Their patent is a little more specific than this. A company called Chromatics had floating point hardware in their CX 1536 graphics engine back in the 80's (so named for it's 1536 x 1152 resolution) and used floating-point to represent the initial coordinates. What they didn't do, but SGI does, is store computed pixel attributes in the framebuffer in floating point.
It's an issue of trust and I have no faith in the Bush administration or its agents.
I have no faith in any administration or its agents. I wish the rest of the world would wise up to this. Government is not now, never has been, nor ever will be our friend.
I can't believe you're still harping on this after the weekend, but I just have to point something out...
People reply, I try to give them the courtesy of a response.
If you really understood anything about information theory, other than ID talking points, you'd know that a perfectly random sequence contains more information than any other configuration. So a sufficiently long burst of white noise contains more information than your entire genome.
. Sure.
It's not the "information" that design advocates mean when they talk about it, but that's not going to stop them from abusing it.
And how are design advocate abusing it? Not only do they say that DNA has more information content than a book, but that DNA has complex specified information.
Once again, randomness wins.
Last I checked, the monkeys were still working on Shakespeare.
But theists, while they do say "God did it", go beyond this to further determine how God did it.
Simply attacking me as an atheist, doesn't fix any problems with the "question".
I wasn't attacking you. I was simply observing that your position was a necessary conclusion from the premise "god does not exist".
You are simply taking a scientific question of "How did that happen?" and making it into a question with a priori assumptions
That's what everybody does. Everyone has a priori assumptions.
Consciousness is a product of our brain.
Is it? God doesn't have a "brain", yet he is conscious.
What part of consciousness is such a mystery?
What it is and how it works.
Because, design requires motive.
But there may be other traits of design that can be used to infer design without having to rely on motive. I can create a computer program because I love to program. I could also create it because I'm being paid to create it. The fact that different motives still result in design means that design should be able to be determined apart from motive.
Here, which of these two sets of numbers is generated by a computer and which did I design? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
I don't actually care. Design should be able to be determined apart from the designer.
The fact that the Shakespeare work is written by a person (or an infinite monkey) is unknown out of context.
See? You agree with me.
Furthermore, it's safe to say that the Shakespeare work didn't appear by chance, and proabably not by chance along with a non-intelligent selection mechanism.
Intelligence can produce order but so can nature. Simply because intelligence can produce order and order exists, does not mean any found order is produced by intelligence.
I agree.
If it's a book, an author is a good guess. If it's a rabbit, evolution is a good bet.
Except that DNA has more information content than a book. So evolution may be less of a "good bet" and more the necessary consequence of an a priori assumption.
Though I've heard that particular accusation about inconsistency used by pretty much every side. For instance, Objectivists say that every worldview other than their own is inconsistent.
Talk is easy. But, also, more than talk is required. Cognitive dissonance is a very real barrier that's hard to overcome. It isn't enough to have light -- a blind man is just as blind in a bright room as a dark room.
That's a good point; science isn't the only method of gaining knowledge. So, I ask you this: by what process can we learn about that which is outside nature?
By having that which transcends nature enter nature and talk to us.
That's why, IMO, it's either Christianity or Atheism. Again, IMO, these are really the only two viable choices (deism and agnosticism being purely emotional balm). It will be interesting to see what happens to naturalism if the intelligent design crowd come through. Will information be added to the four fundamental components of the universe (matter/energy, space/time)? And if information becomes a fundamental component, will this be enough? Or will it have to be information/intelligence? And if it's information/intelligence, does this mean that atheism will have be scrapped for deism (which, I think, is the weakest form of deism?)
I can sit down with a pile of toothpicks/pennies/ and demonstrate why I use most of the axioms I use (identity, transitivity, etc.)...that's why I take them on faith (I just can't PROVE them in the traditional sense of a math proof).
By definition axioms can't be proven.
God or no god, intelligence is just a nuance of existence that I don't spend much time trying to understand
This lends credence to my prior statement that atheism is actually a hindrance to science.
As for the statement "intelligence is only an emergent property of matter," well, that's just another "axiom" that some scientists are willing to accept
This isn't an axiom -- it is a necessary conclusion of the a priori commitment to the axiom "there is no god." It's philosophy masquerading as science.
Even if we did prove that intelligence CAN emerge spontaneously from matter, we can never say that OUR intelligence didn't come from God
But you wouldn't have to. Occam's razor and all that.
Pretty much all you can do in life is accept the fundamental reason of existence that gives you the greatest sense of comfort (religion/string theory/whatever),...
What about consistency? There are lots of comfortable people who are incoherent messes (many with tenure!).
or just not think about it (that's where the joint comes in...).
"Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" is a result of atheism. Your worldview has you bound.
Gravity is as rich in information as you could want.
Not in the sense of a message or a pattern.
But this is obviously not the case with genetics. DNA is littered with the vestiges of the past.
So is the source code to the products made by the company I work for. So? It didn't write itself and those monkeys are still trying to produce one page of the works of Shakespeare.
The fact is, you can get more information out of a genetic algorithm than you put in.
That happens to be a hotly contested statement. The back and forth between, say, Dembski and his detractors makes for interesting reading, especially Dembski's statements about the "No Free Lunch" theorem. What's somewhat frustrating, however, is the final paragraph from Fitness Among Competitive Agents:
The view that evolution is a free lunch has been stated most forcefully by Richard Dawkins (1987, 316): "The one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity." Getting organized complexity out of primeval simplicity is a good trick indeed. But it is a trick that NFL seems to debunk. The question therefore remains: Insofar as evolutionary computation does better than blind search, what is its source of power? That's a topic for another paper.
I very much want to read that paper.
Take for example, an electronic circuit that was developed via a genetic algorithm, which works better than circuits designed by any engineer who ever lived. It works better due to a side-loop that seems to have no bearing on the circuit - though clearly it does - but no one yet understands why.
I wish I could find a reference to this. Nevertheless, having had a course in AI and having written software similar to this, the heuristic functions used to guide a search are still the product of intelligence, and I'm not (yet) convinced that the search is more intelligent than the designer of the search. Intuitively, my program to play a game may generate moves that surprise me, but few would say that the computer is smarter than the programmer. Faster and more tenacious, but not more intelligent. And that's the problem with these computer demonstrations -- they are frontloaded with intelligence in order to produce the desired result yet this frontloading is ignored.
It's true that science's universe of discourse is always natural reality. Whenever knowledge is expanded past what is currently considered natural, the definition of nature is extended to include it. The very idea of other dimensions was once considered supernatural, but as our knowledge of QM grows, they are becoming part of what we consider natural.
So maybe we're on the cusp where science finds that intelligence is a fundamental part of nature and not a byproduct of it. That sparks the memory of something I read a long time ago by a scientist of some repute. Let me see if I can find it.... here it is (from God of the Astronomers, by Robert Jastrow-Ph.D.)
Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? Was the Universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination.
The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. An entire world, rich in structure and history, may have existed before our Universe appeared; but if it did, science cannot tell what kind of world it was. A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation.
This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. To which St. Augustine added, "Who can understand this mystery or explain it to others?" The development is unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. We have been able to connect the appearance of man on this planet to the crossing of the threshold of life on the earth, the manufacture of the chemical ingredients of life within stars that have long since expired, the formation of those stars out of the primal mists, and the expansion and cooling of the parent cloud of gases out of the cosmic fireball.
Now we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to further progress seems insurmountable. It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
The supernatural by definition is so hopelessly beyond any understanding, consistency or prediction that science cannot include it because no progress in understanding can be made.
Science can tell us nothing about ethics (it can't bridge the gap from "is" to "ought"), for example, yet it isn't beyond our understanding. Therefore, science is not the only route to knowledge. So I can't agree with your definition that the supernatural is hopelessly beyond understanding.
I'm not sure that it's even possible to have; there's no way to rationalize confidence without consistency.
A profoundly true statement (and is one reason why atheism d
They are two different questions, but I was addressing the former.
I understand that. You claimed that the worldview that says "God did it" is injurious to science. It isn't. It's a hysterical reaction to an opposing worldview.
I regard the latter as nonsense.
I would too, were I an atheist. So what?
We are simply looking for the naturalistic source and applying the motive to the process.
What is the naturalistic source for highly complex specific information?
The existence of order in the universe would easily have been noted without the concept of God.
Except, for some reason, that didn't appear to be the case.
You think that since some people looked for order in the universe while believing in God that the idea of God is suddenly scientific?
I don't believe I said that. What I said what that some historians of science noted that science did not flourish apart from certain monotheistic societies. I was rebutting the claim that acceptance of the existence of god would be a disaster for modern science.
That's downright absurd. You might as well give leprechaun credit for our understanding of light diffusion.
Materialists haven't come anywhere close to being able to understand the basis for our consciousness or rational thought. In fact, one school of thought is that consciousness is an illusion. So if that leprechaun had the characteristics of a certain monotheistic god, it might be reasonable to give him/her/it that credit.
Actually, I know a number of materialistic naturalists and they would never say "In the beginning were the particles..." -- Such a thing is instantly flawed based on the existence of particles. Thus it can't be the beginning.
Elsewhere, one poster has said that matter/energy, space/time are all that there is. That is, that "particles" gave rise to intelligence. If that isn't the case, then what would you say is?
We can't really look for design.
Why not?
We can look for order. The idea that atheism, materialism, naturalism are crippling science in regard to design is absurd. We look for order, not for design.
This sentence, I think, proves my point. You don't look for design in nature because, to you, it's a priori not recognizable.
If something is designed, it should be ordered. So looking for order isn't going to miss any design that might exist.
Is order the only criteria for design? Design theorists think not. The text of a page of Shakespeare was designed. How about the information encoded in DNA?
Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find?
We should find order. Which is just what we are looking for. After finding order, some theologians will ascribe such order to the design of God; even in light of more reasonable explanations.
Intelligence produces design is a reasonable explanation. What do you think is more reasonable?
What is evil for a stone? A stone has no interests to concern itself with.
I agree. Good and evil require self-awareness. It also requires the ability to go from "is" to "ought".
Evil" is that which is harmful to a living being, in other words that which threatens, harms, coerces, or destroys a living being.
This is certainly not true, since there are people who think that there are cases where harming another person is meritorious. What is actually the case is that good and evil are whatever an individual wants them to be (and, yes, this is coming from a theist).
Where has the evil gone? Poof! Maybe it never existed.
You are confusing the action with the judgement about the action. Good and evil exist only within a mind.
The continuum of good versus evil is broad and subjective
Then why do you keep trying to define it? It is what you want it to be. It doesn't need rationalization and, I think, isn't subject to rationalization.
But it is clear that to provide resources for another is an act of good...
Really? I can think of cases where it isn't, at least, in my opinion, which is all good and evil are.
So, by this definition, are most of us "good" or "evil" or something in-between? Indeed, how does "God" fare in this test?
Well, that's the really interesting question, which you stopped short of answering. If good and evil are purely subjective (which I think they are), then how does one judge between value systems? This question ends up with what I think is an interesting result depending on one's worldview (i.e. atheism vs. theism vs. polytheism...).
No, I'm not. We may be talking past each other, but I'm not trolling.
The existence of God is a theory that cannot be falsified
The non-existence of God is likewise a theory that cannot be falsified. (At least, at this point in my knowledge, I don't know how to test either for falsifiability).
This makes it useless as a scientific theory
I'll agree to this if the materialists will likewise agree.
It just makes it pointless as an explanatory mechanism.
So how does one falsify "the most improbable thing happened by chance and, lo and behold, here we are"?
Why do things fall? Cause God wants them to.
I think this is a confusion of terms between desire and means. In any case gravity, for example, doesn't appear to be information rich. DNA does. How was this information generated? Even with genetic algorithms, you can't get out more information than is originally put into the system.
Faith is nothing more than one's set of axioms. So in one sense, you can't have science (at least, the method of science), without faith -- because everything has a set of axioms.
Science is about testing hypotheses to see if the underlying theory is valid
So when (some) scientists say that intelligence is only an emergent property of matter, is that science, or naturalism run amok?
This ["atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature"] is flat out wrong.
It a direct corollary from the definition of atheism.
Atheism says things came about because who the fuck gives a shit.
Apathy is not atheism. Every worldview has a creation story; atheism's is that non-intelligent matter + chance somehow gives rise to us.
I think the biggest stumbling block in debates between religious people and athiests comes from bringing the matter of intelligence into the whole situation altogether.
So are you saying that we should exclude intelligence from debates?;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist. Mod me down.)
I am not religious because I am comfortable existing without believing in a higher power.
Since when is truth judged by our comfort level?
But I really do draw the line when somebody suggests that athiesm, in and of itself, is a faith which comes down to "Either we're the smartest, or aliens are."
What else can it lead to? If aliens don't exist, then we're the smartest (because there is no smarter god or gods). If aliens do exist, then a comparison between the intelligence of the two seems in order, does it not?
Me, I don't care.. who really cares?
If you're happy with apathy, then fine. But your ennui isn't going to do very much for some of us.
Its like discovering how to predict how planets orbit, and then going, "Aw crap, its predestined and somebody already knows how it works, so why bother learning more."
Somebody always knows more than you about something. If that were a barrier to learning then why bother?
There might be design in nature, but it doesn't help me in knowing that, and I'm waiting for science to prove it.
Some are trying, despite the current hostility from the materialists and the ACLU.
As soon as its as irrifutable as me dropping a brick and seeing it hit the ground, well then, I guess I'll just have to conclude God was a complete asshole for making the human race work their asses off instead of him just dropping off the blueprints.
I'm not sure I follow your logic. This seems like a variant on the problem of theodicy which is a whole 'nother thread.
To me God is a moot point; I will admit he might exist like I will admit he might also be a small piece of burnt toast that was zapped up by alients 6,000,000 years ago, surgically implanted with a super-advanced bio-mecanical brain, and installed as the janitor of the Milky Way. It just seems that humans have more of a tendancy to be wrong than right, and thats what I love about science rather than faith. It embraces proving the wrongs, where faith almost always dictates never testing it.
This is an example of the shoddy reasoning that passes for logic these days. Every world view starts with certain 'self-evident truths' that aren't subject to proof. Either God exists, or He doesn't. From that flows systems which are as inexorable as geometries. Whether they are consistent or not is another matter. Each worldview has its own explanatory power and its own problems and its own ways of molding how people can approach and evaluate evidence.
I will repeat; who the fuck cares.
This is one of the problems of atheism. "Eat, drink, and be merry -- for tomorrow we die." At least you're consistent.
The purpose of the universe is to try and get as close to passing the Turing test as possible...
The universe has a purpose? Where did it come from? How do you know that it is related to the Turing test and not, as others would say, simply survival?
... but mathematically, nothing in the universe ever can
Could I see the math for this?
you can't quantify intelligence because intelligence isn't and will never be measured in units.
So it's impossible to correctly say that one person is more intelligent than another? We seem to have a fuzzy notion of what intelligence is; perhaps further study will refine it more.
Of course there are other choices
Ok. Name just one. In the end, everything comes down to either theism or atheism. You can't have it any other way.
Still, just because something was useful in the past does not mean that it is still as useful today; it doesn't mean that there aren't better alternatives available now.
It doesn't mean that there are, either.
nothing is so holy as to be beyond question
Even the assumption that that this is a purely materialistic universe? I don't mind you questioning the existence of God; I used to be pretty good at it, myself. But questioning naturalism? Oh, my. Not allowed.
Todays methods have their own problems and should be replaced in the future when we've discovered something better.
I think you're making a category error; methods are not the same as the foundations for those methods. In the end, atheism and theism are the only two worldviews possible.
The problem is that all the strongly monotheistic religions place God not as "far greater than man" but as infinitely greater. Some people have a problem with an entity that is infinitely anything.
So? Truth isn't measured by how we react to something. However, your reaction is a byproduct of your worldview -- it's controlling how you are able to think about something.
The whole idea of a search is to explore a possibility.
What are you talking about? A "design in nature"? What does that even mean? That some man on a cloud set up an easle and started painting?
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? How do we recognize signs of intelligence? Why isn't there a science of intelligence? Is this a solvable or intractable problem? When is it reasonable to conclude that the signal from Ceti Alpha 6 that repeats "1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 56" is not a natural signal?
Saying that there is a design in nature is pointless and doesn't advance us anywhere.
Why? I study computer code written by others in order to learn how they do things. Scientists study how living organisms are designed to see how to better to manufacture things.
"If we were to accept the existence of God as a scientifically valid explanatory principle, it would also be a disaster for modern science. It's not science. It allows for every answer and is not testable."
Obviously, the contributions of theists to science refute this. Again, you are confusing "God did" with "how did God...".
... if the non-falsifiable is admitted as a scientific explanation, then science has fundamentally erred."
Let's apply this to the Monkey/Shakespeare problem. Was the page produced by a very large number of monkeys over a long period of time via a highly improbable set of circumstances or was it produced by an intelligent (human, machine) agent? How do you falsify improbability? Chance or God. Are there any other choices?
The problem with science is that it doesn't yet know how to quantify intelligence.
One could take exception to that math teacher. Real teachers take their students to heights the students would never achieve on their own and enable them to go farther.
I'll never forget my 11th grade "elementary functions" teacher. One day she told the class that she would give us some of her college homework and give extra credit for solving them. She had me so hooked that I stayed up all night working on the problems. I came into her class the next day with circles under my eyes. After class, she took the time to check my work. She told me that I had gotten the second problem wrong. I was sure I hadn't. She was using her paper to grade mine and she let me look at her work. After a few seconds, I spotted an error she had made. She paused, thought about it, and then told me that I was right! Not only did she challenge me, she was able to admit to a student that she was wrong. She fanned an interest in math into a flame and because of her I went on to get a B.S. in Applied Math.
Miss Kerns, I highly doubt you'll ever see this, but thank you. You made a difference in my life and I'll never forget you (and it's been over 30 years!)
Evil is not the absence of God. After all, God is omnipresent, so nowhere is God absent. So if we were to use your definition, evil would not exist.
Good and evil require intellect and will. Evil is where the intellect and will are in opposition to God's.
And, btw, God creates evil. See Isa 45:7, especially in the KJV. The Hebrew word "ra" should be familiar to most people, since it's used in "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and _ra_".
If we were to accept the existance of God it would also be a disaster for modern science. It's not science. It allows for every answer and is not testible.
How does this follow? "God did it" and "how did God do it?" are two different things. I find it really interesting that the former excludes the latter. Some historians of science have argued that it was because of the idea of a rational God that the idea arose that nature was ordered and could be fathomed, particularly through observation and testing. Wasn't it Kepler who studied the heavens in order to "think God's thoughts after Him"? So the idea that God and science are incompatible is, to borrow a phrase, "not even wrong". It's simply a by product of the anti-intellectual, anti-historical, "don't offend me" nonsense that passes for thinking these days.
Science flourished within a theistic worldview in Europe and elsewhere, so I don't see how you can support the idea that God is a disaster when it comes to science. But maybe by "modern" you mean "completely materialistic". And of course that's true. It's the age old dilemma: which came first? The naturalist says, "In the beginning were the particles...". The Christian says, "In the beginning was the Word..." And never the 'twain shall meet.
Oh, what the hell, let's go for troll moderation. I'll go so far as to argue that denying the existence of God is actually hindering science. Why? Because atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature. Therefore, the notion of using science to identify and measure design isn't considered (except, perhaps, with SETI. But aliens are metaphysically less scary than God. There's no evidence for them yet the search goes on.) Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find?
Florida law is very clear on this. In the event someone is incapacitated, decisions on medical care fall to the *husband* first. I agree.
The only way to get out of this hiearchy is to prove that the guardian is incompetent. What if the husband is a scoundrel? What if, for example, he lies about what his wife's intentions really were?
From a medical perspective, I have found no instance of anyone recovering from a PVS after three years -- let alone *fifteen*. I challenge you to find me that. I don't have to take the challenge, because it isn't relevant. Consider the case if there had been written instructions from her stating that she was to be kept on life support. Then the courts would have so ruled and the money from the malpractice lawsuit would have gone to her care.
Is *one PVS dispute* really the *biggest* issue of our nation? Something doesn't have to be the biggest in order for it to be important. The reason the nation got involved because it was a case of life vs. death; and America is highly polarized on that point.
This exchange nicely illustrates the problems and inner conflicts with religious conservatives' ideas.
A potentially interesting comment, let's see if it's supported...
Economically they support a system that systematically prunes out the weak
I'd like to see data for this statement because it runs counter to everything I know. I don't support governmental welfare programs, because a) they are inefficient with regard to resources and b) they don't address the core problems. But government, IMHO, isn't the only solution and I provide support through other channels.
I could appreciate them if they were openly Darwinist like their Libertarian brethren...
If we were "openly Darwinist" (survival of the fittest) then we wouldn't be Christians, would we?
Finally, the appeals to keeping Schiavo had nothing to do with economics; in fact, it was economically pointless to keep her alive.
I personally say screw the loved ones, what about the dignity of the patient?
What about it? She was brain dead -- she didn't care about anything.
Who cares how much money they have to keep her alive - do you honestly believe she'd want to live this way?
It isn't about what I think she wanted. Her parents said she did, her husband said she didn't. Her parents were, IMO, acting out of false hope. Her husband was, IMO, acting for selfish gain. Therefore, I conclude that it was impossible to know what her real wishes were. So, if this is so, then I think we should err on the side of life. YMMV.
There must be a point where the quality of life of the patient overrides the selfish drives of the loved ones.
"Quality of life" is an awfully subjective opinion.
If I get that way, let me die with dignity, not as a drooling politcal pawn.
Don't kid yourself -- there is no dignity to death. Nevertheless, write it down, leave a copy with a lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
Their patent is a little more specific than this. A company called Chromatics had floating point hardware in their CX 1536 graphics engine back in the 80's (so named for it's 1536 x 1152 resolution) and used floating-point to represent the initial coordinates. What they didn't do, but SGI does, is store computed pixel attributes in the framebuffer in floating point.
It's an issue of trust and I have no faith in the Bush administration or its agents.
I have no faith in any administration or its agents. I wish the rest of the world would wise up to this. Government is not now, never has been, nor ever will be our friend.
Windows is ... like a leopard changing its spots to stripes
/ducks
//running Tiger, eagerly waiting for Leopard
///oh, wait, this isn't Fark...
But, but, but Mac OS X is going from Tiger to Leopard, so it's changing it's stripes to spots. Is that really any different?
Sure.And how are design advocate abusing it? Not only do they say that DNA has more information content than a book, but that DNA has complex specified information.Last I checked, the monkeys were still working on Shakespeare.
Furthermore, it's safe to say that the Shakespeare work didn't appear by chance, and proabably not by chance along with a non-intelligent selection mechanism.I agree.Except that DNA has more information content than a book. So evolution may be less of a "good bet" and more the necessary consequence of an a priori assumption.
That's why, IMO, it's either Christianity or Atheism. Again, IMO, these are really the only two viable choices (deism and agnosticism being purely emotional balm). It will be interesting to see what happens to naturalism if the intelligent design crowd come through. Will information be added to the four fundamental components of the universe (matter/energy, space/time)? And if information becomes a fundamental component, will this be enough? Or will it have to be information/intelligence? And if it's information/intelligence, does this mean that atheism will have be scrapped for deism (which, I think, is the weakest form of deism?)
I very much want to read that paper.I wish I could find a reference to this. Nevertheless, having had a course in AI and having written software similar to this, the heuristic functions used to guide a search are still the product of intelligence, and I'm not (yet) convinced that the search is more intelligent than the designer of the search. Intuitively, my program to play a game may generate moves that surprise me, but few would say that the computer is smarter than the programmer. Faster and more tenacious, but not more intelligent. And that's the problem with these computer demonstrations -- they are frontloaded with intelligence in order to produce the desired result yet this frontloading is ignored.
So maybe we're on the cusp where science finds that intelligence is a fundamental part of nature and not a byproduct of it. That sparks the memory of something I read a long time ago by a scientist of some repute. Let me see if I can find it.... here it is (from God of the Astronomers, by Robert Jastrow-Ph.D.)
Science can tell us nothing about ethics (it can't bridge the gap from "is" to "ought"), for example, yet it isn't beyond our understanding. Therefore, science is not the only route to knowledge. So I can't agree with your definition that the supernatural is hopelessly beyond understanding.
A profoundly true statement (and is one reason why atheism d
Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find? Intelligence produces design is a reasonable explanation. What do you think is more reasonable?
The Fibonacci sequence is in the public domain. ;-)
And, btw, it's clear that I can't add late at night. The last number should be 55.
Why? I study computer code written by others in order to learn how they do things. Scientists study how living organisms are designed to see how to better to manufacture things.
Let's apply this to the Monkey/Shakespeare problem. Was the page produced by a very large number of monkeys over a long period of time via a highly improbable set of circumstances or was it produced by an intelligent (human, machine) agent? How do you falsify improbability? Chance or God. Are there any other choices?
The problem with science is that it doesn't yet know how to quantify intelligence.
One could take exception to that math teacher. Real teachers take their students to heights the students would never achieve on their own and enable them to go farther.
I'll never forget my 11th grade "elementary functions" teacher. One day she told the class that she would give us some of her college homework and give extra credit for solving them. She had me so hooked that I stayed up all night working on the problems. I came into her class the next day with circles under my eyes. After class, she took the time to check my work. She told me that I had gotten the second problem wrong. I was sure I hadn't. She was using her paper to grade mine and she let me look at her work. After a few seconds, I spotted an error she had made. She paused, thought about it, and then told me that I was right! Not only did she challenge me, she was able to admit to a student that she was wrong. She fanned an interest in math into a flame and because of her I went on to get a B.S. in Applied Math.
Miss Kerns, I highly doubt you'll ever see this, but thank you. You made a difference in my life and I'll never forget you (and it's been over 30 years!)
Evil is not the absence of God. After all, God is omnipresent, so nowhere is God absent. So if we were to use your definition, evil would not exist.
Good and evil require intellect and will. Evil is where the intellect and will are in opposition to God's.
And, btw, God creates evil. See Isa 45:7, especially in the KJV. The Hebrew word "ra" should be familiar to most people, since it's used in "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and _ra_".
If we were to accept the existance of God it would also be a disaster for modern science. It's not science. It allows for every answer and is not testible.
How does this follow? "God did it" and "how did God do it?" are two different things. I find it really interesting that the former excludes the latter. Some historians of science have argued that it was because of the idea of a rational God that the idea arose that nature was ordered and could be fathomed, particularly through observation and testing. Wasn't it Kepler who studied the heavens in order to "think God's thoughts after Him"? So the idea that God and science are incompatible is, to borrow a phrase, "not even wrong". It's simply a by product of the anti-intellectual, anti-historical, "don't offend me" nonsense that passes for thinking these days.
Science flourished within a theistic worldview in Europe and elsewhere, so I don't see how you can support the idea that God is a disaster when it comes to science. But maybe by "modern" you mean "completely materialistic". And of course that's true. It's the age old dilemma: which came first? The naturalist says, "In the beginning were the particles...". The Christian says, "In the beginning was the Word..." And never the 'twain shall meet.
Oh, what the hell, let's go for troll moderation. I'll go so far as to argue that denying the existence of God is actually hindering science. Why? Because atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature. Therefore, the notion of using science to identify and measure design isn't considered (except, perhaps, with SETI. But aliens are metaphysically less scary than God. There's no evidence for them yet the search goes on.) Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find?
Florida law is very clear on this. In the event someone is incapacitated, decisions on medical care fall to the *husband* first.
I agree.
The only way to get out of this hiearchy is to prove that the guardian is incompetent.
What if the husband is a scoundrel? What if, for example, he lies about what his wife's intentions really were?
From a medical perspective, I have found no instance of anyone recovering from a PVS after three years -- let alone *fifteen*. I challenge you to find me that.
I don't have to take the challenge, because it isn't relevant. Consider the case if there had been written instructions from her stating that she was to be kept on life support. Then the courts would have so ruled and the money from the malpractice lawsuit would have gone to her care.
Is *one PVS dispute* really the *biggest* issue of our nation?
Something doesn't have to be the biggest in order for it to be important. The reason the nation got involved because it was a case of life vs. death; and America is highly polarized on that point.
This exchange nicely illustrates the problems and inner conflicts with religious conservatives' ideas.
A potentially interesting comment, let's see if it's supported...
Economically they support a system that systematically prunes out the weak
I'd like to see data for this statement because it runs counter to everything I know. I don't support governmental welfare programs, because a) they are inefficient with regard to resources and b) they don't address the core problems. But government, IMHO, isn't the only solution and I provide support through other channels.
I could appreciate them if they were openly Darwinist like their Libertarian brethren...
If we were "openly Darwinist" (survival of the fittest) then we wouldn't be Christians, would we?
Finally, the appeals to keeping Schiavo had nothing to do with economics; in fact, it was economically pointless to keep her alive.
I personally say screw the loved ones, what about the dignity of the patient?
What about it? She was brain dead -- she didn't care about anything.
Who cares how much money they have to keep her alive - do you honestly believe she'd want to live this way?
It isn't about what I think she wanted. Her parents said she did, her husband said she didn't. Her parents were, IMO, acting out of false hope. Her husband was, IMO, acting for selfish gain. Therefore, I conclude that it was impossible to know what her real wishes were. So, if this is so, then I think we should err on the side of life. YMMV.
There must be a point where the quality of life of the patient overrides the selfish drives of the loved ones.
"Quality of life" is an awfully subjective opinion.
If I get that way, let me die with dignity, not as a drooling politcal pawn.
Don't kid yourself -- there is no dignity to death. Nevertheless, write it down, leave a copy with a lawyer.