As a Master's theology student and active church member, I agree. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with church tax breaks. Sure, it's nice, and maybe if there's rules for secular non-profits I wouldn't mind incorporating in that sense, but for governments to specifically say "you're a religious organization, you get tax breaks" is to say as well that "you're _not_ a religious organization, you get no tax breaks." You can't read a lot of religious history without getting nervous about governments deciding what is and isn't a religion.
As an unrelated aside, the same kind of argument is why I dislike legal protection of "traditional" marriage.
Rapid prototyping is starting to change that, to an extent, though. Or at least the initial "Here's the physical object" prototyping stage is getting easier to enter.
For every realized brilliant engineer/mixer/producer, there are more, possibly many more, unrealized ones. In the days when TV studios were building-sized, you needed to work for years to gain access to one to tell your story. Then camcorders, webcams, and youtube happened, and while 99% of what's on there is crap, 1% of it is brilliant work from people who could never have gained access to the big studios. That 1% represents a two or five or tenfold increase in the amount of smart/clever/funny/important video that's available. Now the same thing is happening with music production.
It's not that anyone should expect computers to transform total losers into brilliant musicians. It's that we should expect computers to transform into adequate sound studios for those musicians-in-potentia to use.
Except that, in those cases, it was. Oppenheimer didn't _dabble_ in the Bhagavad Gita, it was one of the most profound influences in his life. Mendel didn't _contain_ his belief in God, he joined a _monestary_ at the age of 21. He spent years in the Augustinian order, praying and reading the Bible constantly, during which time he performed his pea-plant experiments. His faith was not tucked away in a corner of his mind any more than his interest and education in physics and meteorology were; they were all substantial parts of his life. He didn't labour under the unnecessary dictates of theological quibbles, he purposely sought out and participated in the most intense religious lifestyle available to 19th century Austrians/Czechs.
Sure, religious people can let their biases override their observations. So can atheists. So can everyone. The argument I keep hearing, though, is that religious faith is somehow magically corrupting of scientific thought, and has to be explained away. What kind of nonsense is that? Explaining away the regular occurrence of a distasteful variable isn't something people who advocate the scientific method should be doing.
Bit hard to insist that people with religious faith can't be good scientists, then, eh? Or that scientists can't stumble into stupid, blind bias? It explodes the unwarranted dichotomy, which is my whole goal.
Faith tells people to create globe-spanning charities, to feed the hungry, and to care for the sick, too. Be careful of ascribing motive on the basis of a limited sample. I agree with the motive/tools description, though. The problem seems to be that many/.ers don't differentiate between "blind dogmatic" faith and any other kind.
My thanks, and all respect, but I disagree on faith being a step back. I'd be careful of ascribing the habits of the worst (such as the anti-intellectualism of Deep South fundies) to the rest (such as doctors who are also Christians or Muslims). It's the assertion that they're mutually exclusive that causes the trouble on both sides, I think.
Nothing, assuming you just want stuff for people to kill. The plan is to generate an ecosystem of varied plants, prey, and predators that can be affected by players; over-harvesting, farming, etc. A simple model based on primes seems, at first glance, to be much more conducive to emergent gameplay than tweaking random numbers.
Your explanation for the counter-example of Mendel seems to be that people who have religious faith and practice science are hypocrites, which isn't terribly satisfactory. Why are they hypocrites? Why does their putative hypocrisy mean faith and science are mutually exclusive? Rather more importantly, why are "the methods of science still intrinsically at odds with the methods of religious inquiry?" You've asserted that it's so, but given no reason for anyone to agree with you. What makes them mutually exclusive? If people are complex, as you say, why insist that two human activities are necessarily opposed? Why should Mendel not consider himself a Christian while investigating heredity?
Good point. I read a book recently, though I can't remember the title, that asserted western science advanced because Christianity gave it a mental foothold when it asserted that, rather than being subject to the capricious whims of changing gods, mankind was responsible to a single God of unchanging character and justice. Not sure how far the argument goes, myself, and iirc the book's author went farther than I would have, claiming the Chinese failed to develop scientifically because they lacked Christianity, but there does seem to be something to the assertion that an assumption of an ordered world is necessary for the development of science.
Cool. I've looking at automatically generating stuff for games recently. Obviously, this works for authentic-looking backgrounds, but my friends and I were working on a project that involved automating critter generation using classic predator-prey models. One big worry was the farming-to-death of critters that are part of an ecosystem. This idea might be useful for much more nicely randomized or randomized-seeming mob population/spawning.
Faith gave us jihad, crusade, and inquisition. Science gave us mustard gas, involuntary sterilization, and nuclear weapons. Faith gave us international charities that feed starving children. Science gave us clean water.
Gregor Mendel was a Christian monk. Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a devout Muslim. Oppenheimer did not think of the Bhagavad Gita by accident.
My point is, it's incorrect to characterize people involved in a community, or publicly claiming adherence to a certain way of thinking or doing things, as stupid, or evil, or blind. It's incorrect to characterize a way of doing or thinking as universally good or evil- it blinds you to the evil or good that exists in it. If your reaction to the above paragraph is to explain how these men advanced science in spite of having faith, then are you not interpreting the evidence to suit your assumptions? They were scientists. They had faith, and not inconsequential faith, in things many posters here evidently hate with a burning passion. Accept reality; for these men, at least, faith and science were not mutually exclusive, not demiurgic oppositional forces, but simply two ways. That doesn't mean you have to do the same, but maybe it means that you shouldn't dismiss faith as "magical thinking" that can't exist in the same mind as critical observation.
There is nothing so terrible that we can't make jokes about it. If we stop being able to laugh at something, we have made it sacred, and nuking Hiroshima isn't something I want to make sacred. I prefer to make jokes about nukes, Hitler, and 9/11, because comedy balances tragedy.
Because we don't want Blizzard to own the wallet and the cash? Because Blizzard is concerned with game balance and profit from players, not arbitrating an international currency? Because we don't want to pay an extra $15 a month to participate in the digital economy? Because we don't like currencies with inflation rates of over 1000%? Take your pick.
Wait, wait; are you complaining that the bottle used to contain a drink made from corn syrup is insufficiently removed from its corn origins, for the purposes of food allergies? Sir, I think I see a flaw in your argument.
I'll cop to that, though I think it really depends on perspective; Napoleon put hundreds of thousands of men under arms to invade Russia. The smaller the scale of the army, the greater the impact of leading from the front- and the converse.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Master's theology student and active church member, I agree. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with church tax breaks. Sure, it's nice, and maybe if there's rules for secular non-profits I wouldn't mind incorporating in that sense, but for governments to specifically say "you're a religious organization, you get tax breaks" is to say as well that "you're _not_ a religious organization, you get no tax breaks." You can't read a lot of religious history without getting nervous about governments deciding what is and isn't a religion.
As an unrelated aside, the same kind of argument is why I dislike legal protection of "traditional" marriage.
Rapid prototyping is starting to change that, to an extent, though. Or at least the initial "Here's the physical object" prototyping stage is getting easier to enter.
Another religious debate. /flee
Because the ultimatum from Saudi Arabia was "put in backdoors or GTFO," and they didn't GTFO. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-07/rim-saudi-arabia-reach-deal-on-blackberry-ap-says.html
For every realized brilliant engineer/mixer/producer, there are more, possibly many more, unrealized ones. In the days when TV studios were building-sized, you needed to work for years to gain access to one to tell your story. Then camcorders, webcams, and youtube happened, and while 99% of what's on there is crap, 1% of it is brilliant work from people who could never have gained access to the big studios. That 1% represents a two or five or tenfold increase in the amount of smart/clever/funny/important video that's available. Now the same thing is happening with music production.
It's not that anyone should expect computers to transform total losers into brilliant musicians. It's that we should expect computers to transform into adequate sound studios for those musicians-in-potentia to use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoScA4_wWA#t=6m30s Monty Python. "This room is surrounded by film!"
Except that, in those cases, it was. Oppenheimer didn't _dabble_ in the Bhagavad Gita, it was one of the most profound influences in his life. Mendel didn't _contain_ his belief in God, he joined a _monestary_ at the age of 21. He spent years in the Augustinian order, praying and reading the Bible constantly, during which time he performed his pea-plant experiments. His faith was not tucked away in a corner of his mind any more than his interest and education in physics and meteorology were; they were all substantial parts of his life. He didn't labour under the unnecessary dictates of theological quibbles, he purposely sought out and participated in the most intense religious lifestyle available to 19th century Austrians/Czechs.
Sure, religious people can let their biases override their observations. So can atheists. So can everyone. The argument I keep hearing, though, is that religious faith is somehow magically corrupting of scientific thought, and has to be explained away. What kind of nonsense is that? Explaining away the regular occurrence of a distasteful variable isn't something people who advocate the scientific method should be doing.
Bit hard to insist that people with religious faith can't be good scientists, then, eh? Or that scientists can't stumble into stupid, blind bias? It explodes the unwarranted dichotomy, which is my whole goal.
Faith tells people to create globe-spanning charities, to feed the hungry, and to care for the sick, too. Be careful of ascribing motive on the basis of a limited sample. I agree with the motive/tools description, though. The problem seems to be that many /.ers don't differentiate between "blind dogmatic" faith and any other kind.
My thanks, and all respect, but I disagree on faith being a step back. I'd be careful of ascribing the habits of the worst (such as the anti-intellectualism of Deep South fundies) to the rest (such as doctors who are also Christians or Muslims). It's the assertion that they're mutually exclusive that causes the trouble on both sides, I think.
Nothing, assuming you just want stuff for people to kill. The plan is to generate an ecosystem of varied plants, prey, and predators that can be affected by players; over-harvesting, farming, etc. A simple model based on primes seems, at first glance, to be much more conducive to emergent gameplay than tweaking random numbers.
:D My pleasure.
Your explanation for the counter-example of Mendel seems to be that people who have religious faith and practice science are hypocrites, which isn't terribly satisfactory. Why are they hypocrites? Why does their putative hypocrisy mean faith and science are mutually exclusive? Rather more importantly, why are "the methods of science still intrinsically at odds with the methods of religious inquiry?" You've asserted that it's so, but given no reason for anyone to agree with you. What makes them mutually exclusive? If people are complex, as you say, why insist that two human activities are necessarily opposed? Why should Mendel not consider himself a Christian while investigating heredity?
Good point. I read a book recently, though I can't remember the title, that asserted western science advanced because Christianity gave it a mental foothold when it asserted that, rather than being subject to the capricious whims of changing gods, mankind was responsible to a single God of unchanging character and justice. Not sure how far the argument goes, myself, and iirc the book's author went farther than I would have, claiming the Chinese failed to develop scientifically because they lacked Christianity, but there does seem to be something to the assertion that an assumption of an ordered world is necessary for the development of science.
Cool. I've looking at automatically generating stuff for games recently. Obviously, this works for authentic-looking backgrounds, but my friends and I were working on a project that involved automating critter generation using classic predator-prey models. One big worry was the farming-to-death of critters that are part of an ecosystem. This idea might be useful for much more nicely randomized or randomized-seeming mob population/spawning.
Faith gave us jihad, crusade, and inquisition. Science gave us mustard gas, involuntary sterilization, and nuclear weapons. Faith gave us international charities that feed starving children. Science gave us clean water.
Gregor Mendel was a Christian monk. Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a devout Muslim. Oppenheimer did not think of the Bhagavad Gita by accident.
My point is, it's incorrect to characterize people involved in a community, or publicly claiming adherence to a certain way of thinking or doing things, as stupid, or evil, or blind. It's incorrect to characterize a way of doing or thinking as universally good or evil- it blinds you to the evil or good that exists in it. If your reaction to the above paragraph is to explain how these men advanced science in spite of having faith, then are you not interpreting the evidence to suit your assumptions? They were scientists. They had faith, and not inconsequential faith, in things many posters here evidently hate with a burning passion. Accept reality; for these men, at least, faith and science were not mutually exclusive, not demiurgic oppositional forces, but simply two ways. That doesn't mean you have to do the same, but maybe it means that you shouldn't dismiss faith as "magical thinking" that can't exist in the same mind as critical observation.
/me dons an abestos suit and waits for a response
Sir, I bow to you.
There is nothing so terrible that we can't make jokes about it. If we stop being able to laugh at something, we have made it sacred, and nuking Hiroshima isn't something I want to make sacred. I prefer to make jokes about nukes, Hitler, and 9/11, because comedy balances tragedy.
No refunds, no returns! We don't want 'em!
Because we don't want Blizzard to own the wallet and the cash? Because Blizzard is concerned with game balance and profit from players, not arbitrating an international currency? Because we don't want to pay an extra $15 a month to participate in the digital economy? Because we don't like currencies with inflation rates of over 1000%? Take your pick.
Wait, wait; are you complaining that the bottle used to contain a drink made from corn syrup is insufficiently removed from its corn origins, for the purposes of food allergies? Sir, I think I see a flaw in your argument.
http://wwwery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/US-Smartphone-OS-Market-Share.png
I'll cop to that, though I think it really depends on perspective; Napoleon put hundreds of thousands of men under arms to invade Russia. The smaller the scale of the army, the greater the impact of leading from the front- and the converse.
Mister Wright, OP is quoting Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time. Objection denied.
Also, the PhD's primary work is in risk management, so he has some authority to speak about odds and risks.