Capitalism is an economic system. It has one underling assumption. That society exists to serve man, not man to serve society. Yet we still hold on to the belief that capitalism is best for the consumer. It may be some of the time, but that is not why it is designed. The only purpose of legislation is to protect this assumption. To allow man to best serve him.
"They cling to the naive notion that it's possible to legislate perfect economies, and willfully ignore the historical evidence that every other economic system produces far worse abuses and misery."
Brilliant! Legislation that regulates Capitalism only harms it.
Capitalism also provides the moral basis for our society. The most fundamental assumption we make is that life is valuable. This is an assumption that can be found in almost every civilization.
If life is valuable, and the society holds this to be true, capitalism is the only economic system that can exist. Because, capitalism says you are valuable. It implies the basic self worth of the individual, by giving him the right to do whatever he wants with his property and his skills. Whereas socialism tells him that his skills are valuable but he is not. This self-esteem, that only capitalism can grant, cannot be underestimated. Would Edison have persevered with the light bulb without a basic sense of self worth?
Corporatism is simply a paper tiger created by those socialists who want have not done well. It is interesting that those who are socialist don't want to take credit for their own actions. This is the other part of capitalism, if it states that man is free to act as he wants, then it also states that man is responsible for his own actions and his own success.
To be fair all of these civilizations had many of the elements of the Ten Commandments. What this guy I hope was doing was using the Ten Commandments to represent the natural law. Can you imagine a civilization without the basic natural law?
It is Sunday the least you can do is cut the guy some slack.
And on the seventh day the lord rested, and so did this guy's mind.
He is right, however I would modify this slightly. Donate a small lab, 10 to 15 computers, with these three conditions:
1) They are only allowed to run free/OSS software. 2) They must start a club or after school group for programmers that work on OSS. One of the side benefits of OSS is how useful it is to teach up and coming programmers. Continue to donate your time to foster the skills of this up and coming group. 3) The computers are used by non-programmers during the school day for a intro to computers course the rest of the time. One way to help the community is to increase the number of users. Make sure they learn the basics Unix instead of learning Windoze. I am teaching my younger siblings Linux as their first OS and they are finding it much easier than I thought it would be.
If you offer to teach the teachers Unix I am sure they would be more than happy to, agree to these conditions.
I have a simple question to ask of you: Does society serve the individual, or does the individual serve society? This may seem like an abstract question but it cuts to the heart of the matter.
Let me phrase the question a different way. Lets assume temporarily that you, peter, are a doctor who if you only go to work tomorrow can cure AIDS and cancer. But you don't want to. Do I (Lets assume for that I am your boss), have the moral obligation to force you to work?
There are two answers, the capitalist and the socialist.
Free markets can prompt co-operation. For example Intel and AMD had to co-operate on the 8086 or else IBM would not have used it in the PC. Or when you refer a person to a competitor to win the customers respect. Patents prompt this because they force you to disclose how you do what you do. They then protect you after you do this.
Now I like the idea of the Amazon patent as much as the next person, not much at all. And I think the idea of boycotting Amazon is a great one. I am currently participating in it. But to try and force Amazon through the law to not do something that is logically consistent with the free-market ideals that you profess to have.
To some this up, you have made a small mistake; competition is a Good Thing for us every time, because a good thing can only be good when compared to the other option. And in the socialist system without the basic sense of self worth that capitalism implies true innovation is not possible.
I also am a high school student who lives in a school without any programming classes. It is not good. Because of that the majority of the programmig I have learned was project specific and for a while I learned VB.
I do a lot of computer related stuff for my school however. Mainly because they bought a lot of new hardware, but left the admin buget negilably lacking. If the budget has been cut then I am sure your school will be even more responsive to you volentering your skills to help out.
When our NT firewall (version 1.23 of WinProxy), became overloaded I volenteered to set up a Linux box running IP Masquarde even though I knew nothing on the subject of IP Masqing. I read the HOWTO's and learned allmost all I needed to get it started. The point is if you offer the oportunity to make you school better will come.
If a person does not have the initative to find expeirance they probaly don't have the inative to become a Alan Cox in the first place. That is not to say that we may loose many good people, but you are exagerating the situation a bit.
I congradulate Beacon for utilizing the skill of their students they are setting a great example for the rest of the world.
Smart menus as an idea are not a bad thing. However, Microsoft's implamentation is horrible. I was not using the beta combo of Win2000/Office2000 by the time I was sick of it. I know what iteams I am looking for. I often use a few features in Office but I know most of them. And I want to be able to use what I know, they don't allow me to do so quickly.
No! You are forgeting the the BSOD sceensaver. The Redmond folks will be scared have to death when they watch the errors pile up and the box still work. i can't fix it boss it is still working. Can you imagine what will happen when all those techies don't have anything to do?:)
What Novell is now releasing NDS, is a service that Unix doesn't have. It allows single point of logon, and for large complex networks to be referenced, organized, and managed with a lot more ease than before. Beyond that, they have one of the better networking clients for Win32, beyond that they can't offer much that is not already out there.
I have been using NDS for a while now to intagrate my prof's network, it is great. I am glad to see Linux is getting it. This combined with Samba is all we need to move into the fileserving server space right now.
No, he was only hit 19 times, in 41 bullets fired. That shows the desperation, chaos, and split second reasoning that has been argued from the start. This is a tragedy on two fronts, first a young man is dead, that is tragic. However, it is also tragic that four men, have been tarred with as lynches, even after a jury has ruled they did nothing wrong.
No, Amazon cannot possibly be hoping to become profitable simply by patenting. However, they may be trying to buy time to become profitable. If an investor hears that Amazon has obtained this patent it increases the value of Amazon in two ways:
1) If you believe this patent is not defendable then, then it is at least a weapon that prevents other companies from suing them with it, and it is as it saves them the cash for that it increases their profit.
2) If it is defendable, it is a way to hurt their competitors and it increases the value of what Amazon owns.
Either way the value of their stock increases. And the longer their stock has value without profitability the better.
O.K. So all Amazon is trying to do is end this evil patent system, by getting as many broad-reaching patents as possible. This is like me saying I murdered a person, just to expose the evils of the capitol punishment system. You would justifiably fry me for this.
No, applying Ocram's razor, the argument that Amazon is trying to generate positive attention, to divert minds from their lack of profitability is a much stronger argument. If a investor thinks that their is even half a chance of winning the sure to come patent battle it increases the perceived value of their stock. They are going to face increasing pressure to turn a profit, the longer they can postpone this crunch the more they can cash out before the stock begins to fall.
So Amazon behaving as such is not a truly evil company. They are simply a company acting to preserve their bottom line as long as they can.
This is a valid question "As far as law is concerned, the eyes of a million Slashbots are worth about..."
I can tell you that the technical perspective is something that many lawyers including Tech and IP lawyers are lacking. The help that many of the people here could offer could be quite powerful. Let me offer an example.
I was talking with my father's girlfriend, an IP Lawyer, Pre-law at Michigan, Law from Harvard Law, who works with universities on how to structure joint research IP licensees. She asked me what "This whole DeCSS thing was about?" and "Wasn't it great that the MPAA went after pirates so quickly?" I went on to inform her what the DeCSS really did, and didn't do. She was shocked. It lead to a larger discussion over the application of free speech to source code (An idea I read about in a Slashdot thread.) She thought the idea was a "brilliant way to look at the problem and presented a real challenge to the application of patents to source code."
How much better if these people could benefit from the good arguments Slashdot can generate on the very cases they are trying to try.
Now the only problem is her understanding "Natalie Portman petrified in Hot Grits"
I agree my best code comes out when I am sleep deprived. However the design for, something complex algorithmic solutions does not seem to work as well. I usually end up sketching out an arch, then spending some time hear till my eyes are about ready to drop, then I go have a cup of two of coffee, then spit my code out. My dad hates it, I have to warn him before it happens. Yes, I still live at home, I am 17. I have to crash afterwards though. That is not fun, long and interesting dreams (When they get to the length of a Ayn Rand novel I know I have gone to far.)
I spent 124 hours without sleep in the Ninth grade, three years ago, I was writing a play for class and had to keep editing to accomplish the will of the teacher "Add two more roles, more students want to work on this, etc." And for some reason the WP I was using would not save files, 19 pages gets long to type every night. Some very interesting things happened though:
1) My mental functions where downgraded seriously, took hours just to type, I can normally for about 50 words a min. It was down around 10, not good.
2) My memory was seriously downgraded, I put coffee through the Coffee Maker twice, thought I had not made it. That's in 30 minutes not a long time, the coffee was horrible, I had used Water Joe for the additional caffeine and it had quite a punch.
3) My imagination was significantly improved. It was as if I could see the play being preformed and was just writing the transcripts. I know it may have been hallucinations but it was so vivid and I can still remember it today.
That's just me though.
Nate Custer
P.S. please forgive the rant but I have not slept since Thursday at 6 am, so I don't have the clarity to write an incredibly focused post.
The UN has tried in the past to level fines on countries, see how well it did. The US currently owns the UN millions, they can't do anything about it. If the US follows it constitution, they cannot allow any body sovereignty over the US. Thus no court has jurisdiction over the US except the US's court. The UN is just an advisor.
While it is true that France has not acquitted itself very well in recent wars (WWII and Vietnam for example) they have had a prolonged effect in the politics of the UN. They along with Russia are Iraq's best pals. So don't count them out completely. Mr. Annan has sided with them more than the US.
I am far from a legal expert however I believe the precedent is for it to be tried in French courts, under French law. While there is a International Court I do not believe this is the type of case they handle. This idea of precedent is how we try foreign nationals whose country deny them diplomatic immunity.
No! Do read Descartes's meditations the proof is far from that simple.
This still does not deal with the base contention I made at the beginning of this discussion. Godel's Incompleteness theorem, shows that some things can be absolutely true, yet unprovable. I am not claiming that the existence of god is such a thing per say, only that it may be, if it is your position you may have a long time to wait. Instead, you are constructing paper tigers and then complaining when they are not torn down. Here is a good proof of nonexistence X^n + Y^n Z^n for n greater than 2. That has been proven.
Nate Custer
P.S. Descartes also had a proof for the existence of God based on the proof you mentioned above.
No, Mathmatics is a strictly defined science, while its theoroms don't allways have the aplicability of say - physics, it is however a valid method of finding truth and dhould be treated as such.
Fair deal. Seeing that my suggestion of Kung has caused a bit of a reaction let me explain the selection. Kung, as I stated was the chief theological advisor for Vatican II. This is not because he is a High Up in the Catholic church only that he was viewed by them as a knowledgeable source on the matter. This means that any RC could not protest he is a biased person. At the same time, he has written three books on the non grata list with the Vatican, all three are openly hostile to the RC, so no one can claim Kung is not open minded person, who presents a valid argument worth considering.
You have made a fair proposition. I must admit I jumped to conclusions when I read the way you characterized Christians:
"Are you only capable of acting ethically with the threat of your supernatural deity sending you to torture and torment hanging over your head?"
you produced an argument that any freshman Theo. major could have ripped to pieces. To assume that because a person acts by faith their ethics are based on fear is far from accurate.
I have enjoyed many good critiques of Christianity as a whole:
Ayn Rand Why I am not a Christian by Bertand Russel The Collected works of Nietzsche etc.
As well as the two books by Sagan I have read. I trust (by faith of course) that I will enjoy The Demon Haunted World.
I do not however hold that there is a contradiction in faith, however I would enjoy hearing exactly what you are referring to there.
Best regards,
Nate Custer
P.S. From Russel, when Godel should his major work was dead wrong "I wanted certainty the same way many people blindly want religion. It blinded my reason." so I guess Russel is refuted eh?
Again, Mathematics comes back to help out the other less robust sciences. In Math we have something called Ramesy theory. It states that given a sufficiently large population, any stated mathematical artifact will be found. Lets extrapolate this, given a large population (2 million years), you will always find an specific object (all the right conditions for life). Now this does not mean that God doesn't exist or that he did not cause the events to happen. Only, that just because you are alive doesn't mean that God exists. Even if Decorates says so.
Ah, you expose the flaw in your logic here. The basis, the assumptions that science holds have not changed and are not questioned. The one exception here is Mathematics, they found they will never know the complete truth (Godel's Incompleteness theorem). The bible is an assumption in Theology much like the scientific method, it is not up for question. Specific theories, like Origin's ideas on creation, or Aquinas's Transubstantiation, or Papal Infallibility are disputed with regularity. Look at the reformation or the counterreformation? That way Christianity can maintain the intellectual cohesion you want it to have, that being said where is that same cohesion in Science?
"With your system, we would have a Board of Priests continually revising the Bible depending on what's in style for that decade or century, with arbitrary judgements on right vs. wrong. Come to think of it, you might consider joining the Roman Catholic church.;)"
A little rough on the RC church aren't we? That being said, you have a point here it is often stated as the Liar, Lunatic, Lord hypothesis. Jesus was either wrong because he is lying, wrong because he is crazy, or dead on. There is not a balance, a midpoint.
Slashdot Mirror
Capitalism is an economic system. It has one underling assumption. That society exists to serve man, not man to serve society. Yet we still hold on to the belief that capitalism is best for the consumer. It may be some of the time, but that is not why it is designed. The only purpose of legislation is to protect this assumption. To allow man to best serve him.
"They cling to the naive notion that it's possible to legislate perfect economies, and willfully ignore the historical evidence that every other economic system produces far worse abuses and misery."
Brilliant! Legislation that regulates Capitalism only harms it.
Capitalism also provides the moral basis for our society. The most fundamental assumption we make is that life is valuable. This is an assumption that can be found in almost every civilization.
If life is valuable, and the society holds this to be true, capitalism is the only economic system that can exist. Because, capitalism says you are valuable. It implies the basic self worth of the individual, by giving him the right to do whatever he wants with his property and his skills. Whereas socialism tells him that his skills are valuable but he is not. This self-esteem, that only capitalism can grant, cannot be underestimated. Would Edison have persevered with the light bulb without a basic sense of self worth?
Corporatism is simply a paper tiger created by those socialists who want have not done well. It is interesting that those who are socialist don't want to take credit for their own actions. This is the other part of capitalism, if it states that man is free to act as he wants, then it also states that man is responsible for his own actions and his own success.
Best regards,
Nate Custer
To be fair all of these civilizations had many of the elements of the Ten Commandments. What this guy I hope was doing was using the Ten Commandments to represent the natural law. Can you imagine a civilization without the basic natural law?
It is Sunday the least you can do is cut the guy some slack.
And on the seventh day the lord rested, and so did this guy's mind.
Nate Custer
He is right, however I would modify this slightly. Donate a small lab, 10 to 15 computers, with these three conditions:
1) They are only allowed to run free/OSS software.
2) They must start a club or after school group for programmers that work on OSS. One of the side benefits of OSS is how useful it is to teach up and coming programmers. Continue to donate your time to foster the skills of this up and coming group.
3) The computers are used by non-programmers during the school day for a intro to computers course the rest of the time. One way to help the community is to increase the number of users. Make sure they learn the basics Unix instead of learning Windoze. I am teaching my younger siblings Linux as their first OS and they are finding it much easier than I thought it would be.
If you offer to teach the teachers Unix I am sure they would be more than happy to, agree to these conditions.
Nate Custer
I have a simple question to ask of you: Does society serve the individual, or does the individual serve society? This may seem like an abstract question but it cuts to the heart of the matter.
Let me phrase the question a different way. Lets assume temporarily that you, peter, are a doctor who if you only go to work tomorrow can cure AIDS and cancer. But you don't want to. Do I (Lets assume for that I am your boss), have the moral obligation to force you to work?
There are two answers, the capitalist and the socialist.
Free markets can prompt co-operation. For example Intel and AMD had to co-operate on the 8086 or else IBM would not have used it in the PC. Or when you refer a person to a competitor to win the customers respect. Patents prompt this because they force you to disclose how you do what you do. They then protect you after you do this.
Now I like the idea of the Amazon patent as much as the next person, not much at all. And I think the idea of boycotting Amazon is a great one. I am currently participating in it. But to try and force Amazon through the law to not do something that is logically consistent with the free-market ideals that you profess to have.
To some this up, you have made a small mistake; competition is a Good Thing for us every time, because a good thing can only be good when compared to the other option. And in the socialist system without the basic sense of self worth that capitalism implies true innovation is not possible.
Nate Custer
I also am a high school student who lives in a school without any programming classes. It is not good. Because of that the majority of the programmig I have learned was project specific and for a while I learned VB.
I do a lot of computer related stuff for my school however. Mainly because they bought a lot of new hardware, but left the admin buget negilably lacking. If the budget has been cut then I am sure your school will be even more responsive to you volentering your skills to help out.
When our NT firewall (version 1.23 of WinProxy), became overloaded I volenteered to set up a Linux box running IP Masquarde even though I knew nothing on the subject of IP Masqing. I read the HOWTO's and learned allmost all I needed to get it started. The point is if you offer the oportunity to make you school better will come.
If a person does not have the initative to find expeirance they probaly don't have the inative to become a Alan Cox in the first place. That is not to say that we may loose many good people, but you are exagerating the situation a bit.
I congradulate Beacon for utilizing the skill of their students they are setting a great example for the rest of the world.
Nate Custer
Smart menus as an idea are not a bad thing. However, Microsoft's implamentation is horrible. I was not using the beta combo of Win2000/Office2000 by the time I was sick of it. I know what iteams I am looking for. I often use a few features in Office but I know most of them. And I want to be able to use what I know, they don't allow me to do so quickly.
Nate Custer
No! You are forgeting the the BSOD sceensaver. The Redmond folks will be scared have to death when they watch the errors pile up and the box still work. i can't fix it boss it is still working. Can you imagine what will happen when all those techies don't have anything to do? :)
Nate Custer
What Novell is now releasing NDS, is a service that Unix doesn't have. It allows single point of logon, and for large complex networks to be referenced, organized, and managed with a lot more ease than before. Beyond that, they have one of the better networking clients for Win32, beyond that they can't offer much that is not already out there.
Best regards,
Nate Custer
I have been using NDS for a while now to intagrate my prof's network, it is great. I am glad to see Linux is getting it. This combined with Samba is all we need to move into the fileserving server space right now.
Sweet
Nate Custer
No, he was only hit 19 times, in 41 bullets fired. That shows the desperation, chaos, and split second reasoning that has been argued from the start. This is a tragedy on two fronts, first a young man is dead, that is tragic. However, it is also tragic that four men, have been tarred with as lynches, even after a jury has ruled they did nothing wrong.
Nate Custer
No, Amazon cannot possibly be hoping to become profitable simply by patenting. However, they may be trying to buy time to become profitable. If an investor hears that Amazon has obtained this patent it increases the value of Amazon in two ways:
1) If you believe this patent is not defendable then, then it is at least a weapon that prevents other companies from suing them with it, and it is as it saves them the cash for that it increases their profit.
2) If it is defendable, it is a way to hurt their competitors and it increases the value of what Amazon owns.
Either way the value of their stock increases. And the longer their stock has value without profitability the better.
Nate Custer
O.K. So all Amazon is trying to do is end this evil patent system, by getting as many broad-reaching patents as possible. This is like me saying I murdered a person, just to expose the evils of the capitol punishment system. You would justifiably fry me for this.
No, applying Ocram's razor, the argument that Amazon is trying to generate positive attention, to divert minds from their lack of profitability is a much stronger argument. If a investor thinks that their is even half a chance of winning the sure to come patent battle it increases the perceived value of their stock. They are going to face increasing pressure to turn a profit, the longer they can postpone this crunch the more they can cash out before the stock begins to fall.
So Amazon behaving as such is not a truly evil company. They are simply a company acting to preserve their bottom line as long as they can.
Nate Custer
This is a valid question "As far as law is concerned, the eyes of a million Slashbots are worth about ..."
I can tell you that the technical perspective is something that many lawyers including Tech and IP lawyers are lacking. The help that many of the people here could offer could be quite powerful. Let me offer an example.
I was talking with my father's girlfriend, an IP Lawyer, Pre-law at Michigan, Law from Harvard Law, who works with universities on how to structure joint research IP licensees. She asked me what "This whole DeCSS thing was about?" and "Wasn't it great that the MPAA went after pirates so quickly?" I went on to inform her what the DeCSS really did, and didn't do. She was shocked. It lead to a larger discussion over the application of free speech to source code (An idea I read about in a Slashdot thread.) She thought the idea was a "brilliant way to look at the problem and presented a real challenge to the application of patents to source code."
How much better if these people could benefit from the good arguments Slashdot can generate on the very cases they are trying to try.
Now the only problem is her understanding "Natalie Portman petrified in Hot Grits"
Nat Custer
I agree my best code comes out when I am sleep deprived. However the design for, something complex algorithmic solutions does not seem to work as well. I usually end up sketching out an arch, then spending some time hear till my eyes are about ready to drop, then I go have a cup of two of coffee, then spit my code out. My dad hates it, I have to warn him before it happens. Yes, I still live at home, I am 17. I have to crash afterwards though. That is not fun, long and interesting dreams (When they get to the length of a Ayn Rand novel I know I have gone to far.)
Nate Custer
I spent 124 hours without sleep in the Ninth grade, three years ago, I was writing a play for class and had to keep editing to accomplish the will of the teacher "Add two more roles, more students want to work on this, etc." And for some reason the WP I was using would not save files, 19 pages gets long to type every night. Some very interesting things happened though:
1) My mental functions where downgraded seriously, took hours just to type, I can normally for about 50 words a min. It was down around 10, not good.
2) My memory was seriously downgraded, I put coffee through the Coffee Maker twice, thought I had not made it. That's in 30 minutes not a long time, the coffee was horrible, I had used Water Joe for the additional caffeine and it had quite a punch.
3) My imagination was significantly improved. It was as if I could see the play being preformed and was just writing the transcripts. I know it may have been hallucinations but it was so vivid and I can still remember it today.
That's just me though.
Nate Custer
P.S. please forgive the rant but I have not slept since Thursday at 6 am, so I don't have the clarity to write an incredibly focused post.
The UN has tried in the past to level fines on countries, see how well it did. The US currently owns the UN millions, they can't do anything about it. If the US follows it constitution, they cannot allow any body sovereignty over the US. Thus no court has jurisdiction over the US except the US's court. The UN is just an advisor.
Nate Custer
While it is true that France has not acquitted itself very well in recent wars (WWII and Vietnam for example) they have had a prolonged effect in the politics of the UN. They along with Russia are Iraq's best pals. So don't count them out completely. Mr. Annan has sided with them more than the US.
Nate Custer
I am far from a legal expert however I believe the precedent is for it to be tried in French courts, under French law. While there is a International Court I do not believe this is the type of case they handle. This idea of precedent is how we try foreign nationals whose country deny them diplomatic immunity.
Nate Custer
No! Do read Descartes's meditations the proof is far from that simple.
This still does not deal with the base contention I made at the beginning of this discussion. Godel's Incompleteness theorem, shows that some things can be absolutely true, yet unprovable. I am not claiming that the existence of god is such a thing per say, only that it may be, if it is your position you may have a long time to wait. Instead, you are constructing paper tigers and then complaining when they are not torn down. Here is a good proof of nonexistence X^n + Y^n Z^n for n greater than 2. That has been proven.
Nate Custer
P.S. Descartes also had a proof for the existence of God based on the proof you mentioned above.
Doug,
Demand the imposable?
"I will believe in God when you can give me a repeatable, well designed and defined experiement for testing God's existence."
yet as you yourself say:
"such a proof is impossible!"
Nate Custer
No, Mathmatics is a strictly defined science, while its theoroms don't allways have the aplicability of say - physics, it is however a valid method of finding truth and dhould be treated as such.
Nate Custer
Fair deal. Seeing that my suggestion of Kung has caused a bit of a reaction let me explain the selection. Kung, as I stated was the chief theological advisor for Vatican II. This is not because he is a High Up in the Catholic church only that he was viewed by them as a knowledgeable source on the matter. This means that any RC could not protest he is a biased person. At the same time, he has written three books on the non grata list with the Vatican, all three are openly hostile to the RC, so no one can claim Kung is not open minded person, who presents a valid argument worth considering.
You have made a fair proposition. I must admit I jumped to conclusions when I read the way you characterized Christians:
"Are you only capable of acting ethically with the threat of your supernatural deity sending you to torture and torment hanging over your head?"
you produced an argument that any freshman Theo. major could have ripped to pieces. To assume that because a person acts by faith their ethics are based on fear is far from accurate.
I have enjoyed many good critiques of Christianity as a whole:
Ayn Rand
Why I am not a Christian by Bertand Russel
The Collected works of Nietzsche
etc.
As well as the two books by Sagan I have read. I trust (by faith of course) that I will enjoy The Demon Haunted World.
I do not however hold that there is a contradiction in faith, however I would enjoy hearing exactly what you are referring to there.
Best regards,
Nate Custer
P.S. From Russel, when Godel should his major work was dead wrong "I wanted certainty the same way many people blindly want religion. It blinded my reason." so I guess Russel is refuted eh?
Again, Mathematics comes back to help out the other less robust sciences. In Math we have something called Ramesy theory. It states that given a sufficiently large population, any stated mathematical artifact will be found. Lets extrapolate this, given a large population (2 million years), you will always find an specific object (all the right conditions for life). Now this does not mean that God doesn't exist or that he did not cause the events to happen. Only, that just because you are alive doesn't mean that God exists. Even if Decorates says so.
Nate Custer
Ah, you expose the flaw in your logic here. The basis, the assumptions that science holds have not changed and are not questioned. The one exception here is Mathematics, they found they will never know the complete truth (Godel's Incompleteness theorem). The bible is an assumption in Theology much like the scientific method, it is not up for question. Specific theories, like Origin's ideas on creation, or Aquinas's Transubstantiation, or Papal Infallibility are disputed with regularity. Look at the reformation or the counterreformation? That way Christianity can maintain the intellectual cohesion you want it to have, that being said where is that same cohesion in Science?
Nate Custer
"With your system, we would have a Board of Priests continually revising the Bible depending on what's in style for that decade or century, with arbitrary judgements on right vs. wrong. Come to think of it, you might consider joining the Roman Catholic church. ;)"
A little rough on the RC church aren't we? That being said, you have a point here it is often stated as the Liar, Lunatic, Lord hypothesis. Jesus was either wrong because he is lying, wrong because he is crazy, or dead on. There is not a balance, a midpoint.
Nate Custer