Are you kidding? Java was a big step backwards compared to the state of the art in the mid-90's. Java still hasn't caught up with languages like Smalltalk (Java's collections are a poor rip-off of Smalltalk's).
Python, Perl, Tcl, Lua, and CLR all run on many platforms. Python with Gtk+ or Qt is a much better cross-platform environment than Java: easier to develop for, with better desktop integration, and nicer looking UIs.
I don't know of any mainstream language or VM other than the old VisualBasic that ran on a single platform. Gtk+, Qt, and wx all are cross-platform toolkits, better than anything Java has ever provided.
(Besides, Sun didn't even design or develop Swing, they bought it.)
Mr. Gosling, the only reason Java is any good at all is because large numbers of technically competent people (many of them at IBM) fixed up the bad design decisions you made and patched up your horrible implementation. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much one can fix if a language is as broken as Java 1.0 was.
You have some gall criticizing Dalvik, which runs efficiently, unbloated, and apparently quite securely on millions of phones. The sandbox on your Java design and implementation on the other hand was insecure and buggy both conceptually and in terms of implementation, as a never ending stream of published problems showed. Of course, since Java failed for applets, hardly anybody cares anymore; nowadays, Java's sandbox is just bloat for most users.
And all the while you were promoting Java as an "open" language, you knew that it was covered by Sun patents that made any independent implementation impossible, what a cynical and evil thing to do.
Fortunately, its awful UI libraries kept Java from achieving any significance on the desktop or web, and for most server side software, people have developed alternatives based on less bloated platforms that are easier to develop for.
And of course, it's Java that sucked up all the development resources at Sun without yielding much in terms of revenue; it's the reason Sun eventually went out of business. And mobile Java's poor performance, poor compatibility, and horrible user interface killed mobile applications development until Apple came out with iPhone. What is Java going to kill next?
I think the unspoken belief in the scientific community is that it's pointing very heavily towards life on Mars, but the rule of thumb in science is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and claims don't get much more extraordinary than the claim that life has been found on another world
Mars had a wet, warm history, there is liquid water even on its surface (albeit in small quantities), it had sufficient time to evolve life (more than the appearance of life on earth took), and it also had ample opportunity to get seeded from earth. It probably had large bodies of water over many hundreds of millions of years. There is also suggestive evidence of geologically recent volcanism, which means that there are probably warm pockets deep underground that could still support extremophile life.
Given what we know now, live evolving and surviving on Mars is consistent with what we know and requires no additional explanation. On the other hand, if Mars were found to be completely sterile, that would indeed require some explanation that we don't know yet.
So, the claim "Mars is sterile" is extraordinary; the claim "there is life on Mars" is ordinary albeit still unproven.
Whether it's a gun that kills more people or a barrier that allows troops to advance safely to where they can kill more people really amounts to the same thing.
Of course, the entire reasoning is based on wild analogies and guesses. Normal physical laws may well break down at singularities entirely, meaning that normal conservation laws may also break down.
Stories of historical miracles and promises of miracles (in response to prayer, supplication or meditation) are common to all of the religions you mentioned, except arguably for Taoism. By the standard you stated earlier the religions are all false on the same basis.
The theistic religions have scriptures that say, in effect: "These scriptures are valid because God created them and because God guided men in preserving these scriptures accurately. You must follow these scriptures or you will be punished by God. These scriptures say that God caused the following miracles: parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc." The logical consequence of these claims is that if any part of those scriptures is wrong, the entire religion falls apart. The scriptures and miracles are an essential part of their theology.
The same is not true for many non-theistic religions. For example, whether Buddha did or did not perform miracles has no bearing on the religious message of Buddhism, and there are no negative consequences if you don't believe them to be true. Other religions, like Shamanism, don't claim that they have absolute truth, their supernatural claims and stories are based on trial, error, and observation; if they get one wrong or if a ritual doesn't work, well, no big deal, they made a mistake but it doesn't invalidate their core beliefs.
It seems you're not serious about adjusting your views to reality, or maybe you really don't know as much as you pretend to about those other religions.
The problem is that you reason by superficial analogy: "Christianity has miracles, Buddhism has miracles, so they are both equally valid". Bullshit. That's not how philosophy, logic, or theology work.
I think I'm probably done here.
Yes, you are, until you start actually using a minimum of logic and reason.
But if you prefer the best aspects of those other theologies to those of Judiasm, Islam, and Christianity, which you call theistic and I called totalitarian, then I have no criticism of that.
I have no "preferences". I simply observed that theistic religions have universally failed when people have tested their predictions; therefore, they are untrue and should be discarded. The fact that the same is true for many non-theistic beliefs doesn't alter that one bit. However, the fact that some religions do not contradict physical reality shows that this isn't something all religions must do.
Furthermore, I observed that theistic religions are intrinsically intolerant of other beliefs (i.e., it's part of their dogma). Many other religions and practitioners may also be intolerant, but there exist religions that aren't. That shows that intolerance of other beliefs is also not a necessary aspect of religion.
(And making up your own names for things ("totalitarian religion") doesn't really help understanding.)
From what I have seen, Hinduism, as commonly practiced, is quite theistic by your definition... Likewise for many varieties of Buddhism, even though the more abstract, self-help variety that's been embraced in the west is atheistic. Similarly Taoism, as commonly practiced, involves quite a bit of trying to suck up to a luck-god, even though there's none of that in the Tao Te Ching.
All of those entities are powerful supernatural entities, but they aren't a "God" in the theistic sense; they didn't create existence, and they aren't responsible for the rules by which the universe operates.
But if you're cool with all those other religions, than there's nothing atheistic about your atheism that I disagree with.
I don't know what you mean by "cool". All I'm saying is that theism has failed pretty much every test people have subjected it to. I can say that because theism is a pretty well-defined concept, and that's why it is useful to be clear about what theism is and is not.
In terms of what's "cool", I think all theism is not just false, but intrinsically morally wrong. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with not believing in a God, and on the whole, non-theistic religions tend to be more tolerant of different views.
Maybe you're even less a-religious than me, after all that. I do think that a lot of embrace of Buddhism by westerners is a reaction against Christianity without understanding the extent to which Buddhism is the same bullshit in a different form.
Buddhism is completely different from Christianity. There is no God to set the rules in Buddhism, the "gods" that there are in many ways inferior to human beings, and all beings are subject to the same laws of cause and effect. Unlike Hinduism, there is also no reincarnation of the individual self. Supernatural phenomena have no particular spiritual meaning. Buddhism doesn't require any particular ritual or observance for salvation (whatever works for you), and Buddhists have no problem believing that even Christians or Muslims may reach nirvana within their traditions. And there is no contradiction between core Buddhist beliefs and what's known about the physical world. (In case you're wondering, I'm not a Buddhist.)
The only reason the Vatican is more conciliatory now is because of public opinion and secular governments. You can bet that if they were still in power like they used to, they'd still try to burn Darwinists adn Heliocentrists at the stake, and exterminate any alien life as demons. But the primary goal of the Vatican is to stay in power as much as possible, and to do that, they'll say whatever it takes in the current political climate. Even when they are seemingly against popular opinion (marriage, priests, gay rights, etc.), it's a calculated political strategy. Don't believe a word these people say; instead, look at their history.
Why quibble about where the definition of theism breaks down at the margins?
What margins? 54% of the world are either Christian or Muslim, clearly theistic in the narrowest of senses. Almost the entire rest of the world is not theistic: non-religious, Buddhist, Taoist, Hinduist, or Shaman.
The difference is really one of moral authority and power. In the theistic religions, God has the ultimate moral authority and power over creation. In the other religions, all sentient beings (even gods) are bound by the rules of an impersonal universe. If Vishnu or Zeus tell you that you should kill your son, that doesn't automatically make it morally right; if Yahweh tells you to kill your son, that automatically makes it morally right. In Christianity, you're saved by believing in Jesus, no matter what your deeds, in Hinduism or Buddhism, you can believe in, or worship, whatever you want, it's your deeds that count. In the theistic religions, you owe obedience to God because he created you and God supposedly cares; in the other religions, you don't owe the creator anything.
There really isn't much "margin" between theism and other religions, either in the beliefs or in the population of believers.
Yes, a great many theists make those kinds of claims, and I agree they're mostly bullshit.
All theists make those kinds of claims; it is what defines theism: the claim that God communicates with man personally and that he intervenes in the world directly. All major theistic religions have kept extensive records of such interactions. If you don't believe in them, you are an atheist (although you may still be a deist).
My claim was that if you declare ahead of time what is or is not knowable, then you condemn your understanding to remain in whatever box its in currently
Theists postulate the existence of specific observable effects, and if they cannot demonstrate those observable effects, then their theistic models of the world are wrong. Stating that says nothing about what is knowable or not in general.
Note that atheism isn't the same as materialism or exclusion of all supernatural beliefs, atheism is simply the (well-founded) belief that an omnipotent, omniscient, personal, immanent God does not exist.
The arithmetic construct which Godel's theorems apply to is a very good model for certain aspects of physical reality.
Godel's theorem involves unphysical infinities; it just doesn't apply to any physical system.
and your assertion doesn't hold up even for it.
I'm not making any assertions. Theists assert that "God" exists and acts in the physical world: burning bushes, parting of the Red Sea, punishing the wicked, creation of Adam and Eve, writing scriptures, communicating through prayer, etc. Those haven't held up to scrutiny. If you want to propose other ways in which God acts in the physical world, do so and we can test them.
(Of course, "God" does exist as a psychological construct, in the same sense as schizophrenia and agoraphobia do.)
You also completely blew off my second argument. If you claim that God is unknowable in principle, you're making that up, because you do not know one way or the other. Or if you accept that you do not know, then your "unknowable in principle" argument doesn't support a claim that God doesn't exist.
Statements about an "unknowable God" are meaningless gibberish, created by theists whose actual claims about what can do (see above) have failed to hold up to scrutiny.
So, cut the crap and the excuses. If you want to claim "God exists", you have to clearly define what that means, and then we have to see whether your definition makes sense.
In the UK, he would have breached the Misuse of Computers Act and several child protection laws
Really? The guy was authorized to access the information, he didn't commit any fraud, he didn't break in anywhere, he didn't disclose private information to third parties, and he didn't sexually molest anybody. I think you'd have a pretty tough time to make anything stick legally. He did violate Google policies by giving some Google customers a bad experience, and that's what he was fired for.
Sorry, but if they can read my e-mail account on GMail without my permission, as in my password, then there is zero security regardless of what all their policies and procedures declare
Your ISP can read your E-mail. If you have in-house systems, your staff can read your E-mail. That's the way E-mail systems work.
If you want private E-mail, use encryption; that's the only way. FireGPG works in your browser with webmail clients if you care.
OK, then the Torrens title is broken and a stupid system. A compensation fund doesn't even get close to compensating for this kind of hassle.
Under a system, nobody has an interest to prevent fraud. That was probably the case here: even if the buyer or agent suspected a scam, why should they bother following up on it if they can get away with pretending they didn't know?
A priori, I think I wouldn't want to own property in such a jurisdiction. However, there may be legal safeguards, such as attaching additional contractual restrictions to the title (e.g., first right of refusal), so that the buyer needs to get consent from multiple parties.
Is it possible that there are things in this universe (and outside of it) that exist, yet are unknowable, or even haven't been discovered yet?
We are talking about theism and atheism. Theism means that God intervenes in the physical universe after its creation (the position that God created the universe but doesn't intervene in it is called deism). Christian, Islamic, and Judaic dogma states that this intervention has been active, ongoing, and very visible to human beings.
Atheists consider Christian dogma to be inconsistent with observable facts. A very subtle form of theism might still be possible, but absent any evidence, Occam's razor requires that we should reject it. Atheism is neutral on the question of deism (in fact, Christianity considered deism and atheism to be synonymous until a century ago).
Most people who consider themselves Christian or Muslim these days are probably "subtle theists" or deists instead. But that leaves them pretty much without any well-defined theology at all.
Citation needed. I have never heard of any experiment that a Christian would expect a useful result from.
There are tons of physical effects described in the Bible and Koran, including the creation of those scriptures themselves. So far, there is no scientific result that unequivocally shows any supernatural effects.
The only experiment you can make with God is a personal one - it will not give you publishable results.
If that's what you believe, you're not a Christian, since Christian dogma states that God can directly intervene in the physical world and has done so on many occasions.
Furthermore, even if you believe in some form of theism in which God only communicates with you, that's also a physical effect, and it is becoming accessible to experimentation and measurement.
It's not impossible to believe that God is nonexistent (by your natural, observable, physical sense of "exist") yet still exists spiritually. In fact it's pretty standard, IMO.
Things like burning bushes, parting of the Red Sea, virgin births, and the creation of scripture are solid, physical effects attributed to God's action in the world, with far-reaching consequences. Mainstream Christian dogma also states that God communicates with man during prayer, that God created the universe, and that human beings will be physically resurrected. All of those are physical effects, not just spiritual beliefs. You may explain away some of those as metaphor, but not all of them. If you don't believe in any those things and just think that God set things in motion, you're not a Christian, you're a deist.
You're right that this is pretty standard: most "Christians" these days actually aren't Christians, they have cobbled together some kind of New Age deism out of Christianity because true Christian dogma is untenable.
I actually like this New Age deism, but it is not Christianity. The danger with confusing the two is that the popularity and moral appeal of deism gets transferred to true Christianity, which is inconsistent, implausible, and morally questionable.
Quoting from the Wikipedia entry on Godel's incompleteness theorems:
Gödel's incompleteness theorem and its notions of "existence" apply to mental constructs (mathematical theorems), not physical agents. Christianity requires that God is a physical agent.
In this thread, we're talking about the open source, homegrown "pond scum" mentioned in the article, not industrial scale manufacture.
Industrial scale growth of algae for food or fuel may or may not sense. Turning algae into food or fuel also is a dirty business with lots of nasty chemicals and energy input. Homegrown food and distributed renewable energies may still beat it.
If you do want a protein source that's easy to grow in ponds or water, consider duckweed. It's easy to separate, doesn't require processing, and doesn't get bacterially contaminated as easily. It can also be used for bioremediation, and you can raise fish in the same pond.
We're talking about the open source, homegrown pond scum mentioned in the article, not industrial scale manufacture.
Industrial scale growth of algae for food or fuel may or may not sense, but homegrown food and solar cells may still beat it. Turning algae into food or fuel also is a dirty business with lots of nasty chemicals and energy input.
If you do want a protein source that's easy to grow in ponds or water, consider duckweed. It doesn't require anywhere near as much processing, it can be used for bioremediation, and you can also raise fish in the same pond.
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Are you kidding? Java was a big step backwards compared to the state of the art in the mid-90's. Java still hasn't caught up with languages like Smalltalk (Java's collections are a poor rip-off of Smalltalk's).
.NET is just a complete ripoff of Java. So to question his contributions and praise .NET is hilarious.
There is nothing original in Java either, it's all old features ripped off from a bunch of other languages (and badly at that).
And much of what actually works in Java wasn't put there by Gosling but by other contributors.
Python, Perl, Tcl, Lua, and CLR all run on many platforms. Python with Gtk+ or Qt is a much better cross-platform environment than Java: easier to develop for, with better desktop integration, and nicer looking UIs.
I don't know of any mainstream language or VM other than the old VisualBasic that ran on a single platform. Gtk+, Qt, and wx all are cross-platform toolkits, better than anything Java has ever provided.
(Besides, Sun didn't even design or develop Swing, they bought it.)
Ok, since he's unloading, let me "unload" too.
Mr. Gosling, the only reason Java is any good at all is because large numbers of technically competent people (many of them at IBM) fixed up the bad design decisions you made and patched up your horrible implementation. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much one can fix if a language is as broken as Java 1.0 was.
You have some gall criticizing Dalvik, which runs efficiently, unbloated, and apparently quite securely on millions of phones. The sandbox on your Java design and implementation on the other hand was insecure and buggy both conceptually and in terms of implementation, as a never ending stream of published problems showed. Of course, since Java failed for applets, hardly anybody cares anymore; nowadays, Java's sandbox is just bloat for most users.
And all the while you were promoting Java as an "open" language, you knew that it was covered by Sun patents that made any independent implementation impossible, what a cynical and evil thing to do.
Fortunately, its awful UI libraries kept Java from achieving any significance on the desktop or web, and for most server side software, people have developed alternatives based on less bloated platforms that are easier to develop for.
And of course, it's Java that sucked up all the development resources at Sun without yielding much in terms of revenue; it's the reason Sun eventually went out of business. And mobile Java's poor performance, poor compatibility, and horrible user interface killed mobile applications development until Apple came out with iPhone. What is Java going to kill next?
I think the unspoken belief in the scientific community is that it's pointing very heavily towards life on Mars, but the rule of thumb in science is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and claims don't get much more extraordinary than the claim that life has been found on another world
Mars had a wet, warm history, there is liquid water even on its surface (albeit in small quantities), it had sufficient time to evolve life (more than the appearance of life on earth took), and it also had ample opportunity to get seeded from earth. It probably had large bodies of water over many hundreds of millions of years. There is also suggestive evidence of geologically recent volcanism, which means that there are probably warm pockets deep underground that could still support extremophile life.
Given what we know now, live evolving and surviving on Mars is consistent with what we know and requires no additional explanation. On the other hand, if Mars were found to be completely sterile, that would indeed require some explanation that we don't know yet.
So, the claim "Mars is sterile" is extraordinary; the claim "there is life on Mars" is ordinary albeit still unproven.
Whether it's a gun that kills more people or a barrier that allows troops to advance safely to where they can kill more people really amounts to the same thing.
One man's irony is another man's poetic justice.
Of course, the entire reasoning is based on wild analogies and guesses. Normal physical laws may well break down at singularities entirely, meaning that normal conservation laws may also break down.
Stories of historical miracles and promises of miracles (in response to prayer, supplication or meditation) are common to all of the religions you mentioned, except arguably for Taoism. By the standard you stated earlier the religions are all false on the same basis.
The theistic religions have scriptures that say, in effect: "These scriptures are valid because God created them and because God guided men in preserving these scriptures accurately. You must follow these scriptures or you will be punished by God. These scriptures say that God caused the following miracles: parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc." The logical consequence of these claims is that if any part of those scriptures is wrong, the entire religion falls apart. The scriptures and miracles are an essential part of their theology.
The same is not true for many non-theistic religions. For example, whether Buddha did or did not perform miracles has no bearing on the religious message of Buddhism, and there are no negative consequences if you don't believe them to be true. Other religions, like Shamanism, don't claim that they have absolute truth, their supernatural claims and stories are based on trial, error, and observation; if they get one wrong or if a ritual doesn't work, well, no big deal, they made a mistake but it doesn't invalidate their core beliefs.
It seems you're not serious about adjusting your views to reality, or maybe you really don't know as much as you pretend to about those other religions.
The problem is that you reason by superficial analogy: "Christianity has miracles, Buddhism has miracles, so they are both equally valid". Bullshit. That's not how philosophy, logic, or theology work.
I think I'm probably done here.
Yes, you are, until you start actually using a minimum of logic and reason.
But if you prefer the best aspects of those other theologies to those of Judiasm, Islam, and Christianity, which you call theistic and I called totalitarian, then I have no criticism of that.
I have no "preferences". I simply observed that theistic religions have universally failed when people have tested their predictions; therefore, they are untrue and should be discarded. The fact that the same is true for many non-theistic beliefs doesn't alter that one bit. However, the fact that some religions do not contradict physical reality shows that this isn't something all religions must do.
Furthermore, I observed that theistic religions are intrinsically intolerant of other beliefs (i.e., it's part of their dogma). Many other religions and practitioners may also be intolerant, but there exist religions that aren't. That shows that intolerance of other beliefs is also not a necessary aspect of religion.
(And making up your own names for things ("totalitarian religion") doesn't really help understanding.)
From what I have seen, Hinduism, as commonly practiced, is quite theistic by your definition ... Likewise for many varieties of Buddhism, even though the more abstract, self-help variety that's been embraced in the west is atheistic. Similarly Taoism, as commonly practiced, involves quite a bit of trying to suck up to a luck-god, even though there's none of that in the Tao Te Ching.
All of those entities are powerful supernatural entities, but they aren't a "God" in the theistic sense; they didn't create existence, and they aren't responsible for the rules by which the universe operates.
But if you're cool with all those other religions, than there's nothing atheistic about your atheism that I disagree with.
I don't know what you mean by "cool". All I'm saying is that theism has failed pretty much every test people have subjected it to. I can say that because theism is a pretty well-defined concept, and that's why it is useful to be clear about what theism is and is not.
In terms of what's "cool", I think all theism is not just false, but intrinsically morally wrong. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with not believing in a God, and on the whole, non-theistic religions tend to be more tolerant of different views.
Maybe you're even less a-religious than me, after all that. I do think that a lot of embrace of Buddhism by westerners is a reaction against Christianity without understanding the extent to which Buddhism is the same bullshit in a different form.
Buddhism is completely different from Christianity. There is no God to set the rules in Buddhism, the "gods" that there are in many ways inferior to human beings, and all beings are subject to the same laws of cause and effect. Unlike Hinduism, there is also no reincarnation of the individual self. Supernatural phenomena have no particular spiritual meaning. Buddhism doesn't require any particular ritual or observance for salvation (whatever works for you), and Buddhists have no problem believing that even Christians or Muslims may reach nirvana within their traditions. And there is no contradiction between core Buddhist beliefs and what's known about the physical world. (In case you're wondering, I'm not a Buddhist.)
The only reason the Vatican is more conciliatory now is because of public opinion and secular governments. You can bet that if they were still in power like they used to, they'd still try to burn Darwinists adn Heliocentrists at the stake, and exterminate any alien life as demons. But the primary goal of the Vatican is to stay in power as much as possible, and to do that, they'll say whatever it takes in the current political climate. Even when they are seemingly against popular opinion (marriage, priests, gay rights, etc.), it's a calculated political strategy. Don't believe a word these people say; instead, look at their history.
Why quibble about where the definition of theism breaks down at the margins?
What margins? 54% of the world are either Christian or Muslim, clearly theistic in the narrowest of senses. Almost the entire rest of the world is not theistic: non-religious, Buddhist, Taoist, Hinduist, or Shaman.
The difference is really one of moral authority and power. In the theistic religions, God has the ultimate moral authority and power over creation. In the other religions, all sentient beings (even gods) are bound by the rules of an impersonal universe. If Vishnu or Zeus tell you that you should kill your son, that doesn't automatically make it morally right; if Yahweh tells you to kill your son, that automatically makes it morally right. In Christianity, you're saved by believing in Jesus, no matter what your deeds, in Hinduism or Buddhism, you can believe in, or worship, whatever you want, it's your deeds that count. In the theistic religions, you owe obedience to God because he created you and God supposedly cares; in the other religions, you don't owe the creator anything.
There really isn't much "margin" between theism and other religions, either in the beliefs or in the population of believers.
That's a civil matter between him and his employer.
Yes, a great many theists make those kinds of claims, and I agree they're mostly bullshit.
All theists make those kinds of claims; it is what defines theism: the claim that God communicates with man personally and that he intervenes in the world directly. All major theistic religions have kept extensive records of such interactions. If you don't believe in them, you are an atheist (although you may still be a deist).
My claim was that if you declare ahead of time what is or is not knowable, then you condemn your understanding to remain in whatever box its in currently
Theists postulate the existence of specific observable effects, and if they cannot demonstrate those observable effects, then their theistic models of the world are wrong. Stating that says nothing about what is knowable or not in general.
Note that atheism isn't the same as materialism or exclusion of all supernatural beliefs, atheism is simply the (well-founded) belief that an omnipotent, omniscient, personal, immanent God does not exist.
The arithmetic construct which Godel's theorems apply to is a very good model for certain aspects of physical reality.
Godel's theorem involves unphysical infinities; it just doesn't apply to any physical system.
and your assertion doesn't hold up even for it.
I'm not making any assertions. Theists assert that "God" exists and acts in the physical world: burning bushes, parting of the Red Sea, punishing the wicked, creation of Adam and Eve, writing scriptures, communicating through prayer, etc. Those haven't held up to scrutiny. If you want to propose other ways in which God acts in the physical world, do so and we can test them.
(Of course, "God" does exist as a psychological construct, in the same sense as schizophrenia and agoraphobia do.)
You also completely blew off my second argument. If you claim that God is unknowable in principle, you're making that up, because you do not know one way or the other. Or if you accept that you do not know, then your "unknowable in principle" argument doesn't support a claim that God doesn't exist.
Statements about an "unknowable God" are meaningless gibberish, created by theists whose actual claims about what can do (see above) have failed to hold up to scrutiny.
So, cut the crap and the excuses. If you want to claim "God exists", you have to clearly define what that means, and then we have to see whether your definition makes sense.
In the UK, he would have breached the Misuse of Computers Act and several child protection laws
Really? The guy was authorized to access the information, he didn't commit any fraud, he didn't break in anywhere, he didn't disclose private information to third parties, and he didn't sexually molest anybody. I think you'd have a pretty tough time to make anything stick legally. He did violate Google policies by giving some Google customers a bad experience, and that's what he was fired for.
Sorry, but if they can read my e-mail account on GMail without my permission, as in my password, then there is zero security regardless of what all their policies and procedures declare
Your ISP can read your E-mail. If you have in-house systems, your staff can read your E-mail. That's the way E-mail systems work.
If you want private E-mail, use encryption; that's the only way. FireGPG works in your browser with webmail clients if you care.
OK, then the Torrens title is broken and a stupid system. A compensation fund doesn't even get close to compensating for this kind of hassle.
Under a system, nobody has an interest to prevent fraud. That was probably the case here: even if the buyer or agent suspected a scam, why should they bother following up on it if they can get away with pretending they didn't know?
A priori, I think I wouldn't want to own property in such a jurisdiction. However, there may be legal safeguards, such as attaching additional contractual restrictions to the title (e.g., first right of refusal), so that the buyer needs to get consent from multiple parties.
Is it possible that there are things in this universe (and outside of it) that exist, yet are unknowable, or even haven't been discovered yet?
We are talking about theism and atheism. Theism means that God intervenes in the physical universe after its creation (the position that God created the universe but doesn't intervene in it is called deism). Christian, Islamic, and Judaic dogma states that this intervention has been active, ongoing, and very visible to human beings.
Atheists consider Christian dogma to be inconsistent with observable facts. A very subtle form of theism might still be possible, but absent any evidence, Occam's razor requires that we should reject it. Atheism is neutral on the question of deism (in fact, Christianity considered deism and atheism to be synonymous until a century ago).
Most people who consider themselves Christian or Muslim these days are probably "subtle theists" or deists instead. But that leaves them pretty much without any well-defined theology at all.
Citation needed. I have never heard of any experiment that a Christian would expect a useful result from.
There are tons of physical effects described in the Bible and Koran, including the creation of those scriptures themselves. So far, there is no scientific result that unequivocally shows any supernatural effects.
The only experiment you can make with God is a personal one - it will not give you publishable results.
If that's what you believe, you're not a Christian, since Christian dogma states that God can directly intervene in the physical world and has done so on many occasions.
Furthermore, even if you believe in some form of theism in which God only communicates with you, that's also a physical effect, and it is becoming accessible to experimentation and measurement.
It's not impossible to believe that God is nonexistent (by your natural, observable, physical sense of "exist") yet still exists spiritually. In fact it's pretty standard, IMO.
Things like burning bushes, parting of the Red Sea, virgin births, and the creation of scripture are solid, physical effects attributed to God's action in the world, with far-reaching consequences. Mainstream Christian dogma also states that God communicates with man during prayer, that God created the universe, and that human beings will be physically resurrected. All of those are physical effects, not just spiritual beliefs. You may explain away some of those as metaphor, but not all of them. If you don't believe in any those things and just think that God set things in motion, you're not a Christian, you're a deist.
You're right that this is pretty standard: most "Christians" these days actually aren't Christians, they have cobbled together some kind of New Age deism out of Christianity because true Christian dogma is untenable.
I actually like this New Age deism, but it is not Christianity. The danger with confusing the two is that the popularity and moral appeal of deism gets transferred to true Christianity, which is inconsistent, implausible, and morally questionable.
Quoting from the Wikipedia entry on Godel's incompleteness theorems:
Gödel's incompleteness theorem and its notions of "existence" apply to mental constructs (mathematical theorems), not physical agents. Christianity requires that God is a physical agent.
In this thread, we're talking about the open source, homegrown "pond scum" mentioned in the article, not industrial scale manufacture.
Industrial scale growth of algae for food or fuel may or may not sense. Turning algae into food or fuel also is a dirty business with lots of nasty chemicals and energy input. Homegrown food and distributed renewable energies may still beat it.
If you do want a protein source that's easy to grow in ponds or water, consider duckweed. It's easy to separate, doesn't require processing, and doesn't get bacterially contaminated as easily. It can also be used for bioremediation, and you can raise fish in the same pond.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v232/n5311/abs/232495a0.html [nature.com]
We're talking about the open source, homegrown pond scum mentioned in the article, not industrial scale manufacture.
Industrial scale growth of algae for food or fuel may or may not sense, but homegrown food and solar cells may still beat it. Turning algae into food or fuel also is a dirty business with lots of nasty chemicals and energy input.
If you do want a protein source that's easy to grow in ponds or water, consider duckweed. It doesn't require anywhere near as much processing, it can be used for bioremediation, and you can also raise fish in the same pond.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v232/n5311/abs/232495a0.html