I can't believe this guy is missing the social aspect of college. Living together, working together, going to classes together, etc. all help build and strengthen social bonds that will last for years. We already are losing so much as we restrict communication to faceless, toneless text; why make it worse on ourselves? Humans are social creatures, and the actual coursework is a very, very small part of college.
Which is of course why communism doesn't work either. Because of people.
But that's the same reason that capitalism is so much better than communism. With communism, the incentive is that you'll be providing for others, and they'll help you in return. However, with capitalism, you get what you put into it. Because there's personal motivation, capitalism works. Sure, with capitalism, people will do whatever it takes to get money. But the truth is, even if they're lying and cheating to make that money, they're still ultimately helping their company and society in general. And that's quite a bit better than communism, where there's little to no motivation at all. Misguided motivation that increases productivity is always better than a lack of motivation that hinders productivity. Both systems are influenced by greed and even distrust, but capitalism harnesses that greed, while communism breaks down because of it.
So, will it support NoScript, AdBlock (with filterset.g) and FlashBlock? If not then I'll be waiting. Those are about the only things that make FF better than Opera or IE, IMO. In fact, I think they should be built right into FF.
Except that the whole point of add-ons is to allow you to have a lightweight browser, with the user deciding what features he wants.
Seem to think that there is some limitation to the types of mutations and what their effects can be?
Well...yes. To my knowledge adaptation can only work with the genes it already has. No new genes are introduced, and oftentimes, genetic information is lost (for example, bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic are that way because they lost the ability to metabolize that chemical into themselves).
Incidentally, it's foolish to use speciation as "proof" for evolution. The concept of species is a human invention, and changing an organism's label doesn't prove anything. Has anything been observed to evolve outside of its genus?
You could counter your neighbour with "gravity is 'just a theory'" as well.
And they'll reply, "That's right, and it was a theory that was proven wrong. Mass doesn't attract mass instantaneously, even though that's what Newton's equations indicate."
Do we feel the pull of the earth? Sure. The pull is factual. Do we know exactly what causes it? No. The cause is theoretical. Likewise, we know that we had an origin, but we don't know exactly what the origin was. That's why evolution remains a theory.
Hmmm...wouldn't that be interesting if it applied to young earth creationism as well...
"Up until the mid 21st century, only idiots would dare claim that the earth was only 6000 years old...Until the scientific community decided it was, at which point a huge body of past evidence appeared practically overnight supporting the existence of a young earth."
I mean, maybe there WERE a lot of failures. But somewhere in the universe, ONE worked. And BECAUSE we worked, we're able to wonder about it.
In other words, the fact that we exist proves evolution? Isn't that some sort of fallacy?
Furthermore, couldn't I use the same argument to say, "I can think of no possible way that there is a god, but since we exist, he must have created us, and therefore he must exist"?
If you do it right, like at MSOE (where I'm currently attending), it doesn't suck to be an engineering student at all. Numbers 5, 4, 3, and 1 are inaccurate, and number 2 shouldn't be a valid complaint. I'm studying software engineering, and very few courses require equations all of the time (which makes sense, I suppose). The material is relevant and interesting, the teachers care about the students, and there's a lot of hands-on and real-world experience involved. I'm very happy to be an engineering student.
Since I have a reasonable self image, I don't need to delude myself that a country with a population mostly consisting of poor people prone to starvation at the slightest turn of fortune is somehow also the keeper of a path to some higher state of being. So you're assuming that a person's PHYSICAL attributes are a valid representation of his or her SPIRITUAL enlightenment?
On the other hand, remember that the treatments for snakebites are made from the venom itself.
Yeah, by injecting the stuff into some cow/horse/pig/whatever and then extracting the resulting antibodies...
Maybe so, but isn't that how all vaccines work? And isn't that how most treatments work, by altering the body slightly, so that its reaction to other chemicals or diseases is changed? My point was that most things have different effects based on their application, and nicotine could be no different.
On the other hand, remember that the treatments for snakebites are made from the venom itself. And people have been analyzing the medicinal properties of marijuana for quite some time now. Just because something is considered detrimental doesn't mean that it can't also have healing properties.
It's quite simple. Firefox does a Google search when the user types a word instead of website into the address bar. Lots of people use Firefox, and lots of people are too lazy to type "http://www.yahoo.com/" in the box. They type "yahoo" instead, causing a Google search for yahoo and bringing them to Yahoo's site.
That is circular reasoning. Christians believe God created the universe because they have been told so by the bible.Any monotheist, Christian or not, would be foolish to think that their god didn't create the universe. It's simply common sense.
It also doesn't take a genius to realise that Genesis 1 is not an eye witness account or a scientific dissertation, but a spiritual text with the message that God didn't just create us, but the entire universe. It puts God in a much bigger perspective than the much older text from Genesis 2 does. But it's not meant as a scientific theory of the exact details of how God created the universe.You're not giving Christians a lot of credit if you think that they need to be told that God created the universe. Anyway, in 2 Timothy it says that ALL scripture is inspired by God. These aren't hypotheses of what MAY have happened. This is what God told the authors to write. If you can't trust God, who can you trust?
The rest of Genesis is younger, but that too is not an eye witness account; at the earliest, it was written at the time of Moses, so you're still looking at a thousand years of oral history.The people lived for 900 years back then. If I recall correctly, Noah's father and Adam were alive at the same time. Even after the flood, people still lived for 400 years for some time. So, yes, it may have been 2000 years or so since the creation when these accounts were written. However, if you take into account that this is passed down through five or six people, it gives the passages a lot more credibility.
Many early christian thinkers and church fathers who selected the books and stories that make up our bible also didn't take everything as literally as creationists do. It's a much too short-sighted approach to something this important. It's really not a sin to use your god-given brain, and accept the world around you as real. If you do that, you can see God's hand in his creation, you can learn a lot about how he actually created the world, and evolution is clearly a big part of that.Many early Christians DID take this literally. It was only after Darwin and others introduced the idea that the earth was millions of years old that Christians tried to make the scriptures match this (day-age theory, etc.)
Evolution is not clearly a big part of creation. First of all, the Bible says that man is made in God's image. It does not say God caused a big bang, which eventually created planets, then cells formed, and finally we evolved into something like his image over millions of years. Secondly, I think that it is Romans that says sin and therefore death came through Adam. This wouldn't be true if billions of creatures and humanoids were dying as Adam evolved. Thirdly, once God had created Adam, he looked at EVERYTHING he created and said that it was good. Death is not good and was not in God's original plan. Therefore, if the world when Adam existed was filled with the fossils and corpses of dead animals and people, God wouldn't have considered it good. Lastly, let's say God did use creation, but it really did take millions of years. That's kind of hard on the plants, since they had to wait millions of years for the sun to form, and millions more for the insects to pollinate them. I think it's fairly obvious that the Bible contradicts evolution.
>>I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?
Then you know the bible better than these people. Normal, sane christians are quite aware that dinosaurs had been extinct for millions of years by the time the stories in the bible took place.
As a christian, I'm disgusted that these people pervert stories from the bible into these kind of Disney/Flintstone fairytales.
*sigh* I'm a Christian as well, and I have read the Bible and believe it is the true and accurate Word of God. It shouldn't take a genius to realise that if God created ALL of the animals on the same day as humans (day 6), they co-existed.
If you consider yourself a normal, sane Christian, but don't believe the Bible, or you consider a literal interpretation of it a "perversion", I'm not sure what can be done for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe this guy is missing the social aspect of college. Living together, working together, going to classes together, etc. all help build and strengthen social bonds that will last for years. We already are losing so much as we restrict communication to faceless, toneless text; why make it worse on ourselves? Humans are social creatures, and the actual coursework is a very, very small part of college.
I have a rational hatred of robots that go to my forums and post spam on them. It's not a security issue at all.
Which is of course why communism doesn't work either. Because of people.
But that's the same reason that capitalism is so much better than communism. With communism, the incentive is that you'll be providing for others, and they'll help you in return. However, with capitalism, you get what you put into it. Because there's personal motivation, capitalism works. Sure, with capitalism, people will do whatever it takes to get money. But the truth is, even if they're lying and cheating to make that money, they're still ultimately helping their company and society in general. And that's quite a bit better than communism, where there's little to no motivation at all. Misguided motivation that increases productivity is always better than a lack of motivation that hinders productivity. Both systems are influenced by greed and even distrust, but capitalism harnesses that greed, while communism breaks down because of it.
So, will it support NoScript, AdBlock (with filterset.g) and FlashBlock? If not then I'll be waiting. Those are about the only things that make FF better than Opera or IE, IMO. In fact, I think they should be built right into FF.
Except that the whole point of add-ons is to allow you to have a lightweight browser, with the user deciding what features he wants.
Seem to think that there is some limitation to the types of mutations and what their effects can be?
Well...yes. To my knowledge adaptation can only work with the genes it already has. No new genes are introduced, and oftentimes, genetic information is lost (for example, bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic are that way because they lost the ability to metabolize that chemical into themselves).
Incidentally, it's foolish to use speciation as "proof" for evolution. The concept of species is a human invention, and changing an organism's label doesn't prove anything. Has anything been observed to evolve outside of its genus?
You could counter your neighbour with "gravity is 'just a theory'" as well.
And they'll reply, "That's right, and it was a theory that was proven wrong. Mass doesn't attract mass instantaneously, even though that's what Newton's equations indicate."
Do we feel the pull of the earth? Sure. The pull is factual. Do we know exactly what causes it? No. The cause is theoretical. Likewise, we know that we had an origin, but we don't know exactly what the origin was. That's why evolution remains a theory.
a straight clone of a proprietary product won't get anywhere
Really? If it's the same thing, only FREE, why wouldn't people want it?
Hmmm...wouldn't that be interesting if it applied to young earth creationism as well...
"Up until the mid 21st century, only idiots would dare claim that the earth was only 6000 years old...Until the scientific community decided it was, at which point a huge body of past evidence appeared practically overnight supporting the existence of a young earth."
In other words, the fact that we exist proves evolution? Isn't that some sort of fallacy?
Furthermore, couldn't I use the same argument to say, "I can think of no possible way that there is a god, but since we exist, he must have created us, and therefore he must exist"?
If you do it right, like at MSOE (where I'm currently attending), it doesn't suck to be an engineering student at all. Numbers 5, 4, 3, and 1 are inaccurate, and number 2 shouldn't be a valid complaint. I'm studying software engineering, and very few courses require equations all of the time (which makes sense, I suppose). The material is relevant and interesting, the teachers care about the students, and there's a lot of hands-on and real-world experience involved. I'm very happy to be an engineering student.
On the other hand, remember that the treatments for snakebites are made from the venom itself. And people have been analyzing the medicinal properties of marijuana for quite some time now. Just because something is considered detrimental doesn't mean that it can't also have healing properties.
Where did you get this statistic? I'm asking because it seems illogical that the smartest people assume that things they can't see don't exist.
It's quite simple. Firefox does a Google search when the user types a word instead of website into the address bar. Lots of people use Firefox, and lots of people are too lazy to type "http://www.yahoo.com/" in the box. They type "yahoo" instead, causing a Google search for yahoo and bringing them to Yahoo's site.
That is circular reasoning. Christians believe God created the universe because they have been told so by the bible.Any monotheist, Christian or not, would be foolish to think that their god didn't create the universe. It's simply common sense.
It also doesn't take a genius to realise that Genesis 1 is not an eye witness account or a scientific dissertation, but a spiritual text with the message that God didn't just create us, but the entire universe. It puts God in a much bigger perspective than the much older text from Genesis 2 does. But it's not meant as a scientific theory of the exact details of how God created the universe.You're not giving Christians a lot of credit if you think that they need to be told that God created the universe. Anyway, in 2 Timothy it says that ALL scripture is inspired by God. These aren't hypotheses of what MAY have happened. This is what God told the authors to write. If you can't trust God, who can you trust?
The rest of Genesis is younger, but that too is not an eye witness account; at the earliest, it was written at the time of Moses, so you're still looking at a thousand years of oral history.The people lived for 900 years back then. If I recall correctly, Noah's father and Adam were alive at the same time. Even after the flood, people still lived for 400 years for some time. So, yes, it may have been 2000 years or so since the creation when these accounts were written. However, if you take into account that this is passed down through five or six people, it gives the passages a lot more credibility.
Many early christian thinkers and church fathers who selected the books and stories that make up our bible also didn't take everything as literally as creationists do. It's a much too short-sighted approach to something this important. It's really not a sin to use your god-given brain, and accept the world around you as real. If you do that, you can see God's hand in his creation, you can learn a lot about how he actually created the world, and evolution is clearly a big part of that.Many early Christians DID take this literally. It was only after Darwin and others introduced the idea that the earth was millions of years old that Christians tried to make the scriptures match this (day-age theory, etc.)
Evolution is not clearly a big part of creation. First of all, the Bible says that man is made in God's image. It does not say God caused a big bang, which eventually created planets, then cells formed, and finally we evolved into something like his image over millions of years. Secondly, I think that it is Romans that says sin and therefore death came through Adam. This wouldn't be true if billions of creatures and humanoids were dying as Adam evolved. Thirdly, once God had created Adam, he looked at EVERYTHING he created and said that it was good. Death is not good and was not in God's original plan. Therefore, if the world when Adam existed was filled with the fossils and corpses of dead animals and people, God wouldn't have considered it good. Lastly, let's say God did use creation, but it really did take millions of years. That's kind of hard on the plants, since they had to wait millions of years for the sun to form, and millions more for the insects to pollinate them. I think it's fairly obvious that the Bible contradicts evolution.
>>I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?
Then you know the bible better than these people. Normal, sane christians are quite aware that dinosaurs had been extinct for millions of years by the time the stories in the bible took place.
As a christian, I'm disgusted that these people pervert stories from the bible into these kind of Disney/Flintstone fairytales.
*sigh* I'm a Christian as well, and I have read the Bible and believe it is the true and accurate Word of God. It shouldn't take a genius to realise that if God created ALL of the animals on the same day as humans (day 6), they co-existed.
If you consider yourself a normal, sane Christian, but don't believe the Bible, or you consider a literal interpretation of it a "perversion", I'm not sure what can be done for you.