You'd have to be using Netflix as a replacement for CATV to have to worry about going over your cap.
Something I and many others would like to do but *shock* all avenues of attempting to access competition to the majors results in finding out no one is particularly better than another, no matter what metric you use.
Cable TV is getting very hard to justify these days when, day after day, you keep noticing "500 channels and nothing's on." I would love to have an alternative but there's no competition.
That's what I've been waiting for. This means a server could allocate a fraction of the total bandwidth needed otherwise but still be the primary seeder and everyone still wins downloading the torrent.
I've long had this beef especially with video game providers that want you to download via bittorrent but they don't provide a fast enough seed. It sounds like this would solve a lot of problems.
No, I can't. I don't know their internals. I have no reason to doubt them, though. I mean look at their track record. A boat load of games, some dos, some win9x, some xp, and all compatible with xp/vista/7. At the very least they're verifying compatibility and that must mean they're patching because some of these programs were brutal to run in their day.
I sympathize with you about Redneck Rampage but, really, did GOG lie about what they did or were you over optimistic about what might be? What GOG does is produce faithful reproductions of old games on modern operating systems. They're not trying to "HDify" anything. You should see their Serious Sam package. It's just the original games patched up with some throw-ins. That's GOG, though. It's a crapshoot waiting for publishers to HD enable their games like Croteam did with Serious Sam on Steam.
They do more than that. They verify the games work without problems, using dosbox, under XP/Vista/7. They code and do actual porting on other titles because they have more than just dos games. They remove DRM where it exists. And they've gotten some great exclusives. They're honest (obvious by their amateurish behaviour), they have integrity, they're open and willing to communicate. Give them another shot. Their claim about porting applies to the X% of games they sell that can't run under DosBox and even some that too to fix bugs.
If all the haters actually understood what GOG is, as individuals, as a company, and as a service, compared to Steam, say, you'd grok what they do and just learn to accept the admittedly amateurish publicity stunt and just be glad they're not gone.
Who else is doing what GOG does? Where else are you going to get DRM-free, XP/Vista/7 compatible, inexpensive, absolutely great classic titles legitimately and with such good service?
If you want them to be professional and compete with Steam, they're doomed. Steam has "slick" covered. But if GOG tries to find its own niche, they have a fighting chance. GOG has to be different to do what they do.
Honestly, I don't like much like the stunt, either, but I am glad it was a stunt and not the more expected bankruptcy.
I'll take honest amateurism over shiny, slicked down professionalism any day of the week.
I don't think most do pirate games. In fact, what's worse then slashdotters torrenting is the complaining about DRM, ignoring DRM-free sources, and going to use Steam! lol
I agree, this act was very, very ill conceived. But, I will give GOG the benefit of the doubt. They have proved their integrity over the long term. They delivered so many grade A titles and not once did they renege on their core principles. Depending on what they morph into will determine if their fan base forgives them.
No, I'd call it a stunt. You don't do the traditional suddenly-wipe-the-website-and-replace-it-with-the-scary-closing-notice trick unless it's for real or it's a stunt.
On the upside, it appears that it is a stunt and, while there's no accounting for taste, I'm glad that there's still the possibility GOG will continue. Perhaps the name, domain name and theme just weren't jiving with the Steamers, etc.
I like Steam as much as the next guy, but it has DRM and does not have the old games. That's where GOG comes in. Prince of Persia Sands of Time was/is available on Steam and GOG: Guess where I purchased it? It's a no brainer when GOG is one of the two options for buying the same thing.
This makes me sick to my stomach. I loved GOG. I plugged them often on my own blog. They have a permanent link there. I purchased many, many games from them and don't regret it at all. GOG had integrity, great prices, no DRM, great games, great community, great throw-ins, great sales. Argh! Why! It makes me wonder if the "good guys" can make it. My faith in humanity has again been dimmed a little bit.
I'm all for the print link on sites that abuse readers, but if an article is worth reading and discussing, shouldn't we give them a little credit and link to the real article?
You know, because people do link to print versions so much, most put lots of ads on those too now. I'm surprised this one didn't.
At work, we've been working with our accountants to figure out some tweaks to the tax law the federal government is bringing in with their harmonized sales tax. What struck me was that the reworking of the law now very clearly means that any merchant, no matter the medium, must collect the recipient's province's taxes.
It struck me quite clearly that this was a way around an explicit "internet sales tax" and, in fact, is a much more powerful tool to enforce collecting tax in any given scenario, whether offline, online, in-state, intra-state, etc.
So, guess what, Canada is already getting an internet sales tax and there's no fuss about it because it's relatively hidden just by clarifying the law text about collecting tax.
Ok. First of all, what the Biblical text actually says is "kol heharim hag...
What I'm seeing in Gen 7:19 is "har". The lexicon link for "har" provides different meanings according to biblical usage of the word: hill, mountain, hill country, mount.
I completely blanked on Gen 7:20 saying "mountains" and using the exact word "har".
At any rate, some creationists theorize such a world where high(er) mountains were created due to coinciding plate movement along with the flood. The root words used in the bible imply that water covered hills and mountains: Creationists are theorizing how that might have been possible.
You can't just make up mechanisms to protect a cherished hypothesis. That's not science. Science looks at the evidence and says "ok, what's the simplest explanation of the evidence we have? What is the most probable explanation" you don't just keep making marginally plausible hypotheses to defend an idea.
They're not just making up mechanisms. They're theorizing and modeling with concrete physics. That was the point of linking the runaway subduction proposal.
It's worth repeating: Theories are falsifiable. It's not rational to criticize a theory based on "intentions." So what if they're starting from a religious stand point? Judge the theory on its merits.
I have read a number of creation ideas, proposals, models and theories that are no longer credible and creationists know it. They discover the holes and move on. Just like science has done. I just got done reading A Brief History of Time. The history of physics it describes is exactly like that.
Do you understand what the term "by definition" means or what I was saying about being careful about uses of short inferential distance?
Okay. I am not being pedantic about it but I think you are. I think we both know what the most important communication is with a statement like the one I brought up. Faulting the semantics of the syntax in the medium in which it was delivered is of little value.
Yay, more apologetic cargo cult science that doesn't work at all. That article posits under no evidence other than their reading of the Biblical text very high mutations rates.
I agree. Probably that one article doesn't do a good enough technical job of describing the vast body of work that backs up the ideas. But I really recommend reading more of the Q&A documents and trying to find the technical ones because, as a whole, they are quite intriguing.
Apologetic nonsense. Why is the "mainstream" not quesitoned in this context? Because we have 200 years worth of evidence. In 1750 most educated people were still young earth creationists. By 1850, almost no one was.
Most people would rather not have a god they owe their existence and their obedience to. Is it any wonder that these ideas would catch on like wildfire?
Sincerity is not in doubt. Intellectual honesty and objectiveness are. You aren't linking to anything I haven't seen dozens of times before.
You've poured over their 6000 documents with at least a mind to giving them a chance? I'm impressed.
If a text tells obvious truths then that doesn't say anything significant about the text, full stop.
I don't know why you stopped there. The rest of the paragraph continued on that thought.
You can't just start with a preconceived notion (in this case the correctness of the Biblical text) and then when you reach marginally plausible conclusions decide that that's how things must have happened.
It doesn't matter if he had malicious intent or not. The police had no way of knowing for sure what his real goals were. He appeared to be gearing up to do something naughty, and they caught on and stopped him.
Tell me you're kidding me...that is a sad, sad understanding on justice. Do you have any idea how much of a slippery slope thinking like that is?
My goodness, man, think a little bit. You "look like a naughty person", let's ship you off to Syria for torture, how would you like that??
Having a court say once and for all that "excited delirium" is bullshit and not a valid medical term and can't be used to describe a death which only happens when tasers are used.
My father has a police officer neighbour. He works in Toronto and lives far out in the suburbs. He's a decent guy. He brought up that "excited delirium" like he was sold it by his department and Taser Corp. (or whoever they are). I told him if two police officers can't take down one individual without aids, something is wrong.
OK. So the claim made about the water is that the entire Earth was flat so it wouldn't need nearly as much water.
Not entirely flat. Just not what we see today. It's interesting that the biblical text says the water covered all the "high hills" and not all the "mountains." This is actually quite in agreement with regular plate tectonic theory. The major difference is the timeline. Secular theory puts it way in the past. Creationist theory puts it recently at the time of Noah's Flood.
Rubbish. First, don't use "by definition" when something isn't a definition.
From the wikipedia article on fossils,
Fossilization is an exceptionally rare occurrence, because most components of formerly-living things tend to decompose relatively quickly following death. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes frozen, desiccated, or comes to rest in an anoxic (oxygen-free) environment. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.
In the context of fossil formation, fossils must, by definition, be buried and preserved quickly, one way or another.
That's nonsense. First of all, as someone who can read Genesis in the original Hebrew, nothing in the text says anything at all about humans being created for diversity and adaption. So how you are getting that from there is beyond me.
There are a number of occurrences of the command to "populate the earth," both to humans and to animals. Using good deductive reasoning, if God did really do what he said he did and in the way he said he did it, then it is reasonable to also say that animals and humans were designed up front for adaptation to a large number of environments. It follows that if they needed to survive in different environments, they must have had the genetic diversity from which natural selection specialize traits to best fit the environment.
There's far more genetic diversity in even just the human population then what you would get from about a dozen people on a boat 5000 years ago, even if if every single one of them had very different genetic backgrounds.
The assumption is that that information has not been there the whole time. If the Genesis account of creation is true, all that genetic diversity was present at the beginning and benefited animals, given the command to populate the earth, by natural selection helping the animals to adapt to all sorts of environments.
The geology alone doesn't allow people honestly looking at the evidence to reach any other conclusion.
Actually, it does. The problem is that we're inundated with the popular view, that of an evolutionary take on the evidence. It is no longer questioned in the mainstream. There are counter-arguments and there are failures and set-backs to evolution, but you don't hear about them. You hear about the new discovery but not the later debates between secular scientists, themselves, realizing the discovery doesn't mean much at all. It's a system into which all the pro arguments enter but none of the con arguments enter and so it's vastly imbalanced.
Okay I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready? "uh huh." Dinosaurs."
Well, I hope people don't take comedians seriously, they're just trying to make a living making things funny.
In reality, it's actually even more humorous. What is supposed to sound so obvious is actually one of the more loaded topics you'll ever come across. Of course, no one would expect a comedian to know better. They're just doing their job.
If I were to add one more line to the script, I would add: "How about a one word answer?", "...", "Dragon", "...", "The word dinosaur was only invented relatively recently. Dinosaurs would have had another name.", "...", "...dragon." But it kind of kills the comedy when you have to bring reality into it, right?
Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all.
Actually, creation theories have been talking about tectonic effects coinciding with the flood. With such upheaval, on the epic scale, you might actually expect to see variation in these things. It's not just as simple as water gently pouring into a container. A global flood would have been immensely chaotic. At the same time, tectonic movements would have been shifting many areas in many different ways.
Third, and related to the above, we don't see any global die off that is closely connected to flood deposits.
Fossils, by definition, must be buried quickly. It might be surmised that most fossil deposits are actually a mark of a global die off and the reason for many might be Noah's Flood.
Fourth, we don't see the genetic bottlenecking that would have wiped out that many species. The genetic diversity of many species shows us that a global flood could not have occurred in the last 50,000 years at least, on genetic evidence alone.
On the other hand, this is actually what you would expect if the earth was ~6000 years old and Noah's Flood was real. A thorough grasp of Genesis indicates animals and humans were created for diversity and adaptation which, it would seem natural, they were made such because they had to populate the earth from a relatively small number. So, you would not expect a genetic a bottleneck. All creatives had all the genetic information with which to propagate and create the variations we see today.
If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be.
Perhaps it's not that dramatic of a case. Many common concerns about Noah's Flood have long had responses, as early as the 1950s IIRC. The theories being developed by creationists are every day progressing to propose credible scenarios to the scientific questions pointed at the creation account in Genesis.
Different view points will give different responses to the same facts. Secular people assume evolution and millions of years. Creationists look at your interpretation of the data, see that it disagrees with their assumptions, and attempt to see how the facts can logically be interpreted to support them. This is actually a tribute to creationists: They have to put more effort into their research and theorizing in order to think of a reasonable solution that the majority are unable to think of.
This personally interests me: In a subtly different light, creationists are putting on their "God-caps" and trying to think of how an omnipotent, omniscient God might have done things to turn out the way that we see them now - all the while thinking in natural terms, not supernatural. It's personally fascinating that God said we were created in His image, as if we had the intelligence to ponder His (mysterious) ways...and yet we do, and he allows it and encourages it, and we often discover that, after all, he was telling the truth.
Finally, let me suggest this: We're all bombarded by evolutionary science and media coverage. It has no real competition in mind-share. That makes it something like an echo chamber or a feedback loop, serving to reinforce itself without the need for hard critique. It would all do us a world of good if we investigated as much of the contrary science as we do the mainstream science.
I always thought overhearing a cell conversation was annoying because the person on the cell changed their voice to a self-important tone.
Seriously, remember the good old days of hearing your brother and sister yack on the home phone? Nobody cared. But, it's when you're out in public and these guys are talking with loud, self-important voices that it becomes annoying.
The big reason is that a grown person should be able to tell between right and wrong...
So, whever did the grown up learn right and wrong from? Their parents, of course. Where did they learn it from? From their parents, of course.
One doesn't just grok right and wrong because they grow up. If you followed that idea of morality the spectrum across all cultures would have to be acceptable - and clearly most people don't believe that on very reasonable grounds: Some of the things considered okay in some cultures are considered abhorrent in others.
So, who's right?
I'll tell you who's right: Not you. Not Obama. Not that guy in South Africa. Not that Chinese fellow. Not that Brazilian guy.
Who's right is me but then I would expect everybody on the face of the earth to say the same thing. That would just result in a culture driven by some other force but with no expectation of a minimum set of morals (you think pedophilia is wrong? they don't. you think marriage of minors is wrong? they don't. etc. etc.)
Most people agree they feel there is or should be one moral code on the big issues - we squabble over much about the small things but they're small for a reason, they don't matter when we're really pressed about it. That sense is what should tell us to look further and see if anyone does have the authority and wisdom to lay down such a moral code, and we should see if anyone has in fact really been trying to communicate that to us. As it turns out, at least one god has been trying to tell us for all history: The God written about in Christian scriptures.
Why doesn't your dog kill and eat your family the moment your back is turned?
+5, Insightful? Are you kidding me?
Did you or did you not just compare dogs, driven significantly by base instincts and desires, with humans, driven significantly by reason?
Answer: What religious people call "morality" is nothing in the world but social instinct. Your dog doesn't need an invisible sky fairy to get along in the world, and neither do you.
There's a pertinent saying in the bible that goes "God's foolishness is wiser than man's wisdom." Really, comparing dogs to humans and somehow coming up with social instinct? I don't disagree with the idea of social instinct but this comparison is just confused.
There's no inherent connection between "the only life you have" and "be good to one another." Another person could very well say "the only life you have so make yourself benefit by whatever means possible," meaning there is no real right and wrong so do whatever it takes to make your own life better.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd have to be using Netflix as a replacement for CATV to have to worry about going over your cap.
Something I and many others would like to do but *shock* all avenues of attempting to access competition to the majors results in finding out no one is particularly better than another, no matter what metric you use.
Cable TV is getting very hard to justify these days when, day after day, you keep noticing "500 channels and nothing's on." I would love to have an alternative but there's no competition.
That's what I've been waiting for. This means a server could allocate a fraction of the total bandwidth needed otherwise but still be the primary seeder and everyone still wins downloading the torrent.
I've long had this beef especially with video game providers that want you to download via bittorrent but they don't provide a fast enough seed. It sounds like this would solve a lot of problems.
I mean, what makes you say "that's all I need to know to make sure I don't use it"? What's wrong with them?
No, I can't. I don't know their internals. I have no reason to doubt them, though. I mean look at their track record. A boat load of games, some dos, some win9x, some xp, and all compatible with xp/vista/7. At the very least they're verifying compatibility and that must mean they're patching because some of these programs were brutal to run in their day.
I sympathize with you about Redneck Rampage but, really, did GOG lie about what they did or were you over optimistic about what might be? What GOG does is produce faithful reproductions of old games on modern operating systems. They're not trying to "HDify" anything. You should see their Serious Sam package. It's just the original games patched up with some throw-ins. That's GOG, though. It's a crapshoot waiting for publishers to HD enable their games like Croteam did with Serious Sam on Steam.
Why do you say that? I can't find much dirt on them googling around...?
They do more than that. They verify the games work without problems, using dosbox, under XP/Vista/7. They code and do actual porting on other titles because they have more than just dos games. They remove DRM where it exists. And they've gotten some great exclusives. They're honest (obvious by their amateurish behaviour), they have integrity, they're open and willing to communicate. Give them another shot. Their claim about porting applies to the X% of games they sell that can't run under DosBox and even some that too to fix bugs.
If all the haters actually understood what GOG is, as individuals, as a company, and as a service, compared to Steam, say, you'd grok what they do and just learn to accept the admittedly amateurish publicity stunt and just be glad they're not gone.
Who else is doing what GOG does? Where else are you going to get DRM-free, XP/Vista/7 compatible, inexpensive, absolutely great classic titles legitimately and with such good service?
If you want them to be professional and compete with Steam, they're doomed. Steam has "slick" covered. But if GOG tries to find its own niche, they have a fighting chance. GOG has to be different to do what they do.
Honestly, I don't like much like the stunt, either, but I am glad it was a stunt and not the more expected bankruptcy.
I'll take honest amateurism over shiny, slicked down professionalism any day of the week.
I don't think most do pirate games. In fact, what's worse then slashdotters torrenting is the complaining about DRM, ignoring DRM-free sources, and going to use Steam! lol
I agree, this act was very, very ill conceived. But, I will give GOG the benefit of the doubt. They have proved their integrity over the long term. They delivered so many grade A titles and not once did they renege on their core principles. Depending on what they morph into will determine if their fan base forgives them.
No, I'd call it a stunt. You don't do the traditional suddenly-wipe-the-website-and-replace-it-with-the-scary-closing-notice trick unless it's for real or it's a stunt.
On the upside, it appears that it is a stunt and, while there's no accounting for taste, I'm glad that there's still the possibility GOG will continue. Perhaps the name, domain name and theme just weren't jiving with the Steamers, etc.
I like Steam as much as the next guy, but it has DRM and does not have the old games. That's where GOG comes in. Prince of Persia Sands of Time was/is available on Steam and GOG: Guess where I purchased it? It's a no brainer when GOG is one of the two options for buying the same thing.
This makes me sick to my stomach. I loved GOG. I plugged them often on my own blog. They have a permanent link there. I purchased many, many games from them and don't regret it at all. GOG had integrity, great prices, no DRM, great games, great community, great throw-ins, great sales. Argh! Why! It makes me wonder if the "good guys" can make it. My faith in humanity has again been dimmed a little bit.
I'm all for the print link on sites that abuse readers, but if an article is worth reading and discussing, shouldn't we give them a little credit and link to the real article?
You know, because people do link to print versions so much, most put lots of ads on those too now. I'm surprised this one didn't.
At work, we've been working with our accountants to figure out some tweaks to the tax law the federal government is bringing in with their harmonized sales tax. What struck me was that the reworking of the law now very clearly means that any merchant, no matter the medium, must collect the recipient's province's taxes.
It struck me quite clearly that this was a way around an explicit "internet sales tax" and, in fact, is a much more powerful tool to enforce collecting tax in any given scenario, whether offline, online, in-state, intra-state, etc.
So, guess what, Canada is already getting an internet sales tax and there's no fuss about it because it's relatively hidden just by clarifying the law text about collecting tax.
Ok. First of all, what the Biblical text actually says is "kol heharim hag...
What I'm seeing in Gen 7:19 is "har". The lexicon link for "har" provides different meanings according to biblical usage of the word: hill, mountain, hill country, mount.
I completely blanked on Gen 7:20 saying "mountains" and using the exact word "har".
At any rate, some creationists theorize such a world where high(er) mountains were created due to coinciding plate movement along with the flood. The root words used in the bible imply that water covered hills and mountains: Creationists are theorizing how that might have been possible.
You can't just make up mechanisms to protect a cherished hypothesis. That's not science. Science looks at the evidence and says "ok, what's the simplest explanation of the evidence we have? What is the most probable explanation" you don't just keep making marginally plausible hypotheses to defend an idea.
They're not just making up mechanisms. They're theorizing and modeling with concrete physics. That was the point of linking the runaway subduction proposal.
It's worth repeating: Theories are falsifiable. It's not rational to criticize a theory based on "intentions." So what if they're starting from a religious stand point? Judge the theory on its merits.
I have read a number of creation ideas, proposals, models and theories that are no longer credible and creationists know it. They discover the holes and move on. Just like science has done. I just got done reading A Brief History of Time. The history of physics it describes is exactly like that.
Do you understand what the term "by definition" means or what I was saying about being careful about uses of short inferential distance?
Okay. I am not being pedantic about it but I think you are. I think we both know what the most important communication is with a statement like the one I brought up. Faulting the semantics of the syntax in the medium in which it was delivered is of little value.
Yay, more apologetic cargo cult science that doesn't work at all. That article posits under no evidence other than their reading of the Biblical text very high mutations rates.
I agree. Probably that one article doesn't do a good enough technical job of describing the vast body of work that backs up the ideas. But I really recommend reading more of the Q&A documents and trying to find the technical ones because, as a whole, they are quite intriguing.
Apologetic nonsense. Why is the "mainstream" not quesitoned in this context? Because we have 200 years worth of evidence. In 1750 most educated people were still young earth creationists. By 1850, almost no one was.
Most people would rather not have a god they owe their existence and their obedience to. Is it any wonder that these ideas would catch on like wildfire?
Sincerity is not in doubt. Intellectual honesty and objectiveness are. You aren't linking to anything I haven't seen dozens of times before.
You've poured over their 6000 documents with at least a mind to giving them a chance? I'm impressed.
If a text tells obvious truths then that doesn't say anything significant about the text, full stop.
I don't know why you stopped there. The rest of the paragraph continued on that thought.
You can't just start with a preconceived notion (in this case the correctness of the Biblical text) and then when you reach marginally plausible conclusions decide that that's how things must have happened.
You are right and you ar
It doesn't matter if he had malicious intent or not. The police had no way of knowing for sure what his real goals were. He appeared to be gearing up to do something naughty, and they caught on and stopped him.
Tell me you're kidding me...that is a sad, sad understanding on justice. Do you have any idea how much of a slippery slope thinking like that is?
My goodness, man, think a little bit. You "look like a naughty person", let's ship you off to Syria for torture, how would you like that??
Having a court say once and for all that "excited delirium" is bullshit and not a valid medical term and can't be used to describe a death which only happens when tasers are used.
My father has a police officer neighbour. He works in Toronto and lives far out in the suburbs. He's a decent guy. He brought up that "excited delirium" like he was sold it by his department and Taser Corp. (or whoever they are). I told him if two police officers can't take down one individual without aids, something is wrong.
OK. So the claim made about the water is that the entire Earth was flat so it wouldn't need nearly as much water.
Not entirely flat. Just not what we see today. It's interesting that the biblical text says the water covered all the "high hills" and not all the "mountains." This is actually quite in agreement with regular plate tectonic theory. The major difference is the timeline. Secular theory puts it way in the past. Creationist theory puts it recently at the time of Noah's Flood.
See Runaway subduction as the driving mechanism for the Genesis Flood. The subtler point here is to show how serious Creationists have become about researching and theorizing scientifically plausible mechanisms that would produce what we observe today.
Rubbish. First, don't use "by definition" when something isn't a definition.
From the wikipedia article on fossils,
Fossilization is an exceptionally rare occurrence, because most components of formerly-living things tend to decompose relatively quickly following death. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes frozen, desiccated, or comes to rest in an anoxic (oxygen-free) environment. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.
In the context of fossil formation, fossils must, by definition, be buried and preserved quickly, one way or another.
That's nonsense. First of all, as someone who can read Genesis in the original Hebrew, nothing in the text says anything at all about humans being created for diversity and adaption. So how you are getting that from there is beyond me.
There are a number of occurrences of the command to "populate the earth," both to humans and to animals. Using good deductive reasoning, if God did really do what he said he did and in the way he said he did it, then it is reasonable to also say that animals and humans were designed up front for adaptation to a large number of environments. It follows that if they needed to survive in different environments, they must have had the genetic diversity from which natural selection specialize traits to best fit the environment.
There's far more genetic diversity in even just the human population then what you would get from about a dozen people on a boat 5000 years ago, even if if every single one of them had very different genetic backgrounds.
The assumption is that that information has not been there the whole time. If the Genesis account of creation is true, all that genetic diversity was present at the beginning and benefited animals, given the command to populate the earth, by natural selection helping the animals to adapt to all sorts of environments.
For the last two issues above, see Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics.
The geology alone doesn't allow people honestly looking at the evidence to reach any other conclusion.
Actually, it does. The problem is that we're inundated with the popular view, that of an evolutionary take on the evidence. It is no longer questioned in the mainstream. There are counter-arguments and there are failures and set-backs to evolution, but you don't hear about them. You hear about the new discovery but not the later debates between secular scientists, themselves, realizing the discovery doesn't mean much at all. It's a system into which all the pro arguments enter but none of the con arguments enter and so it's vastly imbalanced.
Take some time to rationally consider the links I've been leaving and this list of creation/evolution topics with a Creationist perspective. Taken with a level head, I
Okay I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready? "uh huh." Dinosaurs."
Well, I hope people don't take comedians seriously, they're just trying to make a living making things funny.
In reality, it's actually even more humorous. What is supposed to sound so obvious is actually one of the more loaded topics you'll ever come across. Of course, no one would expect a comedian to know better. They're just doing their job.
If I were to add one more line to the script, I would add: "How about a one word answer?", "...", "Dragon", "...", "The word dinosaur was only invented relatively recently. Dinosaurs would have had another name.", "...", "...dragon." But it kind of kills the comedy when you have to bring reality into it, right?
What does the Bible have to say about dinosaurs? Quite a bit actually: Dinosaur Questions and Answers
First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?
Where did all the water go?
Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all.
Actually, creation theories have been talking about tectonic effects coinciding with the flood. With such upheaval, on the epic scale, you might actually expect to see variation in these things. It's not just as simple as water gently pouring into a container. A global flood would have been immensely chaotic. At the same time, tectonic movements would have been shifting many areas in many different ways.
But, it's always a good idea to read up on it: Geology Questions and Answers.
Third, and related to the above, we don't see any global die off that is closely connected to flood deposits.
Fossils, by definition, must be buried quickly. It might be surmised that most fossil deposits are actually a mark of a global die off and the reason for many might be Noah's Flood.
Fossils Questions and Answers
Fourth, we don't see the genetic bottlenecking that would have wiped out that many species. The genetic diversity of many species shows us that a global flood could not have occurred in the last 50,000 years at least, on genetic evidence alone.
On the other hand, this is actually what you would expect if the earth was ~6000 years old and Noah's Flood was real. A thorough grasp of Genesis indicates animals and humans were created for diversity and adaptation which, it would seem natural, they were made such because they had to populate the earth from a relatively small number. So, you would not expect a genetic a bottleneck. All creatives had all the genetic information with which to propagate and create the variations we see today.
If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be.
Perhaps it's not that dramatic of a case. Many common concerns about Noah's Flood have long had responses, as early as the 1950s IIRC. The theories being developed by creationists are every day progressing to propose credible scenarios to the scientific questions pointed at the creation account in Genesis.
Different view points will give different responses to the same facts. Secular people assume evolution and millions of years. Creationists look at your interpretation of the data, see that it disagrees with their assumptions, and attempt to see how the facts can logically be interpreted to support them. This is actually a tribute to creationists: They have to put more effort into their research and theorizing in order to think of a reasonable solution that the majority are unable to think of.
This personally interests me: In a subtly different light, creationists are putting on their "God-caps" and trying to think of how an omnipotent, omniscient God might have done things to turn out the way that we see them now - all the while thinking in natural terms, not supernatural. It's personally fascinating that God said we were created in His image, as if we had the intelligence to ponder His (mysterious) ways...and yet we do, and he allows it and encourages it, and we often discover that, after all, he was telling the truth.
Finally, let me suggest this: We're all bombarded by evolutionary science and media coverage. It has no real competition in mind-share. That makes it something like an echo chamber or a feedback loop, serving to reinforce itself without the need for hard critique. It would all do us a world of good if we investigated as much of the contrary science as we do the mainstream science.
I'm confused. I see the entire URL. I just upgraded to 5. What are you guys talking about?
Well, really he meant 4 years ago which, we might as well say, is five years and, as well all know, five is pretty much ten when rounded up.
I always thought overhearing a cell conversation was annoying because the person on the cell changed their voice to a self-important tone.
Seriously, remember the good old days of hearing your brother and sister yack on the home phone? Nobody cared. But, it's when you're out in public and these guys are talking with loud, self-important voices that it becomes annoying.
The big reason is that a grown person should be able to tell between right and wrong...
So, whever did the grown up learn right and wrong from? Their parents, of course. Where did they learn it from? From their parents, of course.
One doesn't just grok right and wrong because they grow up. If you followed that idea of morality the spectrum across all cultures would have to be acceptable - and clearly most people don't believe that on very reasonable grounds: Some of the things considered okay in some cultures are considered abhorrent in others.
So, who's right?
I'll tell you who's right: Not you. Not Obama. Not that guy in South Africa. Not that Chinese fellow. Not that Brazilian guy.
Who's right is me but then I would expect everybody on the face of the earth to say the same thing. That would just result in a culture driven by some other force but with no expectation of a minimum set of morals (you think pedophilia is wrong? they don't. you think marriage of minors is wrong? they don't. etc. etc.)
Most people agree they feel there is or should be one moral code on the big issues - we squabble over much about the small things but they're small for a reason, they don't matter when we're really pressed about it. That sense is what should tell us to look further and see if anyone does have the authority and wisdom to lay down such a moral code, and we should see if anyone has in fact really been trying to communicate that to us. As it turns out, at least one god has been trying to tell us for all history: The God written about in Christian scriptures.
Why doesn't your dog kill and eat your family the moment your back is turned?
+5, Insightful? Are you kidding me?
Did you or did you not just compare dogs, driven significantly by base instincts and desires, with humans, driven significantly by reason?
Answer: What religious people call "morality" is nothing in the world but social instinct. Your dog doesn't need an invisible sky fairy to get along in the world, and neither do you.
There's a pertinent saying in the bible that goes "God's foolishness is wiser than man's wisdom." Really, comparing dogs to humans and somehow coming up with social instinct? I don't disagree with the idea of social instinct but this comparison is just confused.
There's no inherent connection between "the only life you have" and "be good to one another." Another person could very well say "the only life you have so make yourself benefit by whatever means possible," meaning there is no real right and wrong so do whatever it takes to make your own life better.