Yes (if we assume the big bang needs a cause) and this gets at the heart of my point. What you say is logically true, but I was talking about belief, not the truth. Let's suppose that some theories about the origin of the Universe are more true than others, but let's further suppose that I have absolutely zero evidence for any theory one way or another. Under those conditions I would choose to disbelieve each theory just as much as I disbelieve another.
I wonder how your own personal religious experiences (people being healed and so on), causes you to have an opinion about the origin of the big bang? What's the connection?
Thanks for the response. I'll only add that if I don't believe that a god started by the big bang, it doesn't imply that I do believe that it started in some other fashion for which I also have no evidence.
Public service notice: your beliefs are worthless. From a scientific standpoint, question *your own* assumptions first (it's a very Christian concept, ironically). For instance, let's assume your Yatzee notion is correct. What do you know about the universe that would make that a weak argument for your point?
Having faith in something means believing without evidence. I think there's something self centered about that. There's a suggestion that your beliefs are somehow more important than the truth.
Asking good questions about someone else's position doesn't make your position any more right. You can poke holes all day in evolutionary theory and it'd still be way sounder than creationism, which by the way was the top scientific theory for thousands of years and never managed to explain a thing.
Creationism already had its day as the chief scientific theory. Heck, it had a few thousand years.... It just doesn't help you understand anything, probably because it's wrong.
Why do you dismiss the business plot as fantasy? It's accepted by historians. You're being revisionist. Why? I don't think concurrent newspaper reports will cut it since important evidence turned up after they were published.
Also, your initial post is both a personal attack on the original poster and a misdirection from Butler's point which stands unmolested. In fact, it's only controversial if you take a jingoist view of American foreign affairs.
"Thus ended the great American Civil War, which upon the whole must be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record."
-- Winston Churchill
Surely Butler was aware of the Civil War. Notice that the two American wars considered good were forced on us, while we've gleefully made unjust war dozens and dozens of times.
It's easy to separate the politician from the soldier, but that doesn't totally absolve the soldier. Save a little bit of blame for the man that pulls the trigger.
Honor in soldiering is pretty hard to come by. Contrast this with most other jobs. Maybe that's why the honor of the soldier is valued so much.
Let's pretend everybody has to work their butts off even though agriculture and manufacturing are incredibly efficient. Let's structure society so that people have to slave their lives away at utterly pointless jobs just so folks like you can feel like they aren't moochers.
No kidding. There should be no monopoly on distributing published works. Any other book seller should be able to sell wool at whatever royalty rate Amazon is paying.
How about a simple change to eliminate distribution monopoly. Copyright holders, in order to sell their work, have to make their work available to all distributors at a fixed price. So if you write a book, yeah you could fix the price at some astronomical value and publish it yourself, but if you get someone else to publish it and they pay you $X per sale, then anyone else can publish it as well as long as they also pay you $X per sale. Then we could get away from the ridiculous balkanization that we have now. Kindle and Nook (and Sony!) readers would have every book, Netflix and Hulu would be worth watching and so on. In fact, you'd have a million such sites, all with better content then now, and all competing for eyeballs.
You might take a free market approach to such jobs. If you can't pay enough for someone to actually want to do it, they maybe it doesn't need to get done that badly.
Why do we all need jobs if it's possible to make all the shit we need with fewer people? Maybe what the world needs is not more jobs but equitable distribution of corporate ownership. If you have everything you need, maybe you shouldn't work all the time. Maybe you should read a book or write one, or work on your own non-profitable projects?
As long as they don't come here and take our jobs! It's the damndest thing. They get to a rich country and all they want to do is work work work work work.
It's because wealthy, educated women have more autonomy over their own bodies than poor, ignorant women and women generally don't want to have billions of kids while there's always plenty of men who think otherwise.
I wonder why this is modded insightful? Whether you get Social Security or Medicare entirely depends on whether you elect politicians who are willing to support those programs. It's entirely within the ability of Congress to painlessly save social security, and it's even within their ability, though this is much harder, reform the health care system from the crazy system we have now.
Why would you vote for someone who lies to you about this?
I like your anger but the Constitution ain't going to help you. This is a constitutional government. The balance of powers envisioned by the framers only lasted a few decades, just like the critics at the time feared. You can't hit the reset button. It's system that they already know how to game.
Principals aren't really in charge of shit. But I agree that the job is tough and they should be paid well enough so that we can get good principals. But the same argument applies to teachers. Teaching Physics in Highschool should be so well paid that your fellow Phys grads are all jealous that you got a job at Podunk Backwater High.
Teachers are where the rubber meets the road. Administrators, however important and difficult their job, are the support staff.
To complete the car analogy: You can drive around a brand new lexus, or that $100 beater some guy sold you on Craigslist because he doesn't like having a whole through the floor where you can see the road. But whatever you drive, you better put a good set of tires on it.
Slashdot Mirror
It was until now.
Yes (if we assume the big bang needs a cause) and this gets at the heart of my point. What you say is logically true, but I was talking about belief, not the truth. Let's suppose that some theories about the origin of the Universe are more true than others, but let's further suppose that I have absolutely zero evidence for any theory one way or another. Under those conditions I would choose to disbelieve each theory just as much as I disbelieve another.
I wonder how your own personal religious experiences (people being healed and so on), causes you to have an opinion about the origin of the big bang? What's the connection?
Thanks for the response. I'll only add that if I don't believe that a god started by the big bang, it doesn't imply that I do believe that it started in some other fashion for which I also have no evidence.
Public service notice: your beliefs are worthless. From a scientific standpoint, question *your own* assumptions first (it's a very Christian concept, ironically). For instance, let's assume your Yatzee notion is correct. What do you know about the universe that would make that a weak argument for your point?
Having faith in something means believing without evidence. I think there's something self centered about that. There's a suggestion that your beliefs are somehow more important than the truth.
Since night is totally pitch dark on Earth, I guess you won the evolution debate.
Asking good questions about someone else's position doesn't make your position any more right. You can poke holes all day in evolutionary theory and it'd still be way sounder than creationism, which by the way was the top scientific theory for thousands of years and never managed to explain a thing.
Creationism already had its day as the chief scientific theory. Heck, it had a few thousand years .... It just doesn't help you understand anything, probably because it's wrong.
To modern Republicans, Fox News and the like are to be judged by the sanitized story they wish Fox had run rather than the story Fox actually ran.
Why do you dismiss the business plot as fantasy? It's accepted by historians. You're being revisionist. Why? I don't think concurrent newspaper reports will cut it since important evidence turned up after they were published.
Also, your initial post is both a personal attack on the original poster and a misdirection from Butler's point which stands unmolested. In fact, it's only controversial if you take a jingoist view of American foreign affairs.
The patriotism of those who won't brook criticism of their country is shallow.
"Thus ended the great American Civil War, which upon the whole must be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record."
-- Winston Churchill
Surely Butler was aware of the Civil War. Notice that the two American wars considered good were forced on us, while we've gleefully made unjust war dozens and dozens of times.
It's patriotic to want your country to stop being evil.
It's easy to separate the politician from the soldier, but that doesn't totally absolve the soldier. Save a little bit of blame for the man that pulls the trigger.
Honor in soldiering is pretty hard to come by. Contrast this with most other jobs. Maybe that's why the honor of the soldier is valued so much.
Let's pretend everybody has to work their butts off even though agriculture and manufacturing are incredibly efficient. Let's structure society so that people have to slave their lives away at utterly pointless jobs just so folks like you can feel like they aren't moochers.
You are and your ideas are unassailable.
No kidding. There should be no monopoly on distributing published works. Any other book seller should be able to sell wool at whatever royalty rate Amazon is paying.
And yet the author left me wanting more. These are all things that can be learned ... and you're helping!
How about a simple change to eliminate distribution monopoly. Copyright holders, in order to sell their work, have to make their work available to all distributors at a fixed price. So if you write a book, yeah you could fix the price at some astronomical value and publish it yourself, but if you get someone else to publish it and they pay you $X per sale, then anyone else can publish it as well as long as they also pay you $X per sale. Then we could get away from the ridiculous balkanization that we have now. Kindle and Nook (and Sony!) readers would have every book, Netflix and Hulu would be worth watching and so on. In fact, you'd have a million such sites, all with better content then now, and all competing for eyeballs.
You might take a free market approach to such jobs. If you can't pay enough for someone to actually want to do it, they maybe it doesn't need to get done that badly.
Why do we all need jobs if it's possible to make all the shit we need with fewer people? Maybe what the world needs is not more jobs but equitable distribution of corporate ownership. If you have everything you need, maybe you shouldn't work all the time. Maybe you should read a book or write one, or work on your own non-profitable projects?
Yeah, probably.
As long as they don't come here and take our jobs! It's the damndest thing. They get to a rich country and all they want to do is work work work work work.
It's because wealthy, educated women have more autonomy over their own bodies than poor, ignorant women and women generally don't want to have billions of kids while there's always plenty of men who think otherwise.
I wonder why this is modded insightful? Whether you get Social Security or Medicare entirely depends on whether you elect politicians who are willing to support those programs. It's entirely within the ability of Congress to painlessly save social security, and it's even within their ability, though this is much harder, reform the health care system from the crazy system we have now.
Why would you vote for someone who lies to you about this?
I like your anger but the Constitution ain't going to help you. This is a constitutional government. The balance of powers envisioned by the framers only lasted a few decades, just like the critics at the time feared. You can't hit the reset button. It's system that they already know how to game.
Principals aren't really in charge of shit. But I agree that the job is tough and they should be paid well enough so that we can get good principals. But the same argument applies to teachers. Teaching Physics in Highschool should be so well paid that your fellow Phys grads are all jealous that you got a job at Podunk Backwater High.
Teachers are where the rubber meets the road. Administrators, however important and difficult their job, are the support staff.
To complete the car analogy: You can drive around a brand new lexus, or that $100 beater some guy sold you on Craigslist because he doesn't like having a whole through the floor where you can see the road. But whatever you drive, you better put a good set of tires on it.