The problem is that materialism/naturalism is necessary to science. The supernatural is, by definition, untestable. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that science is silent on the topic. That may make it look like science classes are teaching students that the natural world is all that there is. The fact, though, is that science has nothing to say about anything else. I think you're confusing philosophical naturalism with methodological naturalism. Whatever philosophy about the existence of the supernatural a scientist may hold, his or her methods will be naturalistic.
It's possible that I'm misreading you here and that you are saying that research into abiogenesis and cosmology (neither of which is required for evolution) are "philosophical" pursuits and not scientific ones. I have heard that position before, usually in an attempt to equate biochemical abiogenesis research and ID nonscientific philosophical fields of research. They are not, though. Any of the current scientific theories of origins is potentially falsifiable with new data or a new understanding of the underlying models. ID is not. That is why even topics like big bang cosmology and biochemical abiogenesis are still reasonable scientific topics to cover in a classroom while ID is still just pie in the sky philosophy disguised up as science.
Anything is possible. The question is whether it is likely. There is no evidence that these creatures were ever herbivores. At some point, this all just becomes special pleading with the assumption of miracles. That's all fine, but it's not science, and teaching it in a science classroom as a testable theory is ridiculous. As I've said before, there is no possible observation that could ever conflict with divine intervention, so it's not at all scientifically interesting that all of our observations are "consistent" with the idea of an omnipotent being doing whatever it wants.
Some animals are obligate carnivores. Squid, for example. Examples of obligate carnivores being fed on non-carnivorous diets exist, but all of the cases that I know of involve supplementation with artificial nutrients.
I think that the problem here is that you're confusing the idea of falsifiability with the idea that science must necessarily be experimentally repeatable. The observations and data surrounding origins are repeatable. From those data, theories can be developed. From those theories, hypotheses can be formulated that make predictions about other data that might be found. Every time one of those hypotheses is tested successfully, the theory is supported. This framework even works for so-called "observational" science where no lab experiments are possible. All you need to be able to do is say, "If my theoretical framework is correct, I expect to see X if I go looking for it." Then, you go looking for X. Not finding X is a way of falsifying your theory. Finding X supports your theory. Repeat.
The ID people have a fundamental problem here. They can't formulate such a test. They can't say, "If the development of life has been affected by an unobservable intelligent power that exerts unknown influences by an undescribed process, we would expect to see X." Any observation at all is consistent with divine intervention. The grass is green? Support for ID! The grass is blue? Support for ID! If your theoretical framework explains every possible piece of data (whether the data exist or not), your framework explains nothing at all.
I would start to be interested if they would posit an actual process by which the designer interferes. If they would do that, they would pass into the realm of testability and could go in some interesting directions. I have a feeling that if they did, though, they'd end up with a lot of rejected hypotheses.
Consider yourself served with the Thermodynamics Challenge. Please show how the second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. You'll need to show work. No handwaving please. Thermo is a very mathematical field, so you should be able to do it without mushy definitions of disorder or any crap like that. Also, if you use the word "information" you'll have to define that as well, please.
If that challenge presents a problem (it seems to for basically EVERYBODY who makes that assinine claim), try this one: Explain how evolution violates the second law but the development of a human child from a single cell does not. You don't even need to use math for this one. You don't get as much credit as you would for answering the first question, but at least it's something.
I'm looking forward to some dazzling math here. Please don't disappoint.
It's really amazing to me how a group of people that has always controlled every branch of government at every level can somehow turn an issue of good science vs philosophy in science classrooms into one of religious persecution.
Keep up the good fight. Maybe someday your voice will be heard and we'll even have an openly Christian President.
Look at it another way: wouldn't certain animal species that use elaborate mechanisms (think peacock) to attract mates also be more attractive to predators and easier to catch and kill? I mean a peacock can't do shit. *I* can catch one and I'm fat lazy bastard. How come they survived? And how exactly and why did they develop the way they did?
I've heard similar arguments before and they always boggle my mind. If it were true that the peacock's plumage would attract more predators, then there would be no peacocks now REGARDLESS of how they got that way, yes? The whole point is moot. As for the specific example, the birds are naturally skittish and surprisingly tough for their size and weight (read: metatarsal spurs).
Anyway, it's amazing to me how many people say "I have never heard a valid explanation for X, so the theory is wrong" when they clearly haven't done any research on the topic. No, unless you subscribe to the right journals, nobody has mailed you any theories on the evolution of intelligence. No, nobody mentioned it on the subway. You haven't overheard any good conversations on it in any bars. There are people doing a lot of research on the topic, though, even if you haven't been exposed to much of it as a lay person.
I could just as easily say that computer engineering is stupid because nobody took the time out to spoon feed me an explanation of how field effect transistors work. That would be stupid, though. I could just take some classes and read up on the physics and convince myself that these electrical engineers aren't a bunch of crackpots. I have no idea why people get away with lazy armchair criticism of biology when they'd get called on it for so many other topics.
Science is necessarily naturalistic, though. Scientific methods require the ability to observe data and test hypotheses. Allowing for the unobservable and untestable simply breaks the tools that ths scientific method provides. That doesn't mean that the supernatural is impossible or wrong. It just means that it can't be proposed and then tested by scientific methods.
People frequently confuse "thinking really hard about data" with "doing science." You can certainly think rationally and logically about the world around you and come to the conclusion that belief in the supernatural is warranted. That doesn't mean you're a nutcase. It does, however, mean that you've ventured into an area in which science is of no help and results of scientific study will be meaningless. If we allow reasoning about the supernatural into science classes instead of philosophy classes where it belongs, we will fail to teach our students the distinction between the two.
Again, this doesn't mean that the philosophers who think about these things are stupid or wrong or that science is the sole arbiter of the truth. It just means that science covers only a limited subset of what philosophy and logic cover (albeit it does so with phenomenal success) and that we do our children a disservice by not pointing that out.
No, I claim that mathematical analysis might be able to show if a creator was involved or not. You can't assume your conclusion.
Given that you have exactly one sample of "life" and no knowledge of whether it was made by a creator or not, I'd be very surprised if you could pull that one off. Dembski's ability to pump out huge quantities of math without actually producing a verifiable test of whether something is designed or not is a testament to this problem.
In science, only one side has made a convincing argument. It's kind of like the lesson plan for World War II. The fact that a vocal minority of non-scholars claims that there were no death camps does not mean that we should teach "both sides" of the "controversy" as if everybody's point of view held equal merit. In science class, it's important to teach students the results of mainstream science and exactly what the scientific method is. Hypotheses that are indistinguishable from the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory just don't cut it.
If it's encrypted with an algorithm that is widely thought to be strong (AES, 3DES, etc.), I strongly doubt that a government possessing a break for the algorithm would tip its hand by using that information to prosecute a terrorist. Just letting out the fact that the code is broken is an incredibly valuable secret. Sure, they may be able to break it and use the information, but I doubt that getting a conviction against these characters is would be worth it.
Then again, it's also quite possible that nobody knows how to break the standard block algorithms and their data is safe as long as their passphrases were strong.
Unfortunately the world's governments have colluded to issue money backed not by gold, silver, or something else humans across the world hold to be valuable, but rather by nothing more than a government promise.
This is what needs to be solved if people want to have long-term confidence in the value of their money and the security of their futures.
It's amazing to me how many people think that pegging our money supply to gold or some other random precious metal will somehow fix this problem. With fiat money controlled by a well-managed central bank, you can be confident of reasonably controlled inflation. With a money supply that's restricted by the supply of some object of finite supply, you're basically praying that the supply of that good will somehow grow at exactly the rate at which the economy grows. Is deflation induced stagnation or depression really a good thing?
News flash: Gold's market value is subject to the whims of a commodities market. There's nothing special that gives it magical intrinsic value that can make it a steadying force on an economy. Tying our currency to it makes no more sense than tying it to tin or oil or leather for that matter. The price of gold fluctuates at the whims of investors. Better to have a central bank that can smooth over the rough spots.
I don't know why, but economics, physics, and cryptography seem to draw kooks sugar draws flies. I suppose that biology should be in that list as well, but I digress.
It may have come off that way, but the point is that some people just do the math a little differently. Nothing obfuscates the hidden charges better than the way we do it. We are the kings in that department. We are as slick as it gets.
Sure, that's fine. I just get mildly annoyed when people point to western banking and charging of interest at market rate as somehow "evil" when they're doing the same thing and calling it something other than interest. That strikes me as either disingenuous or just plain ignorant. Given how much crap other cultures have taken from Muslims for charging interest, it seems just assinine for them to do exactly the same thing and cover the fact with different terminology.
Yes they would be undertaken. Just not in the time frame of "I want it now". Banks just make it convenient. They don't make it possible. I'm not against convenience. It's much safer to carry a credit card than a wad of cash.
Some things might be undertaken, but a lot of ventures never would be. For example, if I wanted to start drilling for oil, I would need to buy land and equipment to drill the oil. It's reasonable to think that I would not, in my lifetime, be able to afford it. I'd find better things to do with my money that pay off in a shorter period of time rather than saving every penny for decades. However, once I have the equipment, I should be able to pay off the loan with relative ease using profits from drilling oil. Without a loan, the best case is that the oil goes undrilled for *years* and consumers have to wait that long to get the product. The worst case is that the drilling never takes place and the oil is simply never produced. Why not take the extra money other people have lying around and put it to work benefitting society?
Likewise, I can wait 1/3 of my life to have the benefits of home ownership, or I can spend 1/3 of my life building small shacks and improving until I get a modern, high quality home large enough for a family, or I can decide to pay more for the increased quality of life and borrow money to make that happen earlier. If I borrow too much and buy a mansion and owe too much money to pay back, two entities are at fault and two entities are screwed: me for being an idiot and the bank for being reckless enough to loan out too much money to a fool who could never pay it back. Deals like that benefit nobody.
Better example: I went to college to get an education. It was expensive. I studied engineering and economics (which is why this type of stuff interests me). I work as an engineer now. If I had needed to pay for college out of pocket myself, I wouldn't have been able to go. I would have gone to work and put away money for college. By the time I had enough to pay for my tuition, I might have had a family. Alternately, I could have put off having a family until late in life. Either way, my lifetime earnings would have suffered significantly and society would not have gotten the (supposed) benefit of me being an engineer for many years. This case is seen all the time, and society wins, the borrower wins, and the lender wins. Definitely not a zero sum game, and it definitely does a lot more than cause inflation.
I'm afraid it is [a zero sum game], just like the laws of physics themselves. What you don't see is the slave labor outside of your borders that is required to sustain that standard of living and the money lenders.
You're bringing in entities that aren't in the original equation. I'm talking about the borrower and the lender. The borrower pays back interest and gets the benefits of the capital he can acquire with it. There is no need for a third party in this equation, and it's easily demonstrable that it's not a zero sum game. The problem you're bringing up is a real one, but I would say it's more of a trade policy problem than one intrinsic to lending money for interest.
I was talking about real tar-paper shacks. Made out of 2 by 4s and corrugated tar paper. Not the the $100,000 matsh stick homes that blow down when the wind gets above 60 mph.
If that's what you go for, that's fine by me.
Down here, they provide shelter for the family while the concrete one is under construction, also built with savings, not credit. Until the WTO blew through here with that damn NAFTA and super easy credit, most everybody outside the city owned their property. Now the banks are going to own everything.
So here are a few questions to ask yourself: What kinds of homes are being purchased? How long do people end up renting before they can purchase a home? How much money is lost to rent when compared to interest on a loan?
As for the banks owning everything, I doubt that's what they're hoping for. Banks do best when no foreclosures happen. People getting loans they can't afford is a bad thing, to be sure, but it's a people problem, not a loan problem.
Obfuscation is what makes the economy work at all. It's all based on pure faith.
To some extent, I suppose that's true. Your initial point, though, seemed to be that Islamic finance was some sort of utopian solution that wasn't the same thing as an interest carrying loan. It's the same thing with different terminology and long explanations designed to obscure that fact. If you're cool with that, that's also fine by me, but it doesn't change the fact that these are the same types of loans that have fueled every developed economy since banking came into existence.
We will always depend on the next generation to pay our bills.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'd take it to mean that as a society, Americans are living beyond their means in terms of both public and private savings. I agree. We're headed for disaster if we keep it up. Again, though, that doesn't change the fact that the availability of credit allows for real economic growth when used properly. It's just another form of efficient allocation of resources.
Credit doesn't produce anything. It's nothing more than one more guy skimming a little from every transaction. It speeds up the flow of money, and it's this flow that generates profits. And like Las Vegas, the house always wins. It all works great as long as everybody keeps the faith.
Now you're making some sense--but only some. No, credit doesn't "produce" anything by itself, but it allows a lot of good things to happen that wouldn't otherwise happen. Serious business ventures often require credit. Those ventures would not be undertaken if it weren't for the credit infrastructure. The people who are "skimming" are receiving payment for taking on some (minor or major) risk in loaning the money.
When it all goes right, everybody benefits. The lender benefits by making efficient use of excess funds. The borrower benefits from the ability to leverage capital that would otherwise be put to use in less efficient ways. Society as a whole benefits because some sort of goods and services that would otherwise not have been produced or sold were created. We improve our standard of living (in the economic sense) by producing and consuming goods and services. Lending allows more goods and services to be produced and consumed. Without it, growth of our standard of living wouldn't be nearly as fast. It's not a zero sum game, and it's definitely not the house of cards you seem to think it is.
Err... yeah, that and allow the utilization of otherwise underutilized resources in an efficient way by those who can make the best use of them, but why would a society want that?
If loans weren't available, your tar-paper shack wouldn't even cost $1,000 usd. Hell, for that kind of money, I can put on a second floor AND put up a satellite dish.
Please do show your work on this one. I guess if you follow the loans -> inflation line, yes, homes could cost $1000 each. And you'd make $100 a year doing whatever it is you're doing. The reason homes are so expensive is rampant speculation and extraordinarily unwise investment by home consumers. Loans contribute to it because they're easy to get, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Oh, and there are institutions that provide financing without charging interest, but I'm sure present day zenophobias will prevent many people from consulting them.
So, they've come up with a system where instead of charging interest for loaning money for a business venture, they charge a fee for loaning money for a business venture and call it something other than interest. I would imagine that this "share of the profit" also scales with respect to the amount of time it takes to repay the investment and the amount of risk the lender^H^H^H^H^H^H capital owner must take on. Allah be praised, how unlike charging interest!
This entire document is just an exercise in obfuscating the terminology that any economist would use to describe the lending process. If it makes you feel holier, that's great, but it doesn't change reality any more than calling the your lunch side dish freedom fries.
If you loan me $100 and make me pay back $110, you didn't create any money, you made me lose $10.
Well, if what you were planning on doing with the $100 wasn't worth the $10 cost of borrowing the money, don't do it. The onus of creating value is on you. Here's how it actually works:
You have an idea that can net you $130, but you need $100 to implement it. You borrow $100 from me, make the $130, pay me $110, and pocket the rest.
Theoretically, you created $30 in value for whatever you did. I got $10 for taking on the risk of loaning $100 to somebody who has no idea how our fianancial system works. You got $20 for whatever Great Thing you did with the $100. Some other person or group of people got some sort of goods or services that you produced, and presumably those things were worth a net of $130 to them.
Had you not taken out the loan, $130 worth of goods and services would have gone un-produced. People who wanted those goods and services would have had to go without them, and you and I would have had to go without our $30. So sad.:(
Well, if you start saving at 15, and save for 10 years till your 25 while living with your parents , then you could afford to put down 70-80% down on the home and pay the rest as a small interest loan.
That assumes that you start working full time at 15. I'm running over the jobs I had before college and the jobs I held during college, and I'm not seeing it adding all that much to the bottom line. Maybe others had different experiences, but I just can't see how to make this work out without skipping higher education and pushing every penny earned into high risk investments.
Houses are only really expensive because they are artificially hihg, why are they 10x over 20 years? Not inflation, its because of DEMAND and excessive taxes and rules and more price hikes.
Rampant speculation and foolish investment, mostly. People seem to believe that their homes will always increase in value. I have some ideas as to why this is, but it's dead wrong. Anyway, it goes like this: People need a home. They see a high price on the home, but they think that they can get their money back as the home appreciates in value. Money is loaned out like toilet paper, so they have no problem securing a loan with montly payments that they can barely afford. They assume it's not risky because homes "always" increase in value. They go for it. Everybody else does the same, so the "always" increase in value rule is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At some point, though, things go bad. The economy hits a rough spot. Alternately, interest rates start to climb, causing everybody with a variable interest loan to see a hike in their barely-affordable monthly payments. Either way, lots of people can't make the payments. At the same time, demand slows down and price inflation stops. Potential buyers see this and stop purchasing to think about the "houses always appreciate" premise. Prices start to slide. As foreclosures begin and banks try to recoup their losses by selling the collateral, they find that the market is swamped, prices are low, and all of the money they loaned out is just plain gone. Hopefully, their capital reserves are large enough to cover the loss. Stuff like that has happened before, but for some reason, people around here don't seem to think it might happen again. Anyway, you're right. Home prices are out of touch with reality, and it's pretty dangerous.
Why does a brick labourer get more $$$ than a low-end programmer? ANy programmer can learn to be a bricky in 4 hrs, but any bricky would need 4 years to become a entry programmer.
Probably partially because of a union. If you can form a union and do a good job of negotiating, it's a pretty sweet deal for you.
Too much wealth is going into housing and the credit market that services investment funds for the old people which had it easy in the 50s/60s.
Being in the lending industry is a pretty good deal too. I'm not sure how that's a problem, since the availability of credit is the lifeblood of any first world economy.
Personally interest is ok with me, but only at a low level, like 3-4% at the final level, not the bank to bank level.
Why is that? If I'm a bank, I have a choice as to what to do with the piles of cash I have sitting in my vaults. I need to make at least enough on it to cover interest for the account holders. After that, how do I make money? I could loan it out at your proposed 3-4%, but what if I knew of an investment that would bring in more? Why should I have to loan it to you?
If ratest must be 7-15% because of "RISK" then ok charge me 15%, but once I finalize the loan and its paid for, the risk is ZERO, so payback the difference. Why should I pay 15% to cover your 1% losses of bad loans? Maybe the 'extra' for the risk should be 1% higher, not double.
When you get a normal home mortgage loan at your bank, they don't have that full amount just sitting there waiting for you to borrow it. It is nothing like if your neighbor wants to borrow your lawnmower, or even 100$ cash from you. They only have a small fraction of it to loan you, and you will not ever see any suitcase of cash. Most of that "loan" they create out of thin air (follow the economic food chain upstream to find that out), then you pay interest on this amount that was just data entried into existence.
Really nice deal for those guys! Don't you wish you could just create money out of thin air and loan it at interest to people? You can't, on a small scale this is called fraud and buncoism,and you can be arrested for it, on a national scale it's "business".
Hmmm... yes, the Federal Reserve does just "data entry" money into existence. That's its job (among other things). The above seems to indicate that you think that commercial banks have some sort of unlimited power to create money. That's simply not true. Yes, the fractional reserve system creates a "multiplication" effect on the money created by the Fed, but it's definitely finite. Money is still a scarce resource that banks have to earn and divide up carefully. Undercapitalized banks go under. Part of the government's job is to make sure that the "fractional reserve" system forces a large enough fraction in reserves to keep Bad Things from happening.
That is a simplistic overview, but you can learn more about it by googling fractional reserve banking. Also google the actual historical origins of the so called "federal" reserve act and the con and scams around it.
It's a scam basically. Uberrich doods get much richer. The same guys control politics. Your vote is mostly a joke. They have decimated the dollar to the point it is worth slightly less than 2 cents of when this system first got foisted on the US people.
Details please. Where is this "scam" that you speak of?
And check debt rates now, highest ever in our history, personal, governmental. If this scheme was so great, the dollar would be worth MORE, not less.
Yep, Americans are behaving like absolute boneheads when it comes to spending on credit. That's partially because Americans are boneheads when it comes to money management, and it's partially because lenders and investors have become incredibly optimistic (read: careless) about where they put their money. I suppose that all goes back to the optimism brought on by the 90s that never quite died. As for the dollar being worth less than what it should be: HUH? Exactly what are you basing this on, and how is rampant deflation grinding our economy to a halt supposed to be a good thing for us??
These chickens are soon coming home to roost, too. Fair warning if you think this system will remain viable far into the future. Because it will not, and is showing serious signs of cracking right now. All phony currency schemes in the past have eventually and utterly failed, ALL of them, because they have been based on lies, fraud and vapor.
I'm really interested in hearing more about this theory of yours. You're sounding a lot like the perennial crackpots who think that we should all just buy gold and do all of our trading in precious metals, but maybe you have something more interesting to add?
Exactly. Whenever somebody comes asking me about the $50 Lexmark inkjet that looks like a great deal, I tell them the same thing.
99% of all inkjet printers are designed to do one thing: turn full ink cartridges into empty ones. Any printing that is done in the process is just a lucky coincidence.
The people who are looking for one of the serious inkjets for graphics work are not the poeple asking me this question. I understand that they're the correct decision for some people. Most people, though, are printing documents, MapQuest pages, and the occasional image. Home users can get better photo prints cheaper through Costco's online photo center, negating the only perceivable benefit to an inkjet printer for most home users.
Personally, I wouldn't buy them just for ethical reasons. I simply can't imagine rewarding a company for such underhanded tactics. I'd go so far as to say that if you're one of the engineers who designed one of the el-cheapo cash cows for the likes of Lexmark, you are a bad person and are probably going to Hell along with telemarketers and people who spit gum on public sidewalks.
Interestingly enough, I've found that Lexmark makes very passable laser printers. My Optra E+ was a delight. Suprising given the crap that they're pushing to most of the population.
for example, an untreated diabetics' eyes show some filaments that will disappear when he starts geting treatment.
And diabetes is only one disease which affects the patterns which can be detected in the iris. Many other diseases affect both the radial disposition and the radial pattern. The medical books are filled with disease effects on the eyes.
The percentage of people who have diseases that acutally affect the patterns used for iris scanning are quite small. I'm in the business and I have yet to see anybody without at least one very usable eye.
While iris scanning for recognition is useless, it IS extremely useful as a diagnostic tool in medecine.
It's hardly useless. It's by far the fastest and most accurate biometric currently in use. Read some of the literature. It puts fingerprinting to shame, and face recognition is a non-starter.
For personal identification, you would want to scan the blood vessels in the retina. Those are relatively more stable under a wider range of biological conditions.
Retinal scanning is pretty accurate, but the scanning equipment is nowhere near as convenient to use.
But the eyes is a bag of watery tissue. Its subject to varying degrees deformation under a wide variety of physical and bioogical conditions.
The dominant iris algorithm has to make very few corrections for distortion. Viewed straight on, the iris is essentially a 2D annular region. It's a trivial matter to project it onto a coordinate system that normalizes it. Try saying that for fingerprints. Can you say, "plastic deformation?"
How would you like to be refused admision to your work place when all you did was eat some food containing some mono sodium glutemate for lunch? It that easy to screw your patterns.
That's just nonsense. MSG has absolutely no effect on iris scanning. In fact, nothing I've eaten during lunch has prevented me from using iris images of myself that I've scanned before lunch. You're just making stuff up at this point. I know that biometrics are "not cool" according to slashdot, but try attacking the actual weaknesses in a system rather than just making some up.
Everyone knew that was coming, but interracial marriage is still marriage (ie, man/woman: the very definition of the thing). Gay marriage means changing the meaning of marriage.
Yes, and allowing interracial marriage was changing the definition of marriage at the time as well.
It's not a civil right, it's a social change, and more of a lateral change.
The same thing could have been said about interracial marriage. That's why I brought it up.
Listen, if you can convince a majority of people to accept this change as necessary and prudent, then I'll be tolerant of it.
Don't you bother deciding for yourself? If everybody had that attitude about everything, no social change would ever happen.
And truly, let's not compare the "gay rights" movement to the civil rights movement. They're not in the same universe. Gay people are some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US. Blacks could barely survive out there and were denied the most basic of civil rights (education, voting).
I'm not comparing it to the Civil Rights movement, although there are some comparisons to be made on some scale. I'm comparing it specifically to antimiscegenation laws because the same ridiculous arguments were used to support them. It's unnatural, it's not what God intended, it's not the way we do things now, etc. The one I responded to is my favorite, though: it's fair because everybody has the right to marry somebody of the opposite sex. Even the most basic examination shows that it's painfully dishonest argument, so don't act like you're sick of seeing such a silly response to it, and please don't act like there aren't any parallels between the bogus arguments used in both battles.
I can turn the reasoning around another way and avoid touching on the civil rights sore spot. Let's execute everybody with red hair. If you have red hair, you can shave it and we'll leave you alone. It's totally fair, because everybody has the same options: Be bald or have hair that is black, brown, blonde, gray, white, etc. There are so many options, how could this possibly be a discriminatory rule?? It even pass your "civil rights" test: it's not nearly as bad as what the blacks suffered during the civil rights movement, so it must be OK. If only I had some vague notion of tradition or "defending our God-given right to non-red hair" or something biblical to base it on, I'd have it made.
Finally, I'm not sure where you get the statistic that gay people are "some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US." I'm sure it's just a feeling, and I'll grant you that there's no reason to believe that they're systematically being starved to death, but would the fact that gay people can be financially successful somehow justify treating them unfairly in other ways? Serves them right for enjoying success beyond what they deserve as dirty weirdos, right? Having a good job is nice, but it doesn't take away the sting of having the majority of people in your state actively pass a law that does nothing more than restrict your privileges because you're different.
I'm still amazed that Americans, who pay so much lip service to accepting people and treating everybody fairly, would still go out of their way to pass laws that restrict the rights of a minority while affording no real benefit to anybody.
Just like everybody was equal when interracial marriage was illegal. Everybody had the right to marry somebody of their own race. Damn those wackos with weird taste and their demands for special privileges!
Well, if you can list some that are logically possible to do by yourself (e.g. inheritence taxes, the right not to testify against your spouse, etc.), we'll talk.
If the state forces religions (mainly the Catholic Church) to recognize gay marriage, then the freedoms of religion of Catholics is limited.
The Catholic Church whouldn't be forced to recognize gay marriages. IIRC, the Catholic Church doesn't recognize marriages from other churches now, and they didn't need a constitutional amendment banning non-Catholic marriages to do it. What's ridiculous is the Catholic Church preventing the government from performing and recognizing civil marriages.
But you're forgetting that gay people CAN get married! See, marriage is, by definition, a union of a man and a woman. Gay people can marry all they want. They just can't marry someone of the same sex. There's no discrimination here. Things just are what they are. Shall we argue that men can't have babies, and call that a "civil right?"
Let's try this version of it: Banning interracial marriage is not discriminatory becuse everybody is allowed to marry, as long as thier partner is of the same race. That argument leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
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It's possible that I'm misreading you here and that you are saying that research into abiogenesis and cosmology (neither of which is required for evolution) are "philosophical" pursuits and not scientific ones. I have heard that position before, usually in an attempt to equate biochemical abiogenesis research and ID nonscientific philosophical fields of research. They are not, though. Any of the current scientific theories of origins is potentially falsifiable with new data or a new understanding of the underlying models. ID is not. That is why even topics like big bang cosmology and biochemical abiogenesis are still reasonable scientific topics to cover in a classroom while ID is still just pie in the sky philosophy disguised up as science.
Anything is possible. The question is whether it is likely. There is no evidence that these creatures were ever herbivores. At some point, this all just becomes special pleading with the assumption of miracles. That's all fine, but it's not science, and teaching it in a science classroom as a testable theory is ridiculous. As I've said before, there is no possible observation that could ever conflict with divine intervention, so it's not at all scientifically interesting that all of our observations are "consistent" with the idea of an omnipotent being doing whatever it wants.
Some animals are obligate carnivores. Squid, for example. Examples of obligate carnivores being fed on non-carnivorous diets exist, but all of the cases that I know of involve supplementation with artificial nutrients.
The ID people have a fundamental problem here. They can't formulate such a test. They can't say, "If the development of life has been affected by an unobservable intelligent power that exerts unknown influences by an undescribed process, we would expect to see X." Any observation at all is consistent with divine intervention. The grass is green? Support for ID! The grass is blue? Support for ID! If your theoretical framework explains every possible piece of data (whether the data exist or not), your framework explains nothing at all.
I would start to be interested if they would posit an actual process by which the designer interferes. If they would do that, they would pass into the realm of testability and could go in some interesting directions. I have a feeling that if they did, though, they'd end up with a lot of rejected hypotheses.
If that challenge presents a problem (it seems to for basically EVERYBODY who makes that assinine claim), try this one: Explain how evolution violates the second law but the development of a human child from a single cell does not. You don't even need to use math for this one. You don't get as much credit as you would for answering the first question, but at least it's something.
I'm looking forward to some dazzling math here. Please don't disappoint.
Keep up the good fight. Maybe someday your voice will be heard and we'll even have an openly Christian President.
I've heard similar arguments before and they always boggle my mind. If it were true that the peacock's plumage would attract more predators, then there would be no peacocks now REGARDLESS of how they got that way, yes? The whole point is moot. As for the specific example, the birds are naturally skittish and surprisingly tough for their size and weight (read: metatarsal spurs).
Anyway, it's amazing to me how many people say "I have never heard a valid explanation for X, so the theory is wrong" when they clearly haven't done any research on the topic. No, unless you subscribe to the right journals, nobody has mailed you any theories on the evolution of intelligence. No, nobody mentioned it on the subway. You haven't overheard any good conversations on it in any bars. There are people doing a lot of research on the topic, though, even if you haven't been exposed to much of it as a lay person.
I could just as easily say that computer engineering is stupid because nobody took the time out to spoon feed me an explanation of how field effect transistors work. That would be stupid, though. I could just take some classes and read up on the physics and convince myself that these electrical engineers aren't a bunch of crackpots. I have no idea why people get away with lazy armchair criticism of biology when they'd get called on it for so many other topics.
People frequently confuse "thinking really hard about data" with "doing science." You can certainly think rationally and logically about the world around you and come to the conclusion that belief in the supernatural is warranted. That doesn't mean you're a nutcase. It does, however, mean that you've ventured into an area in which science is of no help and results of scientific study will be meaningless. If we allow reasoning about the supernatural into science classes instead of philosophy classes where it belongs, we will fail to teach our students the distinction between the two.
Again, this doesn't mean that the philosophers who think about these things are stupid or wrong or that science is the sole arbiter of the truth. It just means that science covers only a limited subset of what philosophy and logic cover (albeit it does so with phenomenal success) and that we do our children a disservice by not pointing that out.
Given that you have exactly one sample of "life" and no knowledge of whether it was made by a creator or not, I'd be very surprised if you could pull that one off. Dembski's ability to pump out huge quantities of math without actually producing a verifiable test of whether something is designed or not is a testament to this problem.
In science, only one side has made a convincing argument. It's kind of like the lesson plan for World War II. The fact that a vocal minority of non-scholars claims that there were no death camps does not mean that we should teach "both sides" of the "controversy" as if everybody's point of view held equal merit. In science class, it's important to teach students the results of mainstream science and exactly what the scientific method is. Hypotheses that are indistinguishable from the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory just don't cut it.
Then again, it's also quite possible that nobody knows how to break the standard block algorithms and their data is safe as long as their passphrases were strong.
It's amazing to me how many people think that pegging our money supply to gold or some other random precious metal will somehow fix this problem. With fiat money controlled by a well-managed central bank, you can be confident of reasonably controlled inflation. With a money supply that's restricted by the supply of some object of finite supply, you're basically praying that the supply of that good will somehow grow at exactly the rate at which the economy grows. Is deflation induced stagnation or depression really a good thing?
News flash: Gold's market value is subject to the whims of a commodities market. There's nothing special that gives it magical intrinsic value that can make it a steadying force on an economy. Tying our currency to it makes no more sense than tying it to tin or oil or leather for that matter. The price of gold fluctuates at the whims of investors. Better to have a central bank that can smooth over the rough spots.
I don't know why, but economics, physics, and cryptography seem to draw kooks sugar draws flies. I suppose that biology should be in that list as well, but I digress.
Sure, that's fine. I just get mildly annoyed when people point to western banking and charging of interest at market rate as somehow "evil" when they're doing the same thing and calling it something other than interest. That strikes me as either disingenuous or just plain ignorant. Given how much crap other cultures have taken from Muslims for charging interest, it seems just assinine for them to do exactly the same thing and cover the fact with different terminology.
Some things might be undertaken, but a lot of ventures never would be. For example, if I wanted to start drilling for oil, I would need to buy land and equipment to drill the oil. It's reasonable to think that I would not, in my lifetime, be able to afford it. I'd find better things to do with my money that pay off in a shorter period of time rather than saving every penny for decades. However, once I have the equipment, I should be able to pay off the loan with relative ease using profits from drilling oil. Without a loan, the best case is that the oil goes undrilled for *years* and consumers have to wait that long to get the product. The worst case is that the drilling never takes place and the oil is simply never produced. Why not take the extra money other people have lying around and put it to work benefitting society?
Likewise, I can wait 1/3 of my life to have the benefits of home ownership, or I can spend 1/3 of my life building small shacks and improving until I get a modern, high quality home large enough for a family, or I can decide to pay more for the increased quality of life and borrow money to make that happen earlier. If I borrow too much and buy a mansion and owe too much money to pay back, two entities are at fault and two entities are screwed: me for being an idiot and the bank for being reckless enough to loan out too much money to a fool who could never pay it back. Deals like that benefit nobody.
Better example: I went to college to get an education. It was expensive. I studied engineering and economics (which is why this type of stuff interests me). I work as an engineer now. If I had needed to pay for college out of pocket myself, I wouldn't have been able to go. I would have gone to work and put away money for college. By the time I had enough to pay for my tuition, I might have had a family. Alternately, I could have put off having a family until late in life. Either way, my lifetime earnings would have suffered significantly and society would not have gotten the (supposed) benefit of me being an engineer for many years. This case is seen all the time, and society wins, the borrower wins, and the lender wins. Definitely not a zero sum game, and it definitely does a lot more than cause inflation.
You're bringing in entities that aren't in the original equation. I'm talking about the borrower and the lender. The borrower pays back interest and gets the benefits of the capital he can acquire with it. There is no need for a third party in this equation, and it's easily demonstrable that it's not a zero sum game. The problem you're bringing up is a real one, but I would say it's more of a trade policy problem than one intrinsic to lending money for interest.
If that's what you go for, that's fine by me.
So here are a few questions to ask yourself: What kinds of homes are being purchased? How long do people end up renting before they can purchase a home? How much money is lost to rent when compared to interest on a loan?
As for the banks owning everything, I doubt that's what they're hoping for. Banks do best when no foreclosures happen. People getting loans they can't afford is a bad thing, to be sure, but it's a people problem, not a loan problem.
To some extent, I suppose that's true. Your initial point, though, seemed to be that Islamic finance was some sort of utopian solution that wasn't the same thing as an interest carrying loan. It's the same thing with different terminology and long explanations designed to obscure that fact. If you're cool with that, that's also fine by me, but it doesn't change the fact that these are the same types of loans that have fueled every developed economy since banking came into existence.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'd take it to mean that as a society, Americans are living beyond their means in terms of both public and private savings. I agree. We're headed for disaster if we keep it up. Again, though, that doesn't change the fact that the availability of credit allows for real economic growth when used properly. It's just another form of efficient allocation of resources.
Now you're making some sense--but only some. No, credit doesn't "produce" anything by itself, but it allows a lot of good things to happen that wouldn't otherwise happen. Serious business ventures often require credit. Those ventures would not be undertaken if it weren't for the credit infrastructure. The people who are "skimming" are receiving payment for taking on some (minor or major) risk in loaning the money.
When it all goes right, everybody benefits. The lender benefits by making efficient use of excess funds. The borrower benefits from the ability to leverage capital that would otherwise be put to use in less efficient ways. Society as a whole benefits because some sort of goods and services that would otherwise not have been produced or sold were created. We improve our standard of living (in the economic sense) by producing and consuming goods and services. Lending allows more goods and services to be produced and consumed. Without it, growth of our standard of living wouldn't be nearly as fast. It's not a zero sum game, and it's definitely not the house of cards you seem to think it is.
Err... yeah, that and allow the utilization of otherwise underutilized resources in an efficient way by those who can make the best use of them, but why would a society want that?
Please do show your work on this one. I guess if you follow the loans -> inflation line, yes, homes could cost $1000 each. And you'd make $100 a year doing whatever it is you're doing. The reason homes are so expensive is rampant speculation and extraordinarily unwise investment by home consumers. Loans contribute to it because they're easy to get, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
So, they've come up with a system where instead of charging interest for loaning money for a business venture, they charge a fee for loaning money for a business venture and call it something other than interest. I would imagine that this "share of the profit" also scales with respect to the amount of time it takes to repay the investment and the amount of risk the lender^H^H^H^H^H^H capital owner must take on. Allah be praised, how unlike charging interest!
This entire document is just an exercise in obfuscating the terminology that any economist would use to describe the lending process. If it makes you feel holier, that's great, but it doesn't change reality any more than calling the your lunch side dish freedom fries.
Well, if what you were planning on doing with the $100 wasn't worth the $10 cost of borrowing the money, don't do it. The onus of creating value is on you. Here's how it actually works:
You have an idea that can net you $130, but you need $100 to implement it. You borrow $100 from me, make the $130, pay me $110, and pocket the rest.
Theoretically, you created $30 in value for whatever you did. I got $10 for taking on the risk of loaning $100 to somebody who has no idea how our fianancial system works. You got $20 for whatever Great Thing you did with the $100. Some other person or group of people got some sort of goods or services that you produced, and presumably those things were worth a net of $130 to them.
Had you not taken out the loan, $130 worth of goods and services would have gone un-produced. People who wanted those goods and services would have had to go without them, and you and I would have had to go without our $30. So sad. :(
That assumes that you start working full time at 15. I'm running over the jobs I had before college and the jobs I held during college, and I'm not seeing it adding all that much to the bottom line. Maybe others had different experiences, but I just can't see how to make this work out without skipping higher education and pushing every penny earned into high risk investments.
Rampant speculation and foolish investment, mostly. People seem to believe that their homes will always increase in value. I have some ideas as to why this is, but it's dead wrong. Anyway, it goes like this: People need a home. They see a high price on the home, but they think that they can get their money back as the home appreciates in value. Money is loaned out like toilet paper, so they have no problem securing a loan with montly payments that they can barely afford. They assume it's not risky because homes "always" increase in value. They go for it. Everybody else does the same, so the "always" increase in value rule is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At some point, though, things go bad. The economy hits a rough spot. Alternately, interest rates start to climb, causing everybody with a variable interest loan to see a hike in their barely-affordable monthly payments. Either way, lots of people can't make the payments. At the same time, demand slows down and price inflation stops. Potential buyers see this and stop purchasing to think about the "houses always appreciate" premise. Prices start to slide. As foreclosures begin and banks try to recoup their losses by selling the collateral, they find that the market is swamped, prices are low, and all of the money they loaned out is just plain gone. Hopefully, their capital reserves are large enough to cover the loss. Stuff like that has happened before, but for some reason, people around here don't seem to think it might happen again. Anyway, you're right. Home prices are out of touch with reality, and it's pretty dangerous.
Probably partially because of a union. If you can form a union and do a good job of negotiating, it's a pretty sweet deal for you.
Being in the lending industry is a pretty good deal too. I'm not sure how that's a problem, since the availability of credit is the lifeblood of any first world economy.
Why is that? If I'm a bank, I have a choice as to what to do with the piles of cash I have sitting in my vaults. I need to make at least enough on it to cover interest for the account holders. After that, how do I make money? I could loan it out at your proposed 3-4%, but what if I knew of an investment that would bring in more? Why should I have to loan it to you?
A risk premium
Hmmm... yes, the Federal Reserve does just "data entry" money into existence. That's its job (among other things). The above seems to indicate that you think that commercial banks have some sort of unlimited power to create money. That's simply not true. Yes, the fractional reserve system creates a "multiplication" effect on the money created by the Fed, but it's definitely finite. Money is still a scarce resource that banks have to earn and divide up carefully. Undercapitalized banks go under. Part of the government's job is to make sure that the "fractional reserve" system forces a large enough fraction in reserves to keep Bad Things from happening.
Details please. Where is this "scam" that you speak of?
Yep, Americans are behaving like absolute boneheads when it comes to spending on credit. That's partially because Americans are boneheads when it comes to money management, and it's partially because lenders and investors have become incredibly optimistic (read: careless) about where they put their money. I suppose that all goes back to the optimism brought on by the 90s that never quite died. As for the dollar being worth less than what it should be: HUH? Exactly what are you basing this on, and how is rampant deflation grinding our economy to a halt supposed to be a good thing for us??
I'm really interested in hearing more about this theory of yours. You're sounding a lot like the perennial crackpots who think that we should all just buy gold and do all of our trading in precious metals, but maybe you have something more interesting to add?
99% of all inkjet printers are designed to do one thing: turn full ink cartridges into empty ones. Any printing that is done in the process is just a lucky coincidence.
The people who are looking for one of the serious inkjets for graphics work are not the poeple asking me this question. I understand that they're the correct decision for some people. Most people, though, are printing documents, MapQuest pages, and the occasional image. Home users can get better photo prints cheaper through Costco's online photo center, negating the only perceivable benefit to an inkjet printer for most home users.
Personally, I wouldn't buy them just for ethical reasons. I simply can't imagine rewarding a company for such underhanded tactics. I'd go so far as to say that if you're one of the engineers who designed one of the el-cheapo cash cows for the likes of Lexmark, you are a bad person and are probably going to Hell along with telemarketers and people who spit gum on public sidewalks.
Interestingly enough, I've found that Lexmark makes very passable laser printers. My Optra E+ was a delight. Suprising given the crap that they're pushing to most of the population.
The percentage of people who have diseases that acutally affect the patterns used for iris scanning are quite small. I'm in the business and I have yet to see anybody without at least one very usable eye.
It's hardly useless. It's by far the fastest and most accurate biometric currently in use. Read some of the literature. It puts fingerprinting to shame, and face recognition is a non-starter.
Retinal scanning is pretty accurate, but the scanning equipment is nowhere near as convenient to use.
The dominant iris algorithm has to make very few corrections for distortion. Viewed straight on, the iris is essentially a 2D annular region. It's a trivial matter to project it onto a coordinate system that normalizes it. Try saying that for fingerprints. Can you say, "plastic deformation?"
That's just nonsense. MSG has absolutely no effect on iris scanning. In fact, nothing I've eaten during lunch has prevented me from using iris images of myself that I've scanned before lunch. You're just making stuff up at this point. I know that biometrics are "not cool" according to slashdot, but try attacking the actual weaknesses in a system rather than just making some up.
Yes, and allowing interracial marriage was changing the definition of marriage at the time as well.
It's not a civil right, it's a social change, and more of a lateral change.
The same thing could have been said about interracial marriage. That's why I brought it up.
Listen, if you can convince a majority of people to accept this change as necessary and prudent, then I'll be tolerant of it.
Don't you bother deciding for yourself? If everybody had that attitude about everything, no social change would ever happen.
And truly, let's not compare the "gay rights" movement to the civil rights movement. They're not in the same universe. Gay people are some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US. Blacks could barely survive out there and were denied the most basic of civil rights (education, voting).
I'm not comparing it to the Civil Rights movement, although there are some comparisons to be made on some scale. I'm comparing it specifically to antimiscegenation laws because the same ridiculous arguments were used to support them. It's unnatural, it's not what God intended, it's not the way we do things now, etc. The one I responded to is my favorite, though: it's fair because everybody has the right to marry somebody of the opposite sex. Even the most basic examination shows that it's painfully dishonest argument, so don't act like you're sick of seeing such a silly response to it, and please don't act like there aren't any parallels between the bogus arguments used in both battles.
I can turn the reasoning around another way and avoid touching on the civil rights sore spot. Let's execute everybody with red hair. If you have red hair, you can shave it and we'll leave you alone. It's totally fair, because everybody has the same options: Be bald or have hair that is black, brown, blonde, gray, white, etc. There are so many options, how could this possibly be a discriminatory rule?? It even pass your "civil rights" test: it's not nearly as bad as what the blacks suffered during the civil rights movement, so it must be OK. If only I had some vague notion of tradition or "defending our God-given right to non-red hair" or something biblical to base it on, I'd have it made.
Finally, I'm not sure where you get the statistic that gay people are "some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US." I'm sure it's just a feeling, and I'll grant you that there's no reason to believe that they're systematically being starved to death, but would the fact that gay people can be financially successful somehow justify treating them unfairly in other ways? Serves them right for enjoying success beyond what they deserve as dirty weirdos, right? Having a good job is nice, but it doesn't take away the sting of having the majority of people in your state actively pass a law that does nothing more than restrict your privileges because you're different.
I'm still amazed that Americans, who pay so much lip service to accepting people and treating everybody fairly, would still go out of their way to pass laws that restrict the rights of a minority while affording no real benefit to anybody.
Just like everybody was equal when interracial marriage was illegal. Everybody had the right to marry somebody of their own race. Damn those wackos with weird taste and their demands for special privileges!
Well, if you can list some that are logically possible to do by yourself (e.g. inheritence taxes, the right not to testify against your spouse, etc.), we'll talk.
The Catholic Church whouldn't be forced to recognize gay marriages. IIRC, the Catholic Church doesn't recognize marriages from other churches now, and they didn't need a constitutional amendment banning non-Catholic marriages to do it. What's ridiculous is the Catholic Church preventing the government from performing and recognizing civil marriages.
Let's try this version of it: Banning interracial marriage is not discriminatory becuse everybody is allowed to marry, as long as thier partner is of the same race. That argument leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.