There is more historical evidence that Jesus existed than there is of any other person of antiquity. Whom do you believe that told you Jesus did not exist? How do you know that person is credible? Who told you that the historical, biblical record that we have is false? Why do you believe people that tell you that, rather than believing people who tell you the record is true and correct as written?
We know from science that nothing ever goes out of existence. When people make children they "procreate", that is they bring into existence someone who has never existed before. Those who only believe in an existence on the physical plane will dispute this. Obviously, when you die your body changes back into the elements from which it was made. What lives on however is the consciousness, the real you that was created by your mother and father who were assigned to do this task by God as joint creators for this purpose. You don't have to believe this and that's OK. What we choose to believe or not makes no difference in what is true.
The word "Religion" comes from a Latin root which means to "bind" such as a prisoner is bound. Jesus did not come to start another religion. There were enough of those back then and there are even more now. He came to give people a relationship with the eternal God, whom he claimed as his Father. That is a stupendous, outrageous claim to make unless true. If you don't want to believe this, that is OK. The ONLY difference between Christians and atheists is that Christians have had their sins forgiven because they have FAITH in what Jesus said and did.
Jesus has always said "whosoever will...." but will never force anyone to come to him, but also will never cast anyone away who does. He admonishes his followers to love everybody, because we are all sinners. The ONLY difference between Christians and atheists is that Christians have been forgiven of their sins because they believe what Jesus Christ came to earth to do. God does not want any unbelieving robots with Him in heaven who come to him for any other reason than a believing love. He respects human choice enough to allow you to reject his love through unbelief. Scriptures says that you were made in his image and as part of that he has given you the gift of choice to believe or not.
There is no such thing as "proof" for most things, except perhaps in mathematics. When you are accused of a crime, there is either evidence for you or against you. The jury has to decide which evidence to BELIEVE. Some people choose to believe the evidence and some not that there is a Creator God.
Obviously I was not literally referring to claws and teeth as such, but to the idea of being able to eliminate as many competitors as possible in order to increase the probability of survival and the ability to pass their survivors particular set of genes to the next generation. Nature is very competitive and being able to eliminate the competition for resources allows for better reproductive survival. Perhaps calling this "wrong" or "right" is a poor choice of words. Being able to eliminate the competition by whatever means increases the chances for survival. There is cooperation in nature, but it is overshadowed by competition. I think the use of the phrase "murderiest monster" is a moral judgment on your part. When a lion kills a gazelle, does he/she "murder" it and thus become a monster?
As an agnostic are you admitting that you don't know about God, but are willing to be convinced of truth? If that is so, read the Gospel of John in a modern translation such as the NIV. Pay special attention to the "I AM" sayings of Jesus. If you want to learn more about the life of Jesus after that, read the other three Gospels. Read all Gospels at least three times. After that decide whether you want to believe are not. If not, that's fine because no one will come and do a jihadist on you because you don't believe.
Most of the time bad things happen because people make bad choices. Sometimes it is because other people make bad choices including bad choices made by ancestors. Nothing happens without a reason but we don't always know or believe the reason. In the biblical record we are told that the first humans were given the choice whether to believe God or not. That is still the basic choice at all humans have. Because of that choice not to believe God by the first humans, death and suffering came into a perfect world. The promise of God is that one day that will end forever. Of course you don't have to believe that either, but you may if you want to. No true Christian will do jihad on you if you don't believe.
Does it make sense to fear death? After all it's inevitable. It is a law of physics that nothing ever goes out of existence, only changes form. What makes you think that you, that is your consciousness will go out of existence? In the Bible, in Hebrews 9:27 you can read this, "it is appointed unto man once to die, but after that the judgment". Even atheists don't dispute the first part of this biblical truth, but will vehemently deny the second half of this sentence. It is not death that you should fear, but what happens to you afterwards when you have to face the God who made you.
Jesus did exist. How can one prove anything in history? Did Hitler exist? How about Christopher Columbus? Was there ever a guy named Aristotle? You're right however about one thing. Christianity is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on this planet, unless it is true. I choose to believe what Jesus Christ said is true, not necessarily what the various flavors of the Christian religion claim to be true.
But to have a sense of purpose in a meaningless world, it needs to be packaged properly. Religion is just a very effective and time-tested vessel for purpose.
The world may be meaningless for you, but that does not mean objectively that it is. There are plenty of people that get meaning and purpose not only from religion. Some have a selfish purpose, such as making lots of money, no matter who they hurt in the process. There are some who make it their purpose to be helpful and loving to those around them.
That's what people crave. They can't live with the possibility that life might have no meaning at all, that we're just here and should make the best of it.
It is even more important for people to have hope than purpose. People without hope eventually commit suicide. Belief in God can provide both.
Survival of the fittest means that the animal with the biggest teeth or claws will survive over those with lesser equipment. Does that mean that a person with the biggest gun or the nation with the most atomic bombs is more fit to survive? Anyone who subscribes to the theory of evolution therefore cannot logically say that it is wrong to shoot as many "competitors for survival" as possible until someone with a bigger gun comes along.
Nothing can ever be "proved", except perhaps in mathematics. Even in a court of law nothing is ever proved, but the jury gets to consider EVIDENCE and based on that they have to decide whether to believe that evidence or not, before they can decide on guilt or innocence.
There are only two avenues by which we can get information, knowledge and evidence. One is by experiment and discovery, which is the basis of objective experimental science. The other is by what some other person tells you. The latter is far more common in our everyday human experience. In the end it does not matter so much WHAT you believe, but WHOM you believe and trust. You believe and trust what many tell you even though you have not or cannot personally check out the truth of their claims. Do you believe someone because they call themselves a "professor"? Do you believe the promises of a politician running for reelection? Whom do you truly believe and trust?
There is no person that has ever been on earth that has made more outrageous claims than Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the embodiment of TRUTH. He claimed to be the only way to God. He claimed oneness with God. These claims and others are either correct or they are the most outrageous lies ever perpetrated on this planet by anyone. Nobody that really thinks about the claims of Jesus Christ can logically say that he was a good person or a good teacher unless what Jesus Christ said is true. Jesus painted a picture of himself that is starkly black or white, with no shades of gray. Everyone is now left to choose whether the evidence of Jesus' sayings have been correctly transferred to our understanding over the centuries and whether they are true. Jesus did not come to start another religion. The Earth has had and still has more than enough of those. He told his hearers, "I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The question everyone faces is whether to believe Jesus or someone else. Whom do you believe?
Any story where God is mentioned, whether science or not is involved, will be controversial and usually gathers more comments not only on Slashdot, but on many other websites comment pages. Many people refuse to discuss religion or politics because they shun controversy. Especially on/. anybody who professes to believe there is a God is usually modded down by those who not just disbelieve there is a God, but are adamant about it. There seem to be more adamant, activist atheists nowadays than there used to be. I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
"And the design of "living systems" is not actually all that complex (the blueprint of a human is a tiny fraction of the size of the blueprint for a 747 and all its parts)."
You obviously don't know anything about biology, especially microbiology. When humans can build a device much more complicated than a 747 airliner and that airliner can reproduce itself in less than an hour, I would be inclined to believe evolution is possible. Even then only after the original of that self replicating airliner was made by intelligent humans would I believe this.
That is what a single cell organism can do. On a molecular scale, an amoeba is more complicated than the entire city of Los Angeles. Mankind still has not equaled the human eye. After about an hour or so in total darkness, your eyes are sensitive enough to receive a single photon of visible light. People have built photodetectors that can do this also. However, if you take such a photo detector out into ordinary daylight while it is energized, it will be destroyed. No one has yet built an optical device of the dynamic range of the human eye. Do you really think that such a device could have been built using anything else, other than intelligent planning and design?
Why do you think it takes medical students years before they are qualified to be doctors? Why do you think there are so many specialties and subspecialties in medicine? There is not one single person on this earth that can possibly know all the details of the intricate workings of the human body.
The strong nuclear force holds the inner parts of all atoms together. If this nuclear force were slightly less, then the larger atoms would not hold together to make heavy elements. A stronger force would make hydrogen (and thus water) rare. The electromagnetic force holds the electrons to the nucleus and the atoms to each other. If this were a little smaller, the atoms could not combine to form molecules since the latter would fall apart too readily. A larger force would prevent atoms from “sharing” their electrons in order to form molecules. Either way, there could be no life. Where did this delicate balance come from? Why is the proton exactly 1836 times more massive than an electron? Why is water the only natural substance that expands when it solidifies? Why do you and many "scientists" refuse to admit the possibility that the universe and especially living things have a designer? Intelligent people and especially scientists, should look at the evidence of the intricate balances and come to the conclusion that all this could not have possibly come together by any other process besides careful thought and planning.
In human experience, all laws originate in a mind, a human mind. Why could the laws of physics not have originated in a mind far greater than we can even imagine? What is it that is preventing you and so many others from acknowledging that there is a Creator of you and everything else?
I never mentioned irreducible complexity, because I don't think that is the case here. What I am asking is how you explain that this migratory behavior developed in this particular species in a gradual little bit at a time fashion. Birds that migrate mostly overland and can stop in between can conceivably learn to migrate a little further each time at the end of their journeys. The golden plover does not have that option. How and where is that information encoded in such a way that the precise location of these tiny islands in a vast ocean can be found by birds that have never been to Hawaii before? Some things in evolutionary theory can be explained by gradualism, but this is not one of them. It would have had to happen over one migratory season.
Why do people have no trouble attributing evidence of design to human works, but balk at doing the same for living systems that are orders of magnitude more complicated than anything intelligent humans have ever even dreamed of. To me this kind of behavior does not make sense even a tiny little bit. What exactly prevents you from taking the remarkable behavior of these particular birds as evidence that likely there is a higher intelligence operating behind the curtain of our limited vision of reality?
Is this Aero service not limited to the local market where the broadcast station might be received? If so, are these local market not blacked out by the sports organizations? Can they broadcast their "antenna" signal from a local area to the entire Internet? Since broadcast TV depends on advertising, should the broadcasters not be happy to get more eyeballs to advertise to?
You mentioned generalities such as "mechanisms" but you never specify what those mechanisms are. How do these "connections of mechanisms" become available? If you want to defend evolution against evidence, you have to come up with specific evidence of your own.
If you would simply look at a globe or a world map, you would understand that the islands of Hawaii are a tiny tiny speck in the middle of a huge ocean. These birds find that tiny speck of land in spite of contrary air currents and cloudy skies. Even those birds that have never been to Hawaii before manage to find it. You will have to do better than come up with some vague statements about how these birds "combined those mechanisms" and learned how to do such precise navigation and how they pass that knowledge onto their offspring.
Those of us that believe that there is a superb designer that came up with this precision navigation system have no problem simply believing and appreciating His intricate designs in the same way that many people can believe there is a designer and appreciate the design of a Boeing 747 airplane as a masterpiece of human ingenuity and intelligence.
There are many things that evolution cannot explain the origin of how it might have happened. I don't know if you have heard of the Golden Plover. This little bird navigates 6000 miles of Pacific Ocean from Alaska and these birds do not know how to swim. They must fly nonstop and then find the tiny speck in the middle of the Pacific, the islands of Hawaii. How does evolution explain this developed?
It gets even more interesting than that. The amount of fuel, composed of body fat that each little bird can store is insufficient to give each bird the energy to make it that whole distance. The maximum energy it can store would still fall short by over 600 miles. However the birds do not fly alone, but in a formation, where only the lead bird must put out the full energy to counter air resistance. The various birds in the flock take turns at the lead position and the end result is that the entire flock makes it to their destination. The question is, how can this be explained in terms of evolutionary theory?
The young birds that hatch in Alaska do not fly with their parents, but in flocks exclusively made up of their generation. How did they learn to find the islands of Hawaii, having never been there before? This is just one of many examples that evolutionary theory has a hard time with.
If intelligent design is a theoretical possibility, why is it false? I know most animals have sex, but why is this? Creatures that don't use sex are well able to multiply. What evolutionary advantage does sex give? Animals having sex are easier to catch by predators while they are in the sex act. When swatting flies, I did not always get them, but when I caught them copulating, I killed both every time without a single failure. It seems to me that sex has a negative impact on survival, so why was it not "selected" against?
Science concerned with nonliving things is trivially simple compared to anything that is alive. The Internet is probably one of the most complex systems humans have ever come up with. Is there any mathematics that describes the overall operation of the Internet? Yet it is orders of magnitude simpler than even a single cell such as an amoeba. When evolution was first formulated, there was this notion of life originating in a simple cell. Since then, through molecular biology, scientists have determined that the so-called "simple cell" is unbelievably complicated. The math to describe this astronomical complexity is far beyond current human capability.
Simple machines, compound machines, self-regulating and self modifying machines have been described mathematically and there are many of them in operation. So far we still have not made self repairing machines, at least not in hardware as well as no self reproducing machines. Yet single celled organisms are self repairing and self reproducing devices. It is this unfathomable complexity that has prevented biologists coming up with any kind of mathematics that even begins to describe the operation of biological systems. Scientists can dabble around a little bit using statistics, but we are still light years from a mathematical description of the processes taking place in a single cell.
Anytime people who call themselves scientists try to answer any questions of origins, whether social, biological or physical, there are always certain assumptions that are made for which no hard evidence exists. Since in our secular culture the idea of and assumption of an intelligent designer is considered to be "unscientific", other assumptions (beliefs) have must put forth. Any explanation may be entertained, no matter how far out and weird, EXCEPT that there is a supreme person behind and beyond the universe. Once this basic secular assumption is made as a foundation, everything can be built up on that, including complicated mathematical models and the selection of data that fits that basic fundamental assumption. Any data or observations that contradict that foundational assumption are ignored. In some cases data that fit the foundational beliefs are generated out of thin air.
So far it has eluded scientists how to model human behavior. That is why nobody has yet come up with an accurate predictor of the stock market or other economic behaviors. Human behavior is not deterministic and therefore cannot, especially on an individual basis, be modeled by anything mathematical. A question like homosexuality cannot really be answered, until a deeper question is answered. Why is there sex in the first place? There are many creatures that are able to reproduce just fine without resorting to sex. Is the idea of natural selection not based on the foundational belief that there is no Creator and therefore we must ask the question why certain traits have been or have not been selected? Science and mathematics are very good at telling us HOW things work today, but are only marginally useful for telling us WHEN things happened in the past, but have almost nothing to say WHY individual people behave in certain ways.
The need for privacy has nothing to do with the person wanting to be private. It has everything to do with people in and out of government wanting to use information from other people for their own often nefarious purposes. If there were no evil in the world, there would be no need for privacy.
Hey, pretty nice you did a lot of work! Since most people exchange their time for things they need, like bread, an interesting study would be how long a person on average would have to work in order to earn a loaf of bread. I instinctively feel that at least in the US most people today are better off on that score. In the end, money, including the gold form of money is only an intermediary. It could be interesting to do this study for other basic commodities, such as housing, transportation, communication, medical etc. in terms of hours needed to work in order to obtain a years worth of these things.
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There is more historical evidence that Jesus existed than there is of any other person of antiquity. Whom do you believe that told you Jesus did not exist? How do you know that person is credible? Who told you that the historical, biblical record that we have is false? Why do you believe people that tell you that, rather than believing people who tell you the record is true and correct as written?
We know from science that nothing ever goes out of existence. When people make children they "procreate", that is they bring into existence someone who has never existed before. Those who only believe in an existence on the physical plane will dispute this. Obviously, when you die your body changes back into the elements from which it was made. What lives on however is the consciousness, the real you that was created by your mother and father who were assigned to do this task by God as joint creators for this purpose. You don't have to believe this and that's OK. What we choose to believe or not makes no difference in what is true.
The word "Religion" comes from a Latin root which means to "bind" such as a prisoner is bound. Jesus did not come to start another religion. There were enough of those back then and there are even more now. He came to give people a relationship with the eternal God, whom he claimed as his Father. That is a stupendous, outrageous claim to make unless true. If you don't want to believe this, that is OK. The ONLY difference between Christians and atheists is that Christians have had their sins forgiven because they have FAITH in what Jesus said and did.
Jesus has always said "whosoever will...." but will never force anyone to come to him, but also will never cast anyone away who does. He admonishes his followers to love everybody, because we are all sinners. The ONLY difference between Christians and atheists is that Christians have been forgiven of their sins because they believe what Jesus Christ came to earth to do. God does not want any unbelieving robots with Him in heaven who come to him for any other reason than a believing love. He respects human choice enough to allow you to reject his love through unbelief. Scriptures says that you were made in his image and as part of that he has given you the gift of choice to believe or not.
There is no such thing as "proof" for most things, except perhaps in mathematics. When you are accused of a crime, there is either evidence for you or against you. The jury has to decide which evidence to BELIEVE. Some people choose to believe the evidence and some not that there is a Creator God.
Obviously I was not literally referring to claws and teeth as such, but to the idea of being able to eliminate as many competitors as possible in order to increase the probability of survival and the ability to pass their survivors particular set of genes to the next generation. Nature is very competitive and being able to eliminate the competition for resources allows for better reproductive survival. Perhaps calling this "wrong" or "right" is a poor choice of words. Being able to eliminate the competition by whatever means increases the chances for survival. There is cooperation in nature, but it is overshadowed by competition. I think the use of the phrase "murderiest monster" is a moral judgment on your part. When a lion kills a gazelle, does he/she "murder" it and thus become a monster?
As an agnostic are you admitting that you don't know about God, but are willing to be convinced of truth? If that is so, read the Gospel of John in a modern translation such as the NIV. Pay special attention to the "I AM" sayings of Jesus. If you want to learn more about the life of Jesus after that, read the other three Gospels. Read all Gospels at least three times. After that decide whether you want to believe are not. If not, that's fine because no one will come and do a jihadist on you because you don't believe.
Most of the time bad things happen because people make bad choices. Sometimes it is because other people make bad choices including bad choices made by ancestors. Nothing happens without a reason but we don't always know or believe the reason. In the biblical record we are told that the first humans were given the choice whether to believe God or not. That is still the basic choice at all humans have. Because of that choice not to believe God by the first humans, death and suffering came into a perfect world. The promise of God is that one day that will end forever. Of course you don't have to believe that either, but you may if you want to. No true Christian will do jihad on you if you don't believe.
Does it make sense to fear death? After all it's inevitable. It is a law of physics that nothing ever goes out of existence, only changes form. What makes you think that you, that is your consciousness will go out of existence? In the Bible, in Hebrews 9:27 you can read this, "it is appointed unto man once to die, but after that the judgment". Even atheists don't dispute the first part of this biblical truth, but will vehemently deny the second half of this sentence. It is not death that you should fear, but what happens to you afterwards when you have to face the God who made you.
Jesus did exist. How can one prove anything in history? Did Hitler exist? How about Christopher Columbus? Was there ever a guy named Aristotle? You're right however about one thing. Christianity is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on this planet, unless it is true. I choose to believe what Jesus Christ said is true, not necessarily what the various flavors of the Christian religion claim to be true.
But to have a sense of purpose in a meaningless world, it needs to be packaged properly. Religion is just a very effective and time-tested vessel for purpose.
The world may be meaningless for you, but that does not mean objectively that it is. There are plenty of people that get meaning and purpose not only from religion. Some have a selfish purpose, such as making lots of money, no matter who they hurt in the process. There are some who make it their purpose to be helpful and loving to those around them.
That's what people crave. They can't live with the possibility that life might have no meaning at all, that we're just here and should make the best of it.
It is even more important for people to have hope than purpose. People without hope eventually commit suicide. Belief in God can provide both.
Survival of the fittest means that the animal with the biggest teeth or claws will survive over those with lesser equipment. Does that mean that a person with the biggest gun or the nation with the most atomic bombs is more fit to survive? Anyone who subscribes to the theory of evolution therefore cannot logically say that it is wrong to shoot as many "competitors for survival" as possible until someone with a bigger gun comes along.
Nothing can ever be "proved", except perhaps in mathematics. Even in a court of law nothing is ever proved, but the jury gets to consider EVIDENCE and based on that they have to decide whether to believe that evidence or not, before they can decide on guilt or innocence.
There are only two avenues by which we can get information, knowledge and evidence. One is by experiment and discovery, which is the basis of objective experimental science. The other is by what some other person tells you. The latter is far more common in our everyday human experience. In the end it does not matter so much WHAT you believe, but WHOM you believe and trust. You believe and trust what many tell you even though you have not or cannot personally check out the truth of their claims. Do you believe someone because they call themselves a "professor"? Do you believe the promises of a politician running for reelection? Whom do you truly believe and trust?
There is no person that has ever been on earth that has made more outrageous claims than Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the embodiment of TRUTH. He claimed to be the only way to God. He claimed oneness with God. These claims and others are either correct or they are the most outrageous lies ever perpetrated on this planet by anyone. Nobody that really thinks about the claims of Jesus Christ can logically say that he was a good person or a good teacher unless what Jesus Christ said is true. Jesus painted a picture of himself that is starkly black or white, with no shades of gray. Everyone is now left to choose whether the evidence of Jesus' sayings have been correctly transferred to our understanding over the centuries and whether they are true. Jesus did not come to start another religion. The Earth has had and still has more than enough of those. He told his hearers, "I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The question everyone faces is whether to believe Jesus or someone else. Whom do you believe?
Any story where God is mentioned, whether science or not is involved, will be controversial and usually gathers more comments not only on Slashdot, but on many other websites comment pages. Many people refuse to discuss religion or politics because they shun controversy. Especially on /. anybody who professes to believe there is a God is usually modded down by those who not just disbelieve there is a God, but are adamant about it. There seem to be more adamant, activist atheists nowadays than there used to be. I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
"And the design of "living systems" is not actually all that complex (the blueprint of a human is a tiny fraction of the size of the blueprint for a 747 and all its parts)."
You obviously don't know anything about biology, especially microbiology. When humans can build a device much more complicated than a 747 airliner and that airliner can reproduce itself in less than an hour, I would be inclined to believe evolution is possible. Even then only after the original of that self replicating airliner was made by intelligent humans would I believe this.
That is what a single cell organism can do. On a molecular scale, an amoeba is more complicated than the entire city of Los Angeles. Mankind still has not equaled the human eye. After about an hour or so in total darkness, your eyes are sensitive enough to receive a single photon of visible light. People have built photodetectors that can do this also. However, if you take such a photo detector out into ordinary daylight while it is energized, it will be destroyed. No one has yet built an optical device of the dynamic range of the human eye. Do you really think that such a device could have been built using anything else, other than intelligent planning and design?
Why do you think it takes medical students years before they are qualified to be doctors? Why do you think there are so many specialties and subspecialties in medicine? There is not one single person on this earth that can possibly know all the details of the intricate workings of the human body.
The strong nuclear force holds the inner parts of all atoms together. If this nuclear force were slightly less, then the larger atoms would not hold together to make heavy elements. A stronger force would make hydrogen (and thus water) rare. The electromagnetic force holds the electrons to the nucleus and the atoms to each other. If this were a little smaller, the atoms could not combine to form molecules since the latter would fall apart too readily. A larger force would prevent atoms from “sharing” their electrons in order to form molecules. Either way, there could be no life. Where did this delicate balance come from? Why is the proton exactly 1836 times more massive than an electron? Why is water the only natural substance that expands when it solidifies? Why do you and many "scientists" refuse to admit the possibility that the universe and especially living things have a designer? Intelligent people and especially scientists, should look at the evidence of the intricate balances and come to the conclusion that all this could not have possibly come together by any other process besides careful thought and planning.
In human experience, all laws originate in a mind, a human mind. Why could the laws of physics not have originated in a mind far greater than we can even imagine? What is it that is preventing you and so many others from acknowledging that there is a Creator of you and everything else?
I never mentioned irreducible complexity, because I don't think that is the case here. What I am asking is how you explain that this migratory behavior developed in this particular species in a gradual little bit at a time fashion. Birds that migrate mostly overland and can stop in between can conceivably learn to migrate a little further each time at the end of their journeys. The golden plover does not have that option. How and where is that information encoded in such a way that the precise location of these tiny islands in a vast ocean can be found by birds that have never been to Hawaii before? Some things in evolutionary theory can be explained by gradualism, but this is not one of them. It would have had to happen over one migratory season.
Why do people have no trouble attributing evidence of design to human works, but balk at doing the same for living systems that are orders of magnitude more complicated than anything intelligent humans have ever even dreamed of. To me this kind of behavior does not make sense even a tiny little bit. What exactly prevents you from taking the remarkable behavior of these particular birds as evidence that likely there is a higher intelligence operating behind the curtain of our limited vision of reality?
Is this Aero service not limited to the local market where the broadcast station might be received? If so, are these local market not blacked out by the sports organizations? Can they broadcast their "antenna" signal from a local area to the entire Internet? Since broadcast TV depends on advertising, should the broadcasters not be happy to get more eyeballs to advertise to?
You mentioned generalities such as "mechanisms" but you never specify what those mechanisms are. How do these "connections of mechanisms" become available? If you want to defend evolution against evidence, you have to come up with specific evidence of your own.
If you would simply look at a globe or a world map, you would understand that the islands of Hawaii are a tiny tiny speck in the middle of a huge ocean. These birds find that tiny speck of land in spite of contrary air currents and cloudy skies. Even those birds that have never been to Hawaii before manage to find it. You will have to do better than come up with some vague statements about how these birds "combined those mechanisms" and learned how to do such precise navigation and how they pass that knowledge onto their offspring.
Those of us that believe that there is a superb designer that came up with this precision navigation system have no problem simply believing and appreciating His intricate designs in the same way that many people can believe there is a designer and appreciate the design of a Boeing 747 airplane as a masterpiece of human ingenuity and intelligence.
There are many things that evolution cannot explain the origin of how it might have happened. I don't know if you have heard of the Golden Plover. This little bird navigates 6000 miles of Pacific Ocean from Alaska and these birds do not know how to swim. They must fly nonstop and then find the tiny speck in the middle of the Pacific, the islands of Hawaii. How does evolution explain this developed?
It gets even more interesting than that. The amount of fuel, composed of body fat that each little bird can store is insufficient to give each bird the energy to make it that whole distance. The maximum energy it can store would still fall short by over 600 miles. However the birds do not fly alone, but in a formation, where only the lead bird must put out the full energy to counter air resistance. The various birds in the flock take turns at the lead position and the end result is that the entire flock makes it to their destination. The question is, how can this be explained in terms of evolutionary theory?
The young birds that hatch in Alaska do not fly with their parents, but in flocks exclusively made up of their generation. How did they learn to find the islands of Hawaii, having never been there before? This is just one of many examples that evolutionary theory has a hard time with.
If intelligent design is a theoretical possibility, why is it false? I know most animals have sex, but why is this? Creatures that don't use sex are well able to multiply. What evolutionary advantage does sex give? Animals having sex are easier to catch by predators while they are in the sex act. When swatting flies, I did not always get them, but when I caught them copulating, I killed both every time without a single failure. It seems to me that sex has a negative impact on survival, so why was it not "selected" against?
Science concerned with nonliving things is trivially simple compared to anything that is alive. The Internet is probably one of the most complex systems humans have ever come up with. Is there any mathematics that describes the overall operation of the Internet? Yet it is orders of magnitude simpler than even a single cell such as an amoeba. When evolution was first formulated, there was this notion of life originating in a simple cell. Since then, through molecular biology, scientists have determined that the so-called "simple cell" is unbelievably complicated. The math to describe this astronomical complexity is far beyond current human capability.
Simple machines, compound machines, self-regulating and self modifying machines have been described mathematically and there are many of them in operation. So far we still have not made self repairing machines, at least not in hardware as well as no self reproducing machines. Yet single celled organisms are self repairing and self reproducing devices. It is this unfathomable complexity that has prevented biologists coming up with any kind of mathematics that even begins to describe the operation of biological systems. Scientists can dabble around a little bit using statistics, but we are still light years from a mathematical description of the processes taking place in a single cell.
Anytime people who call themselves scientists try to answer any questions of origins, whether social, biological or physical, there are always certain assumptions that are made for which no hard evidence exists. Since in our secular culture the idea of and assumption of an intelligent designer is considered to be "unscientific", other assumptions (beliefs) have must put forth. Any explanation may be entertained, no matter how far out and weird, EXCEPT that there is a supreme person behind and beyond the universe. Once this basic secular assumption is made as a foundation, everything can be built up on that, including complicated mathematical models and the selection of data that fits that basic fundamental assumption. Any data or observations that contradict that foundational assumption are ignored. In some cases data that fit the foundational beliefs are generated out of thin air.
So far it has eluded scientists how to model human behavior. That is why nobody has yet come up with an accurate predictor of the stock market or other economic behaviors. Human behavior is not deterministic and therefore cannot, especially on an individual basis, be modeled by anything mathematical. A question like homosexuality cannot really be answered, until a deeper question is answered. Why is there sex in the first place? There are many creatures that are able to reproduce just fine without resorting to sex. Is the idea of natural selection not based on the foundational belief that there is no Creator and therefore we must ask the question why certain traits have been or have not been selected? Science and mathematics are very good at telling us HOW things work today, but are only marginally useful for telling us WHEN things happened in the past, but have almost nothing to say WHY individual people behave in certain ways.
The need for privacy has nothing to do with the person wanting to be private. It has everything to do with people in and out of government wanting to use information from other people for their own often nefarious purposes. If there were no evil in the world, there would be no need for privacy.
Hey, pretty nice you did a lot of work! Since most people exchange their time for things they need, like bread, an interesting study would be how long a person on average would have to work in order to earn a loaf of bread. I instinctively feel that at least in the US most people today are better off on that score. In the end, money, including the gold form of money is only an intermediary. It could be interesting to do this study for other basic commodities, such as housing, transportation, communication, medical etc. in terms of hours needed to work in order to obtain a years worth of these things.