There is a problem in the definition of human which you use in your argument. You are not using it correctly. There is zero doubt that those "one month old blob[s]" are in fact human. What one may argue is whether they constitute a person. Human persons have rights under the law. This is an important distinction in the argument. No doubt the root here is that the Pope believes that such human life, even at the instant of conception constitutes a human person and therefore is automatically granted all the rights of a person post birth. You clearly don't believe this. But each of said blobs are in fact human.
The sad thing is that it really depends on which dictionary one bases their research. Merriam-Webster does not include it, nor does the Oxford English. This corresponds of course well when comparing stupid as adjective with beautifer for instance. No one says "beautifuller" it is more beautiful or the most beautiful, in kind, it is more stupid or the most stupid, not stupider or stupidest. The inclusion of said words in the American lexicon is based on colloquial use from slang which trickled into mainstream use, not proper, not true English, but then, I'm Canadian and we base our English on the British system.
No one will end up being right on this one because we can both default to our respective sources and declare that the other is clearly wrong. I prefer to avoid stupider and in fact, up North here, I have never heard it used outside an elementary school yard.
You may be serious but you used the word "stupider" which um...just so you know, doesn't exist in the English language. I'm a Bible believer (not a literalist mind you, contextual metaphors and all that), yet I know not to use the word: "stupider." Perhaps before you point the finger and throw away your money, you may want to educate yourself first.
Unfortunately your comment makes little sense. Why would a movie lose its appeal but a music album would not? How often have people remarked that they are sick of hearing the same song played over and over again on the radio, or that they have overplayed an album. In my circle of friends these types of comments come up enough to warrant further investigation as to whether or not rewatching or relistening holds more or less value.
Regardless of the erroneous logic, I actually agree with you from a personal standpoint. There are few movies that I can rewatch umpteen times (Star Wars, LOTRs, Sawshank, Wallstreet are but a few that I can and have) but a good many CDs (I own 1500+) I can listen and relisten over and over and over without tiring much. But then, I'm more of a music lover than a movie lover. Transplant me for someone who prefers movies and their sense of value shifts towards DVDs rather than CDs and to boot, they get the better deal, cheaper DVD often with the soundtrack and special features. I get at best 45 min of good music. YMMV is the catch phrase to use here.
It isn't clearly wrong and this is a major issue worldwide. It is "clearly wrong" in the eyes of the RIAA and their ilk, but not so to a good bunch of people, downloaders or not. Also, it is not harmful to an industry at large (say in this instance, the music industry) what is is harmful to the near racketeering-like setup the RIAA has with their "clients." The RIAA can no longer use their strongarm tactics to leverage ownership of works they never created. This liberation of the artists is AWESOME and should be encouraged so that it might foster growth of new art, high art vs. the rehashed crap the RIAA is trying to pump out day after day. A law is only as good as the value it upholds. If there is no value behind a law, it is time to abrogate it. Much of copyright law needs to be rewritten and many artists recognize that the service oriented aspect of the industry is where the money is, not in the production and manufacturing of goods. Evolve or die. Long live Capitalism.
Well life was we know it would be unique to Earth. This interpretation of the Genesis does not in any way exclude life that would be similar to us in any way elsewhere. These aliens are clearly not human, hence humans remain unique while simultaneously existing with other humanoid intelligent creatures.
Major Christian religions (Roman Catholic, Orthodox-Catholic, Anglican/Episcopalian) are the major Christian religions along with the Lutheran and Wesleyan Churches. World-wide here...Baptists are quite a small faction in the overall number of Christians. Catholics = 1 billion, of the other 1 billion Christians, those mentioned above encompass over 750 000 million more, leaving the dramatic number of American-centric denominations well outnumbered. The consistent teaching of the 5 major churches would not argue against the possibility of extraterrestrial life. They would however teach that the Triune God is there Triune God too.
Good Luck with that. Go out and start a telecommunications company. Go find the venture capital, drop your own copper, your own fiber. Hire the lawyers needed to get the FCC to permit you to jump state borders. Oh, you can't find the 20 billion dollars this will require? But you stated that you could start a company that could offer the exact same service with privacy. No no you can't. This is exactly why these companies continue to exist today. They have bought their security. Laws are in place to protect them.
Now with something like a retail outlet, sure it is possible to overtake them, but if you start something in NYC and I'm in the middle of Arizona, it will take perhaps a decade or more before your mythical company can come and save me from the nasty retail overlords that dominate my realm.
You might be able to help out a few but the many would still be suffering. It will take a massive revolt the likes of the civil war to overturn all the laws that protect these gargantuan companies. So sure, the little companies abusing their customers may fizzle out, but the real abusers, the big bullies will just buy their way out of the mess.
This is a completely invalid argument. Many companies realize their customers have no choice (save for litigation up through the supreme court via the clogged arteries of political and bureaucratic mayhem).
Think telecoms. I sign up for a service. I have to give a certain amount of information for service to my home of course as well as billing etc. Said company gets an enticing offer by a few marketing companies for their client list and any semblance of privacy has been taken from us without our consent, or deceptively with it, as consent was granted signing the contract for the service. Said consent was buried deep in the 6pt font on the back of Form B line 492.
How about credit card companies? Or major retail outlets? Many of these places offer reward cards or credit cards and the lists are sold off to other companies to use at their leisure. An old professor of mine used to have a Shopper's Drug Mart Optimum card. Shopper's Drug Mart is a massive chain in Canada (maybe in the US too?). Her son has a very rare disorder that requires a cocktail of drugs supplemented with high amounts of vitamin C. She started receiving snail mail spam regarding fresh fruit direct to her door as well as garbage mail from a competing pharmaceutical company regarding some meds. She only shopped at Shopper's and she always used her optimum points card. Outraged by this, she contacted the company who admitted that they do sell (or did at that time, about 10 years ago) their client lists to some "select and reputable companies."
Yeah sure right. They sell to whoever will pay large. When it comes to customer privacy, so long as the company realizes they have a stranglehold on a market, they can do what they want because either there is no competition, therefore no alternative for the consumer, or that their market dominance is such that even if they do lose a bunch of customers or have to deal with some legal issues, the benefits/profits far outweigh these marginal hiccups.
There are aspects of privacy one should not expect to retain (walking in public and not being noticed, or photographed etc) it is quite a different problem entirely when a company starts selling off or divulging information. Any of these releases of info should be opt-in only. Heck, in a lot of ways I believe a phone book should be the same way vs. paying to opt-out with an unlisted number.
Did you have a job when you were a teenager? I did, and so do many many teenagers. If they work for their money should they not be permitted to spend it on what they want? Perhaps with some gentle parental guidance they may want to save some or a good bit of it, but spending money on things like CDs (and comics as I did) was good part of the reason I did work as a teen. I worked to buy myself stuff so I would not be a burden on my parents and moreover because I knew they would never give me enough money for all the things I did want.
One such group or perhaps a few do come out of the woodwork and it is part of their "act." They become popular, because they are "cute" and can sing and can dance. The labels observe the popularity and decide that the market can tolerate 100 of these bands. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
It is the same with any popular act. Instead of trying to discover some fresh artists they go with the "safe bet" and mass produce the over-produced clones in order to pad their wallets. As a business strategy is may seem sound. Some may argue that it even works. The problem is that because they are not going out and really cultivating new and different acts and are using other methods to exclude such music on our airwaves (payola, Clear Channel monopoly etc) we don't get to know if other acts would be as profitable for them or even more so. So their safe bet may be slitting their throat and many observing the trend in declining music sales points to this.
Right, because everyone starts out in this situation...working for minimum wage. No one is ever laid off and can't immediately find a better paying job. No of course not, not in the US of A wherein outsourcing, natural disasters etc never ever ever occur. Bloody hell man, just because someone is poor and has children does not automatically make them 1) idiots 2) selfish 3) irresponsible.
I would agree with your statement. I'm not American and in my family we have 4. One 4th gen 60 GB, which is my main unit, a 30 GB 5th gen which is my wife's and then I have a shuffle for the gym and a nano for on the go or for sleeping. I know I'm a bit OC when it comes to compartmentalizing the use of my electronics (it is not just with my music then) but I can think of quite a few families (I've just him my 30's) wherein there exists more than one iPod. 100 million sounds very large but considering the entire population of the world and the fact that some have more than one and others tend to upgrade their units and sell the old ones to friends on on Ebay...100 million units isn't shocking.
Is the word on the street that the PDA functionality will be greatly inhibited? I'm very interested in a PDA + phone that works flawless with my Apple laptop. To this day, nothing seems to work flawlessly. I have/had high hopes for the iPhone, mainly because it is using OS X, but if the PDA functionality is an afterthought only...then I may have to pass. Will there be an input device? (stylus for instance?) Can I integrate with Calendar, Mail, Address Book AND can I also open up Word docs, write my own if need be etc?
Funny, if you go back a few more centuries, folks in power were doing this to Christians just for being Christian. It isn't about what one believes in, it comes down to who is in power and how they exercise it. Sadly, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So when a bunch of Christians happened to be at the helm of Europe, if anyone was trying to combat them in even the mildest of ways, they were punished, and sometimes this meant death. The fallacy so many love adhere to is that that somehow all Christians in 1000 AD or so were murdering crazies. Of course this is completely erroneous. But it makes for a great uninformed point that plays to the incompetence ignorance of many.
No, he is explicitly stating that because he didn't send it back precisely because it was not on the list is a good thing. It means, that if in fact it was the battery that failed (and/or simply some other part of the Dell) that his case is so much stronger.
Tenebrae Quake http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/ has this problem. Bodies (or at least some) become immovable, but indestructible. Makes for an annoyance more than a "feature." Still, it is a wonderful mod of Quake and has me playing the game nightly.
Yes, yes I have and he was attempting to argue from philosophy in many sections where he clearly was inept. the point isn't that I myself think he failed, because you wouldn't take my opinion to heart unless I started flinging around my letters and even then you would likely dismiss because you view what I say as biased because I believe in God. However, when fellow atheists who are scientists criticize him of the very thing I am criticizing him about, you should take notice. Once again, I have no problems with the argument that there is no God, or someone trying to prove their point using math, physics and evolutionary biology. However, when one attempts to step into the realm of philosophy and his clearly incapable but does a good enough job to convince the uneducated (at least in that field) I take notice. This is and has been my point all along. He stops arguing clearly from science and attempts to jump over into a whole other demain and in so doing, reveals his hand (conscience or not) of elevating science to the status of a religion. So, instead of following the ramblings of a clear idiot (in this field) one should focus on other, better, adept and learned men. Be an atheist, be proud to be one, but if one puts forward arguments, leave Dawkins out of it, he went loony long ago.
The irony is that I never once not once was defending my position that I believe in God at all. You seemed to jump on that bandwagon early on with an insult to my belief instead of sticking with the topic at hand. Rather than deal with the fact that Dawkins fails at proving his point, you instead go directly for my throat claiming I'm a nutjob for believe in an unlikely figure. I never brought up the existence of God at all, I merely stated that Dawkins doens't prove the inexistence of God and worse, his rants are akin to a religious zealot. He raises science to something that it is not, he raises it to the level of a faith system and he the primary voice. He is an uninformed zealot. That was my point all along. Stop dodging the argument with ad hominums.
If this were a debate about whether God exists or not, I would have never begun discussing. However, debating a guy with significant clout in one field who spouts off just enough to make himself seem well read and well informed to the ignorant masses but then with even a cursary glance at the fields he is dabbling in, one quickly can recognize that he is full of shit. His ultimate stance - there is no God - is fine, it is the way he goes about it and the rhetoric and other tactics he horriblty misuses that is laughable. But once again, these points you missed, continued to miss and I doubt you will actually grasp this late in the game. There is no point in going on about this, you see him as a knowledgable guru taking the fight to the front lines. Great, good for you, stick with your ignorance. I'd rather read the works of real atheists trying to argue a point vs. the pseudo-atheists who missed the boat and have turned science into a religion. Irony at its best.
I'm not the only one that does: Penrose, Davies, Barbour, Polkinghorne, Peacocke, McAlister etc. etc. Of course you would not be so bold as to proclaim yourself smarter/wiser than these guys, some of which (like Davies) are at the cutting edge of physics. Now then we also have solid atheists like Krauss and Baltimore, both leading scientists, who forcefully criticize Dawkings for being an extremist, crossing the line from advocate, to preacher to religious zealot. Yet, you have no come back from these points you simply continue to insult me. Of course, my imaginary friend and your vacuous hypotheses are equally plausible explanations, in fact, thus far, even Dawkins is unable to fully combate Aquinas' five proofs, let alone the other 24 major arguments for the existence of God. Once again, believe what you want to believe, but when you put your faith in your own personal saviour remember that Dawkins is quite a failure in the field of philosophy and you might want to choose your leader more wisely.
And therein lies your problem. You apparently have little to no philosophical background and as such have no foundation for evaluating whether he is capable of putting forward valid philosophical arguments or not. He is wonderful at rhetoric and hyperbole but he fails miserably at any real academic evaluation of his primary thesis. The fact that he glosses over the fact that many prominent scientists are also "faith-sufferers" indicates that he is writing as a prophet and not as an academic. I urge you to go through the wiki regarding that book, read some of the quick criticisms and then follow the links to the indepth analyses on how incompetent Dawkins really was with this recent book. I have nothing against atheists, but I laugh hard when atheists such as Dawkins transforms non-belief into a full on religion as he does. Science is something other for him. He has lost sight of the capabilities of science and has mapped his own ideals, own vision as to what science should be. Science can't and never will be able to provide the whys or the structured analysis of morals and values because it is not within its scope. Dawkins knows this but hopes otherwise and spews out his verbal diahrea to the masses hoping to draw those that don't understand this, over to naturalism, humanism and atheism. There are far more adept atheists than he. Once again, he's a fruit loop when discussing this. So he's a good evolutionary biologist, but he's no polymath that is for sure and he should keep his philosophical musings in the closet, until he has more than a grade 11 understanding of some of those concepts.
Indeed, however, Dawkins goes far beyond common atheism in his war on religion and his fanaticism regarding science as the absolute anchor of all things including a moral and value system is beyond ridiculous in its lack of scientific foundation. Other atheist/humanist scientists refute much of what Dawkins declares as fact which of course is not although he so hopes it is or will be. Check out his wiki then go and read up on those that criticize him. I'm not refering to theologians or "faith-sufferers" but atheist/humanist scientists. Dawkins is a freak show with a big ego, nothing more.
Funny, as much as I "do go on" you are right there to spew your own religious fanaticism. Dawkins being my favourite whipping boy, is about the biggest religious fanatic of them all. But I'll let him feel very proud of his "meme" coined term while I openly mock the irony that he himself has fallen victim to the very definition of the word. But then we are all gods among men now aren't we:)
Considering you know nothing of the GEM, your comment is once again completely ignorant. Go read Lonergan's methodoly then come back and state that. Theology may well be "reason informed by faith" but before the "faith" part comes in, there is a whole lotta reasoning which requires methodology. The idea that it is untestable absolutely is completely untrue. The fact that at the moment it is untested completely is true, but then so is much of physics. The idea of the "big bang" "string theory" it is all assumptions all untestable. The Big Bang itself from a singularity now being challenged etc etc. All of the "beginnings" are nothing but one faith system against another. One may adhere vehemently to natural science and reason or one may adhere to a monotheistic religion or a patheon of gods etc, but at the end of the day, no one system is necessary better than the other at explaining THE beginning and moreover, they whys, the meanings and the values. For this reason Pastafarianism was started and is as reasonable as the big bang, the big crunch, perpetual oscillation, God, Alah, Zeus and his posse or a stack of turtles all the way down and us a mere portion of undigested food.
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There is a problem in the definition of human which you use in your argument. You are not using it correctly. There is zero doubt that those "one month old blob[s]" are in fact human. What one may argue is whether they constitute a person. Human persons have rights under the law. This is an important distinction in the argument. No doubt the root here is that the Pope believes that such human life, even at the instant of conception constitutes a human person and therefore is automatically granted all the rights of a person post birth. You clearly don't believe this. But each of said blobs are in fact human.
"this corresponds of course well when comparing stupid as adjective with beautifer for instance. "
of course I meant "beautifuller" not beautifer, damn fingers working faster than the brain!
The sad thing is that it really depends on which dictionary one bases their research. Merriam-Webster does not include it, nor does the Oxford English. This corresponds of course well when comparing stupid as adjective with beautifer for instance. No one says "beautifuller" it is more beautiful or the most beautiful, in kind, it is more stupid or the most stupid, not stupider or stupidest. The inclusion of said words in the American lexicon is based on colloquial use from slang which trickled into mainstream use, not proper, not true English, but then, I'm Canadian and we base our English on the British system.
No one will end up being right on this one because we can both default to our respective sources and declare that the other is clearly wrong. I prefer to avoid stupider and in fact, up North here, I have never heard it used outside an elementary school yard.
You may be serious but you used the word "stupider" which um...just so you know, doesn't exist in the English language. I'm a Bible believer (not a literalist mind you, contextual metaphors and all that), yet I know not to use the word: "stupider." Perhaps before you point the finger and throw away your money, you may want to educate yourself first.
Unfortunately your comment makes little sense. Why would a movie lose its appeal but a music album would not? How often have people remarked that they are sick of hearing the same song played over and over again on the radio, or that they have overplayed an album. In my circle of friends these types of comments come up enough to warrant further investigation as to whether or not rewatching or relistening holds more or less value.
Regardless of the erroneous logic, I actually agree with you from a personal standpoint. There are few movies that I can rewatch umpteen times (Star Wars, LOTRs, Sawshank, Wallstreet are but a few that I can and have) but a good many CDs (I own 1500+) I can listen and relisten over and over and over without tiring much. But then, I'm more of a music lover than a movie lover. Transplant me for someone who prefers movies and their sense of value shifts towards DVDs rather than CDs and to boot, they get the better deal, cheaper DVD often with the soundtrack and special features. I get at best 45 min of good music. YMMV is the catch phrase to use here.
It isn't clearly wrong and this is a major issue worldwide. It is "clearly wrong" in the eyes of the RIAA and their ilk, but not so to a good bunch of people, downloaders or not. Also, it is not harmful to an industry at large (say in this instance, the music industry) what is is harmful to the near racketeering-like setup the RIAA has with their "clients." The RIAA can no longer use their strongarm tactics to leverage ownership of works they never created. This liberation of the artists is AWESOME and should be encouraged so that it might foster growth of new art, high art vs. the rehashed crap the RIAA is trying to pump out day after day. A law is only as good as the value it upholds. If there is no value behind a law, it is time to abrogate it. Much of copyright law needs to be rewritten and many artists recognize that the service oriented aspect of the industry is where the money is, not in the production and manufacturing of goods. Evolve or die. Long live Capitalism.
Well life was we know it would be unique to Earth. This interpretation of the Genesis does not in any way exclude life that would be similar to us in any way elsewhere. These aliens are clearly not human, hence humans remain unique while simultaneously existing with other humanoid intelligent creatures.
Major Christian religions (Roman Catholic, Orthodox-Catholic, Anglican/Episcopalian) are the major Christian religions along with the Lutheran and Wesleyan Churches. World-wide here...Baptists are quite a small faction in the overall number of Christians. Catholics = 1 billion, of the other 1 billion Christians, those mentioned above encompass over 750 000 million more, leaving the dramatic number of American-centric denominations well outnumbered. The consistent teaching of the 5 major churches would not argue against the possibility of extraterrestrial life. They would however teach that the Triune God is there Triune God too.
Good Luck with that. Go out and start a telecommunications company. Go find the venture capital, drop your own copper, your own fiber. Hire the lawyers needed to get the FCC to permit you to jump state borders. Oh, you can't find the 20 billion dollars this will require? But you stated that you could start a company that could offer the exact same service with privacy. No no you can't. This is exactly why these companies continue to exist today. They have bought their security. Laws are in place to protect them.
Now with something like a retail outlet, sure it is possible to overtake them, but if you start something in NYC and I'm in the middle of Arizona, it will take perhaps a decade or more before your mythical company can come and save me from the nasty retail overlords that dominate my realm.
You might be able to help out a few but the many would still be suffering. It will take a massive revolt the likes of the civil war to overturn all the laws that protect these gargantuan companies. So sure, the little companies abusing their customers may fizzle out, but the real abusers, the big bullies will just buy their way out of the mess.
This is a completely invalid argument. Many companies realize their customers have no choice (save for litigation up through the supreme court via the clogged arteries of political and bureaucratic mayhem).
Think telecoms. I sign up for a service. I have to give a certain amount of information for service to my home of course as well as billing etc. Said company gets an enticing offer by a few marketing companies for their client list and any semblance of privacy has been taken from us without our consent, or deceptively with it, as consent was granted signing the contract for the service. Said consent was buried deep in the 6pt font on the back of Form B line 492.
How about credit card companies? Or major retail outlets? Many of these places offer reward cards or credit cards and the lists are sold off to other companies to use at their leisure. An old professor of mine used to have a Shopper's Drug Mart Optimum card. Shopper's Drug Mart is a massive chain in Canada (maybe in the US too?). Her son has a very rare disorder that requires a cocktail of drugs supplemented with high amounts of vitamin C. She started receiving snail mail spam regarding fresh fruit direct to her door as well as garbage mail from a competing pharmaceutical company regarding some meds. She only shopped at Shopper's and she always used her optimum points card. Outraged by this, she contacted the company who admitted that they do sell (or did at that time, about 10 years ago) their client lists to some "select and reputable companies."
Yeah sure right. They sell to whoever will pay large. When it comes to customer privacy, so long as the company realizes they have a stranglehold on a market, they can do what they want because either there is no competition, therefore no alternative for the consumer, or that their market dominance is such that even if they do lose a bunch of customers or have to deal with some legal issues, the benefits/profits far outweigh these marginal hiccups.
There are aspects of privacy one should not expect to retain (walking in public and not being noticed, or photographed etc) it is quite a different problem entirely when a company starts selling off or divulging information. Any of these releases of info should be opt-in only. Heck, in a lot of ways I believe a phone book should be the same way vs. paying to opt-out with an unlisted number.
Did you have a job when you were a teenager? I did, and so do many many teenagers. If they work for their money should they not be permitted to spend it on what they want? Perhaps with some gentle parental guidance they may want to save some or a good bit of it, but spending money on things like CDs (and comics as I did) was good part of the reason I did work as a teen. I worked to buy myself stuff so I would not be a burden on my parents and moreover because I knew they would never give me enough money for all the things I did want.
One such group or perhaps a few do come out of the woodwork and it is part of their "act." They become popular, because they are "cute" and can sing and can dance. The labels observe the popularity and decide that the market can tolerate 100 of these bands. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
It is the same with any popular act. Instead of trying to discover some fresh artists they go with the "safe bet" and mass produce the over-produced clones in order to pad their wallets. As a business strategy is may seem sound. Some may argue that it even works. The problem is that because they are not going out and really cultivating new and different acts and are using other methods to exclude such music on our airwaves (payola, Clear Channel monopoly etc) we don't get to know if other acts would be as profitable for them or even more so. So their safe bet may be slitting their throat and many observing the trend in declining music sales points to this.
Right, because everyone starts out in this situation...working for minimum wage. No one is ever laid off and can't immediately find a better paying job. No of course not, not in the US of A wherein outsourcing, natural disasters etc never ever ever occur. Bloody hell man, just because someone is poor and has children does not automatically make them 1) idiots 2) selfish 3) irresponsible.
I would agree with your statement. I'm not American and in my family we have 4. One 4th gen 60 GB, which is my main unit, a 30 GB 5th gen which is my wife's and then I have a shuffle for the gym and a nano for on the go or for sleeping. I know I'm a bit OC when it comes to compartmentalizing the use of my electronics (it is not just with my music then) but I can think of quite a few families (I've just him my 30's) wherein there exists more than one iPod. 100 million sounds very large but considering the entire population of the world and the fact that some have more than one and others tend to upgrade their units and sell the old ones to friends on on Ebay...100 million units isn't shocking.
Is the word on the street that the PDA functionality will be greatly inhibited? I'm very interested in a PDA + phone that works flawless with my Apple laptop. To this day, nothing seems to work flawlessly. I have/had high hopes for the iPhone, mainly because it is using OS X, but if the PDA functionality is an afterthought only...then I may have to pass. Will there be an input device? (stylus for instance?) Can I integrate with Calendar, Mail, Address Book AND can I also open up Word docs, write my own if need be etc?
Ah, I see that now, misread unlikely for likely. His list is definitely inconsistent and my remark was based on a faulty assumption.
Funny, if you go back a few more centuries, folks in power were doing this to Christians just for being Christian. It isn't about what one believes in, it comes down to who is in power and how they exercise it. Sadly, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So when a bunch of Christians happened to be at the helm of Europe, if anyone was trying to combat them in even the mildest of ways, they were punished, and sometimes this meant death. The fallacy so many love adhere to is that that somehow all Christians in 1000 AD or so were murdering crazies. Of course this is completely erroneous. But it makes for a great uninformed point that plays to the incompetence ignorance of many.
No, he is explicitly stating that because he didn't send it back precisely because it was not on the list is a good thing. It means, that if in fact it was the battery that failed (and/or simply some other part of the Dell) that his case is so much stronger.
Tenebrae Quake http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/ has this problem. Bodies (or at least some) become immovable, but indestructible. Makes for an annoyance more than a "feature." Still, it is a wonderful mod of Quake and has me playing the game nightly.
Yes, yes I have and he was attempting to argue from philosophy in many sections where he clearly was inept. the point isn't that I myself think he failed, because you wouldn't take my opinion to heart unless I started flinging around my letters and even then you would likely dismiss because you view what I say as biased because I believe in God. However, when fellow atheists who are scientists criticize him of the very thing I am criticizing him about, you should take notice. Once again, I have no problems with the argument that there is no God, or someone trying to prove their point using math, physics and evolutionary biology. However, when one attempts to step into the realm of philosophy and his clearly incapable but does a good enough job to convince the uneducated (at least in that field) I take notice. This is and has been my point all along. He stops arguing clearly from science and attempts to jump over into a whole other demain and in so doing, reveals his hand (conscience or not) of elevating science to the status of a religion. So, instead of following the ramblings of a clear idiot (in this field) one should focus on other, better, adept and learned men. Be an atheist, be proud to be one, but if one puts forward arguments, leave Dawkins out of it, he went loony long ago.
The irony is that I never once not once was defending my position that I believe in God at all. You seemed to jump on that bandwagon early on with an insult to my belief instead of sticking with the topic at hand. Rather than deal with the fact that Dawkins fails at proving his point, you instead go directly for my throat claiming I'm a nutjob for believe in an unlikely figure. I never brought up the existence of God at all, I merely stated that Dawkins doens't prove the inexistence of God and worse, his rants are akin to a religious zealot. He raises science to something that it is not, he raises it to the level of a faith system and he the primary voice. He is an uninformed zealot. That was my point all along. Stop dodging the argument with ad hominums.
If this were a debate about whether God exists or not, I would have never begun discussing. However, debating a guy with significant clout in one field who spouts off just enough to make himself seem well read and well informed to the ignorant masses but then with even a cursary glance at the fields he is dabbling in, one quickly can recognize that he is full of shit. His ultimate stance - there is no God - is fine, it is the way he goes about it and the rhetoric and other tactics he horriblty misuses that is laughable. But once again, these points you missed, continued to miss and I doubt you will actually grasp this late in the game. There is no point in going on about this, you see him as a knowledgable guru taking the fight to the front lines. Great, good for you, stick with your ignorance. I'd rather read the works of real atheists trying to argue a point vs. the pseudo-atheists who missed the boat and have turned science into a religion. Irony at its best.
I'm not the only one that does: Penrose, Davies, Barbour, Polkinghorne, Peacocke, McAlister etc. etc. Of course you would not be so bold as to proclaim yourself smarter/wiser than these guys, some of which (like Davies) are at the cutting edge of physics. Now then we also have solid atheists like Krauss and Baltimore, both leading scientists, who forcefully criticize Dawkings for being an extremist, crossing the line from advocate, to preacher to religious zealot. Yet, you have no come back from these points you simply continue to insult me. Of course, my imaginary friend and your vacuous hypotheses are equally plausible explanations, in fact, thus far, even Dawkins is unable to fully combate Aquinas' five proofs, let alone the other 24 major arguments for the existence of God. Once again, believe what you want to believe, but when you put your faith in your own personal saviour remember that Dawkins is quite a failure in the field of philosophy and you might want to choose your leader more wisely.
And therein lies your problem. You apparently have little to no philosophical background and as such have no foundation for evaluating whether he is capable of putting forward valid philosophical arguments or not. He is wonderful at rhetoric and hyperbole but
he fails miserably at any real academic evaluation of his primary thesis. The fact that he glosses over the fact that many prominent scientists are also "faith-sufferers" indicates that he is writing as a prophet and not as an academic. I urge you to go through the wiki regarding that book, read some of the quick criticisms and then follow the links to the indepth analyses on how incompetent Dawkins really was with this recent book. I have nothing against atheists, but I laugh hard when atheists such as Dawkins transforms non-belief into a full on religion as he does. Science is something other for him. He has lost sight of the capabilities of science and has mapped his own ideals, own vision as to what science should be. Science can't and never will be able to provide the whys or the structured analysis of morals and values because it is not within its scope. Dawkins knows this but hopes otherwise and spews out his verbal diahrea to the masses hoping to draw those that don't understand this, over to naturalism, humanism and atheism. There are far more adept atheists than he. Once again, he's a fruit loop when discussing this. So he's a good evolutionary biologist, but he's no polymath that is for sure and he should keep his philosophical musings in the closet, until he has more than a grade 11 understanding of some of those concepts.
Indeed, however, Dawkins goes far beyond common atheism in his war on religion and his fanaticism regarding science as the absolute anchor of all things including a moral and value system is beyond ridiculous in its lack of scientific foundation. Other atheist/humanist scientists refute much of what Dawkins declares as fact which of course is not although he so hopes it is or will be. Check out his wiki then go and read up on those that criticize him. I'm not refering to theologians or "faith-sufferers" but atheist/humanist scientists. Dawkins is a freak show with a big ego, nothing more.
Funny, as much as I "do go on" you are right there to spew your own religious fanaticism. Dawkins being my favourite whipping boy, is about the biggest religious fanatic of them all. But I'll let him feel very proud of his "meme" coined term while I openly mock the irony that he himself has fallen victim to the very definition of the word. But then we are all gods among men now aren't we :)
Considering you know nothing of the GEM, your comment is once again completely ignorant. Go read Lonergan's methodoly then come back and state that. Theology may well be "reason informed by faith" but before the "faith" part comes in, there is a whole lotta reasoning which requires methodology. The idea that it is untestable absolutely is completely untrue. The fact that at the moment it is untested completely is true, but then so is much of physics. The idea of the "big bang" "string theory" it is all assumptions all untestable. The Big Bang itself from a singularity now being challenged etc etc. All of the "beginnings" are nothing but one faith system against another. One may adhere vehemently to natural science and reason or one may adhere to a monotheistic religion or a patheon of gods etc, but at the end of the day, no one system is necessary better than the other at explaining THE beginning and moreover, they whys, the meanings and the values. For this reason Pastafarianism was started and is as reasonable as the big bang, the big crunch, perpetual oscillation, God, Alah, Zeus and his posse or a stack of turtles all the way down and us a mere portion of undigested food.