Okie dokie, lets do that. philosophy [fi-los-uh-fee] noun, plural -phies. 1.the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct. 2.any of the three branches, namely natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy, that are accepted as composing this study. 3.a system of philosophical doctrine: the philosophy of Spinoza. 4.the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, especially with a view to improving or reconstituting them: the philosophy of science. 5.a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.
Now, reading those definitions, you'll notice that science is conspicuously absent, aside from this number 4. The significant part there is the words critical study of. Not science itself, but the meaning and implication of science and scientific discovery.
what do you think the Ph in PhD stands for...
Doctorate in Philosophy.....
Oh, you really got me there....or did you? From ye olde Wikipedia: The term "philosophy" does not refer solely to the modern field of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom". In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy. So, the word "Philosophy", as used in PhD, is actually a nod to the term's archaic meaning in ancient Greek, and its use in Europe hundreds of years ago. In other words, it's still called that due to tradition, not because it's correct in the modern usage of the word.
The philosophy of science is that the universe is understandable and testable. That my friend is a philosophy.
Yep, science is the tool, and the philosophy of science is concerned with the use and implications of what is discovered using that tool. Splitting hairs? Let's return to ye olde Wikipedia again: Philosophy of science has historically been met with mixed response from the scientific community. Though scientists often contribute to the field, many prominent scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” according to physicist Richard Feynman. Implication being that the philosophy of science is indeed a separate and distinct, although "complimentary", field from science itself.
Yes, Nazi's misused science, just like Branch Davidians misused religion, just like jihadists misused religion, just like Westboro baptist misuses religion....
The difference is that, aside from being morally repugnant by most standards, the Nazi use of science was in fact deeply flawed, with scientific "findings" that were just plain wrong or wildly distorted to fit the Nazi's existing philosophy. With religion though, how can you actually say the Branch Davidians, jihadists or Westboro Baptists are misusing it? They have just as much evidence that they are doing "God's" will as any other religious group, which is to say none.
All that being said, unless you're posting from ancient Greece, or perhaps 17th century Italy, I'd say my use of the term is okay, and yours is incorrect in modern (current) usage.
So, God, the infinitely powerful and absolutely perfect being, made people, but did a crappy job of it and had to dumb down his own moral standards so that his pets could have some hope of living up to at least basic standards, and then over thousands of years adjusts his rules because to account for his crap creation being particularly slow on the uptake but still able to make some sort of progress. Sure, that makes far more sense than he doesn't exist, and people are making up rules and attributing them to this all-powerful being, and then changing them over time to suit our own social conventions. Makes perfect sense.
Women's lib only became possible when Women could control their own reproduction and when physical strength was not an absolute requirement to make a living.
So ultimately might makes right, and God is not only okay with that, but he purposely loaded the game so that half of his creatures would be ruled, and often abused by that principle. Why on earth would you actually WANT to believe in this psycho?
Religion is kinda like an operating system... it doesn't really matter which one you run. Some are more susceptible to viruses and botnets than others, some interoperate better other operating systems. But generally it's great that there's some diversity.
Why would morality that's handed down from an immortal being change so drastically over time? This seems more like evidence that the whole thing is a bunch of made-up stories by a primitive middle-eastern culture than anything else. If god is omnipotent and infallible, then his definition of what's moral should be immutable. Yet, as you say, it used to be that daughters were property and offering them up for an angry crowd to rape was okay, but now it isn't.
On the far side of the 20th century, we have to be very carefull that we don't let the morality that modern technology allows to interfere with the morality that has served mankind for over 3000 years.
So the only reason that women are people and not property now is technology? Wow, I bet you're a real hit with the ladies....
You're asking me to prove the existence of God before I can cite him as a moral authority?
If you expect anyone else to accept that authority as valid, yes. If I show up at your house and say "I'm with the Department of Taking Houses, gimme your keys and get out", you'd want proof that the "Department of Taking Houses" actually exists, and has the authority to demand your house, wouldn't you? Why should I simply take anyone's word for it that there's a supreme authority that I should submit to when it comes to morality (or anything else), when there's no actual proof for its existence or its authority?
I may as well ask you to prove that human life is valuable.
Inherently? No, in the grand scheme of things human life has no particular value, but to us humans, since that's what we are, it's pretty damned valuable. We're a social species, we're wired to value ourselves and others like us to further our own goals. If we weren't a social species, if we were inherently solitary, that probably wouldn't be the case and we'd find it perfectly reasonable to kill each other off at every opportunity, which, in a way we do since we're also wired for "tribalism", and we have plenty of examples of it being fine to kill off people who aren't part of our "tribe".
You might try to argue that if I can't appreciate or understand the intrinsic value of human life, then I'm no better off than I deserve. How would that be different from me arguing that if you can't appreciate or understand the goodness of God, then you're no better off than you deserve?
Unless you want to get really out there, human life absolutely, without question exists. You can observe it and decide whether it's worth appreciating or not based on those observations. God on the other hand, has to be taken completely on faith and without evidence, the only thing to judge "him" by is the words and behaviour of people who claim he exists, not through actual observation of that which I'm asked to believe exists.
And here's exactly why all of your examples are wrong. Science is not a philosophy, it is a tool. That a tool can be subverted to do something bad is not a reflection on the tool, but of the philosophy of the tool's wielder. I can use a hammer to build a shelter for the homeless, or I can use it to cave-in the skull of a child, this does not mean hammers are either good or bad, good or bad only comes into play when you consider how I used the hammer. The Nazis used (although I'd say misused) science to further the goals of the philosophy that they had already decided on, same for the Soviets, and in my opinion same for the Chinese in this case.
The number of backflips you're going through to justify a position is amazing....
The reason, therefore, why I reject Human Life as a moral axiom is because its principles are subjugated to its goals. While we happen to agree that Human Life is valuable, another person whose goals are different from yours or mine might not draw the same conclusion. By what basis, other than, "I disagree with you" could you argue the immorality of that person's behaviour or principles?
How is this any different than confronting someone from a different religious tradition than your own that has different values. You're just moving the debate from "x number of people believe a thing is moral without a higher power" to "x number of people believe a thing is moral based on their religion of choice".
I choose, instead, to subscribe to a moral model that begins with principles of morality, such as "God is good" and allow my behaviours to proceed from there.
No, it begins with "I choose to subscribe to a philosophy that requires me to believe in a being who may or may not actually exist and refuses to reveal himself because he likes to keep people guessing", and then moves on to "This being who may or may not exist is good".
This can lead to questionable behaviour, such as Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac. We observe that behaviour and have trouble reconciling it with a moral man or a good God.
No, the questionable part if this is: if I meet someone on the street who says he hears voices that give him commands him to kill his children that nobody else can hear, I assume he's schizophrenic, not that he's got an inside line to a supreme being. If it happens in the Bible, it's a revelation, if it happens in reality, it's a mental disease, why is that?
We observe that behaviour and have trouble reconciling it with a moral man or a good God. I believe (and I feel comfortable saying that most other Christians do as well) that promoting Human Life IS, in fact, a high moral principle. We also believe, however, that it is not the HIGHEST moral principle.
This is the kind of thing that makes non-religious people nervous when it comes to religious people. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that someone might "hear a voice" that instructs them to kill me (or anyone else really), and that they'll be okay with it because it's more important to "serve god" than it is to promote human life, and that they can have a legion of followers who agree with them simply because they said "god told me" instead of "my dog told me" or "aliens told me".
By analogy, I wouldn't ever arbitrarily hurt somebody or damage or steal their property. If, however, by doing so, I could save somebody's life, then I would.
Then it wouldn't be arbitrary. I don't think you'll find a lot of people who'd argue that breaking down a door is somehow wrong because you're damaging property if you're doing it to rescue the people on the other side of it.
You might disagree with Abraham's choice of principles or priorities, you might say that it's irresponsible or evil to allow an authority figure to hold a position of such esteem.
An authority figure who nobody can see or hear, and who won't divulge the reason for his command. Yeah, why would anyone think that's irresponsible?
Christians believe that Abraham was rightly acting out the higher principle, "God is good" even though it conflicted with a very-high principle, "Human Life is valuable." That God commanded Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac at the last moment appears, in my mind, to confirm BOTH principles (While God does want us to recognize his goodness as a highest principle, he is neither arbitrary nor cruel.)
Which brings us back to this; how is anyone to know that it's "god" telling them to do
My point is that miracles do not have to screw up our understanding of the universe.
You'd have to expand on your definition of "miracles" then, because when I hear that word I think impossible things that happen against all rational expectations, such as the dead rising or a healer touching a blind man and restoring his sight. If you're talking about something happening that's simply unlikely but perfectly possible, then I'm not sure why it's a "miracle".
Further, I am saying it may not be a case of 'there is no evidence', but possibly 'there is no clear evidence' - which in such cases is a significant difference.
Yeah, there would be a difference, but I haven't seen anything that requires a god to explain at all, that can't be explained by more mundane reasons.
Are you Sycodon posting as AC for some reason, or just an AC who's pretending to be Sycodon? Either way, translation for what you just said: "I don't really know why I don't like healthcare reform, but my favorite right-wing talkshow host says it's bad and that's good enough for me". The question wasn't what can Google tell me about healthcare reform, the question was what don't *you* like about it.
I think you're living in the 'ad absurdum' world; where things must be one extreme or the other.
Not really, I covered "God exists and interacts with reality", and "God exists and doesn't interact with reality". What other options are there?
If God exists, he could use the universe how we use a computer: as in, most of the actual instructions to the CPU are predefined software, and any interaction by the user usually goes through that. In such a case, the rules would look very consistent even if the user was actually doing something.
I covered that possibility. If a god exists, but doesn't interact or interfere with reality, he may as well not exist because we'll never know he's there and he has no bearing on our existence. That's a pointless exercise. Might as well wonder if reality is a simulation that really only started 5 minutes ago, but that you're pre-programmed to think has been going for billions of years. If the nature of reality is such that we can not, by definition, determine its true nature, we have no choice but to take what we can see as real as we'll never be able to tell it's not.
But perhaps the reason you haven't seen something requiring God is that he's left the universe on overnight whilst it does something that doesn't require interaction...
So if that's the case, if there's no evidence for a god, why assume that one exists but has stepped away, rather than just not assume the existence of one to begin with? If I put a soda on the table, leave the room and come back a minute later, I don't wonder if faeries have spit in the can based on the lack of evidence against faeries spitting in my soda when I wasn't looking. Why? Because I have no reason to believe it happened in the first place.
Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, Rick Perry have all said the 10th Amendment means something or have said that a government program that is not backed up by the Constitution is unconstitutional, and they have all paid the price.
Yeah, because aside from their comments on the 10th Amendment, there's nothing else that they do that make them look crazy. Nope, not a thing.
There's a difference between 'deny' and 'not give'. No libertarian would try to deny anybody healthcare. They would just object to forcing people to give healthcare against their will.
My god if that doesn't sound like something straight out of the Colbert Report. "I'm not denying you medical care, I'm just not giving it to you."
If God is there, he seems has a history of doing things in a scientifically consistent way.
Except for when he doesn't. The Judeo-Christian god has a habit of allegedly stopping time, raising the dead, turning people into pillars of salt, actively causing natural disasters, and smiting people. None of these things are consistent with science, they're the realm of fantasy. A god that simply sets things in motion and stands back without acting is pointless, or at least irrelevant, things will happen the same way whether he's exists or not. A god that interferes with outcomes and is an active participant in reality though is a game-changer that means we can't count on any result actually being consistently repeatable because one day he may simply decide to change the outcome. No, so far I've yet to see anything that actually requires a god to be explained, and if there is a god who's so removed from reality that he never acts, well, I submit there's no functional difference between that kind of god and no god at all so it makes no difference.
Whether God exists or not has no bearing on our ability to understand how the universe works.
The existence of a being who can, on a whim, simply change the nature of reality (ie: "miracles"), and who can further be petitioned by his followers to perform feats that are otherwise thought to be impossible (such as raising the dead, or stopping time) has no bearing on our ability to understand how the universe works? The existence of such a being would be a fundamental cornerstone to understanding the universe, as it would mean that all bets are off and that on a whim that being could cause *anything* to happen, regardless of what rules we think exist governing the nature of reality. It would introduce a category of "God did it" that would make any observation we make inherently unreliable.
That's a good point. I didn't think anyone was really doing that (separating the edible/non-edible parts) considering all the talk of "taking food from people to use as fuel". I knew it *could* be done, just didn't realize anyone was actually doing it...
Exactly right, now that you mention it there was an episode of "Apocalypse Pa" where they set up a pickup truck to do exactly that, using waste from their livestock (horses IIRC). The second I hit "submit" I realized I shouldn't have specified "plant-based left-overs", but I guess that's just what was really in my mind given the coffee bean vs corn talk....
Gasification using a waste product would be more renewable and green. But coffee requires significant water, pesticides, and human intervention to grow. This is probably no better than corn ethanol fueling a vehicle.
Except that they're using coffee grounds. To compare it to ethanol, you'd have to somehow be able to eat the corn first, and then make the ethanol from the husks/leaves that remain. All that aside, coffee grounds were just a whim, not a necessity. The rig they built should work just as well with any other plant-based left-overs (sawdust, leaves, lawn-clippings). Just compress them to have similar density and away you go...
Somalia might be worth considering, or areas along the Pakistani/Afghani boarder. Of course, you wouldn't go there because they're shitholes, and you like actually living in places with civilization, which means that you choose to do business with governments because you value having a standard of living that isn't available in places that don't have functional governments. What you want is the benefit of living in a stable civilized area, but without the burden of the rules and responsibilities imposed by the societies that provide that stability. You can't have it both ways.
Paying professors high salaries [slashdot.org] working for 9 months of work (most professors do not teach during the summer, like teachers) is an easy path to the poor house.
Why is it that when it comes to teachers people assume that if you could make them work 12 months instead of 9 they'd get the same amount? If the amount of work to be done took longer, it stands to reason that the professors/teachers would expect higher wages than they already get. Nobody who works in those professions says to themselves "Excellent, I've tricked them into paying me for a full year of work when I'll only be there for 9 months", more like "When you consider the amount of time off I'll have, this salary seems acceptable to me".
You think it's possible to, like, clone him , recreate the exact circumstances that made him old Albert and just ask him, or would it be more simple to create a time machine (which would require going faster than light ?)
I suspect the simplest thing to do would just be to ask a physicist to explain it to you. It's not like Einstein was a mysterious cave-dwelling hermit who only doled out cryptic prognostications to pilgrims who ventured forth to find his lair. His research is pretty widely available and well documented...
She is more than welcome to put her money on the market, and pay the same amount of taxes on her returns.
Because all risk is equal? I don't know what she makes, but let's say she's managed to save up a nice little nest-egg of $100k, and puts in $75k. She invests, and as is possible with risk, looses most of it, leaving her with a total of $25k. Now her boss on the other hand, let's say he risks his nest-egg of $50 billion. He also puts in 3/4, and looses. Wow, she only lost $75k, but Warren lost about $37.5 billion! Which of the two would you rather be though at the end of the day, the secretary with her $25k, or Warren with his $12.5 billion?
Simply saying "Hey, you can invest too!" is meaningless if you even think for a second about the scales involved here. The people who make the most also have the ability to survive reversals that would financially ruin smaller players. Small investors would have to worry about paying their mortgage in a down month, not whether they're buying a new jet or just getting the old one detailed.
Ah, but if you don't buy your cheese from Kraft, who do you buy your cheese from? The federal government can't just single out Kraft to tax. If they tax Kraft, they have to tax Kraft's competitors as well.
No, I buy it from Bob's Big Cheese Company (sorry, I have no idea who the big competitors to Kraft in the crappy cheese market are, but I'll bet there are a few). You see, while Kraft decides in this scenario to pass that cost directly to the customer, Bob's says "Gee, we'll undercut Kraft, make a slightly lower (NOTE: lower, not loss) profit per unit, and pick up a bunch of Kraft customers". Nobody is saying tax corporations to the point where they can't make any profit, although that seems to be what you're implying will happen if they're taxed at all. As long as a company is still profiting, they're not going to just lock the doors and go out of business to spite the government over taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Okie dokie, lets do that.
philosophy [fi-los-uh-fee]
noun, plural -phies.
1.the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
2.any of the three branches, namely natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy, that are accepted as composing this study.
3.a system of philosophical doctrine: the philosophy of Spinoza.
4.the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, especially with a view to improving or reconstituting them: the philosophy of science.
5.a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.
Now, reading those definitions, you'll notice that science is conspicuously absent, aside from this number 4. The significant part there is the words critical study of. Not science itself, but the meaning and implication of science and scientific discovery.
Oh, you really got me there....or did you? From ye olde Wikipedia:
The term "philosophy" does not refer solely to the modern field of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom". In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy.
So, the word "Philosophy", as used in PhD, is actually a nod to the term's archaic meaning in ancient Greek, and its use in Europe hundreds of years ago. In other words, it's still called that due to tradition, not because it's correct in the modern usage of the word.
Yep, science is the tool, and the philosophy of science is concerned with the use and implications of what is discovered using that tool. Splitting hairs? Let's return to ye olde Wikipedia again:
Philosophy of science has historically been met with mixed response from the scientific community. Though scientists often contribute to the field, many prominent scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” according to physicist Richard Feynman.
Implication being that the philosophy of science is indeed a separate and distinct, although "complimentary", field from science itself.
The difference is that, aside from being morally repugnant by most standards, the Nazi use of science was in fact deeply flawed, with scientific "findings" that were just plain wrong or wildly distorted to fit the Nazi's existing philosophy. With religion though, how can you actually say the Branch Davidians, jihadists or Westboro Baptists are misusing it? They have just as much evidence that they are doing "God's" will as any other religious group, which is to say none.
All that being said, unless you're posting from ancient Greece, or perhaps 17th century Italy, I'd say my use of the term is okay, and yours is incorrect in modern (current) usage.
Here endeth the lesson.
So, God, the infinitely powerful and absolutely perfect being, made people, but did a crappy job of it and had to dumb down his own moral standards so that his pets could have some hope of living up to at least basic standards, and then over thousands of years adjusts his rules because to account for his crap creation being particularly slow on the uptake but still able to make some sort of progress. Sure, that makes far more sense than he doesn't exist, and people are making up rules and attributing them to this all-powerful being, and then changing them over time to suit our own social conventions. Makes perfect sense.
So ultimately might makes right, and God is not only okay with that, but he purposely loaded the game so that half of his creatures would be ruled, and often abused by that principle. Why on earth would you actually WANT to believe in this psycho?
Yeah, I read Snow Crash too, great book....
Why would morality that's handed down from an immortal being change so drastically over time? This seems more like evidence that the whole thing is a bunch of made-up stories by a primitive middle-eastern culture than anything else. If god is omnipotent and infallible, then his definition of what's moral should be immutable. Yet, as you say, it used to be that daughters were property and offering them up for an angry crowd to rape was okay, but now it isn't.
So the only reason that women are people and not property now is technology? Wow, I bet you're a real hit with the ladies....
If you expect anyone else to accept that authority as valid, yes. If I show up at your house and say "I'm with the Department of Taking Houses, gimme your keys and get out", you'd want proof that the "Department of Taking Houses" actually exists, and has the authority to demand your house, wouldn't you? Why should I simply take anyone's word for it that there's a supreme authority that I should submit to when it comes to morality (or anything else), when there's no actual proof for its existence or its authority?
Inherently? No, in the grand scheme of things human life has no particular value, but to us humans, since that's what we are, it's pretty damned valuable. We're a social species, we're wired to value ourselves and others like us to further our own goals. If we weren't a social species, if we were inherently solitary, that probably wouldn't be the case and we'd find it perfectly reasonable to kill each other off at every opportunity, which, in a way we do since we're also wired for "tribalism", and we have plenty of examples of it being fine to kill off people who aren't part of our "tribe".
Unless you want to get really out there, human life absolutely, without question exists. You can observe it and decide whether it's worth appreciating or not based on those observations. God on the other hand, has to be taken completely on faith and without evidence, the only thing to judge "him" by is the words and behaviour of people who claim he exists, not through actual observation of that which I'm asked to believe exists.
And here's exactly why all of your examples are wrong. Science is not a philosophy, it is a tool. That a tool can be subverted to do something bad is not a reflection on the tool, but of the philosophy of the tool's wielder. I can use a hammer to build a shelter for the homeless, or I can use it to cave-in the skull of a child, this does not mean hammers are either good or bad, good or bad only comes into play when you consider how I used the hammer. The Nazis used (although I'd say misused) science to further the goals of the philosophy that they had already decided on, same for the Soviets, and in my opinion same for the Chinese in this case.
The number of backflips you're going through to justify a position is amazing....
How is this any different than confronting someone from a different religious tradition than your own that has different values. You're just moving the debate from "x number of people believe a thing is moral without a higher power" to "x number of people believe a thing is moral based on their religion of choice".
No, it begins with "I choose to subscribe to a philosophy that requires me to believe in a being who may or may not actually exist and refuses to reveal himself because he likes to keep people guessing", and then moves on to "This being who may or may not exist is good".
No, the questionable part if this is: if I meet someone on the street who says he hears voices that give him commands him to kill his children that nobody else can hear, I assume he's schizophrenic, not that he's got an inside line to a supreme being. If it happens in the Bible, it's a revelation, if it happens in reality, it's a mental disease, why is that?
This is the kind of thing that makes non-religious people nervous when it comes to religious people. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that someone might "hear a voice" that instructs them to kill me (or anyone else really), and that they'll be okay with it because it's more important to "serve god" than it is to promote human life, and that they can have a legion of followers who agree with them simply because they said "god told me" instead of "my dog told me" or "aliens told me".
Then it wouldn't be arbitrary. I don't think you'll find a lot of people who'd argue that breaking down a door is somehow wrong because you're damaging property if you're doing it to rescue the people on the other side of it.
An authority figure who nobody can see or hear, and who won't divulge the reason for his command. Yeah, why would anyone think that's irresponsible?
Which brings us back to this; how is anyone to know that it's "god" telling them to do
You'd have to expand on your definition of "miracles" then, because when I hear that word I think impossible things that happen against all rational expectations, such as the dead rising or a healer touching a blind man and restoring his sight. If you're talking about something happening that's simply unlikely but perfectly possible, then I'm not sure why it's a "miracle".
Yeah, there would be a difference, but I haven't seen anything that requires a god to explain at all, that can't be explained by more mundane reasons.
Are you Sycodon posting as AC for some reason, or just an AC who's pretending to be Sycodon? Either way, translation for what you just said: "I don't really know why I don't like healthcare reform, but my favorite right-wing talkshow host says it's bad and that's good enough for me". The question wasn't what can Google tell me about healthcare reform, the question was what don't *you* like about it.
Not really, I covered "God exists and interacts with reality", and "God exists and doesn't interact with reality". What other options are there?
I covered that possibility. If a god exists, but doesn't interact or interfere with reality, he may as well not exist because we'll never know he's there and he has no bearing on our existence. That's a pointless exercise. Might as well wonder if reality is a simulation that really only started 5 minutes ago, but that you're pre-programmed to think has been going for billions of years. If the nature of reality is such that we can not, by definition, determine its true nature, we have no choice but to take what we can see as real as we'll never be able to tell it's not.
So if that's the case, if there's no evidence for a god, why assume that one exists but has stepped away, rather than just not assume the existence of one to begin with? If I put a soda on the table, leave the room and come back a minute later, I don't wonder if faeries have spit in the can based on the lack of evidence against faeries spitting in my soda when I wasn't looking. Why? Because I have no reason to believe it happened in the first place.
Good point, you could go to an undertaker instead.
Yeah, because aside from their comments on the 10th Amendment, there's nothing else that they do that make them look crazy. Nope, not a thing.
My god if that doesn't sound like something straight out of the Colbert Report. "I'm not denying you medical care, I'm just not giving it to you."
And there are just so many of them that you became overwhelmed and unable to pick any to actually mention as being problems?
Except for when he doesn't. The Judeo-Christian god has a habit of allegedly stopping time, raising the dead, turning people into pillars of salt, actively causing natural disasters, and smiting people. None of these things are consistent with science, they're the realm of fantasy. A god that simply sets things in motion and stands back without acting is pointless, or at least irrelevant, things will happen the same way whether he's exists or not. A god that interferes with outcomes and is an active participant in reality though is a game-changer that means we can't count on any result actually being consistently repeatable because one day he may simply decide to change the outcome. No, so far I've yet to see anything that actually requires a god to be explained, and if there is a god who's so removed from reality that he never acts, well, I submit there's no functional difference between that kind of god and no god at all so it makes no difference.
The existence of a being who can, on a whim, simply change the nature of reality (ie: "miracles"), and who can further be petitioned by his followers to perform feats that are otherwise thought to be impossible (such as raising the dead, or stopping time) has no bearing on our ability to understand how the universe works? The existence of such a being would be a fundamental cornerstone to understanding the universe, as it would mean that all bets are off and that on a whim that being could cause *anything* to happen, regardless of what rules we think exist governing the nature of reality. It would introduce a category of "God did it" that would make any observation we make inherently unreliable.
That's a good point. I didn't think anyone was really doing that (separating the edible/non-edible parts) considering all the talk of "taking food from people to use as fuel". I knew it *could* be done, just didn't realize anyone was actually doing it...
Exactly right, now that you mention it there was an episode of "Apocalypse Pa" where they set up a pickup truck to do exactly that, using waste from their livestock (horses IIRC). The second I hit "submit" I realized I shouldn't have specified "plant-based left-overs", but I guess that's just what was really in my mind given the coffee bean vs corn talk....
Except that they're using coffee grounds. To compare it to ethanol, you'd have to somehow be able to eat the corn first, and then make the ethanol from the husks/leaves that remain.
All that aside, coffee grounds were just a whim, not a necessity. The rig they built should work just as well with any other plant-based left-overs (sawdust, leaves, lawn-clippings). Just compress them to have similar density and away you go...
Somalia might be worth considering, or areas along the Pakistani/Afghani boarder. Of course, you wouldn't go there because they're shitholes, and you like actually living in places with civilization, which means that you choose to do business with governments because you value having a standard of living that isn't available in places that don't have functional governments. What you want is the benefit of living in a stable civilized area, but without the burden of the rules and responsibilities imposed by the societies that provide that stability. You can't have it both ways.
I was unaware that Americans were no longer permitted to leave the country. When did this happen?
Why is it that when it comes to teachers people assume that if you could make them work 12 months instead of 9 they'd get the same amount? If the amount of work to be done took longer, it stands to reason that the professors/teachers would expect higher wages than they already get. Nobody who works in those professions says to themselves "Excellent, I've tricked them into paying me for a full year of work when I'll only be there for 9 months", more like "When you consider the amount of time off I'll have, this salary seems acceptable to me".
I suspect the simplest thing to do would just be to ask a physicist to explain it to you. It's not like Einstein was a mysterious cave-dwelling hermit who only doled out cryptic prognostications to pilgrims who ventured forth to find his lair. His research is pretty widely available and well documented...
Because all risk is equal? I don't know what she makes, but let's say she's managed to save up a nice little nest-egg of $100k, and puts in $75k. She invests, and as is possible with risk, looses most of it, leaving her with a total of $25k. Now her boss on the other hand, let's say he risks his nest-egg of $50 billion. He also puts in 3/4, and looses. Wow, she only lost $75k, but Warren lost about $37.5 billion! Which of the two would you rather be though at the end of the day, the secretary with her $25k, or Warren with his $12.5 billion?
Simply saying "Hey, you can invest too!" is meaningless if you even think for a second about the scales involved here. The people who make the most also have the ability to survive reversals that would financially ruin smaller players. Small investors would have to worry about paying their mortgage in a down month, not whether they're buying a new jet or just getting the old one detailed.
No, I buy it from Bob's Big Cheese Company (sorry, I have no idea who the big competitors to Kraft in the crappy cheese market are, but I'll bet there are a few). You see, while Kraft decides in this scenario to pass that cost directly to the customer, Bob's says "Gee, we'll undercut Kraft, make a slightly lower (NOTE: lower, not loss) profit per unit, and pick up a bunch of Kraft customers". Nobody is saying tax corporations to the point where they can't make any profit, although that seems to be what you're implying will happen if they're taxed at all. As long as a company is still profiting, they're not going to just lock the doors and go out of business to spite the government over taxes.