Please explain and demonstrate how you get life from non-life. Until biologists get to that point, your view is nothing more than blind faith. You don't know, I don't know, but what we DO know about life is that even its simplest forms is mind boggling complex. Hundreds of thousands of computer code base pairs in even the simplest single celled organism and no realistic theory as to how it got there in the first place. (No, chance is NOT an explanation. "The Monkeys typing Shakespeare theorem" has shown to not be possible. There is neither enough time or enough matter in the universe to go through even a fraction of the possibilities.)
All life on this planet we have found thus far is carbon based. No alternate biochemistry has been shown to be even theoretically realistic
All carbon based life we have found thus far requires liquid water in some form or another. This makes life impossible in the vast majority of the universe.
Most star systems either lack the heavy elements necessary for life (too far from the galactic core) or have too much ionizing radiation for life to survive (too close to the galactic core.)
Most star systems are binary, no life there as stable orbits are not realistically possible.
etc.
The sad fact is that a hundred trillion times zero is still zero.
Could there be life on other planets? Sure. There could also be a monolith in orbit around Jupiter. Given the evidence we do have about life, it's complexities, and limits, one should be skeptical about the possibility of life outside of Earths atmosphere until that evidence of its existence is shown.
"No biblical view of marriage?" OK, go sit in the corner because you're clearly talking out your bum. While there may be some disagreement on the fine details, biblical scripture is clear about the whole one man/one woman aspect of marriage being the ideal.
If you read the bible you see a clear progression. Slavery and racism (and multiple wives) were TOLERATED in the old testament, with the ultimate goal of them being eliminated. Much like how a father tolerates his child's annoying habits and quirks while working on the larger picture of raising the child. God tolerated David's multiple wives because there were more important things that needed to be done. The regulations of slavery in the OT were quite restrictive vs the standards of the day and included many passages protecting the rights of slaves that other cultures of the day had no concept of. Also, much of what people call "slavery" was actually indentured servitude, in which a person would voluntarily sell themselves to someone for a set period of time.
Your main argument seems to be that "Because Christians weren't following the teachings of Christianity, therefore Christianity has no standards of marriage." The fact that some Christians were jerks doesn't make Christianity false. In Christian doctrine, man is fallen and imperfect. Perfection is a standard we can never meet, thus the need for Christs sacrifice. Of course though perfection is impossible, that doesn't mean one shouldn't try.
The sad part? there is NO PARTY that is for smaller government, none. the Rs pass just as much nasty regs as the Ds, it is simply rewarding different check writers, that's all. Both sides want bigger government, more power to the government, less power to the people. i agree that sooner or later we'll have another depression (if we haven't already started which I'd argue we have) and maybe when the whole thing collapses we'll see REAL hope and change, but we sure as fuck ain't seeing it now from Ds or Rs.
The Democrats want to spend spend spend, and Republicans have no reason not to spend. The cause is the same, fiat money. The government knows full well that there aren't enough rich people to finance all their spending, they have to get it from the middle class and poor. Of course if the government had to raise the taxes on that single working mother to the level need to pay for all the spending the politicians wouldn't last long. So they simply tax that same single working mother via inflation. The politicians can then blame the inflation on foreigners, bankers, greedy businessmen, speculators, etc. Anything to deflect the true source, the government itself debasing the money to finance its reckless spending.
And people wonder why companies are sitting on a pile of cash. If you are in a poker game where the dealer keeps changing the rules mid-hand, what are YOU going to do? Sit on your chips until they make up their dammed mind what the rules are going to be.
This is EXACTLY what happened during the Great Depression, first under Hoover and then under Roosevelt. Government creating and changing various rules and regulations, trying to "fix" things only made matters worse as businessmen refrained from investing and hiring, unable to make long term investment plans due to the governments constant rule changing. Today we are getting exactly what they got then, decade long economic stagnation and double digit unemployment, problems that only ceased once those interventionist policies were abandoned and business owners could make long term investment plans without fear of government.
Want to know why worker wages have been stagnant? Rather than spend their money on wages, employers have to spend their money on complying with government regulations. By the governments own figures, $7,000-$10,000 per year per employee; $1.75 trillion from the private sector every year. A hidden stealth tax on workers that they never see. An employer doesn't care about what the workers take home pay is, they care about the total cost of employing that person, all costs included. The more spent just complying with government regulations, the less that can be spent on either raising wages or hiring more workers at the same wage. There need to be some rules to prevent fraud and enforce contracts, but what we have now is ridiculous.
These costs make it EASIER for a company to abuse its workers because it reduces the alternative employment opportunities a worker has available. My mechanic has virtually no leeway to screw me because there are a dozen other mechanics I could go to. If workers have a dozen possible employers in a given area, how much can an employer get away with? Not much. What if there are only two or three? With all the hate for the large banks, why are there not a wave a new startup banks offering better service? Because the regulations give massive advantages to the large firms that they cant compete.
The point being made is that "Incomes" was defined by the SCOTUS as "Profits". The government and you are using a different definition of the word, "gross wages" which the SCOTUS rejected.
Gun control advocates do the same thing in regards to the second amendment. "Well regulated" in that usage means kept in proper working order. They deliberately use a different meaning of the word to mean "Heavily government controls." A very Stalin-esque thing to do.
Just because people like Irwin Schiff are right on the issue doesn't mean they are going to win. It was wrong for whites to take the Indians land, doesn't mean it didn't happen. The holocaust was wrong, that didn't stop the German government from doing it. Interring Japanese-Americans and effectively stealing their property was wrong, but the US government still did it anyway. They fact that they ARE getting away with it doesn't make it right either. If it did then you would have to say that Stalin murdering tens of millions of people was right because he got away with it.
For me it was several years ago with some Dell flash ad on fark.com and elsewhere that would physically crash my computer because it took so much ram and CPU that my computer would simply lock up.
Yeah it is real rational to go blow up a school bus filled with children. That is completely void of bravery and overflowing with cowardice.
It is an INCREDIBLY rational thing to do. There are 2 ways to win a war:
1. Destroy your enemies ability to wage war, either militarily or economically.
2. Destroy your enemies political will to fight.
There are no rules in war. If you are not willing to accept that then don't go to war in the first place and don't pursue foreign policy that will result in war. We may try to put some lipstick on that pig with the Geneva Conventions and what not, but it's nothing but window dressing to hide the ugly reality. If you want to win and you think you can do that by bombing school buses and shopping centers then you'd be an idiot not to. History doesn't care who had the moral high ground, only who won.
I personally don't want to go to war and thus want to peruse policies that will minimize any chance of war. I want a foreign policy of national DEFENSE, not offense.
Up until recently we were simply lucky enough to have a large buffer zone between us and the islamist fanatics (another commenter already pointed out the historic exceptions in the Barbary Wars, where our buffer was reduced by our absurd desire for the freedom to trade in Europe--these WARS cannot be written off simply as "piracy off their shores"--just as it is today, it was state-sponsored terrorism and extortion that deserved a military response).
There are about 2.6 million Muslims in the US. Explain why we are not having bombings every day across the US? The answer is that while they may share the same religion as those in the Middle East, they do not share the same socioeconomic grievances as people in the Middle East and recent immigrants to Europe.
Also, the timing is way off as the "buffer" was largely gone by the mid 1800's with the advent of steam travel, plenty of trade was going on with the region. We should have seen a gradual increase in attacks from then to now if religion was the primary motivator, but we don't. (Especially after 1863 when dynamite was invented.)
Another point is that until we started intervening they were quite content to kill each other. The WORST thing you can do for a largely tribal population who likes killing their enemies is to give all of them a common enemy. After we leave, which we ultimately will, within one generation they will go back to fighting among themselves.
Do you ever wonder what else you didn't learn in history class? Maybe you should realize that your learning should not have stopped with your shitty education, before you imply that others did not pay attention.
Who said it did? I was obviously being facetious. You can continue to misunderstand the enemy as long as you want, just accept that you will lose every war. The US lost Vietnam because of that sort of hubris and we've lost in the Middle East for the same reasons.
First, we aren't willing to fight to win. If we wanted to win we would have plastered the borders of Afghanistan and Iraq with a few hundred million landmines to stop the flow of fighters. Don't like that? Then don't go to war. (Actually, if we wanted to win we couldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place.)
Second, we don't even bother to understand why our enemy is fighting and waddle right into their trap. It would be one thing if it was the politicians who were getting killed because of that, but it's not.
So do you deny the historic fact that the US has supported and propped up dictators in the region for the last 50 years?
Do you deny the historic fact that these US supported dictators have oppressed and brutalized their own people?
Do you deny the historic fact that the people in the Middle East didn't give two sh*ts about the west until after WWII when the US and Soviet union began interviewing in the region. Like I said before, Muslims have not attacked the west since the middle ages, no fire ships being sailed into harbors during the 1700's, no bombings and arson in the 1800's, no mass shootings during the early 1900's. If the "TEY HAT US FUR UR FREEDOOM" was true they they should have been attacking us from the beginning of the US republic. Yet they haven't.The ire towards the US only started after 1953 when we started intervening in the internal affairs of the region. Before that it was towards the British, who prominently controlled the region.
Do you deny the fact that Bin Laden has told us, REPEATEDLY and PUBLICLY, WHY he is attacking us. In case you've never looked for it.
1. U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
2. U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
3. U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
4. U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
5. U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
Whether or not you agree with those motivations or believe they are true or not, THAT is why they are attacking the US. The propaganda "TEY HAT US FUR UR FREEDOOM" doesn't even pass the smell test and is demonstrably false with even a little digging.
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
These people are not blowing themselves up BECAUSE of their religion, that does play some part into it yes, but that is not the main driving reason. I paid attention in history class, I don't remember Muslims sending fire ships into New York Harbor in the 1880's. I don't remember suicide car bombings in the 1930's. I remember some piracy off their shores and that was about it. If religion was the DRIVING force we would have seen these past events, but we don't.
The reason they attack us today is because for the last 50 years we have been meddling in their internal affairs. We have installed/propped up dictators who have brutalized and oppressed their people for decades. They know that until the US has been driven from the region they will not have self rule. The purpose of 9/11 was to get the US more deeply involved and more easily attacked. They have told us their goals repeatedly, bankrupt the US Soviet Union style to force it to leave the region forever.
Why the suicide attacks? Because the US supported/influenced tyrants have made life so miserable that these people have nothing to lose. If they lined up as a regular army they know they would get slaughtered, so why not just go for a suicide attack and do far more damage. Either method ends in death. Self rule is worth dying for, so they make the very rational choice to sacrifice themselves for the future of their people to have the ability to rule themselves. If the roles were reversed you'd see Americans lining up around the corner to strap on the bomb belts for the same reasons and you and I would be cheering them on for their bravery.
Why do otherwise intelligent people continue to blather such nonsense? You're not going to convince anyone who has studied the question with that talk and now that the various Christian denominations are beefing up their apologetics programs in response to the New Atheists, many more young Christians are going to be equipped to deal with such "arguments".
Please, do show how Christianity "was invented by the dominant classes, to keep the little guys at bay". All you do by saying that is expose yourself as having done little to no study on the topic of philosophy and theology.
Please do explain Saul of Tarsus's conversion on the road to Damascus. Saul had nothing to gain and everything to lose by becoming a Christian. Please do explain the uncanny historical accuracy of the works of Luke, with details like the nicknames of local leaders, depth of local waters, local topography, and other tidbits that intersect with and have been confirmed by secular history and archeology. (The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History) Please do explain how 11 of the 12 disciples, who personally KNEW if what they were saying was true or false, went to deaths with not one of the 12 recanting at any point. (This is different than a Muslim Jihadist, who simply believes that Islam is true, the disciples KNEW first hand if what they were preaching was true. They were there.)
To add on to that, who would make up a religion like Christianity? The disciples are frequently shown to be inept idiots, frequently not understanding Jesus's teachings before the crucifiction. Peter is rebuked and called Satan by Jesus himself. All the disciples deny Jesus and run away in his hour of need. Women, whose testimony was worthless in 1st century Jewish culture, are the ones who find the empty tomb. Even after this the disciples still doubt the resurrection. Jesus's own family does not believe him during his life and in one passage try to cart him away as being crazy.
All I typically get is explanations that have been rejected by scholarly critics of the new testament decades or even centuries ago. (Apparent death, hallucination, stealing the body, etc.)
If you want to see what made up scripture looks like, go read the Apocryphal Gospels, forgeries from the 2nd century AD.
Was Christianity abused at some points in history? Yes. Does that by itself mean it is false? No.
Atheism was abused and used to commit the largest cases of mass slaughter in history, does that by itself mean it is false? No.
What you need is philosophical argumentation and weigh it between the two worldviews.
Christianity claimed that the world was created a finite time ago, thanks to modern science we now know this happened around ~14.5 billion years ago.
Atheism, along with some eastern religions, claimed an eternal universe until that was contradicted by the evidence.
Christianity posits a first uncaused cause that prevents an infinite regress of causes. (Atheists who say "Who created God" simply show that they do not understand the question or the answer.)
Atheism has no plausible first cause, all ultimately end in an infinite regress, which cannot exist. (How many people here understand the problem of an infinite regress?)
Science flourished under Christianity and not elsewhere in the middle ages because Christian philosophy assumes an orderly, understandable universe. You cannot even start trying to do modern science without those presuppositions.
Atheist philosophy has no grounds for assuming an orderly/understandable universe. People like Dawkins reject it, and then do science that assumes it, not realizing the contradiction.
That's not to say Atheist philosophy hasn't been useless, it has posited many good questions that required serious consideration and answers. The main problem is that Atheists today continue to drum on questions that were answered decades, if not centuries ago. If they DO discuss an answer, they almost always either misun
See California during the Gold Rush years for examples of this, the US hadn't even set up a territorial government at that time. Absent a government, people will voluntarily construct a court system for the same reason they will construct shelter, because it is in their best interest to do so.
In the long run, I don't think the Chinese writing style stands a chance in the global economy long term. Spanish/English will win out for the simple reason that learning to read and write English/Spanish, heck, even Russian is FAR easier than Chinese.
Lets be honest, many of the 99% are just as culpable. They continue to believe the lie that there is a free lunch and they can continue to get something for nothing. There is no NEED for the two parties to change because the 99% will continue to vote depending on who has the R or D in front of their name. If the masses of people really wanted change then Ron Paul or whoever would win as a write in candidate and nobody could stop them.
The only way I see the system changing right now is when we go the way of the Soviet Union. The current system is a sinking ship, the mistakes have already been made, the only question worth discussing is how bad things will get. Had we started transitioning 15-20 years ago, like Canada did, things would not have been so bad and we would have had time to fix other problems. Unfortunately now, no matter what we do, a lot of people are going to get soaked.
That is what I noticed after the Flood of 97 here in Grand Forks. Thus I built my generator accordingly.
A Petter AA1 Industrial diesel engine with bolt-on genhead. Built the mount myself and I'm having my uncle augment the electric start with both a pull-start and provisions to start it with a cordless drill. The engine was designed to be pull started and has a decompression lever. All total ran me only about $1,000 to put together.
Disadvantages:
Weighs 180+ pounds.
Industrial diesel engines are not exactly quiet and stealthy. People are gonna know I have power. The Mini-14 takes care of this deficiency, though I doubt it will be needed.
730 watts continuous power.
Royal PITA to start in cold weather. Have Propane heater to pre-heat engine
Advantages:
Fuel consumption of only 2-3 gallons PER DAY at full load. These engines were built for efficiency.
3 ways of starting, electric, cordless drill, and pull-start.
Big heavy flywheel and genhead that is rated to 1.5Kw continuous means I have great surge capacity. Can easily run my fridge at startup.
Can be left running 24/7
Stockpile 25 gallons of fuel and I'll have power for 8-12 days. Ration the fuel to a gallon per day and I'll be good for over 3 weeks. Have a single deep cycle battery to run small electronics and lighting.
Yup, the reason Linux works in those applications is because all the things that makes Linux fall down HARD on the desktop don't apply. They don't use a graphics card, Wi-Fi, or have sound. They have a dedicated team of programers whose sole job is to maintain the needed drivers and software. The set of hardware used is static and does not change.
Linux in this case is just like my pickup. No power steering, no AC, no power windows, manual transmission, no luxuries other than a radio. On the flip side, the guts are so stupid easy to work on, if you know how, that you can do all sorts of mods to it or simply keep it running for decades after more advanced cars have been scrapped. If you know how to drive it, the manual steering and gearbox gives you a level of feel and control you don't get with your average vehicle. Of course if you DON'T know how to control it you'll be in the ditch the first time you come to a turn.
Also just like Linux, if you took the average consumer and tried replacing their modern car (Windows) with my pickup (Linux), they would get a restraining order against you.
Wouldn't it just be easier to get rid of the regulations and special privileges that grant effective monopolies to these companies? Your position is incoherent on its face, you of all people should see that. You complain about local monopolies, that are the result of government intervention, and then you think MORE government intervention will break, rather than further entrench, these monopolies?
You yourself said, "We have already paid 200 billion for a national broadband infrastructure and all we got from the telecos and cablecos was a low res picture of goatse while their CEOs pocketed the cash, and in many areas your "choice" is being fucked by one company or having nothing at all. " and your solution is MORE government? Bwaaa? You think that the same government that was totally clueless when handing out money for that national broadband infrastructure is going to have ANY clue whatsoever how to do the same all by itself for a price that beats the current system? (See the governments attempts to distribute gasoline in the 1970's). No, what is going to happen is exactly what happened last time except with more money. There is no profit/loss mechanism and thus no accountability for waste.
If anything, a BETTER solution would be to do what is done at my job, jail inmate telephones. There, the contract for the system goes up for renewal every 3 years or so. Cities elsewhere have done the same for the water system with great success. Whatever the solution, more government is not the answer.
The WPA was an unmitigated disaster, little more than a vote buying scheme to keep Democrats in power. The Deep South, hit hardest by the problems of the Depression and solidly Democrat in federal elections, saw the least amount of money. While Republican strongholds and urban areas saw the most money.
2. Speculators keep prices LOWER than they would otherwise be. The alternative is that there are no speculators and instead somebody buys the oil as a long term investment and holds it and eventually prices go higher and higher because of it. Speculators are on BOTH sides of every futures deal, so they bet that prices will go down as well as betting that prices will go up. Speculators create a much more efficient market, where prices are much closer to what the market really believes they should be.
Just a real world example of this.
Those same "speculators" that drive oil prices higher have driven natural gas prices to 10 year lows. Yet NG drillers continue to drill and explore new production and so many people are confused by this. The answer is slapping them in the face if they would look at the futures market.
The price for per MMBtu for delivery in August 2012 is $2.91. That is historically low. If you look ahead though, to the price per MMBtu for delivery in April 2016, the price of natural gas has doubled to $5.90.
How does this benefit consumers? Businesses making decisions will be able to clearly see that the low NG prices will not last indefinitely and plan accordingly and not invest in low efficiency, but cheaper, equipment that uses NG. Even consumers like me can look at that and factor in those fuel costs into out heating bill. Makes it easy to see if the extra cost of that 95% efficiency furnace is worth it or not. This extra concern about increased fuel costs pushes the consumption of NG down.
Producers are encouraged to continue producing new capacity because they are working on the assumption that the price of NG 3+ years from now will be close to $5 instead of $3. This extra supply pushes supply up and prices down.
If not for "speculators" then these price increases would simply show up in the spot market and since they are immediate the price swings would be MUCH more severe.
"Speculators" in a market economy are like a large capacitor in a DC power circuit. Any spikes or troughs in the voltage are smoothed out by the capacitor. The capacitor by itself cannot increase or decrease the voltage, but the voltage spike or trough shows up there first before it hits the powered equipment. Electronics, like markets, do not like sudden spikes.
I'd love to see the people who think speculation needs to be done away with to get rid of all their UPSs and surge suppressors and see how well that works out.
Hurricanes are, simplifying of course, the result of temperature differences in the atmosphere. If the MMGW theory is correct the temperature differences between the tropics and poles will diminish, thus there will be less energy and storms will be weaker and less frequent.
Mate, if the government comes to take away your free speech with a team of Navy SEALS and a cruise missile as back up you're going to need more than a fucking target rifle to stop them..
If a genuine civil insurgency were to start up that had the backing from even a fraction of the population the government would LOSE and lose badly.
First problem. Lots of solders would defect and take whatever equipment they can. Not the crap MIC weapons, but the basics that are effective.
Second problem. Lots of soldiers who don't/can't defect will engage in sabotage or spying. Remember that in during the Vietnam war two aircraft carriers were taken out of service because of sabotage. The US military works because everyone trusts everyone else, what happens when that is no longer the case.
Third problem. US military equipment is procured via politics and as such is overpriced and under performing. The weaknesses are well known and exploited in Iraq/Afghanistan and would be exploited in a domestic insurgency.
M1 Abrams Tank: Wafer thin roof armor, turbine engine prone to catastrophic engine fires if penetrated by shaped charge or if fuel bomb thrown onto engine deck leaks into engine compartment. Fuel hog, strikes against fuel resupply will seriously limit mobility. No effective anti-personnel rounds for main gun, canister round is glorified shotgun shell of limited effectiveness, largely ineffective against infantry or in MOUNT operations. High weight means that many bridges and even roads in the US are unable to support it, making it much easier to predict movement.
AH-64 Less than a thousand worldwide. Serious maintenance hog. Prolonged conflict will render most inoperable.
M2 Bradly. Internal fuel and ammo storage in the floor. Very vulnerable to mine strikes causing catastrophic cook offs. No firing ports for infantry, cannot fight while buttoned up. High weight limits mobility. TOW launcher is unarmored and cannot mount ERA, turret armor on that side is thin. Shaped charge penetration will cook off the rockets and potentially penetrate into turret.
I could go on. I'm hardly the only one who knows this, for me it's mainly for the purpose of criticizing the military-industrial complex, but I suppose it has other uses.
Fourth. Current US military tactics in the Middle East create more insurgents than they kill. We know that the missile strikes into Pakistan have been the best recruitment tool the Taliban could have asked for.
Fifth. Remember that in the Middle East we are fighting an enemy who thinks it's Allah's job to aim when they are shooting, over here we have to do our own aiming. Also remember that both countries only have a combined population of about 60 million vs 300 million for the US.
Sixth: Such a conflict would undoubtedly prick the US bond bubble, leaving the printing press as the governments only source of funding. Once that starts even the loyalists will start deserting when their months wages won't buy anything.
It would be a very bloody conflict with high losses, but ultimately, the government would fall apart Soviet Union style. Personally I'm hoping for a peaceful collapse once the bond bubble bursts and the government can no longer fund deficit spending.
It happened to Standard Oil after Rockefeller retired in 1896 (Competition destroyed Standard oil, not the Anti-consumer Antitrust suit.) and it will happen to any company in a free market, the big boys will get eaten by the smaller competitors unless they stay on top of their game. Rockefeller's co-workers readily admitted that he was the key to Standard oils's sucess, 'Rockefeller always sees a little further than the rest of us -- and then he sees around the corner.' Rockefeller was the Bill Gates of his day and once he was gone Standard Oil got Balmer type management.
Of course once you get the government in you have what we have now in banking and other industries. Gigantic corporations who are protected from competition by regulations and bailouts.
There would be no problem if you did not have a central bank, fiat money, and bans on branch banking. Canada in the 19th century is a perfect example. No major bank panics whatsoever during that time.
"grow weaker areas until they're up to snuff and later reap the rewards for that"
You mean like Solyndra? What right do you have to take the wealth from people in one part of the country and give it to another. If nobody wants to invest in a region there is probably a good reason for it.
Nobody wanted to invest in the South in the early 20th century because of restrictive Jim Crow laws as well as other burdensome regulations that they didn't have to deal with elsewhere in the country. The market punished the South for Jim Crow decades before the government did anything, and they fixed that wrong with another wrong. If the South wanted ecenomic development it needed to treat land/labor/capital in such a way that they wanted to come to the region.
There are a lot of ways to disprove evolution. In fact, there are so many ways of disproving evolution that I think the most compelling evidence FOR evolution is the lack of evidence against it.
- You could find DNA that doesn't make sense, like a whole new unique sequence in a species that's supposed to be related to some other species that lack this sequence. That would disprove evolution. But no, all DNA that we've found makes sense. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3O6KYPmEw&feature=related
Compare the computer code in an iPhone 1 with an iPhone 2 with an iPhone 3 with an iPhone 4. What if you compared the code in in iPhone with the code in an iPad? You would most certainly see a high commonality of code. Would you argue that the progression of that code is the result of natural selection acting on random mutation? Or would you recognize that the designers of the iPhone/iPad chose to take existing code and use it in another design.
Homology of body plans and DNA are explained equally by common ancestor and common designer, the homology itself cannot tell you which one is correct. You need a mechanism that can be tested. We can observe scientists in a lab designing new species of organisms, mainly plants and single-celled organisms right now, but attempts to replicate natural selection acting on random mutation have failed to demonstrate anything more than variation within a species, the Lenski E. coli long-term evolution experiment being the most famous example.
I did not see it mentioned in the video, correct me if I am wrong, but mice and humans share a 60-85% DNA commonality. (Depends on your definition and who you cite.)
- If you find ONE animal of the wrong type in the wrong geological layer, evolution is wrong. This brings vast opportunities to creationists - they only have to find one to disprove the entire theory of eveolution! But no, ALL fossils ever found are found in exactly the layer where you'd expect them.
Explain the Cambrian Explosion via Darwinian mechanisms. Darwin himself recognized it was a legitimate and serious objection to his theory since his mechanism could only progress gradually and the Cambrian Explosion happened far too quickly. Virtually all the major body plans show up at once with no transitional forms. His explanation was that the fossil record was incomplete, 150 years later and the problem has only gotten worse.
To get an idea of what happened in the Cambrian explosion, imagine yourself on one goal line of a Football field. That line represents the first fossil, a microscopic, single-celled organism. Now start marching down the field. You pass the twenty-yard line, the forty-yard line, midfield, and continue steadily toward the other goal line. You come to the sixteen-yard line on the far end of the field, and now you see the appearance of some sponges and maybe some jellyfish and worms. Then -boom!- in the space of a single stride, 8 inches actually, at least twenty and as many as thirty-five of the world's forty phyla suddenly appear fully formed, without any of the ancestors required by Darwinism.
My Atheist friend simply admits that he doesn't have an definite explanation, but clings to the punctuated equilibrium theory, even though that theory is fraught with problems.
- You could find some body function of an animal or plant that could not have arisen by means of evolution - much as I hate the term irreducible complexity, they sort of would have a point if only they could show a decent example. Which of course they cannot - eyes, ears and so on can plausibly and logically be constructed by gradual improvements.
Both are incredibly irritating and near impossible to talk with online.
Both deny well established scientific facts and evidence in order to fit their worldview.
Both try to make their existing worldview fit the facts, rather than admit that their interpretation was wrong and adapt their worldview accordingly.
Moderate Christians like myself, who see no conflict between Christianity and science, and moderate atheists I know, who have nothing against religion and are simply unconvinced by the evidence for theism, get lumped in with the fundamentalists and their arguments and questions summarily dismissed by both sides.
I blame the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Not every Atheist is Joseph Stalin and not every Christian is Eric Rudolph. Stop lumping everyone into those two camps.
Christian fundamentalists, stop going full retard and cherry picking what science you like. Scripture deals with the things we could not figure out by ourselves, like the Trinity. Science rests its presupositions on Christian philosophy, that the universe is orderly, understandable, and can be understood mathematically. Remember the words of Robert Boyle, “From a knowledge of God's work we shall know Him.”
Atheists fundamentalists, deal with the fact that the last 50 years of Biology and Paleontology has raised legitimate objections to Darwinian theory that need to be dealt with. The "Monkeys typing Shakespeare Theorem" doesn't cut it and everyone knows it.
Hand-waving and just-so stories don't convince either side and, if either side was so sure about their position, would not use them. My time is better spent discussing these things in person where both sides are far more sensible and civil.
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Please explain and demonstrate how you get life from non-life. Until biologists get to that point, your view is nothing more than blind faith. You don't know, I don't know, but what we DO know about life is that even its simplest forms is mind boggling complex. Hundreds of thousands of computer code base pairs in even the simplest single celled organism and no realistic theory as to how it got there in the first place. (No, chance is NOT an explanation. "The Monkeys typing Shakespeare theorem" has shown to not be possible. There is neither enough time or enough matter in the universe to go through even a fraction of the possibilities.)
All life on this planet we have found thus far is carbon based. No alternate biochemistry has been shown to be even theoretically realistic
All carbon based life we have found thus far requires liquid water in some form or another. This makes life impossible in the vast majority of the universe.
Most star systems either lack the heavy elements necessary for life (too far from the galactic core) or have too much ionizing radiation for life to survive (too close to the galactic core.)
Most star systems are binary, no life there as stable orbits are not realistically possible.
etc.
The sad fact is that a hundred trillion times zero is still zero.
Could there be life on other planets? Sure. There could also be a monolith in orbit around Jupiter. Given the evidence we do have about life, it's complexities, and limits, one should be skeptical about the possibility of life outside of Earths atmosphere until that evidence of its existence is shown.
"No biblical view of marriage?" OK, go sit in the corner because you're clearly talking out your bum. While there may be some disagreement on the fine details, biblical scripture is clear about the whole one man/one woman aspect of marriage being the ideal.
If you read the bible you see a clear progression. Slavery and racism (and multiple wives) were TOLERATED in the old testament, with the ultimate goal of them being eliminated. Much like how a father tolerates his child's annoying habits and quirks while working on the larger picture of raising the child. God tolerated David's multiple wives because there were more important things that needed to be done. The regulations of slavery in the OT were quite restrictive vs the standards of the day and included many passages protecting the rights of slaves that other cultures of the day had no concept of. Also, much of what people call "slavery" was actually indentured servitude, in which a person would voluntarily sell themselves to someone for a set period of time.
Your main argument seems to be that "Because Christians weren't following the teachings of Christianity, therefore Christianity has no standards of marriage." The fact that some Christians were jerks doesn't make Christianity false. In Christian doctrine, man is fallen and imperfect. Perfection is a standard we can never meet, thus the need for Christs sacrifice. Of course though perfection is impossible, that doesn't mean one shouldn't try.
The sad part? there is NO PARTY that is for smaller government, none. the Rs pass just as much nasty regs as the Ds, it is simply rewarding different check writers, that's all. Both sides want bigger government, more power to the government, less power to the people. i agree that sooner or later we'll have another depression (if we haven't already started which I'd argue we have) and maybe when the whole thing collapses we'll see REAL hope and change, but we sure as fuck ain't seeing it now from Ds or Rs.
The Democrats want to spend spend spend, and Republicans have no reason not to spend. The cause is the same, fiat money. The government knows full well that there aren't enough rich people to finance all their spending, they have to get it from the middle class and poor. Of course if the government had to raise the taxes on that single working mother to the level need to pay for all the spending the politicians wouldn't last long. So they simply tax that same single working mother via inflation. The politicians can then blame the inflation on foreigners, bankers, greedy businessmen, speculators, etc. Anything to deflect the true source, the government itself debasing the money to finance its reckless spending.
And people wonder why companies are sitting on a pile of cash. If you are in a poker game where the dealer keeps changing the rules mid-hand, what are YOU going to do? Sit on your chips until they make up their dammed mind what the rules are going to be.
This is EXACTLY what happened during the Great Depression, first under Hoover and then under Roosevelt. Government creating and changing various rules and regulations, trying to "fix" things only made matters worse as businessmen refrained from investing and hiring, unable to make long term investment plans due to the governments constant rule changing. Today we are getting exactly what they got then, decade long economic stagnation and double digit unemployment, problems that only ceased once those interventionist policies were abandoned and business owners could make long term investment plans without fear of government.
Want to know why worker wages have been stagnant? Rather than spend their money on wages, employers have to spend their money on complying with government regulations. By the governments own figures, $7,000-$10,000 per year per employee; $1.75 trillion from the private sector every year. A hidden stealth tax on workers that they never see. An employer doesn't care about what the workers take home pay is, they care about the total cost of employing that person, all costs included. The more spent just complying with government regulations, the less that can be spent on either raising wages or hiring more workers at the same wage. There need to be some rules to prevent fraud and enforce contracts, but what we have now is ridiculous.
These costs make it EASIER for a company to abuse its workers because it reduces the alternative employment opportunities a worker has available. My mechanic has virtually no leeway to screw me because there are a dozen other mechanics I could go to. If workers have a dozen possible employers in a given area, how much can an employer get away with? Not much. What if there are only two or three? With all the hate for the large banks, why are there not a wave a new startup banks offering better service? Because the regulations give massive advantages to the large firms that they cant compete.
Equivocation logical fallacy on your part.
http://i.imgur.com/GLV7s.jpg
The point being made is that "Incomes" was defined by the SCOTUS as "Profits". The government and you are using a different definition of the word, "gross wages" which the SCOTUS rejected.
Gun control advocates do the same thing in regards to the second amendment. "Well regulated" in that usage means kept in proper working order. They deliberately use a different meaning of the word to mean "Heavily government controls." A very Stalin-esque thing to do.
Just because people like Irwin Schiff are right on the issue doesn't mean they are going to win. It was wrong for whites to take the Indians land, doesn't mean it didn't happen. The holocaust was wrong, that didn't stop the German government from doing it. Interring Japanese-Americans and effectively stealing their property was wrong, but the US government still did it anyway. They fact that they ARE getting away with it doesn't make it right either. If it did then you would have to say that Stalin murdering tens of millions of people was right because he got away with it.
For me it was several years ago with some Dell flash ad on fark.com and elsewhere that would physically crash my computer because it took so much ram and CPU that my computer would simply lock up.
Yeah it is real rational to go blow up a school bus filled with children. That is completely void of bravery and overflowing with cowardice.
It is an INCREDIBLY rational thing to do. There are 2 ways to win a war:
1. Destroy your enemies ability to wage war, either militarily or economically.
2. Destroy your enemies political will to fight.
There are no rules in war. If you are not willing to accept that then don't go to war in the first place and don't pursue foreign policy that will result in war. We may try to put some lipstick on that pig with the Geneva Conventions and what not, but it's nothing but window dressing to hide the ugly reality. If you want to win and you think you can do that by bombing school buses and shopping centers then you'd be an idiot not to. History doesn't care who had the moral high ground, only who won.
I personally don't want to go to war and thus want to peruse policies that will minimize any chance of war. I want a foreign policy of national DEFENSE, not offense.
Up until recently we were simply lucky enough to have a large buffer zone between us and the islamist fanatics (another commenter already pointed out the historic exceptions in the Barbary Wars, where our buffer was reduced by our absurd desire for the freedom to trade in Europe--these WARS cannot be written off simply as "piracy off their shores"--just as it is today, it was state-sponsored terrorism and extortion that deserved a military response).
There are about 2.6 million Muslims in the US. Explain why we are not having bombings every day across the US? The answer is that while they may share the same religion as those in the Middle East, they do not share the same socioeconomic grievances as people in the Middle East and recent immigrants to Europe.
Also, the timing is way off as the "buffer" was largely gone by the mid 1800's with the advent of steam travel, plenty of trade was going on with the region. We should have seen a gradual increase in attacks from then to now if religion was the primary motivator, but we don't. (Especially after 1863 when dynamite was invented.)
Another point is that until we started intervening they were quite content to kill each other. The WORST thing you can do for a largely tribal population who likes killing their enemies is to give all of them a common enemy. After we leave, which we ultimately will, within one generation they will go back to fighting among themselves.
Do you ever wonder what else you didn't learn in history class? Maybe you should realize that your learning should not have stopped with your shitty education, before you imply that others did not pay attention.
Who said it did? I was obviously being facetious. You can continue to misunderstand the enemy as long as you want, just accept that you will lose every war. The US lost Vietnam because of that sort of hubris and we've lost in the Middle East for the same reasons. First, we aren't willing to fight to win. If we wanted to win we would have plastered the borders of Afghanistan and Iraq with a few hundred million landmines to stop the flow of fighters. Don't like that? Then don't go to war. (Actually, if we wanted to win we couldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place.) Second, we don't even bother to understand why our enemy is fighting and waddle right into their trap. It would be one thing if it was the politicians who were getting killed because of that, but it's not.
Yea, because there are SOOO many Catholics, Hindus and Buddhists in Al Qaeda.
So do you deny the historic fact that the US has supported and propped up dictators in the region for the last 50 years?
Do you deny the historic fact that these US supported dictators have oppressed and brutalized their own people?
Do you deny the historic fact that the people in the Middle East didn't give two sh*ts about the west until after WWII when the US and Soviet union began interviewing in the region. Like I said before, Muslims have not attacked the west since the middle ages, no fire ships being sailed into harbors during the 1700's, no bombings and arson in the 1800's, no mass shootings during the early 1900's. If the "TEY HAT US FUR UR FREEDOOM" was true they they should have been attacking us from the beginning of the US republic. Yet they haven't.The ire towards the US only started after 1953 when we started intervening in the internal affairs of the region. Before that it was towards the British, who prominently controlled the region.
Do you deny the fact that Bin Laden has told us, REPEATEDLY and PUBLICLY, WHY he is attacking us. In case you've never looked for it.
1. U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
2. U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
3. U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
4. U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
5. U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
Whether or not you agree with those motivations or believe they are true or not, THAT is why they are attacking the US. The propaganda "TEY HAT US FUR UR FREEDOOM" doesn't even pass the smell test and is demonstrably false with even a little digging.
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
These people are not blowing themselves up BECAUSE of their religion, that does play some part into it yes, but that is not the main driving reason. I paid attention in history class, I don't remember Muslims sending fire ships into New York Harbor in the 1880's. I don't remember suicide car bombings in the 1930's. I remember some piracy off their shores and that was about it. If religion was the DRIVING force we would have seen these past events, but we don't.
The reason they attack us today is because for the last 50 years we have been meddling in their internal affairs. We have installed/propped up dictators who have brutalized and oppressed their people for decades. They know that until the US has been driven from the region they will not have self rule. The purpose of 9/11 was to get the US more deeply involved and more easily attacked. They have told us their goals repeatedly, bankrupt the US Soviet Union style to force it to leave the region forever.
Why the suicide attacks? Because the US supported/influenced tyrants have made life so miserable that these people have nothing to lose. If they lined up as a regular army they know they would get slaughtered, so why not just go for a suicide attack and do far more damage. Either method ends in death. Self rule is worth dying for, so they make the very rational choice to sacrifice themselves for the future of their people to have the ability to rule themselves. If the roles were reversed you'd see Americans lining up around the corner to strap on the bomb belts for the same reasons and you and I would be cheering them on for their bravery.
Why do otherwise intelligent people continue to blather such nonsense? You're not going to convince anyone who has studied the question with that talk and now that the various Christian denominations are beefing up their apologetics programs in response to the New Atheists, many more young Christians are going to be equipped to deal with such "arguments".
Please, do show how Christianity "was invented by the dominant classes, to keep the little guys at bay". All you do by saying that is expose yourself as having done little to no study on the topic of philosophy and theology.
Please do explain Saul of Tarsus's conversion on the road to Damascus. Saul had nothing to gain and everything to lose by becoming a Christian. Please do explain the uncanny historical accuracy of the works of Luke, with details like the nicknames of local leaders, depth of local waters, local topography, and other tidbits that intersect with and have been confirmed by secular history and archeology. (The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History) Please do explain how 11 of the 12 disciples, who personally KNEW if what they were saying was true or false, went to deaths with not one of the 12 recanting at any point. (This is different than a Muslim Jihadist, who simply believes that Islam is true, the disciples KNEW first hand if what they were preaching was true. They were there.)
To add on to that, who would make up a religion like Christianity? The disciples are frequently shown to be inept idiots, frequently not understanding Jesus's teachings before the crucifiction. Peter is rebuked and called Satan by Jesus himself. All the disciples deny Jesus and run away in his hour of need. Women, whose testimony was worthless in 1st century Jewish culture, are the ones who find the empty tomb. Even after this the disciples still doubt the resurrection. Jesus's own family does not believe him during his life and in one passage try to cart him away as being crazy.
All I typically get is explanations that have been rejected by scholarly critics of the new testament decades or even centuries ago. (Apparent death, hallucination, stealing the body, etc.)
If you want to see what made up scripture looks like, go read the Apocryphal Gospels, forgeries from the 2nd century AD.
Was Christianity abused at some points in history? Yes. Does that by itself mean it is false? No.
Atheism was abused and used to commit the largest cases of mass slaughter in history, does that by itself mean it is false? No.
What you need is philosophical argumentation and weigh it between the two worldviews.
Christianity claimed that the world was created a finite time ago, thanks to modern science we now know this happened around ~14.5 billion years ago.
Atheism, along with some eastern religions, claimed an eternal universe until that was contradicted by the evidence.
Christianity posits a first uncaused cause that prevents an infinite regress of causes. (Atheists who say "Who created God" simply show that they do not understand the question or the answer.)
Atheism has no plausible first cause, all ultimately end in an infinite regress, which cannot exist. (How many people here understand the problem of an infinite regress?)
Science flourished under Christianity and not elsewhere in the middle ages because Christian philosophy assumes an orderly, understandable universe. You cannot even start trying to do modern science without those presuppositions.
Atheist philosophy has no grounds for assuming an orderly/understandable universe. People like Dawkins reject it, and then do science that assumes it, not realizing the contradiction.
That's not to say Atheist philosophy hasn't been useless, it has posited many good questions that required serious consideration and answers. The main problem is that Atheists today continue to drum on questions that were answered decades, if not centuries ago. If they DO discuss an answer, they almost always either misun
See California during the Gold Rush years for examples of this, the US hadn't even set up a territorial government at that time. Absent a government, people will voluntarily construct a court system for the same reason they will construct shelter, because it is in their best interest to do so.
In the long run, I don't think the Chinese writing style stands a chance in the global economy long term. Spanish/English will win out for the simple reason that learning to read and write English/Spanish, heck, even Russian is FAR easier than Chinese.
A good essay I found awhile back. http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html/
Lets be honest, many of the 99% are just as culpable. They continue to believe the lie that there is a free lunch and they can continue to get something for nothing. There is no NEED for the two parties to change because the 99% will continue to vote depending on who has the R or D in front of their name. If the masses of people really wanted change then Ron Paul or whoever would win as a write in candidate and nobody could stop them.
The only way I see the system changing right now is when we go the way of the Soviet Union. The current system is a sinking ship, the mistakes have already been made, the only question worth discussing is how bad things will get. Had we started transitioning 15-20 years ago, like Canada did, things would not have been so bad and we would have had time to fix other problems. Unfortunately now, no matter what we do, a lot of people are going to get soaked.
That is what I noticed after the Flood of 97 here in Grand Forks. Thus I built my generator accordingly.
A Petter AA1 Industrial diesel engine with bolt-on genhead. Built the mount myself and I'm having my uncle augment the electric start with both a pull-start and provisions to start it with a cordless drill. The engine was designed to be pull started and has a decompression lever. All total ran me only about $1,000 to put together.
Disadvantages:
Weighs 180+ pounds.
Industrial diesel engines are not exactly quiet and stealthy. People are gonna know I have power. The Mini-14 takes care of this deficiency, though I doubt it will be needed.
730 watts continuous power.
Royal PITA to start in cold weather. Have Propane heater to pre-heat engine
Advantages:
Fuel consumption of only 2-3 gallons PER DAY at full load. These engines were built for efficiency.
3 ways of starting, electric, cordless drill, and pull-start.
Big heavy flywheel and genhead that is rated to 1.5Kw continuous means I have great surge capacity. Can easily run my fridge at startup.
Can be left running 24/7
Stockpile 25 gallons of fuel and I'll have power for 8-12 days. Ration the fuel to a gallon per day and I'll be good for over 3 weeks. Have a single deep cycle battery to run small electronics and lighting.
Tape a copy of the repair bill to the side of their monitor with the total in large font.
Yup, the reason Linux works in those applications is because all the things that makes Linux fall down HARD on the desktop don't apply. They don't use a graphics card, Wi-Fi, or have sound. They have a dedicated team of programers whose sole job is to maintain the needed drivers and software. The set of hardware used is static and does not change.
Linux in this case is just like my pickup. No power steering, no AC, no power windows, manual transmission, no luxuries other than a radio. On the flip side, the guts are so stupid easy to work on, if you know how, that you can do all sorts of mods to it or simply keep it running for decades after more advanced cars have been scrapped. If you know how to drive it, the manual steering and gearbox gives you a level of feel and control you don't get with your average vehicle. Of course if you DON'T know how to control it you'll be in the ditch the first time you come to a turn.
Also just like Linux, if you took the average consumer and tried replacing their modern car (Windows) with my pickup (Linux), they would get a restraining order against you.
Wouldn't it just be easier to get rid of the regulations and special privileges that grant effective monopolies to these companies? Your position is incoherent on its face, you of all people should see that. You complain about local monopolies, that are the result of government intervention, and then you think MORE government intervention will break, rather than further entrench, these monopolies?
You yourself said, "We have already paid 200 billion for a national broadband infrastructure and all we got from the telecos and cablecos was a low res picture of goatse while their CEOs pocketed the cash, and in many areas your "choice" is being fucked by one company or having nothing at all. " and your solution is MORE government? Bwaaa? You think that the same government that was totally clueless when handing out money for that national broadband infrastructure is going to have ANY clue whatsoever how to do the same all by itself for a price that beats the current system? (See the governments attempts to distribute gasoline in the 1970's). No, what is going to happen is exactly what happened last time except with more money. There is no profit/loss mechanism and thus no accountability for waste.
If anything, a BETTER solution would be to do what is done at my job, jail inmate telephones. There, the contract for the system goes up for renewal every 3 years or so. Cities elsewhere have done the same for the water system with great success. Whatever the solution, more government is not the answer.
The WPA was an unmitigated disaster, little more than a vote buying scheme to keep Democrats in power. The Deep South, hit hardest by the problems of the Depression and solidly Democrat in federal elections, saw the least amount of money. While Republican strongholds and urban areas saw the most money.
2. Speculators keep prices LOWER than they would otherwise be. The alternative is that there are no speculators and instead somebody buys the oil as a long term investment and holds it and eventually prices go higher and higher because of it. Speculators are on BOTH sides of every futures deal, so they bet that prices will go down as well as betting that prices will go up. Speculators create a much more efficient market, where prices are much closer to what the market really believes they should be.
Just a real world example of this.
Those same "speculators" that drive oil prices higher have driven natural gas prices to 10 year lows. Yet NG drillers continue to drill and explore new production and so many people are confused by this. The answer is slapping them in the face if they would look at the futures market.
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/NG.html
The price for per MMBtu for delivery in August 2012 is $2.91. That is historically low. If you look ahead though, to the price per MMBtu for delivery in April 2016, the price of natural gas has doubled to $5.90.
How does this benefit consumers? Businesses making decisions will be able to clearly see that the low NG prices will not last indefinitely and plan accordingly and not invest in low efficiency, but cheaper, equipment that uses NG. Even consumers like me can look at that and factor in those fuel costs into out heating bill. Makes it easy to see if the extra cost of that 95% efficiency furnace is worth it or not. This extra concern about increased fuel costs pushes the consumption of NG down.
Producers are encouraged to continue producing new capacity because they are working on the assumption that the price of NG 3+ years from now will be close to $5 instead of $3. This extra supply pushes supply up and prices down.
If not for "speculators" then these price increases would simply show up in the spot market and since they are immediate the price swings would be MUCH more severe.
"Speculators" in a market economy are like a large capacitor in a DC power circuit. Any spikes or troughs in the voltage are smoothed out by the capacitor. The capacitor by itself cannot increase or decrease the voltage, but the voltage spike or trough shows up there first before it hits the powered equipment. Electronics, like markets, do not like sudden spikes.
I'd love to see the people who think speculation needs to be done away with to get rid of all their UPSs and surge suppressors and see how well that works out.
Hurricanes are, simplifying of course, the result of temperature differences in the atmosphere. If the MMGW theory is correct the temperature differences between the tropics and poles will diminish, thus there will be less energy and storms will be weaker and less frequent.
Mate, if the government comes to take away your free speech with a team of Navy SEALS and a cruise missile as back up you're going to need more than a fucking target rifle to stop them..
If a genuine civil insurgency were to start up that had the backing from even a fraction of the population the government would LOSE and lose badly.
First problem. Lots of solders would defect and take whatever equipment they can. Not the crap MIC weapons, but the basics that are effective.
Second problem. Lots of soldiers who don't/can't defect will engage in sabotage or spying. Remember that in during the Vietnam war two aircraft carriers were taken out of service because of sabotage. The US military works because everyone trusts everyone else, what happens when that is no longer the case.
Third problem. US military equipment is procured via politics and as such is overpriced and under performing. The weaknesses are well known and exploited in Iraq/Afghanistan and would be exploited in a domestic insurgency.
M1 Abrams Tank: Wafer thin roof armor, turbine engine prone to catastrophic engine fires if penetrated by shaped charge or if fuel bomb thrown onto engine deck leaks into engine compartment. Fuel hog, strikes against fuel resupply will seriously limit mobility. No effective anti-personnel rounds for main gun, canister round is glorified shotgun shell of limited effectiveness, largely ineffective against infantry or in MOUNT operations. High weight means that many bridges and even roads in the US are unable to support it, making it much easier to predict movement.
AH-64 Less than a thousand worldwide. Serious maintenance hog. Prolonged conflict will render most inoperable.
M2 Bradly. Internal fuel and ammo storage in the floor. Very vulnerable to mine strikes causing catastrophic cook offs. No firing ports for infantry, cannot fight while buttoned up. High weight limits mobility. TOW launcher is unarmored and cannot mount ERA, turret armor on that side is thin. Shaped charge penetration will cook off the rockets and potentially penetrate into turret.
I could go on. I'm hardly the only one who knows this, for me it's mainly for the purpose of criticizing the military-industrial complex, but I suppose it has other uses.
Fourth. Current US military tactics in the Middle East create more insurgents than they kill. We know that the missile strikes into Pakistan have been the best recruitment tool the Taliban could have asked for.
Fifth. Remember that in the Middle East we are fighting an enemy who thinks it's Allah's job to aim when they are shooting, over here we have to do our own aiming. Also remember that both countries only have a combined population of about 60 million vs 300 million for the US.
Sixth: Such a conflict would undoubtedly prick the US bond bubble, leaving the printing press as the governments only source of funding. Once that starts even the loyalists will start deserting when their months wages won't buy anything.
It would be a very bloody conflict with high losses, but ultimately, the government would fall apart Soviet Union style. Personally I'm hoping for a peaceful collapse once the bond bubble bursts and the government can no longer fund deficit spending.
It happened to Standard Oil after Rockefeller retired in 1896 (Competition destroyed Standard oil, not the Anti-consumer Antitrust suit.) and it will happen to any company in a free market, the big boys will get eaten by the smaller competitors unless they stay on top of their game. Rockefeller's co-workers readily admitted that he was the key to Standard oils's sucess, 'Rockefeller always sees a little further than the rest of us -- and then he sees around the corner.' Rockefeller was the Bill Gates of his day and once he was gone Standard Oil got Balmer type management.
Of course once you get the government in you have what we have now in banking and other industries. Gigantic corporations who are protected from competition by regulations and bailouts.
There would be no problem if you did not have a central bank, fiat money, and bans on branch banking. Canada in the 19th century is a perfect example. No major bank panics whatsoever during that time.
"grow weaker areas until they're up to snuff and later reap the rewards for that"
You mean like Solyndra? What right do you have to take the wealth from people in one part of the country and give it to another. If nobody wants to invest in a region there is probably a good reason for it.
Nobody wanted to invest in the South in the early 20th century because of restrictive Jim Crow laws as well as other burdensome regulations that they didn't have to deal with elsewhere in the country. The market punished the South for Jim Crow decades before the government did anything, and they fixed that wrong with another wrong. If the South wanted ecenomic development it needed to treat land/labor/capital in such a way that they wanted to come to the region.
There are a lot of ways to disprove evolution. In fact, there are so many ways of disproving evolution that I think the most compelling evidence FOR evolution is the lack of evidence against it.
- You could find DNA that doesn't make sense, like a whole new unique sequence in a species that's supposed to be related to some other species that lack this sequence. That would disprove evolution. But no, all DNA that we've found makes sense. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3O6KYPmEw&feature=related
Compare the computer code in an iPhone 1 with an iPhone 2 with an iPhone 3 with an iPhone 4. What if you compared the code in in iPhone with the code in an iPad? You would most certainly see a high commonality of code. Would you argue that the progression of that code is the result of natural selection acting on random mutation? Or would you recognize that the designers of the iPhone/iPad chose to take existing code and use it in another design.
Homology of body plans and DNA are explained equally by common ancestor and common designer, the homology itself cannot tell you which one is correct. You need a mechanism that can be tested. We can observe scientists in a lab designing new species of organisms, mainly plants and single-celled organisms right now, but attempts to replicate natural selection acting on random mutation have failed to demonstrate anything more than variation within a species, the Lenski E. coli long-term evolution experiment being the most famous example.
I did not see it mentioned in the video, correct me if I am wrong, but mice and humans share a 60-85% DNA commonality. (Depends on your definition and who you cite.)
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/OF-MICE-AND-MEN-Striking-similarities-at-the-2748350.php
- If you find ONE animal of the wrong type in the wrong geological layer, evolution is wrong. This brings vast opportunities to creationists - they only have to find one to disprove the entire theory of eveolution! But no, ALL fossils ever found are found in exactly the layer where you'd expect them.
Explain the Cambrian Explosion via Darwinian mechanisms. Darwin himself recognized it was a legitimate and serious objection to his theory since his mechanism could only progress gradually and the Cambrian Explosion happened far too quickly. Virtually all the major body plans show up at once with no transitional forms. His explanation was that the fossil record was incomplete, 150 years later and the problem has only gotten worse.
To get an idea of what happened in the Cambrian explosion, imagine yourself on one goal line of a Football field. That line represents the first fossil, a microscopic, single-celled organism. Now start marching down the field. You pass the twenty-yard line, the forty-yard line, midfield, and continue steadily toward the other goal line. You come to the sixteen-yard line on the far end of the field, and now you see the appearance of some sponges and maybe some jellyfish and worms. Then -boom!- in the space of a single stride, 8 inches actually, at least twenty and as many as thirty-five of the world's forty phyla suddenly appear fully formed, without any of the ancestors required by Darwinism.
My Atheist friend simply admits that he doesn't have an definite explanation, but clings to the punctuated equilibrium theory, even though that theory is fraught with problems.
- You could find some body function of an animal or plant that could not have arisen by means of evolution - much as I hate the term irreducible complexity, they sort of would have a point if only they could show a decent example. Which of course they cannot - eyes, ears and so on can plausibly and logically be constructed by gradual improvements.
Both are incredibly irritating and near impossible to talk with online.
Both deny well established scientific facts and evidence in order to fit their worldview.
Both try to make their existing worldview fit the facts, rather than admit that their interpretation was wrong and adapt their worldview accordingly.
Moderate Christians like myself, who see no conflict between Christianity and science, and moderate atheists I know, who have nothing against religion and are simply unconvinced by the evidence for theism, get lumped in with the fundamentalists and their arguments and questions summarily dismissed by both sides.
I blame the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Not every Atheist is Joseph Stalin and not every Christian is Eric Rudolph. Stop lumping everyone into those two camps.
Christian fundamentalists, stop going full retard and cherry picking what science you like. Scripture deals with the things we could not figure out by ourselves, like the Trinity. Science rests its presupositions on Christian philosophy, that the universe is orderly, understandable, and can be understood mathematically. Remember the words of Robert Boyle, “From a knowledge of God's work we shall know Him.”
Atheists fundamentalists, deal with the fact that the last 50 years of Biology and Paleontology has raised legitimate objections to Darwinian theory that need to be dealt with. The "Monkeys typing Shakespeare Theorem" doesn't cut it and everyone knows it.
Hand-waving and just-so stories don't convince either side and, if either side was so sure about their position, would not use them. My time is better spent discussing these things in person where both sides are far more sensible and civil.
Good night.