there is no historical evidence of Socrates' existence.
From his supposed contemporaries, the only evidence we have are The Clouds -- which is just a play which features a comedic philosopher character named "Socrates" -- and the surviving Socratic dialogues attributed to Xenophon and Plato.
But what we call Socratic dialogues are actually also plays, usually (but not always) with a questioning character called "Socrates". So why couldn't "Socrates" be a fictional character, a literary device, invented by a group of philosophers to expose their ideas in these dialogues?
It would then be quite natural for Aristophanes to feature "Socrates" in a comedy satirizing the ideas and activities of these philosophers.
(The problem here is, I'm actually starting to convince myself that Socrates may not have existed...)
Who really gives a fuck what the World Economic Forum says? They're by and large a bunch of bitter Euro-twits who are jealous of the United States. FTA, Denmark is "now regarded as the world leader in technological advancement." That's utterly laughable. Can anyone take seriously an organization that makes that claim? Do even the bitterest of US-hating Euro-twits really believe that?