Sure. You're right to a large extent. The causes of instability (in any OS) normally seem to be:
Hardware (what this article is about)
Drivers
Viruses (yet to see this under linux)
Applications
Bugs in the OS itself
Usually in this order.
However, the majority of people I know have had bad experiences, especially with the viruses(and hardware underpowered for Vista, making it crawl, and crash more often). While these issues are not Microsoft's fault, I think a lot of the anger people have against them comes from the fact that people simply do not believe Microsoft does enough to combat these issues.
Around here, for example, I dare not plug my memory stick into a windows box (of any version) since 100% are infected. The user's fault? Yes. But around here bandwidth for updates/AV is expensive. I am the only one I know who keeps my OS (linux in my case) reasonably up to date. Heck half the people here don't even have SP3 for XP or SP1 for vista. Again, not Microsoft's fault, but that doesn't earn them any points at all. It may be unreasonable to expect them to solve these issues (and deal with hardware failures more gracefully), but that is precisely what average people expect.
But for the sake of completeness, I will answer you anyway. Please note that I do not consider taking one's opponent's arguments to extremes a valid method of arguing; not everyone intends to explore or go to extremes, which may not be applicable. Also, I am not attacking atheism, since it is a self-consistent belief system, like many others.
Perhaps you react as you did, because I was not clear enough. Let me be so now. The irrationality of the way people argue persists on both sides of the debate. Further to this a large proportion of vocal atheists* react to criticism in the same way the religious do - as if the consider themselves a religion. And they have a right to consider themselves in that light, even if it is not valid.
Please do not equate nazism to religion. While some religions may have similar goals/values and many religions are responsible for terrible things (or rather, more accurately, people are), you can not make blanket statements like that and expect to be taken seriously. While it would serve to make your argument easier, it is not logically valid to substitute "religion" and "nazism" arbitrarily.
Also, please note again, just because you do not force atheism down peoples throats (although I begin to question that), does not imply the non-existence of people who do.
The problem with free speech is people do not understand the responsibility that comes with it. Therefore they (quite correctly) lose it to resolutions like this. This is not an ideal situation, but it is life. People need to learn to get their point across without resorting to childish confrontations in which harsh criticism takes place. They also need to understand one of the prices of freedom is to allow people to disagree with you. Even when you "know" they are wrong. This is fundamentally why this resolution is being passed. People have managed to offend each other. Again. Its not actually about religion and never was.
When you attack a person's religion, from their point of view you are attacking them, since it is what they (in most cases) genuinely believe. This has nothing to do with whether or not what they believe is true. And don't say it shouldn't be like that. That is not the point. The point is that it is like that and we must deal with it.
And yes, I do know the definition of irony.
*Citation; look at most slashdot posts on the topic, look at most forums that discuss these matters. Objectively please.
Ok. Firstly, people who force religion down other people's throats are doing it wrong. In fact people who force atheism down other peoples throats are also doing it wrong - ignore them both, neither has a clue. Secondly, haven't you noticed that usually when the topic of God/religion comes up, atheists are normally out there accusing those who believe in God of having flawed logic. Whether or not this is true, the manner in which the argument is made is not exactly polite. I believe I recall seeing comments on this thread along those lines...
As for most atheists keeping quiet, yeah I know a who lot do. Mostly the ones that don't care much. I recall someone on slashdot encouraging people to hate religion. The ones that talk sure seem desperate to convert everyone... Or maybe they just come across wrong? Either way, its a problem.
As for reacting and arguing like religious fundamentalists, what planet do you live on? Seriously, do you not read slashdot? BTW, I never said fanboyism is religion. What I did was link fundamentalist religion with (to be fair) some athiests. There are atheists out there who behave as if atheism were a religion. BTW, if you think all religious types are foam at the mouth bible bashers, you need to get out of America and travel the world a bit.
Hell, the article is about hate speech against groups of people, which is only possible if you can isolate people into groups and make blanket statements about everyone in those groups, then based on those statements, encourage hate and discrimination towards those people.
Hate speech against atheists. Hmmm. How about "all atheists are idiots who should be shot?" It doesn't take much imagination to come up with statements like that. And note; I completely disagree with that statement.
Perhaps I can summarise what I'm saying thus; we hate the traits in others we see most in ourselves. Those who "hate religion" so much probably practise it in their own way. And no, most people won't like hearing that. Also, on the flip side of that, fundamentalists are normally the ones with the most doubt..
True. However, I've found that a good firewall makes a huge difference(even while running windows). And my ISP (annoyingly) blocks all incoming traffic. 100% of it. In order to break my machine, you must first break my ISP... Oh, and I'm physically disconnected most of the time. And I don't surf porn/cracks. And there is a program that comes with my distribution that checks for root kits(and other security issues) every night at midnight.
It is also rather nice not to be suffering from the memory stick autorun viruses around here. In a world where nobody runs an up to date/good AV, the Linux user is king.
The major advantage Linux has with viruses is you don't execute arbitrary code on people's memory sticks. It just doesn't happen(yet I guess), and would be a fairly hard(compared to windows) to make happen.
If you want 100% security, though, I believe there is a scheme involving concrete and the sea...
Dude! Take a chill pill. This is not FUD. The gp is just relating his experience, and here's a shock, YMMV! So just sit back and have another beer.
BTW, I've also had major hassles with windows - mostly related to viruses. As it happens this forced me to switch 100% to linux and I'm happy here, but not everyone who switches is. Personally I like the bandwidth I save from not constantly downloading AV updates, and the speed increase from not running AV. But hey, where you are computing power and bandwidth are probably cheap. Again, YMMV.
To be honest, I reckon both sides (the fundamentalists and the atheists) are almost as bad as each other. Sometimes its hard to tell the difference between them.. Ooops... Is this hate speech...?;)
doesn't offer an explanation of various philosophical details
is primarily composed of skeptics
doesn't have such a thing as "blasphemy" "heresy" etc.
Oh, then please explain to me why:
it's "adherents" often are so passionate about "defending" it as to come off as nutcases?
it's "adherents" often react to the statement "there is a God" in the same way religious groups react to the statement "there is no God."?
atheists are so desperate to convert everyone to their way of thinking(just like most religions)?
See slashdot for many examples...
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is a religion, but oh so many atheists react and argue in the same way as the religious fundamentalists they hate so much. The similarity between these two groups is downright uncanny.
So before you say atheism != religion, be sure that at least most of the atheists out there actually believe and understand this. If the statement is true, why don't people act like it is?
On a side note, do you really want hate speech against atheists to be legal?
I live in africa, and here we have a massive problem called HIV/AIDS. You can talk of taking precautions all you want, but condoms are not 100% effective (and are virtually ineffective for some other nasty STDs). The fact is, in order to deal with this crisis, we have realised that it requires behavioural change - i.e. stop screwing everything that has two legs and moves. In a world where people are faithful to a single partner, STDs aren't a major problem. I suspect the path of wisdom is to teach your kids a little self control.
Is this behavioural change successful? (http://www.avert.org/aidsuganda.htm)
First of all, you don't need to control every single set of lights (unless drivers are exceptionally stupid, which I guess can't be ruled out). Secondly, directing traffic isn't exactly rocket science - training wouldn't take long at all. Traffic lights can easily be replaced by humans for an interim period.
I have seen a city (admittedly a small one) operate without traffic lights(or power for that matter). It takes a little while, but people learn to give up right of way as required by law and in general you actually get through the lights faster.
I am not familiar with the American highway code (if you guys have one?) but surely it covers what to do (and not to do) when the lights are out?
[...]
1. Traffic lights being shut down, which can grind traffic and thus commerce to a halt.
2. Crime.
3. Panicking people who don't have the sense to just wait it out.
1 - Never seen a traffic cop directing traffic?
2 - [Citation Needed] or [logical reasoning]
3 - Can't say much on this one...
I had a four hour power cut on wednesday night. Around here thats considered completely normal. In fact I'm lucky not to get longer ones.
I can't say much about other countries, but when the economy of my country basically disappeared and we started getting frequent power cuts, it was revealed that the electricity supply authority was not able to purchase new transformers, so they were taking the standby transformers and moving them around to replace the blown ones. From this, I guess I just assumed that a standby transformer was normal practise. In which case, it should take a couple of man hours per substation to get everything going again.
Having lived with constant power cuts, I can't say it would phase(no pun intended) me all that much. As long as it was less than a week.
Except that the cache is not "measly"(running into multiple megabytes) and a capacitor that could seriously power a driver for a few seconds is not small(in any way). It takes quite a lot of power to maintain the drive spin and move the drive head around. A laptop drive chews about 2.5 - 5W or more doing this. Remember that you can't use all the energy stored in a capacitor; even with a step up converter (which adds inefficiency) there comes a point where the voltage drops too low.
You could probably get one or two sectors with a fairly large capacitor, but it simply isn't very practical or cost effective. Or surprisingly it would have been done and be mainstream technology by now...
No, batteries are the only way out, except that batteries (especially the popular LiIon) tend to die after a relatively short period of time. You could argue that the drive would be obsolete by that time, but not everyone works that way. Besides, its too expensive for too little gain. Software has shown that it can deal with this acceptably. Nothing is 100%, if you use a computer chances are high you will lose data at some point.
If you're really paranoid, those flash hybrid hard disks everyone was talking about some time back may be an option. But I suspect they'll have similar issues.
I reckon that people will believe strange things for reasons that are logically consistent within their system of belief. You not agreeing (or even it being illogical to you) has nothing to do with it since you are not within their system and neither do you (in most cases) fully understand it, or you would see that.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are rational people on both sides (although the creationists don't seem to have as many). Any "adult" discussion involves respect on both sides - you will never convince anyone without respecting them first, which means you must understand their system. So creationist bashing really achieves nothing except driving people away and making you look childish. Likewise the atheist bashing you get from some of the crazies.
Personally I think its stupid to teach non mainstream science in a classroom. If the majority of people don't agree leave it out. Simply teach what most people believe and why, including what assumptions are made. That is all.
And for the record, yes, I am a Christian, but no, I am not irrational. And I do believe these particular American Christians have actually missed the point of their faith.
And no, I'm not afraid of being modded down, so I will not post AC...
Why _isn't_ there such a capacitor in the system? [...]
Cost. Btw a capacitor big enough to run your hard drive long enough to practically write your memory + disk cache is not realistic. We're talking batteries here. And guess what? Batteries wear out (how long does a laptop battery last...?). Just get a UPS and configure your system to halt/suspend to disk immediately on mains power loss. (and yes I am an Electronic engineering student.)
[...]Unlike the the bible which is inherently not factual and really hasn't seen any progress in centuries.
[...]
Uh. Right. So coz its old and doesn't change much, its wrong. There's a nice logical progression for you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a "fundamentalist bible basher", but I do prefer to follow a logical debate. Disjointed attacks don't really help your argument any more than they help the "fundamentalist bible bashers" arguments.
And for the record, my opinion is that it is wrong to teach "creationism" in the classroom. Generally accepted science only please. But then, I am not an american.
Personally I think the "close-minded pricks" on both sides should shut up already and get the same airtime i.e. nil. For those who aren't "close-minded pricks" (and yes, they exist on both sides) talk all you like.
As for the classroom, teach what the majority of science says, and why they came to those conclusions and what assumptions are made. (i.e. what you were supposed to be doing as a teacher all along.) Thats what my teachers did and I'm in the 3rd world. Whats taking the Americans so long to twig on to this?
I live in Zimbabwe(check wikipedia if you like); I know all about corruption and greed, and trust me, it has nothing to do with religion or science. In the hands of an evil man, both are merely tools used to exploit people. If you want to make the world better, until you can fix the corrupt people, you've got nothing.
You can blame the tools people use to hurt each other all you like, but that does not make the tools the problem.
And for the record, I am a Christian who'd love the world to be a better place for everyone. (And no, I don't think creationism should be taught in schools - that is a very unChristian idea, and also, no, I don't believe in forcing my views down your throat - take it or leave it.)
[...]b) Deceptive, nobody I know says evolution is unassailable, just better supported by [...]
Don't know many people on/. do you?
On my way down to your comment I've seen at least 5 hotly screaming "Evolution is LAW". The "evolutionists" here seem just as bad as the "fundamentalists" - getting all angry about these issues. Personally I reckon both sides of this debate should just grow up.
While I agree with your side, argument by taking extreme examples isn't really valid.
Like many other philosophical debates, your position on this matter (ironically) depends entirely on a set of fundamental assumptions which most people don't even realise they have made.
In an objective debate (as if that is possible on/.) we would all end up arguing about those assumptions. Either set could be valid since they both explain the known universe. However getting people to realise this is an exercise in futility. Basically you'll have to make a choice on what you believe. That is if you believe you can...:}
I'd submit to you that those who think God is into dictatorship are doing it wrong - perhaps Christianity has been mis-represented to you. How about this view of things (take it or leave it, its up to you.)
Everyone has free will, and God will not violate that for any reason. But in our crazy human nature we try and use structures and hierarchies to replace relationships. Most sane Christians I know beleive Christianity is fundamentally about a relationship between you and God and your relationships with the world(hence the two greatest commandments, if you will). But since people like to do it this way, God works within the system to change them. All of this junk about creationism vs evolution and turn or burn "evangelism" misses this fundamental point. It's not about that at all, and never really was. Sometimes I despair of some American Christians - sometimes all they do is break relationships and push people away... But I guess noone is without problems.
As for God viewing us as equals... Would that really make sense? In any context? Nevertheless, I do beleive that God limits himself in order to have a relationship with people. Hence free will.
However, this doesn't mean you have to beleive. I firmly beleive that that is your choice alone to make, and it should be an informed one. Now I am thoroughly off topic and should be modded so! But my karma isn't that bad.:)
Slashdot Mirror
by PopeRatzo (965947) * on Wednesday April 01, @01:49AM
If you ask most people what today's date is, they'll say March 31, 2009.[...]
So, no, they'd probably tell you it's the first of April...
Sure. You're right to a large extent. The causes of instability (in any OS) normally seem to be:
Usually in this order.
However, the majority of people I know have had bad experiences, especially with the viruses(and hardware underpowered for Vista, making it crawl, and crash more often). While these issues are not Microsoft's fault, I think a lot of the anger people have against them comes from the fact that people simply do not believe Microsoft does enough to combat these issues.
Around here, for example, I dare not plug my memory stick into a windows box (of any version) since 100% are infected. The user's fault? Yes. But around here bandwidth for updates/AV is expensive. I am the only one I know who keeps my OS (linux in my case) reasonably up to date. Heck half the people here don't even have SP3 for XP or SP1 for vista. Again, not Microsoft's fault, but that doesn't earn them any points at all. It may be unreasonable to expect them to solve these issues (and deal with hardware failures more gracefully), but that is precisely what average people expect.
Thread is now subject to Godwin's Law.
But for the sake of completeness, I will answer you anyway. Please note that I do not consider taking one's opponent's arguments to extremes a valid method of arguing; not everyone intends to explore or go to extremes, which may not be applicable. Also, I am not attacking atheism, since it is a self-consistent belief system, like many others.
Perhaps you react as you did, because I was not clear enough. Let me be so now. The irrationality of the way people argue persists on both sides of the debate. Further to this a large proportion of vocal atheists* react to criticism in the same way the religious do - as if the consider themselves a religion. And they have a right to consider themselves in that light, even if it is not valid.
Please do not equate nazism to religion. While some religions may have similar goals/values and many religions are responsible for terrible things (or rather, more accurately, people are), you can not make blanket statements like that and expect to be taken seriously. While it would serve to make your argument easier, it is not logically valid to substitute "religion" and "nazism" arbitrarily.
Also, please note again, just because you do not force atheism down peoples throats (although I begin to question that), does not imply the non-existence of people who do.
The problem with free speech is people do not understand the responsibility that comes with it. Therefore they (quite correctly) lose it to resolutions like this. This is not an ideal situation, but it is life. People need to learn to get their point across without resorting to childish confrontations in which harsh criticism takes place. They also need to understand one of the prices of freedom is to allow people to disagree with you. Even when you "know" they are wrong. This is fundamentally why this resolution is being passed. People have managed to offend each other. Again. Its not actually about religion and never was.
When you attack a person's religion, from their point of view you are attacking them, since it is what they (in most cases) genuinely believe. This has nothing to do with whether or not what they believe is true. And don't say it shouldn't be like that. That is not the point. The point is that it is like that and we must deal with it.
And yes, I do know the definition of irony.
*Citation; look at most slashdot posts on the topic, look at most forums that discuss these matters. Objectively please.
Ok. Firstly, people who force religion down other people's throats are doing it wrong. In fact people who force atheism down other peoples throats are also doing it wrong - ignore them both, neither has a clue. Secondly, haven't you noticed that usually when the topic of God/religion comes up, atheists are normally out there accusing those who believe in God of having flawed logic. Whether or not this is true, the manner in which the argument is made is not exactly polite. I believe I recall seeing comments on this thread along those lines...
As for most atheists keeping quiet, yeah I know a who lot do. Mostly the ones that don't care much. I recall someone on slashdot encouraging people to hate religion. The ones that talk sure seem desperate to convert everyone... Or maybe they just come across wrong? Either way, its a problem.
As for reacting and arguing like religious fundamentalists, what planet do you live on? Seriously, do you not read slashdot? BTW, I never said fanboyism is religion. What I did was link fundamentalist religion with (to be fair) some athiests. There are atheists out there who behave as if atheism were a religion. BTW, if you think all religious types are foam at the mouth bible bashers, you need to get out of America and travel the world a bit.
Hell, the article is about hate speech against groups of people, which is only possible if you can isolate people into groups and make blanket statements about everyone in those groups, then based on those statements, encourage hate and discrimination towards those people.
Hate speech against atheists. Hmmm. How about "all atheists are idiots who should be shot?" It doesn't take much imagination to come up with statements like that. And note; I completely disagree with that statement.
Perhaps I can summarise what I'm saying thus; we hate the traits in others we see most in ourselves. Those who "hate religion" so much probably practise it in their own way. And no, most people won't like hearing that. Also, on the flip side of that, fundamentalists are normally the ones with the most doubt..
True. However, I've found that a good firewall makes a huge difference(even while running windows). And my ISP (annoyingly) blocks all incoming traffic. 100% of it. In order to break my machine, you must first break my ISP... Oh, and I'm physically disconnected most of the time. And I don't surf porn/cracks. And there is a program that comes with my distribution that checks for root kits(and other security issues) every night at midnight.
It is also rather nice not to be suffering from the memory stick autorun viruses around here. In a world where nobody runs an up to date/good AV, the Linux user is king.
The major advantage Linux has with viruses is you don't execute arbitrary code on people's memory sticks. It just doesn't happen(yet I guess), and would be a fairly hard(compared to windows) to make happen.
If you want 100% security, though, I believe there is a scheme involving concrete and the sea...
Dude! Take a chill pill. This is not FUD. The gp is just relating his experience, and here's a shock, YMMV! So just sit back and have another beer.
BTW, I've also had major hassles with windows - mostly related to viruses. As it happens this forced me to switch 100% to linux and I'm happy here, but not everyone who switches is. Personally I like the bandwidth I save from not constantly downloading AV updates, and the speed increase from not running AV. But hey, where you are computing power and bandwidth are probably cheap. Again, YMMV.
To be honest, I reckon both sides (the fundamentalists and the atheists) are almost as bad as each other. Sometimes its hard to tell the difference between them.. Ooops... Is this hate speech...? ;)
Atheism isn't a religion, since it:
Oh, then please explain to me why:
See slashdot for many examples...
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is a religion, but oh so many atheists react and argue in the same way as the religious fundamentalists they hate so much. The similarity between these two groups is downright uncanny.
So before you say atheism != religion, be sure that at least most of the atheists out there actually believe and understand this. If the statement is true, why don't people act like it is?
On a side note, do you really want hate speech against atheists to be legal?
I live in africa, and here we have a massive problem called HIV/AIDS. You can talk of taking precautions all you want, but condoms are not 100% effective (and are virtually ineffective for some other nasty STDs). The fact is, in order to deal with this crisis, we have realised that it requires behavioural change - i.e. stop screwing everything that has two legs and moves. In a world where people are faithful to a single partner, STDs aren't a major problem. I suspect the path of wisdom is to teach your kids a little self control.
Is this behavioural change successful? (http://www.avert.org/aidsuganda.htm)
First of all, you don't need to control every single set of lights (unless drivers are exceptionally stupid, which I guess can't be ruled out). Secondly, directing traffic isn't exactly rocket science - training wouldn't take long at all. Traffic lights can easily be replaced by humans for an interim period.
I have seen a city (admittedly a small one) operate without traffic lights(or power for that matter). It takes a little while, but people learn to give up right of way as required by law and in general you actually get through the lights faster.
I am not familiar with the American highway code (if you guys have one?) but surely it covers what to do (and not to do) when the lights are out?
J[...]
No power, no emergency communication system. How many people actually keep a battery-powered or even a hand-cranked radio handy? Not many. [...]
90-100% of hams. We traditionally supply emergency communication.
[...] 1. Traffic lights being shut down, which can grind traffic and thus commerce to a halt. 2. Crime. 3. Panicking people who don't have the sense to just wait it out.
1 - Never seen a traffic cop directing traffic?
2 - [Citation Needed] or [logical reasoning]
3 - Can't say much on this one...
I had a four hour power cut on wednesday night. Around here thats considered completely normal. In fact I'm lucky not to get longer ones.
I live in Zimbabwe. Now try being unkind.
I can't say much about other countries, but when the economy of my country basically disappeared and we started getting frequent power cuts, it was revealed that the electricity supply authority was not able to purchase new transformers, so they were taking the standby transformers and moving them around to replace the blown ones. From this, I guess I just assumed that a standby transformer was normal practise. In which case, it should take a couple of man hours per substation to get everything going again.
Having lived with constant power cuts, I can't say it would phase(no pun intended) me all that much. As long as it was less than a week.
Except that the cache is not "measly"(running into multiple megabytes) and a capacitor that could seriously power a driver for a few seconds is not small(in any way). It takes quite a lot of power to maintain the drive spin and move the drive head around. A laptop drive chews about 2.5 - 5W or more doing this. Remember that you can't use all the energy stored in a capacitor; even with a step up converter (which adds inefficiency) there comes a point where the voltage drops too low.
You could probably get one or two sectors with a fairly large capacitor, but it simply isn't very practical or cost effective. Or surprisingly it would have been done and be mainstream technology by now...
No, batteries are the only way out, except that batteries (especially the popular LiIon) tend to die after a relatively short period of time. You could argue that the drive would be obsolete by that time, but not everyone works that way. Besides, its too expensive for too little gain. Software has shown that it can deal with this acceptably. Nothing is 100%, if you use a computer chances are high you will lose data at some point.
If you're really paranoid, those flash hybrid hard disks everyone was talking about some time back may be an option. But I suspect they'll have similar issues.
I reckon that people will believe strange things for reasons that are logically consistent within their system of belief. You not agreeing (or even it being illogical to you) has nothing to do with it since you are not within their system and neither do you (in most cases) fully understand it, or you would see that.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are rational people on both sides (although the creationists don't seem to have as many). Any "adult" discussion involves respect on both sides - you will never convince anyone without respecting them first, which means you must understand their system. So creationist bashing really achieves nothing except driving people away and making you look childish. Likewise the atheist bashing you get from some of the crazies.
Personally I think its stupid to teach non mainstream science in a classroom. If the majority of people don't agree leave it out. Simply teach what most people believe and why, including what assumptions are made. That is all.
And for the record, yes, I am a Christian, but no, I am not irrational. And I do believe these particular American Christians have actually missed the point of their faith.
And no, I'm not afraid of being modded down, so I will not post AC...
Why _isn't_ there such a capacitor in the system? [...]
Cost. Btw a capacitor big enough to run your hard drive long enough to practically write your memory + disk cache is not realistic. We're talking batteries here. And guess what? Batteries wear out (how long does a laptop battery last...?). Just get a UPS and configure your system to halt/suspend to disk immediately on mains power loss. (and yes I am an Electronic engineering student.)
[...]Unlike the the bible which is inherently not factual and really hasn't seen any progress in centuries.
[...]
Uh. Right. So coz its old and doesn't change much, its wrong. There's a nice logical progression for you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a "fundamentalist bible basher", but I do prefer to follow a logical debate. Disjointed attacks don't really help your argument any more than they help the "fundamentalist bible bashers" arguments.
And for the record, my opinion is that it is wrong to teach "creationism" in the classroom. Generally accepted science only please. But then, I am not an american.
Personally I think the "close-minded pricks" on both sides should shut up already and get the same airtime i.e. nil. For those who aren't "close-minded pricks" (and yes, they exist on both sides) talk all you like.
As for the classroom, teach what the majority of science says, and why they came to those conclusions and what assumptions are made. (i.e. what you were supposed to be doing as a teacher all along.) Thats what my teachers did and I'm in the 3rd world. Whats taking the Americans so long to twig on to this?
I live in Zimbabwe(check wikipedia if you like); I know all about corruption and greed, and trust me, it has nothing to do with religion or science. In the hands of an evil man, both are merely tools used to exploit people. If you want to make the world better, until you can fix the corrupt people, you've got nothing.
You can blame the tools people use to hurt each other all you like, but that does not make the tools the problem.
And for the record, I am a Christian who'd love the world to be a better place for everyone. (And no, I don't think creationism should be taught in schools - that is a very unChristian idea, and also, no, I don't believe in forcing my views down your throat - take it or leave it.)
[...]b) Deceptive, nobody I know says evolution is unassailable, just better supported by [...]
Don't know many people on /. do you?
On my way down to your comment I've seen at least 5 hotly screaming "Evolution is LAW". The "evolutionists" here seem just as bad as the "fundamentalists" - getting all angry about these issues. Personally I reckon both sides of this debate should just grow up.
Yeah, being in grammar police family is a truely scary threat... I suspect some would take Sue aside as an alternative.
While I agree with your side, argument by taking extreme examples isn't really valid.
Like many other philosophical debates, your position on this matter (ironically) depends entirely on a set of fundamental assumptions which most people don't even realise they have made.
In an objective debate (as if that is possible on /.) we would all end up arguing about those assumptions. Either set could be valid since they both explain the known universe. However getting people to realise this is an exercise in futility. Basically you'll have to make a choice on what you believe. That is if you believe you can... :}
The sticky point being who gets to be linux1... I'd vote for that penguin from madagascar...
I'd submit to you that those who think God is into dictatorship are doing it wrong - perhaps Christianity has been mis-represented to you. How about this view of things (take it or leave it, its up to you.)
Everyone has free will, and God will not violate that for any reason. But in our crazy human nature we try and use structures and hierarchies to replace relationships. Most sane Christians I know beleive Christianity is fundamentally about a relationship between you and God and your relationships with the world(hence the two greatest commandments, if you will). But since people like to do it this way, God works within the system to change them. All of this junk about creationism vs evolution and turn or burn "evangelism" misses this fundamental point. It's not about that at all, and never really was. Sometimes I despair of some American Christians - sometimes all they do is break relationships and push people away... But I guess noone is without problems.
As for God viewing us as equals... Would that really make sense? In any context? Nevertheless, I do beleive that God limits himself in order to have a relationship with people. Hence free will.
However, this doesn't mean you have to beleive. I firmly beleive that that is your choice alone to make, and it should be an informed one. Now I am thoroughly off topic and should be modded so! But my karma isn't that bad. :)