Most world religions are based on the fact that there is an eternal truth, something that carries through every generation of humanity. Just because the religious texts were written at a time when scientific progress wasn't as advanced as now doesn't negate the fundamental truth they speak of. So saying that "religion is not relevant" is ignorant (for lack of a better term at the moment).
Actually I hear this reasoning all of the time, I think this is just what makes religion less relevant. There are two assumptions "there are universal truths" and "religion recognizes some of them". I find your argument not compelling. It seems that most reasoning goes like this - religion contains universal truths therefore all of it must be true, you could decompose this to simply say that if something contains any truth by extension all of it MUST be true. Examine this, if the creator of a religion wished to be taken seriously he/she would be expected to include some universal truths, as a result you should not be supprised to find that most religions are peppered with these truths, that however doesn't make the religion relevant to current scientific advances or anything for that matter.
Speaking as a Christian, the fundamental truth is "love God and love your neighbor as yourself." (Jesus, paraphrased, Mark 12:29-31) There are always new situations to apply this to, and I suppose that's what you meant by "subjective interpretation," but that fundamental is still there. It is timeless.
This little piece is actually not relevant to the question of wether science should create life. Just because this seems to be a universal truth doesn't mean that Christianity invented it or was the first to discover it. In fact Evolution was most likely the one that invented this one. Imagine evolving from something like a black widow not only would it not be in your best interest to love your neighbor you'd even get to eat your mate - what fun. Now imagine evolving from a creature that needs a social structure to survive, one that on it's own would be inadequate in it's environment - it would be in your best interest to to "love" ( ie. help) your neighbor, because without him you'd have less of a chance of surviving and vice versa. Just because religion realized this doesn't mean that they should have say in whether we should get to create life or not. Actually it would be in our best interest as a species to have every tool we could possibly create at our disposal, it is also in our best interest to not use these tools against eachother. If we are intelegent enough to invent a tool we should also be intelegent enough to restrict it's usage.
I'd have to agree. All of this secrecy is causing quite a large number of people to get really anxious about the possibilities. In all reality we have little reason to belive this "product" will do anything, aside from the patents.
From the patents we can derive quite a lot about what "it" is supposed to do, however because patents are public information, "it" might not be what transmeta is really doing. Transmeta is being really secretive thus the information in the patents is what transmeta wants us to "know". To take it one step further, transmeta could be working on anything, and the patents could be an attempt to mislead those who copy or stop them, or the patents could be on an auxiliary technology (ie. supporting chipset).
My friend and I joke about what transmeta is really doing, we have concluded that they are making chips that will power the next generation of washing machines. Don't expect anything from transmeta. I'm not saying they are making vapor, I'm just saying that if you don't expect anything you will be nicely supprised when they make the awesome chip you never expected:)
Oh, if only. It would just be too much to port a game I play like crazy:)
On another note, bioware is developing neverwinter nights on win/linux/mac at the same time. Wee, they make good games( ie. Baldur's Gate), I can hardly wait.
Don't get me wrong I love Heretic II. It's just that heretic 2 already works flawlessly in wine for me, and I already beat it on hard. I would much rather have them spend some time porting a non Quake-engine style game, maybe an rpg or racing game(ie. planescape:torment,need for speed: high stakes). Oh well, I guess for all of those unfortunate enough to have not played it, Heretic 2 is as good as anything - at least it's not a total quake clone, nice change of setting, nice gameplay, rpg elements. I had fun playing it, I was just rooting for something newer and/or different.
Slashdot Mirror
-Solus
I'd have to agree. All of this secrecy is causing quite a large number of people to get really anxious about the possibilities. In all reality we have little reason to belive this "product" will do anything, aside from the patents.
:)
From the patents we can derive quite a lot about what "it" is supposed to do, however because patents are public information, "it" might not be what transmeta is really doing. Transmeta is being really secretive thus the information in the patents is what transmeta wants us to "know". To take it one step further, transmeta could be working on anything, and the patents could be an attempt to mislead those who copy or stop them, or the patents could be on an auxiliary technology (ie. supporting chipset).
My friend and I joke about what transmeta is really doing, we have concluded that they are making chips that will power the next generation of washing machines. Don't expect anything from transmeta. I'm not saying they are making vapor, I'm just saying that if you don't expect anything you will be nicely supprised when they make the awesome chip you never expected
Oh, if only. It would just be too much to port a game I play like crazy :)
On another note, bioware is developing neverwinter nights on win/linux/mac at the same time. Wee, they make good games( ie. Baldur's Gate), I can hardly wait.
Don't get me wrong I love Heretic II. It's just that heretic 2 already works flawlessly in wine for me, and I already beat it on hard. I would much rather have them spend some time porting a non Quake-engine style game, maybe an rpg or racing game(ie. planescape:torment,need for speed: high stakes). Oh well, I guess for all of those unfortunate enough to have not played it, Heretic 2 is as good as anything - at least it's not a total quake clone, nice change of setting, nice gameplay, rpg elements. I had fun playing it, I was just rooting for something newer and/or different.