Most of the old testement was kept in the Ark and once every 49 years it was taken out and read in public then returned to the Ark until about 60 AD.
That you think there was an Ark and a global flood (I presume), casts anything else you put forth in very poor light. There was never a global flood and this has been known for 150 years.
Come on! You're on Slashdot. You should know this!
Why don't you provide some of this evidence then? I bet that you have none. No ID proponent has ever shown any positive evidence for ID. I wonder why that is?
evolution has HUGE flaws
Why don't you elaborate on what these flaws are? I bet that these flaws are simply your misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory actually says.
This assumption is never questioned and on the surface seems to make sense. However, there is no way to PROVE that this radioactivity clock, upon which the immense ages theorized, are based, is in fact invariant over the large spans of time.
That is not true. Every time radio-isotope dating is done, it matches the constant constant decay rate assumption. What we don't have is any evidence that would cause this assumption to be questioned. Do you have any?
One very good piece of evidence that the decay rates are constant is observations of supernova 1987A. This supernova occurred at a distance of ~160,000 light-years. Gamma rays from certain cobalt isotopes were observed to decline as predicted by the half-life that these isotopes are observed to have here on Earth. This is good evidence that as far back as 160,000 years ago the decay rates for these isotopes have not changed.
There is probably other evidence, but I'm familiar supernova 1987A fairly well. There is simply no reason to think that radioactive decay occured slower or faster in the past.
Does the increase of CO2 (which is far denser than oxygen or nitrogen) at relatively LOW altitudes (because of this density) have ANY effect on the upper atmosphere? In fact, is heat really retained at ALL by a thin surface layer of CO2?
Earth's atmosphere is incredibly well mixed. Consider the molecular weight of CO2: 44. The molecular weight of the CFC CCl2F2 is 122. So this relatively heavy CFC molecule can makes its way miles above the Earth and damage the ozone layer. Any CO2 created at the surface of the Earth will be evenly dispersed throughout the whole atmosphere.
Someone else already answered "yes" and "yes" to the above questions, but I wanted to show that with a bit of simple math the original poster could have answered this question themselves.
I teach programming and CCNA in a public high school, and I make extensive use of free and OS software. If possible, teachers should use OSS where ever they can. Myself I use Audacity, MediaWiki , Apache, MySQL, PHP, Samba, and you get the idea... By the way teachers: if your classroom is a computer lab, MediaWiki is a great way to distribute assignments and course notes!
I also make it clear to the students that much of the software I use in class is free to download. This way the students may use the software outside of class. This year is the first year I taught my web design students how to install Apache on windows. At least one student now has a church web site running from his home computer and uses dyndns.org to provide a hostname.
If you are a math teacher there is a piece of software that I have been playing with that I'm excited about. It's called SAGE and the package has really good 2 and 3-d graphing capabilities. Anyway, just plug F/OSS with your students in any way possible.
Yeah, that's where I got my first bunch of stickers from. The problem is the stickers fade so fast. Just a few weeks and the red color of the text is very faded! Maybe I just need to donate more money to the bioliteracy project and hope that different, more light fast inks are used now...
Because of my car's bumper stickers I'm frequently asked: "Do you believe in evolution?" Instead of just saying that I do, I try to raise their consciousness a bit by answering "No, I accept that evolution is the theory that best explains the evidence." This usually gives them a pause. Belief is often closely associated with faith, and faith is something that isn't necessary to accept evolution. Only evidence is needed and there is lots of that available.
I'm a teacher and my bumper sticker if very appropriate and funny in several different ways, it reads: "Leave no child behind - Teach Evolution." I wish I had another one as this one is very faded.
You'd think publishers would realize that easy access to their lyrics makes their product more valuable, not less...
Absolutely! Easy access to song lyrics has also caused me to buy new
music before. Numerous times when I'm listening to the radio in my car a
rockin' song will play and the ignorant announcer never tells who the band
was. My trick is to remember a phrase from the song and later type the phrase
and the work lryics into google. This is how I discovered the White Strips.
Charging for lyrics seems to be a way for the recording industry to continue
shooting themselves in the foot.
The war on (some) drugs is also responsible for making chemistry a difficult hobby to persue. Many common chemicals are hard to get now days, red phosphorus for instance. In some states buying glassware requires a permit and jumping through other hoops (Texas is one such state I've read about.)
I remember from reading biographies of of Thomas Edison and being amazed at the chemical lab he had as a teenager; it would be almost impossible for a kid now to learn and investigate chemistry like Edison did.
What a sorry state of affairs this is for the inquisitive.
I'd say that the amount of terror US gets is disproportionally small to the amount of terror US applies to some countries in the rest of the world.
Site please. I'd say your wrong.
Plenty of citations can be had by just looking at Latin America.
The history of U.S. involvement in these countries is awful, the
fact that the U.S. has tore down democracies in various Latin American countries and replaced their governments with dictators
is mind boggling. Isn't the U.S. supposed to support democracy?
Take the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua
during the late '60s and early '70s. Somoza was supported by the
U.S. with supplies, training for his contra troops, etc. Somoza
was a brutal dictator even worse than Noriega (Who the U.S. saw
fit to capture by invading Panama so that some control would be
retained by the U.S. in that country.)
Then there is also the military aid supplied to El Salvador during the 1980's.
Archbishop Oscar Romero sent a letter of plea to president Carter to not send more military aid to El Salvador because the aid would enable the government to continue oppressing the population. Aid was sent and Romero soon assassinated. Why would the U.S. send military aid to a country in such a case?
There are many reasons that different groups and countries hate
the U.S., and it isn't because of our "freedom".
I just can't buy that two animals can be bridged by so much time, yet the "old" creatures are still running about today, long after the presumed evolution processed us into the current beings. After this much time, wouldn't it mean the apes were decendant from another form, too?
I may be reading this wrong, but you seem to say that humans evolved from apes and that the "old" apes are still around. This is something that I have seen evolution deniers refer to often, and again I'm sorry if I've read too much onto what you wrote, it's not terribly clear.
Humans didn't evolve from apes. Chimps and humans though do share a common ancestor which is now extinct. To learn more about biology and evolution the talkorigins website is a good reference and springboard to other sites.
They already have the power to do these things without a warrant so long as they go back and get the warrant within 72 hours. This gives them the ability to act on a lead immediately without the hassle of waiting on a judge. They don't want to do even THAT much -- they want whatever they are doing to be SECRET and to be UNACCOUNTABLE for it. Ultimately, I believe we will find that it is going well beyond communications where one side is 'al qaeda' and the other side is in the U.S. I think if we get to see what they are REALLY doing, we'll find investigations against anti-war and anti-Bush organizations and their members.
This absolutely on the spot! I have not seen any major news
outlet utter this simple bit of insight. The only thing you
keep hearing from Bush's press secretary is that the wiretapping is "targeted". BS. I won't believe it until there is some proof that is it targeted. Oh, but the administration can't provide
any proof can they, because they never got any warrents to begin with! We have checks and balances in our governent for a reason Mr. President!
Your links don't preclude the possibility that the rise of drug use is related to the decline of religious adherence too...
I think it does. If religious adherence is related to the homicide rate then you would need to show some data where religious adherence numbers follow the inverse of the homicide rate. Is the decline of religious adherence something that is linear with time? That seems to be what you suggest but, looking at this graph religious adherence should have declined during 1920-33, then risen and experienced another decline starting in 1970.
Religious adherence sure doesn't seem to be a good explaination the homicide rate.
As long as you are tossing around correlations regarding violent crime, I have one that is better supported and actually has an identifiable cause. See these links:
I'm undecided about religions in general. Sure religious folks do good work, but what concerns me is that me is that (as far as most major religions go) religion allows a person to think irrationally about some subjects. This irrationally and poor thinking seems to also bleed across into other areas.
Here's an example. I was talking with a coworker and the subject of miracles came up. She mentioned that she knew a woman who was in a car wreck. This woman had a x-ray which showed an fracture in her arm. A few days later the woman returned for another x-ray and to have her arm set. The second x-ray showed no fracture. My coworker thought this was miracle.
My coworkers strong religious belief caused her to stop thinking. The contradictory x-rays were evidence of a miracle for her. I can think of many other explainations, besides a miracle, as to why the x-rays returned different results. But in this case religion intruded and thinking stopped.
Religion would be a great human motivator is it didn't impare logic and reason.
yeah that is until you unintentionally enter a real account number and someone somewhere is the victim... perhaps one of those people out there that you wanted to help you in your quest generates your CC or bank account number an end up with no money in your account or a maxed out CC.... moron!
I guess you don't know much about bank accounts or credit cards. What I'm doing is very safe. The likelihood of submitting a valid credit card number, expiration date, and verification number is very small. Especially, when you include an account holder name! Please get a clue.
I have a guilty pleasure, and I want to share it with everyone here.;)
I look forward to receiving a phishing email. In the past I would just delete the message, but no more! I always visit their web site and give all the information I can (all the info. I can make up that is!) I try my best the make the info look legit; the credit card, bank routing numbers, name, and address, everything!
What better way to bring attention to these crooks than to have them try to access fraudulent accounts? I guess they may have a way to filter out the bogus info, but I have fun making their work more difficult.;)
Lately, I noticed that the phishers web pages contain some javascript code to checksum the credit card numbers. This was a downer, until I d/l'ed a CC number generator! Oh, now my fun could continue. I hope that more people will take up my pastime.
The point is: no education is complete, especially in high school. We have to pick and choose what to teach, so why not leave out something that causes political and religious conflict?
I understand your point, and I would like for each student to have a good grounding in rational and skeptical thought. But I refuse to give in to the imbeciles trying to spread this nonsense. I'm sorry that some people's religious beliefs are so weak that they are threatened by science.
In our technological society the spread of pseudoscience needs to held in check when ever possible. This kind of baloney is a real danger. If people believe nonsense like this, what else will they be susceptible to? I wish that "The Demon Haunted World" was required reading in every school...
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the old testement was kept in the Ark and once every 49 years it was taken out and read in public then returned to the Ark until about 60 AD.
That you think there was an Ark and a global flood (I presume), casts anything else you put forth in very poor light. There was never a global flood and this has been known for 150 years. Come on! You're on Slashdot. You should know this!
Your skepticism is completely unwarranted; do you think that your brain is in a vat? The sensation of your body is just an assumption. Ooohh...
There is NO known law of physics that mandates that the speed of light be constant.
Yes there is: General Relativity
There is evidence that the speed of light must have been 300 million times faster than today, shortly after the "big bang".
There is no such evidence.
This assumption is never questioned and on the surface seems to make sense. However, there is no way to PROVE that this radioactivity clock, upon which the immense ages theorized, are based, is in fact invariant over the large spans of time.
That is not true. Every time radio-isotope dating is done, it matches the constant constant decay rate assumption. What we don't have is any evidence that would cause this assumption to be questioned. Do you have any?
One very good piece of evidence that the decay rates are constant is observations of supernova 1987A. This supernova occurred at a distance of ~160,000 light-years. Gamma rays from certain cobalt isotopes were observed to decline as predicted by the half-life that these isotopes are observed to have here on Earth. This is good evidence that as far back as 160,000 years ago the decay rates for these isotopes have not changed.
There is probably other evidence, but I'm familiar supernova 1987A fairly well. There is simply no reason to think that radioactive decay occured slower or faster in the past.
Does the increase of CO2 (which is far denser than oxygen or nitrogen) at relatively LOW altitudes (because of this density) have ANY effect on the upper atmosphere? In fact, is heat really retained at ALL by a thin surface layer of CO2?
Earth's atmosphere is incredibly well mixed. Consider the molecular weight of CO2: 44. The molecular weight of the CFC CCl2F2 is 122. So this relatively heavy CFC molecule can makes its way miles above the Earth and damage the ozone layer. Any CO2 created at the surface of the Earth will be evenly dispersed throughout the whole atmosphere.
Someone else already answered "yes" and "yes" to the above questions, but I wanted to show that with a bit of simple math the original poster could have answered this question themselves.
I also make it clear to the students that much of the software I use in class is free to download. This way the students may use the software outside of class. This year is the first year I taught my web design students how to install Apache on windows. At least one student now has a church web site running from his home computer and uses dyndns.org to provide a hostname.
If you are a math teacher there is a piece of software that I have been playing with that I'm excited about. It's called SAGE and the package has really good 2 and 3-d graphing capabilities. Anyway, just plug F/OSS with your students in any way possible.
Yeah, that's where I got my first bunch of stickers from. The problem is the stickers
fade so fast. Just a few weeks and the red color of the text is very faded! Maybe I
just need to donate more money to the bioliteracy project and hope that different, more
light fast inks are used now...
Because of my car's bumper stickers I'm frequently asked: "Do you believe in evolution?" Instead
of just saying that I do, I try to raise their consciousness a bit by answering "No, I accept
that evolution is the theory that best explains the evidence." This usually gives them a pause.
Belief is often closely associated with faith, and faith is something that isn't necessary to
accept evolution. Only evidence is needed and there is lots of that available.
I'm a teacher and my bumper sticker if very appropriate and funny in several different ways, it
reads: "Leave no child behind - Teach Evolution." I wish I had another one as this one is very
faded.
If the U.S. educational system is so horrible, then why do so many international students come here to study?
The whole educational system isn't horrible; only the secondary schools are. Like you said, the universities are doing just fine.
"Neocons" is a derogatory phrase ...
Sure it is, and it's used to denigrate people who hold that philosophy for very good reason: Neo-Conned!
You'd think publishers would realize that easy access to their lyrics makes their product more valuable, not less...
Absolutely! Easy access to song lyrics has also caused me to buy new music before. Numerous times when I'm listening to the radio in my car a rockin' song will play and the ignorant announcer never tells who the band was. My trick is to remember a phrase from the song and later type the phrase and the work lryics into google. This is how I discovered the White Strips.
Charging for lyrics seems to be a way for the recording industry to continue shooting themselves in the foot.
The war on (some) drugs is also responsible for making chemistry a difficult hobby to persue. Many common chemicals are hard to get now days, red phosphorus for instance. In some states buying glassware requires a permit and jumping through other hoops (Texas is one such state I've read about.)
I remember from reading biographies of of Thomas Edison and being amazed at the chemical lab he had as a teenager; it would be almost impossible for a kid now to learn and investigate chemistry like Edison did.
What a sorry state of affairs this is for the inquisitive.
I'd say that the amount of terror US gets is disproportionally small to the amount of terror US applies to some countries in the rest of the world.
Site please. I'd say your wrong.
Plenty of citations can be had by just looking at Latin America. The history of U.S. involvement in these countries is awful, the fact that the U.S. has tore down democracies in various Latin American countries and replaced their governments with dictators is mind boggling. Isn't the U.S. supposed to support democracy?
Take the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua during the late '60s and early '70s. Somoza was supported by the U.S. with supplies, training for his contra troops, etc. Somoza was a brutal dictator even worse than Noriega (Who the U.S. saw fit to capture by invading Panama so that some control would be retained by the U.S. in that country.)
Then there is also the military aid supplied to El Salvador during the 1980's. Archbishop Oscar Romero sent a letter of plea to president Carter to not send more military aid to El Salvador because the aid would enable the government to continue oppressing the population. Aid was sent and Romero soon assassinated. Why would the U.S. send military aid to a country in such a case?
There are many reasons that different groups and countries hate the U.S., and it isn't because of our "freedom".
I just can't buy that two animals can be bridged by so much time, yet the "old" creatures are still running about today, long after the presumed evolution processed us into the current beings. After this much time, wouldn't it mean the apes were decendant from another form, too?
I may be reading this wrong, but you seem to say that humans evolved from apes and that the "old" apes are still around. This is something that I have seen evolution deniers refer to often, and again I'm sorry if I've read too much onto what you wrote, it's not terribly clear.
Humans didn't evolve from apes. Chimps and humans though do share a common ancestor which is now extinct. To learn more about biology and evolution the talkorigins website is a good reference and springboard to other sites.
Here's the problem:
They already have the power to do these things without a warrant so long as they go back and get the warrant within 72 hours. This gives them the ability to act on a lead immediately without the hassle of waiting on a judge. They don't want to do even THAT much -- they want whatever they are doing to be SECRET and to be UNACCOUNTABLE for it. Ultimately, I believe we will find that it is going well beyond communications where one side is 'al qaeda' and the other side is in the U.S. I think if we get to see what they are REALLY doing, we'll find investigations against anti-war and anti-Bush organizations and their members.
This absolutely on the spot! I have not seen any major news outlet utter this simple bit of insight. The only thing you keep hearing from Bush's press secretary is that the wiretapping is "targeted". BS. I won't believe it until there is some proof that is it targeted. Oh, but the administration can't provide any proof can they, because they never got any warrents to begin with! We have checks and balances in our governent for a reason Mr. President!
Your links don't preclude the possibility that the rise of drug use is related to the decline of religious adherence too...
I think it does. If religious adherence is related to the homicide rate then you would need to show some data where religious adherence numbers follow the inverse of the homicide rate. Is the decline of religious adherence something that is linear with time? That seems to be what you suggest but, looking at this graph religious adherence should have declined during 1920-33, then risen and experienced another decline starting in 1970.
Religious adherence sure doesn't seem to be a good explaination the homicide rate.
As long as you are tossing around correlations regarding violent crime, I have one that is better supported and actually has an identifiable cause. See these links:
Crime
Crime and the Drug War
It is no stretch to say that crime is more closely associated with the differenct prohibitions than with lessing religious adherence.
I'm undecided about religions in general. Sure religious folks do good work, but what concerns me is that me is that (as far as most major religions go) religion allows a person to think irrationally about some subjects. This irrationally and poor thinking seems to also bleed across into other areas.
Here's an example. I was talking with a coworker and the subject of miracles came up. She mentioned that she knew a woman who was in a car wreck. This woman had a x-ray which showed an fracture in her arm. A few days later the woman returned for another x-ray and to have her arm set. The second x-ray showed no fracture. My coworker thought this was miracle.
My coworkers strong religious belief caused her to stop thinking. The contradictory x-rays were evidence of a miracle for her. I can think of many other explainations, besides a miracle, as to why the x-rays returned different results. But in this case religion intruded and thinking stopped.
Religion would be a great human motivator is it didn't impare logic and reason.
Oops, I was mistaken! :)
I also thought it was cool that the default computer name back then was "Dark Star", which is a Grateful Dead song for those that don't know.
I may be mistaken, but I thought the use of the name darkstar refered to the movie Darkstar. BTW, every geek should see this movie! It is hilarious!!
yeah that is until you unintentionally enter a real account number and someone somewhere is the victim... perhaps one of those people out there that you wanted to help you in your quest generates your CC or bank account number an end up with no money in your account or a maxed out CC.... moron!
I guess you don't know much about bank accounts or credit cards. What I'm doing is very safe. The likelihood of submitting a valid credit card number, expiration date, and verification number is very small. Especially, when you include an account holder name! Please get a clue.
I have a guilty pleasure, and I want to share it with everyone here. ;)
I look forward to receiving a phishing email. In the past I would just delete the message, but no more! I always visit their web site and give all the information I can (all the info. I can make up that is!) I try my best the make the info look legit; the credit card, bank routing numbers, name, and address, everything!
What better way to bring attention to these crooks than to have them try to access fraudulent accounts? I guess they may have a way to filter out the bogus info, but I have fun making their work more difficult. ;)
Lately, I noticed that the phishers web pages contain some javascript code to checksum the credit card numbers. This was a downer, until I d/l'ed a CC number generator! Oh, now my fun could continue. I hope that more people will take up my pastime.
If we don't teach creationism in schools, where are kids going to learn about it?
Creationism is covered very well in Michael Shermer's book "Why People Believe Weird Things".
:)
The point is: no education is complete, especially in high school. We have to pick and choose what to teach, so why not leave out something that causes political and religious conflict?
I understand your point, and I would like for each student to have a good grounding in rational and skeptical thought. But I refuse to give in to the imbeciles trying to spread this nonsense. I'm sorry that some people's religious beliefs are so weak that they are threatened by science.
In our technological society the spread of pseudoscience needs to held in check when ever possible. This kind of baloney is a real danger. If people believe nonsense like this, what else will they be susceptible to? I wish that "The Demon Haunted World" was required reading in every school...