it wasn't planned obsolescence. it was still basically draft. they rushed the release to try and cut down the lead HD-DVD had for getting out early. plus sony needed to get the ps3 out as well. thats why they're quickly releasing new profiles and what not.
or you can make the analogy comparing it to engineer/construction worker. the software engineer writes the blueprints and what not, the computer just puts it together.
analogies are great that way. you can make almost any argument if you really try. Seeing as how the definition usually comes down to one who uses science and practicality to solve problems, I think engineer can apply.
well, nowhere has anyone shown any provable point C that implies cloning is not unethical (!B). Nothing about cloning proves anything he says as wrong. he's saying its an affront to human dignity. he's not saying it proves him wrong. he's just saying its unethical to be playing God in his opinion. Since ethics is and always will be opinion, ESPECIALLY with something as controversial as cloning, and while you can give facts, its always going to be up for interpretation on how you use those facts. Plus there's the whole issue of considering clones monstrosities in various religions (no souls, cloned souls, etc.), its easy to say their beliefs do not allow for cloning.
Honestly, I can't see how cloning proves ANYTHING wrong in his religion.
Didn't say the cannibals would be unethical about their decision, only that there is a bias. the quote directly relating scientists (and not the analogy, which i said was extreme) is
There's a huge bias involved in saying, "hey, let the scientists decide if we should allow science to progress unhindered or not." I didn't say they wouldn't make good decisions, just that its dangerous. Just because they're scientists doesn't mean they'd put science before everything else, but its not a good idea to put that power solely in their hands. I never said to put it in the Church's either (which you had interpreted to mean the exact opposite)
I'm not saying the church is the right one Remember that quote? I forgot to point that out in my last point. Its just another one of your brilliant acts of inference.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I was arguing against not putting decision making abilities solely in the hands of science. Absolute power corrupts absolutely (yea yea, i know, its not a scientific statement and there really is no way to back it up, but it is a popularly held belief thats supported by a lot of circumstantial evidence). I'd never want to put that much power in one group. Nor do I think that much power should be given to the Church. Thats one of the (in theory) great things about our governmental system (whether or not it is currently working is a different issue); the checks & balances system. I just can't see how anyone wouldn't argue against someone arguing that its a good idea to put absolute decision making powers in an obviously biased group. It doesn't mean they'll abuse that power, but you're tipping the scale towards a greater possibility of abuse.
Having multiple points of view on the ETHICAL issues involved with science would be the best. Yea, you can include scientists, but they have NO authority in morals or ethics. They have just as much authority as the church or any random person on the street really, which is why you need more than just their opinion. WHY would you argue they should be the only ones making ethical decisions about science? Just because they know science does NOT imply they know ANYTHING about ethics.
I enjoy science. I love science. I read about it all the time. I do hobby robotics and circuitry. That wouldn't exist without scientists. However, I can't stand all the science zealots out there. Just as bad as the religious zealots (at least in terms of their 'logical' arguments).
I used a emotionally loaded analogy to display the danger involved. I could have used the analogy of "Its like letting pacifists have all decision making abilities involving war." That may sound good to some people because they don't see the inherent danger right away. The point of using the extreme example is to convey that there is a dangerous side to science and scientists will tend to have more leniency than others towards what some might call unethical (stem cell research for example).
Not to mention incredibly fucking insulting to every decent scientist out there. I don't recall calling scientists unethical. I believe thats you making assuming. And we all know what assuming does. It makes an ass out of you in front of me.
they're the only people I know who believe that religion is the sole source and arbiter of morality Strange, I don't remember saying religion was the sole source of morality. I just said that science wasn't a source of morality (which you never went on and tried to disprove in your entire post)
Lucky for the rest of us, they're wrong, despite all their shouting to the contrary. Not that I think you're wrong or right, but I like how you just state something as fact and give nothing even remotely resembling an argument to justify your position. I can do that too. "Uh hey. You're wrong. Despite you saying otherwise." WHOA! Thats so much easier than actually creating arguments.
because science must necessary be secular in nature, scientists must be unethical monsters who would do anything and everything to further their goals I'm pretty sure you tried to say that I was alluding to some idea that since science was secular that scientists must be unethical monsters. I fail to see how you arrive at that conclusion (though so far in your post you show a certain lack for structuring arguments, therefore who's to say you can arrive at conclusions). I said science inherently has NO ethics. I did not say it was UNETHICAL. No ethics != unethical. It means neutral. Not good, not bad. Try some reading comprehension and come back to me later.
The vast majority of scientists out there are ethical, moral individuals I never said they weren't. But thanks for trying to make it seem like I did so as to belittle my arguments (actually, dunno if you're that advanced enough in trying to persuade others in such a way).
And if it weren't for them, we'd still be living in the dark ages, by them, are you referring to the Church which funded most science at the time and pushed it forward? I'm sorry, I got confused as to what you were saying.
Seriously. I'm not even sure why I responded to this post. Forget dumbest thing I ever read. You just brought down my hope in humanity a little bit. Ethics is not a scientific argument. Its a philosophical one. Ethics DOES NOT EXIST OUTSIDE OF THE HUMAN MIND. Its a human construct that has no roots in the natural world (either we made it up or it came from up on high. i don't care which, i'm just saying it did not come from science). Science cannot analyze it. It cannot study it. It cannot observe it. Ethics cannot exist in a vacuum without humans. Science cannot grasp ethics. Its like trying to have science find the definition of art. Keep in mind though (since you're probably getting all flustered about now) that I did not call science OR scientists unethical.
I apologize for my rude reply, but I can't stand when someone responds to an argument with insults instead of intelligent debate. Its doubly insulting because not only did you insult me, but you drew my argument to false conclusions to try and prove me wrong. It is fallacious and just low, even for someone who i wouldn't be surprised hasn't gotten more than a junior high education. Not ONE THING you said had ANYTHING to do with argument you responded to. I just had to spend most of my time arguing how I didn't say anything remotely resembling what you just spouted forth.
Religion couldn't cause anywhere NEAR the death and destruction that it did WITHOUT science. Plus, since when did we punish the son for the sins of the father? If you had some guy in your family tree that murdered someone, does that automatically mean that I shouldn't listen to anything you have to say about morals?
Good luck with that. Last I checked, everything can cause any emotional state. Some people enjoy pain, others dislike it. Some people enjoy murder, some tend to look down upon it. Find one thing that 100% of the human beings (past, present, and future) DON'T want to do. and 99.99(repeating) is not enough. *HAS* to be 100%.
As for why he's wrong, he's wrong because he has no reason to be against cloning other then it threatens his world outlook wait... he's wrong because his reasoning is that it goes against stuff he believes in? sooooo, if you ever give an opinion based on your beliefs (which one has reasons to believe in, whether you agree or not), you're automatically wrong? He has a world outlook. You have a world outlook. Yet, you can't base opinions off your world outlook. Even though EVERY SINGLE CONCLUSION IS ROOTED IN YOUR WORLD OUTLOOK. You're being very hypocritical here. You're allowed to make assumptions based off YOUR opinions, but he's not allowed to make any? I think you're wrong. Your belief is apparently that people are wrong if they have no reason to be against something other than its against their belief. You have nothing to back that up OTHER than that its your belief (logically its a fallacy, btw), therefore you are wrong. Whether the reasoning is true or false has nothing to do with the conclusion. If i never knew about science and said there's a force in the earth pulling things towards its center and i had no reason to back that up OTHER than i just believed in it, it doesn't make my conclusion (that there's a force pulling us towards the center of the earth) incorrect. If A->B and A is false, B is not automatically false. If I focus hard enough, you will die sometime in the future. Without going to ridiculous lengths about future technology, i think we can both agree you *will* die in the future (hopefully comfortably and after a long and happy life). I can believe in my power all I want... it doesn't mean you *won't* die in the future.
Condoms can't stop spreading HIV 100% of the time. Abstinence CAN (at least sexual transmission). Plus, if you only had sex when married, it stops the spreading of HIV to only that one other person IF you have it. And then possibly to the child if there is one.
Your third statement ignores that it may take 10 years to find out they are HIV+. If you want to have children and have sex, it will just as easily spread HIV. You can't make an argument that condoms are the only way to stop it unless you also want to assume that you can't have sex WITHOUT a condom because there's a 1 in 4 chance you'll impregnate the significant other and still a chance you'll pass it onto the child. PLUS if you follow his rules, you wouldn't have premarital sex anyway. The person is foolish if they are ok with breaking that one, but not ok with breaking another. If you follow his rules, you can ONLY spread HIV+ to at most 1 + n, where n is the number of children you have. Since he also says you should only have sex for love AND procreation (not an and/or) that number will still be small. And if you only have sex with one person, your chances of getting AIDS is dramatically reduced because you *can't* get it sexually UNLESS the other person has A) been raped, B) got AIDS some nonsexual way, C) Born with it. In the last case, you'd probably know about it through a test. If its the first, its a limited scenario to begin with and if its the second, condoms have shit to do with it.
I just have to reiterate... condoms are NOT the only thing keeping people from unknowingly spreading a horrible, deadly disease. It can curb it, but abstinence is MUCH better (but even that doesn't stop it from being spread non-sexually).
Is cloning ok? is it ok to raise humans that are exactly the same, but to use them to only harvest their organs. i can't think of a scientific reason NOT to...
this is true. i didn't say i agreed with the point i raised. the only point i can raise against it is that we've hindered evolution. or now that i think about it, we could still make an evolutionary argument in that we're using our intelligence to help reproduce, not necessarily the ability to procreate. evolution doesn't insist that bad genes don't get passed on or only good genes get passed on... only that people with an advantage in finding a mate will pass on their genes. i keep on forgetting that evolution doesn't inherently mean things will get better, only that usually they do.
what i'm doing right now and in that last post is the equivalent of thinking out loud... but quietly typing instead of talking.
wow, a majority of people believe in cloning? i didn't know that.
If you're just saying he's wrong cause you disagree with some other point of view of his, than i'd have to say you're wrong. you don't represent a majority of the Earth's population's opinion or conscience.
there are people who are vegetables and can't think. so you have no problem killing them? Just remember whatever definition you use has to still fit every human that is currently post-birth, so to speak.
The GP was right. Beware of anyone who tries to draw a line. If you make it too late, $%^# we killed a human being. If we make it too early... oh well, we let a blob live... but we didn't kill a human. and don't say, "well what if the birth kills the mother?" while i personally agree that it should be ok to abort if there is a high-risk of death, its more because i think its more like self defense. since you may not find out it'll kill the mother until right before birth (in which case, the only argument AGAINST it being human is that its still in the womb and being fed by the mother), then you'd have to admit you'd be killing a human to save her. Whereas if you found out extremely early, then you can decide to kill a blob to save her. If timing is the only difference and we're not sure when it actually becomes a human, you can't really make the argument against "if we make it too early... we didn't kill a human." with saying it may cause the death of the mother. thats a DIFFERENT argument. it has nothing to do of where you should draw the line of calling something human or not. logically, if we do not have a definition of what is actually human, we really can't draw the line and would be forced to assume the earliest possible point. hell, you could even draw this argument to before conception, but then you could throw the argument that we let sperm/eggs die all the time because we can't help it, its a natural part of reproduction, therefore its ok. so, i have no problem drawing the line at conception, because any earlier and you kind of have to always use in-vitro and we couldn't waste any sperm or eggs.
eh, thats not quite the same argument. i've seen it repeated here a few times, but its still fallacious. There's a difference between fighting against something trying to take away human life as opposed to deciding whether a human should decide whether another lives or dies.
I personally don't have a problem with embryonic stem cell research. I have issue with abortion mainly because I feel its teaching people they can escape consequence and it just appears to be borderline barbaric. At least with research on embryos we're furthering our knowledge. I also don't have a problem with artificial insemination. I just want to point out that your argument is not all that great.
that isn't exactly evil. he said instead of premarital sex with condoms, don't have sex at all. And one could also hazard the guess that "hey, if you're dying from some disease that you could spread to your significant other, perhaps maybe you should forgo the little bit of pleasure to let him/her avoid the lifelong pain."
Saying he's evil cause he argued for something that people didn't follow and instead only half-assed it is kind of lame. Making an argument of, "well, everyone is gonna do it anyway, so we should support it" is a weak argument.
scientifically, artificial insemination and the likes are kind of bad for humanity. goes against evolution and all that... assuming you believe in that sort of thing.
I honestly agree with you, but the point i raise is still valid i suppose...
that has nothing to do with ethics. you could still say that religion was behind people wanting to solve the world's problems and that it used science as its tool. its a valid argument. if you removed religion from history, you can't know for sure that we would have discovered all that we did because we may not have had the same inclination to help others. yea, maybe we would, but its at least up for debate how much of 'caring' has its roots in religion.
That's not ethics. That's bad science. Because if you misrepresent your findings, its actually giving false evidence. It's not because you're furthering your own agenda, its because you're giving bad knowledge. You're saying "here this is true," but its not. It has nothing to do with WHY you lied. You're just not following the scientific method... or anything else related to science for that matter.
Science cannot come with an ethical code (i've yet to hear a valid argument. if you have one, i'd like to hear it.) Scientists may have done many of those things. But many of those scientists were also religious. They may have used their religious principles to persuade them to pursue some goal. Just saying science did good things, therefore its ethical makes no sense. I can just say science has led to the murder of every person ever killed by any sort of tool, therefore its evil. That argument would be just as ridiculous.
Its fallacious to think that just because you disagree with somebody who says that humankind is inherently sinful that therefore any argument they make must be false. Just because you don't agree with the premise does not mean the conclusion is false. You haven't actually argued that all those things he said were an affront to human dignity weren't in fact affronts to human dignity. He could very well be absolutely correct, but you won't listen to him cause he has a different set of beliefs. He could AGREE with you and you still, according to your argument, would automatically disregard anything he says. Yea, you could say he's making a terrible argument, but you're not saying whether or not his conclusion is a good one.
ehhh, that position is arguable. That's like saying we should leave it up to a bunch of cannibals to decide if we should be allowed to eat humans in our society. Or leaving it up to the IRA to decide whether more restrictions should be imposed on the sale of shotguns in the US. There's a huge bias involved in saying, "hey, let the scientists decide if we should allow science to progress unhindered or not." Science inherently comes with no ethics. Its a dangerous deal to say let science take care of it. I know my analogies are obviously extreme, but they focus on the point i'm trying to make. You're giving a very important decision to a very biased group. I'm not saying the church is the right one, but I know they at least consider that which isn't scientific (dignity for one is not a scientific principle).
That ACID(2,3) tests are designed to test browsers, browsers are not designed to test ACID. As such, ACID should be updated to include the new doctype option for IE. So, if I take a test and don't pass it, the test should update itself to include my wrong answers? ACID is designed to test a browser's adherence to a set standard. Its not designed to just 'test' a browser to see if it works. It's designed to see if it works the way a browser should. I say break the millions of web-pages and force them to get updated.
Slashdot Mirror
it wasn't planned obsolescence. it was still basically draft. they rushed the release to try and cut down the lead HD-DVD had for getting out early. plus sony needed to get the ps3 out as well. thats why they're quickly releasing new profiles and what not.
haven't you been paying attention? patents don't get rejected due to prior art anymore =P
or you can make the analogy comparing it to engineer/construction worker. the software engineer writes the blueprints and what not, the computer just puts it together.
analogies are great that way. you can make almost any argument if you really try. Seeing as how the definition usually comes down to one who uses science and practicality to solve problems, I think engineer can apply.
well, nowhere has anyone shown any provable point C that implies cloning is not unethical (!B). Nothing about cloning proves anything he says as wrong. he's saying its an affront to human dignity. he's not saying it proves him wrong. he's just saying its unethical to be playing God in his opinion. Since ethics is and always will be opinion, ESPECIALLY with something as controversial as cloning, and while you can give facts, its always going to be up for interpretation on how you use those facts. Plus there's the whole issue of considering clones monstrosities in various religions (no souls, cloned souls, etc.), its easy to say their beliefs do not allow for cloning.
Honestly, I can't see how cloning proves ANYTHING wrong in his religion.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I was arguing against not putting decision making abilities solely in the hands of science. Absolute power corrupts absolutely (yea yea, i know, its not a scientific statement and there really is no way to back it up, but it is a popularly held belief thats supported by a lot of circumstantial evidence). I'd never want to put that much power in one group. Nor do I think that much power should be given to the Church. Thats one of the (in theory) great things about our governmental system (whether or not it is currently working is a different issue); the checks & balances system. I just can't see how anyone wouldn't argue against someone arguing that its a good idea to put absolute decision making powers in an obviously biased group. It doesn't mean they'll abuse that power, but you're tipping the scale towards a greater possibility of abuse.
Having multiple points of view on the ETHICAL issues involved with science would be the best. Yea, you can include scientists, but they have NO authority in morals or ethics. They have just as much authority as the church or any random person on the street really, which is why you need more than just their opinion. WHY would you argue they should be the only ones making ethical decisions about science? Just because they know science does NOT imply they know ANYTHING about ethics.
I enjoy science. I love science. I read about it all the time. I do hobby robotics and circuitry. That wouldn't exist without scientists. However, I can't stand all the science zealots out there. Just as bad as the religious zealots (at least in terms of their 'logical' arguments).
I used a emotionally loaded analogy to display the danger involved. I could have used the analogy of "Its like letting pacifists have all decision making abilities involving war." That may sound good to some people because they don't see the inherent danger right away. The point of using the extreme example is to convey that there is a dangerous side to science and scientists will tend to have more leniency than others towards what some might call unethical (stem cell research for example).
Seriously. I'm not even sure why I responded to this post. Forget dumbest thing I ever read. You just brought down my hope in humanity a little bit. Ethics is not a scientific argument. Its a philosophical one. Ethics DOES NOT EXIST OUTSIDE OF THE HUMAN MIND. Its a human construct that has no roots in the natural world (either we made it up or it came from up on high. i don't care which, i'm just saying it did not come from science). Science cannot analyze it. It cannot study it. It cannot observe it. Ethics cannot exist in a vacuum without humans. Science cannot grasp ethics. Its like trying to have science find the definition of art. Keep in mind though (since you're probably getting all flustered about now) that I did not call science OR scientists unethical.
I apologize for my rude reply, but I can't stand when someone responds to an argument with insults instead of intelligent debate. Its doubly insulting because not only did you insult me, but you drew my argument to false conclusions to try and prove me wrong. It is fallacious and just low, even for someone who i wouldn't be surprised hasn't gotten more than a junior high education. Not ONE THING you said had ANYTHING to do with argument you responded to. I just had to spend most of my time arguing how I didn't say anything remotely resembling what you just spouted forth.
one of the worst arguments. ever.
Religion couldn't cause anywhere NEAR the death and destruction that it did WITHOUT science. Plus, since when did we punish the son for the sins of the father? If you had some guy in your family tree that murdered someone, does that automatically mean that I shouldn't listen to anything you have to say about morals?
Good luck with that. Last I checked, everything can cause any emotional state. Some people enjoy pain, others dislike it. Some people enjoy murder, some tend to look down upon it. Find one thing that 100% of the human beings (past, present, and future) DON'T want to do. and 99.99(repeating) is not enough. *HAS* to be 100%.
Condoms can't stop spreading HIV 100% of the time. Abstinence CAN (at least sexual transmission). Plus, if you only had sex when married, it stops the spreading of HIV to only that one other person IF you have it. And then possibly to the child if there is one.
Your third statement ignores that it may take 10 years to find out they are HIV+. If you want to have children and have sex, it will just as easily spread HIV. You can't make an argument that condoms are the only way to stop it unless you also want to assume that you can't have sex WITHOUT a condom because there's a 1 in 4 chance you'll impregnate the significant other and still a chance you'll pass it onto the child. PLUS if you follow his rules, you wouldn't have premarital sex anyway. The person is foolish if they are ok with breaking that one, but not ok with breaking another. If you follow his rules, you can ONLY spread HIV+ to at most 1 + n, where n is the number of children you have. Since he also says you should only have sex for love AND procreation (not an and/or) that number will still be small. And if you only have sex with one person, your chances of getting AIDS is dramatically reduced because you *can't* get it sexually UNLESS the other person has A) been raped, B) got AIDS some nonsexual way, C) Born with it. In the last case, you'd probably know about it through a test. If its the first, its a limited scenario to begin with and if its the second, condoms have shit to do with it.
I just have to reiterate... condoms are NOT the only thing keeping people from unknowingly spreading a horrible, deadly disease. It can curb it, but abstinence is MUCH better (but even that doesn't stop it from being spread non-sexually).
Is cloning ok? is it ok to raise humans that are exactly the same, but to use them to only harvest their organs. i can't think of a scientific reason NOT to...
this is true. i didn't say i agreed with the point i raised. the only point i can raise against it is that we've hindered evolution. or now that i think about it, we could still make an evolutionary argument in that we're using our intelligence to help reproduce, not necessarily the ability to procreate. evolution doesn't insist that bad genes don't get passed on or only good genes get passed on... only that people with an advantage in finding a mate will pass on their genes. i keep on forgetting that evolution doesn't inherently mean things will get better, only that usually they do.
what i'm doing right now and in that last post is the equivalent of thinking out loud... but quietly typing instead of talking.
wow, a majority of people believe in cloning? i didn't know that.
If you're just saying he's wrong cause you disagree with some other point of view of his, than i'd have to say you're wrong. you don't represent a majority of the Earth's population's opinion or conscience.
there are people who are vegetables and can't think. so you have no problem killing them? Just remember whatever definition you use has to still fit every human that is currently post-birth, so to speak.
... we didn't kill a human." with saying it may cause the death of the mother. thats a DIFFERENT argument. it has nothing to do of where you should draw the line of calling something human or not. logically, if we do not have a definition of what is actually human, we really can't draw the line and would be forced to assume the earliest possible point. hell, you could even draw this argument to before conception, but then you could throw the argument that we let sperm/eggs die all the time because we can't help it, its a natural part of reproduction, therefore its ok. so, i have no problem drawing the line at conception, because any earlier and you kind of have to always use in-vitro and we couldn't waste any sperm or eggs.
The GP was right. Beware of anyone who tries to draw a line. If you make it too late, $%^# we killed a human being. If we make it too early... oh well, we let a blob live... but we didn't kill a human. and don't say, "well what if the birth kills the mother?" while i personally agree that it should be ok to abort if there is a high-risk of death, its more because i think its more like self defense. since you may not find out it'll kill the mother until right before birth (in which case, the only argument AGAINST it being human is that its still in the womb and being fed by the mother), then you'd have to admit you'd be killing a human to save her. Whereas if you found out extremely early, then you can decide to kill a blob to save her. If timing is the only difference and we're not sure when it actually becomes a human, you can't really make the argument against "if we make it too early
eh, thats not quite the same argument. i've seen it repeated here a few times, but its still fallacious. There's a difference between fighting against something trying to take away human life as opposed to deciding whether a human should decide whether another lives or dies.
I personally don't have a problem with embryonic stem cell research. I have issue with abortion mainly because I feel its teaching people they can escape consequence and it just appears to be borderline barbaric. At least with research on embryos we're furthering our knowledge. I also don't have a problem with artificial insemination. I just want to point out that your argument is not all that great.
that isn't exactly evil. he said instead of premarital sex with condoms, don't have sex at all. And one could also hazard the guess that "hey, if you're dying from some disease that you could spread to your significant other, perhaps maybe you should forgo the little bit of pleasure to let him/her avoid the lifelong pain."
Saying he's evil cause he argued for something that people didn't follow and instead only half-assed it is kind of lame. Making an argument of, "well, everyone is gonna do it anyway, so we should support it" is a weak argument.
scientifically, artificial insemination and the likes are kind of bad for humanity. goes against evolution and all that... assuming you believe in that sort of thing.
I honestly agree with you, but the point i raise is still valid i suppose...
that has nothing to do with ethics. you could still say that religion was behind people wanting to solve the world's problems and that it used science as its tool. its a valid argument. if you removed religion from history, you can't know for sure that we would have discovered all that we did because we may not have had the same inclination to help others. yea, maybe we would, but its at least up for debate how much of 'caring' has its roots in religion.
That's not ethics. That's bad science. Because if you misrepresent your findings, its actually giving false evidence. It's not because you're furthering your own agenda, its because you're giving bad knowledge. You're saying "here this is true," but its not. It has nothing to do with WHY you lied. You're just not following the scientific method... or anything else related to science for that matter.
Science cannot come with an ethical code (i've yet to hear a valid argument. if you have one, i'd like to hear it.) Scientists may have done many of those things. But many of those scientists were also religious. They may have used their religious principles to persuade them to pursue some goal. Just saying science did good things, therefore its ethical makes no sense. I can just say science has led to the murder of every person ever killed by any sort of tool, therefore its evil. That argument would be just as ridiculous.
oops, meant to type NRA... my bad =P
Its fallacious to think that just because you disagree with somebody who says that humankind is inherently sinful that therefore any argument they make must be false. Just because you don't agree with the premise does not mean the conclusion is false. You haven't actually argued that all those things he said were an affront to human dignity weren't in fact affronts to human dignity. He could very well be absolutely correct, but you won't listen to him cause he has a different set of beliefs. He could AGREE with you and you still, according to your argument, would automatically disregard anything he says. Yea, you could say he's making a terrible argument, but you're not saying whether or not his conclusion is a good one.
ehhh, that position is arguable. That's like saying we should leave it up to a bunch of cannibals to decide if we should be allowed to eat humans in our society. Or leaving it up to the IRA to decide whether more restrictions should be imposed on the sale of shotguns in the US. There's a huge bias involved in saying, "hey, let the scientists decide if we should allow science to progress unhindered or not." Science inherently comes with no ethics. Its a dangerous deal to say let science take care of it. I know my analogies are obviously extreme, but they focus on the point i'm trying to make. You're giving a very important decision to a very biased group. I'm not saying the church is the right one, but I know they at least consider that which isn't scientific (dignity for one is not a scientific principle).
doesn't render properly on firefox 2.0 either
ACID is designed to test a browser's adherence to a set standard. Its not designed to just 'test' a browser to see if it works. It's designed to see if it works the way a browser should. I say break the millions of web-pages and force them to get updated.