OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
Damn good question. As far as it can be determined, the act of detection or thinking about the result changes the result.
Erm, well, I'm not sure the Copenhagen interpretation has been experimentally demonstrated to be the only valid interpretation of quantum mechanics (no, experiments showing that local hidden variable theories don't work don't demonstrate that detection collapses the wave function), and I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation says anything about "thinking about the result".
A side note: There are numerous studies that show that humans have 6th sense like abilities. One study shows that human tension rose incredibly world wide just prior to 9/11, and they have tracked similar phenomena to other major events both natural and man made. There was a study that showed that humans had a spike in brain activity just prior to seeing erotic images, which hints at some type of precognition and ESP like abilities.
Citations, please? I'd like to see whether the data really points to your interpretations.
There is a distinct difference when thinking about a creator, which is that morals and ethics can become a requirement as opposed to the atheist view. Look at the state of the US legal system now compared to, lets say the 1850s and see how big the difference is.
Well, yes, we now have laws against, e.g., owning people as property, which is a definite improvement. Are you saying that this was, say, the result of a post-1850's Great Awakening, or something such as that? There were religious people on both sides of that "owning people as property" debate.
Now, laws are mere technicality that people in power can break. Survival of the fittest works in that aspect, just as well as what most people think of in the animal kingdom.
Society is not harmed by people trying to do the right things according to Judea Christian beliefs.
Well, I don't see any benefit to society to some Biblical beliefs, such as thesebeliefs and the one given here and here, and there's definite harm to people as a result of the first of those.
Now, maybe you're not counting all the crap in Leviticus as "Judea[sic] Christian beliefs". If so, what are you counting?
The worst that would happen is that they would just die after living a life in a relatively peaceful and respectful society.
OK, you're definitely not counting all the crap in Leviticus, giving the pile of stonings to death, etc. called for there.
You on the other hand are doomed if you are wrong. Society is harmed by people that have no belief except for survival of the fittest, and that man is god.
Yup. Fortunately for me, and for society, even though I'm a nonbeliever, I'm not one of those people. I know plenty of other nonbelievers who don't believe that stuff either.
That is the first the sane comment I've read on this topic in a very long time... And I happen to agree 100%. If you think about it, logic dictates that there must be a creator / supreme being. 0 + 0 = 0. Permanently. This does not change over billions of years. So if you originally have nothing, how do you get to the initial "something" / material / energy etc for the whole big bang? The answer is that
...you don't originally have nothing. I'm not sure what you have at t=0, other than "a singularity?", but I'm not sure any theories of cosmology have zero energy at t=0.
As an amateur Philosopher spanning about a quarter century, I can tell you that I have studied quite a lot of territory which includes a lot of Physics.
OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
I am not going to try and explain, but tell you to find the answer you need to think beyond any point which becomes uncomfortable to your beliefs.
Challenging your beliefs is a hurtful process.
Are you willing to challenge your beliefs - including any belief you have in a creator?
Belief in a creator could get you to a point where you have to think about morals and ethics beyond survival instincts.
I have yet to find any reason to believe in a creator, but have somehow managed to think about morals and ethics beyond survival instincts. Perhaps there are people who can't think about them without belief in a creator; that prospect is both sad and frightening (those folks might well think about them badly with a poor choice of faith - "the creator tells me to kill these people because they don't believe in him!").
But the base argument of a creator can not be disproved and logic always takes you to a creator.
So who created the creator? Logic takes me to that question if somebody asserts something along the lines of "logic always takes you to a creator". (Hint: you'd better have a better argument if you want that philosophy Ph.D. from an institution that doesn't share your biases.)
We look at how everything works in the Universe and we see that everything relates to cause and effect. Then when you say "What caused it all to start moving" the Atheists go in to a rage. At least the Religions just point to a book and say "that" instead of the Atheist's reaction of "it doesn't matter" or "la la la I'm not listening to you".
Well, I guess it's significant that I identify as a "nonbeliever" rather than as a capital-A "Atheist", as my answer is "beats the hell out of me; I'm not even sure how to determine that in a fashion other than to make an ex recto declaration such as pointing to a book and saying "that", which might be a fine answer for some, but, especially given that different religions point to different books, there's no particular logical reason to take any one of them more seriously than others".
We live in a society brainwashed not to think about the question, and hate people that do think about it. That should frighten you!
So if somebody finds enjoyment/fulfillment in murdering as many people as possible and calling it their purpose in life, you're okay with that?
I can't speak for Barsteward, but, speaking for myself, no, I'm not.
If not why not?
I can't speak for Barsteward, but, just because somebody calls something their purpose in life, that doesn't ipso facto mean it's OK by me. (And, although I can't speak for Barsteward, I do note that he/she said "The only purpose i can see in life is reproduction.", i.e. "Any other reason for a purpose is someone finding enjoyment/fulfillment in what they do and calling it their purpose in life." is just somebody pulling a purpose in life ex recto, the result being worth as much as anything else pulled ex recto - or perhaps less, as the stuff you're most likely to extract from the rectum could perhaps at least be used as fertilizer.)
You won't find God if you're not genuinely looking for him.
Or if he doesn't exist in the first place.
While there may be no proof, you must realize that you are incorrect in saying that "[...] there's not a scrap of evidence [...]."
And this evidence is?
Christians who actually know God are motivated by love to share their faith, and realize that they, too, have faults. They share their faith because they've found a love that is worth sharing. They aren't trying to "convert" you, they're trying to share what they have with you. Of the actual Christians, the persistent ones aren't being persistent to force you to believe; they're being persistent because they don't want you to miss out on something great.
The phrase "thank you for sharing" is often not a positive one, hint hint. The persistent ones should learn when it's time to STFU. (And that's "miss out on something they believe is great"; if you're not willing to accept that others might not think that there's something great to miss, that's, err, umm, rude....)
This universe is God's experiment in free will. Some people will show that they give a smurf about overcoming temptation to break from God's purpose. Those who do will be rewarded when the earth is rebuilt;
I.e., in the rebuilt earth, what Biblical literalists exist, if any, will keep their nuttiness to themselves? That would certainly be a reward.... If the folks who think the biggest problems with the world are The Queers and The Fornicators and The Uppity Women also kept it to themselves, that would truly be heaven.
(Or maybe the reward is that we find out whether M-theory is the answer or not.)
Does this debate exist anywhere outside the US and maybe some south-american countries? -- I have never seen a trace of it in Europe, (where I live).
Yes, it does. I suspect Jewish creationism is enough of a minority view that the debate isn't huge in Israel, but I might be mistaken there. I don't know how significant Hindu creationism is.
I believe what I do about evolution because I see EVIDENCE that no evolution-supporting fossil record exists.
I'm assuming you don't mean "evidence that no fossil record of any sort exists" (if you do mean that, I'd like to see that evidence!), and therefore that you mean "evidence that the fossil record doesn't support evolution". If so, please check your evidence here and here, for example.
I generally tow the Slashdot line, but this is one of the topics where I definitely disagree with the Slashdot norm. Since those siding with Leakey are well represented, I thought I would provide some perspective from the other side: those who believe in a literal seven day creation account.
Well, there are several "other sides". (I even belong to one of them - I think evolution is the best explanation for the forms of life on Earth, but I also don't think the debate's going to be history any time soon, at least not in some parts of the world, and I think some of the comments on the article and follow-up comments are solid evidence for my belief.)
Even amongst those who reject evolution, there's more than just Biblical literalists - there's a Biblical argument against young-earth creationism on at least one creationist site. (It's all word-chopping, so it's unlikely to convince those who wish to believe something else; they'll just chop the words differently.)
And I know faith is not popular around here, but I maintain a faith that there is an alternative explanation for why this evidence seems to be pointing towards evolution (I won't bore you with repeating ideas you've surely heard before). I strongly believe that science can account for everything natural in the world, but I also believe that any attempts to explain things in a manner contrary to the Bible will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect.
While evolution is the prevailing belief today, I have faith that it will be disproved in time, just as the skeptical historians were disproved.
...and I have an extremely strong suspicion that it won't. Stalemate.
Anyway, all I sought to do here was represent the other side so you could see how someone who likes to think of themselves as rational can possibly disagree.
Whether those reading what you say will view you as rational or rationalizing is another matter. Humans' ability to construct systems of thought is impressive; this includes humans' ability to construct systems of thought capable of leading to just about any conclusion the humans constructing the system of thought want. (That's why I like science - it at least tries to be a bit less ex recto.)
2. Computers have shown that the neat evolutionary trees that get drawn up are in fact based on imaginary relations of similarity and difference that owe more to the human mind's tendency to perceive patterns than to the raw biological data.
...and physics is the study of frictionless elephants whose mass can be ignored. Are those "neat evolutionary trees" trees actually used by biologists or are they simplifed examples given in popular accounts?
4....the evolution of present-day organisms from their supposed ancestors are in fact highly conjectural if not downright false.... And even the emergence of one species from another has never been directly observed by science.
5....(Evolution) remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete. The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one?
7. The data used to support evolution are neither experiments nor repeatable, nor can they be, since the origin of species on earth was a unique event.
"The origin of species on earth" is a process, not an event. Yes, evolutionary biology, like geology, is a "historical" science, so it makes "retrodictions", but....
The problem isn't with the proof, the problem is with the AXIOMS. Very good and convincing proofs of the existence of God are there, if you take a particular set of axioms as the basis for your outlook. That's the faith part.
So does that, ultimately, amount to "you will be convinced of the existence of God if you make assumptions about the world that require the existence of God"? Unless there's a non-faith-based reason to make those assumptions, the proof isn't going to be convincing to people who don't make those assumptions, making it just an entertaining exercise for those who happen to make those assumptions, not something to take seriously as a reason to believe.
It's a real problem in our world today that people take math and science as gospel. Everyone seems to forget that all of math and science are based on axioms, things that we assume must be correct because there's no way to prove it. We have to make those assumptions, though, to do anything at all. You might say "well, so far nothing has shown those assumptions to be wrong, so we must be right!", but that's only good to a point.
Yes, math is a subject where you start with a set of axioms and derive theorems from it, and all that matters is whether the axioms are consistent (i.e., one axiom doesn't contradict another) and, for any theorem, whether derivation is correct.
Science, however, is not such a subject. One might think of a particular scientific theory as having axiom-like assumptions from which one derives theorem-like predictions (although they're not necessarily stated in a mathematical form). However, the theorem-like predictions aren't just proven; they have to be tested against the real world. This means you don't get to choose your axioms arbitrarily and still have your theory taken seriously; if its predictions don't match the real world, you're not likely to be taken seriously unless you can show that there's something wrong with the experiments done to test the predictions.
Newton's law of gravity is correct, but only if you assume a Euclidean geometry.
Well, more accurately, Newton's laws of motion, as laid out by Newton, involve motion in a Euclidean space, and Newton's law of gravity, as laid out by Newton, involves a gravitational force in that space, whereas Einstein's general relativity involves special relativity-style laws of motion in a space-time that might be curved by the presence of matter, so that, the paths of matter not affected by (non-gravitational) forces being "straight lines" (geodesics) in that space-time, those paths might be affected by the presence of matter. However, Newtonian gravity can be formulated in a fashion similar to Einsteinian gravity, curved space and all.
Actually, Apple stopped shipping GCC a long time ago./usr/bin/gcc is just a compatibility-wrapper on top of LLVM which translates command line options for GCC to the equivalents in LLVM.
Is that "LLVM the project" or "LLVM the code generator and optimizer library"? The latter has no command-line options to translate to. The former includes clang, which is a C/C++/Objective-C front-end that can be combined with the LLVM code generator and optimizer to form a C/C++/Objective-C compiler; that compiler has a set of command-line options that, by and large, are the same as those of GCC./usr/bin/gcc was, at least in the Lion timeframe, the same as llvm-gcc, which is "a modified version of gcc that compiles C/ObjC programs into native objects, LLVM bitcode or LLVM assembly language, depending upon the options." - GCC front-end, LLVM back-end. Its native command-line options are pretty much the same as those of GCC ("Being derived from the GNU Compiler Collection, llvm-gcc has many of gcc's features and accepts most of gcc's options.").
Perhaps in the latest versions of XCode/usr/bin/gcc runs clang rather than llvm-gcc.
So, no translation - the main C/C++/Objective-C compilers built from the LLVM back end use, by and large, the same command-line options as GCC (why bother making them different just to be different?).
Why is there any interconnect at all between an OS and a GUI ?
Curse Microsoft for presenting the unwashed massed with no difference between hardware device management user input to software.
Probably more like "curse Microsoft for selling a package that contains both the core OS and GUI, rather than selling them separately and encouraging third-party GUIs to run atop the core OS".
You don't have to lose interest in hobby computing, just consumer electronics. I still do hobby computing, but on regular PC hardware running GNU/Linux
Poor windows support? I'm running Windows 7 Pro (Bootcamp partition) and OSX right now via Parallels seamlessly at the moment....
As I said elsewhere, the person to whom you're replying was, I suspect, talking about iOS machines (e.g., "Android is more flexible and it shows by the market share." - Android's competing with iOS, not OS X), not Macs.
Are you serious? Have you been to a Linux conference lately? It's MacBooks as far as the eye can see, because Apple's the only vendor that doesn't have to cut corners on hardware quality.
Poor Windows support.
Seems to me that offering up Windows drivers and a free multi-booting utility is plenty for Apple to do. They're not in the business of making life better for the proles who have to settle for Windows, after all.
The person to whom you're replying was, I suspect, talking about iOS machines (e.g., "Android is more flexible and it shows by the market share." - Android's competing with iOS, not OS X), not Macs.
No they don't at least the few people who I know using them professionally for mixing and mastering.
(One has gone to Windows for now running on a mac pro - learning a new application from scratch (He knows his trade but people don't do what he has without good reason).
The other one is fairly pissed off also.
I suspect what pisses them off isn't the lack of a requirement to screw around with the machine. Perhaps it's some of the consequences of stuff Apple's chosen to do in order to reduce the requirement to screw around with the machine, or perhaps it's something else.
They want it to Just Work. They want to buy it, plug it in, go pointy-clicky and have it work. People have an expectation that computers and technological devices (tablets, phones, etc) work without screwing around with them.
Or, in my case, I want my laptop to Just Work without screwing around with it, especially in the places where I don't care (life's too short to spend any of it dicking around with, say, sound or trackpad or graphics drivers or tweaking random configuration files), but allow me to sudo^Wscrew around with it, in the places where I care, if I want to. So far, OS X has done pretty well for me on that score.
(And Ubuntu might also do well there as well, at least if I choose my hardware well. I'd mention Fedora, but I largely think of it as "the OS whose SELinux implementation gets in the way of VMware running hgfs"; given that I can scp stuff to and from my Fedora VM without too much trouble, and don't do it very often, and don't run that VM very often in any case, it hasn't been worth the effort to figure out how to beat SELinux into shape there.)
Slashdot Mirror
OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
Damn good question. As far as it can be determined, the act of detection or thinking about the result changes the result.
Erm, well, I'm not sure the Copenhagen interpretation has been experimentally demonstrated to be the only valid interpretation of quantum mechanics (no, experiments showing that local hidden variable theories don't work don't demonstrate that detection collapses the wave function), and I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation says anything about "thinking about the result".
A side note: There are numerous studies that show that humans have 6th sense like abilities. One study shows that human tension rose incredibly world wide just prior to 9/11, and they have tracked similar phenomena to other major events both natural and man made. There was a study that showed that humans had a spike in brain activity just prior to seeing erotic images, which hints at some type of precognition and ESP like abilities.
Citations, please? I'd like to see whether the data really points to your interpretations.
There is a distinct difference when thinking about a creator, which is that morals and ethics can become a requirement as opposed to the atheist view. Look at the state of the US legal system now compared to, lets say the 1850s and see how big the difference is.
Well, yes, we now have laws against, e.g., owning people as property, which is a definite improvement. Are you saying that this was, say, the result of a post-1850's Great Awakening, or something such as that? There were religious people on both sides of that "owning people as property" debate.
Now, laws are mere technicality that people in power can break. Survival of the fittest works in that aspect, just as well as what most people think of in the animal kingdom.
Well, perhaps the fittest might be the ones who don't just fuck other people over.
Society is not harmed by people trying to do the right things according to Judea Christian beliefs.
Well, I don't see any benefit to society to some Biblical beliefs, such as these beliefs and the one given here and here, and there's definite harm to people as a result of the first of those.
Now, maybe you're not counting all the crap in Leviticus as "Judea[sic] Christian beliefs". If so, what are you counting?
The worst that would happen is that they would just die after living a life in a relatively peaceful and respectful society.
OK, you're definitely not counting all the crap in Leviticus, giving the pile of stonings to death, etc. called for there.
You on the other hand are doomed if you are wrong. Society is harmed by people that have no belief except for survival of the fittest, and that man is god.
Yup. Fortunately for me, and for society, even though I'm a nonbeliever, I'm not one of those people. I know plenty of other nonbelievers who don't believe that stuff either.
That is the first the sane comment I've read on this topic in a very long time... And I happen to agree 100%. If you think about it, logic dictates that there must be a creator / supreme being. 0 + 0 = 0. Permanently. This does not change over billions of years. So if you originally have nothing, how do you get to the initial "something" / material / energy etc for the whole big bang? The answer is that
...you don't originally have nothing. I'm not sure what you have at t=0, other than "a singularity?", but I'm not sure any theories of cosmology have zero energy at t=0.
As an amateur Philosopher spanning about a quarter century, I can tell you that I have studied quite a lot of territory which includes a lot of Physics.
OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
I am not going to try and explain, but tell you to find the answer you need to think beyond any point which becomes uncomfortable to your beliefs.
Challenging your beliefs is a hurtful process.
Are you willing to challenge your beliefs - including any belief you have in a creator?
Belief in a creator could get you to a point where you have to think about morals and ethics beyond survival instincts.
I have yet to find any reason to believe in a creator, but have somehow managed to think about morals and ethics beyond survival instincts. Perhaps there are people who can't think about them without belief in a creator; that prospect is both sad and frightening (those folks might well think about them badly with a poor choice of faith - "the creator tells me to kill these people because they don't believe in him!").
But the base argument of a creator can not be disproved and logic always takes you to a creator.
So who created the creator? Logic takes me to that question if somebody asserts something along the lines of "logic always takes you to a creator". (Hint: you'd better have a better argument if you want that philosophy Ph.D. from an institution that doesn't share your biases.)
We look at how everything works in the Universe and we see that everything relates to cause and effect. Then when you say "What caused it all to start moving" the Atheists go in to a rage. At least the Religions just point to a book and say "that" instead of the Atheist's reaction of "it doesn't matter" or "la la la I'm not listening to you".
Well, I guess it's significant that I identify as a "nonbeliever" rather than as a capital-A "Atheist", as my answer is "beats the hell out of me; I'm not even sure how to determine that in a fashion other than to make an ex recto declaration such as pointing to a book and saying "that", which might be a fine answer for some, but, especially given that different religions point to different books, there's no particular logical reason to take any one of them more seriously than others".
We live in a society brainwashed not to think about the question, and hate people that do think about it. That should frighten you!
Actually, I likve in a society where a crapload of people are brainwashed "not to think about the question" in the sense that they think "God said it, I believe it, that settles it", and where many of those people hate those who don't think that about it, and that really frightens me, because those people have entirely too much power in this society.
So if somebody finds enjoyment/fulfillment in murdering as many people as possible and calling it their purpose in life, you're okay with that?
I can't speak for Barsteward, but, speaking for myself, no, I'm not.
If not why not?
I can't speak for Barsteward, but, just because somebody calls something their purpose in life, that doesn't ipso facto mean it's OK by me. (And, although I can't speak for Barsteward, I do note that he/she said "The only purpose i can see in life is reproduction.", i.e. "Any other reason for a purpose is someone finding enjoyment/fulfillment in what they do and calling it their purpose in life." is just somebody pulling a purpose in life ex recto, the result being worth as much as anything else pulled ex recto - or perhaps less, as the stuff you're most likely to extract from the rectum could perhaps at least be used as fertilizer.)
You won't find God if you're not genuinely looking for him.
Or if he doesn't exist in the first place.
While there may be no proof, you must realize that you are incorrect in saying that "[...] there's not a scrap of evidence [...]."
And this evidence is?
Christians who actually know God are motivated by love to share their faith, and realize that they, too, have faults. They share their faith because they've found a love that is worth sharing. They aren't trying to "convert" you, they're trying to share what they have with you. Of the actual Christians, the persistent ones aren't being persistent to force you to believe; they're being persistent because they don't want you to miss out on something great.
The phrase "thank you for sharing" is often not a positive one, hint hint. The persistent ones should learn when it's time to STFU. (And that's "miss out on something they believe is great"; if you're not willing to accept that others might not think that there's something great to miss, that's, err, umm, rude....)
Precisely. You are following Peter, Paul, and other people; not Jesus.
Screw that. I'm a Ringo man until the day I die.
Or did you mean "Mary man"?
This universe is God's experiment in free will. Some people will show that they give a smurf about overcoming temptation to break from God's purpose. Those who do will be rewarded when the earth is rebuilt;
I.e., in the rebuilt earth, what Biblical literalists exist, if any, will keep their nuttiness to themselves? That would certainly be a reward.... If the folks who think the biggest problems with the world are The Queers and The Fornicators and The Uppity Women also kept it to themselves, that would truly be heaven.
(Or maybe the reward is that we find out whether M-theory is the answer or not.)
Maybe you find some string theory
No, we have to teach the controversy - do string theory and loop quantum gravity.
Does this debate exist anywhere outside the US and maybe some south-american countries? -- I have never seen a trace of it in Europe, (where I live).
Yes, it does. I suspect Jewish creationism is enough of a minority view that the debate isn't huge in Israel, but I might be mistaken there. I don't know how significant Hindu creationism is.
I believe what I do about evolution because I see EVIDENCE that no evolution-supporting fossil record exists.
I'm assuming you don't mean "evidence that no fossil record of any sort exists" (if you do mean that, I'd like to see that evidence!), and therefore that you mean "evidence that the fossil record doesn't support evolution". If so, please check your evidence here and here, for example.
I generally tow the Slashdot line, but this is one of the topics where I definitely disagree with the Slashdot norm. Since those siding with Leakey are well represented, I thought I would provide some perspective from the other side: those who believe in a literal seven day creation account.
Well, there are several "other sides". (I even belong to one of them - I think evolution is the best explanation for the forms of life on Earth, but I also don't think the debate's going to be history any time soon, at least not in some parts of the world, and I think some of the comments on the article and follow-up comments are solid evidence for my belief.)
Even amongst those who reject evolution, there's more than just Biblical literalists - there's a Biblical argument against young-earth creationism on at least one creationist site. (It's all word-chopping, so it's unlikely to convince those who wish to believe something else; they'll just chop the words differently.)
And I know faith is not popular around here, but I maintain a faith that there is an alternative explanation for why this evidence seems to be pointing towards evolution (I won't bore you with repeating ideas you've surely heard before). I strongly believe that science can account for everything natural in the world, but I also believe that any attempts to explain things in a manner contrary to the Bible will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect.
By which you mean "contrary to your interpretation of the Bible". The folks at appear to read it differently from the way you read it, as per the page I cited.
While evolution is the prevailing belief today, I have faith that it will be disproved in time, just as the skeptical historians were disproved.
...and I have an extremely strong suspicion that it won't. Stalemate.
Anyway, all I sought to do here was represent the other side so you could see how someone who likes to think of themselves as rational can possibly disagree.
Whether those reading what you say will view you as rational or rationalizing is another matter. Humans' ability to construct systems of thought is impressive; this includes humans' ability to construct systems of thought capable of leading to just about any conclusion the humans constructing the system of thought want. (That's why I like science - it at least tries to be a bit less ex recto.)
2. Computers have shown that the neat evolutionary trees that get drawn up are in fact based on imaginary relations of similarity and difference that owe more to the human mind's tendency to perceive patterns than to the raw biological data.
...and physics is the study of frictionless elephants whose mass can be ignored. Are those "neat evolutionary trees" trees actually used by biologists or are they simplifed examples given in popular accounts?
4. ...the evolution of present-day organisms from their supposed ancestors are in fact highly conjectural if not downright false. ... And even the emergence of one species from another has never been directly observed by science.
Not so.
5. ...(Evolution) remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete. The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one?
Well, at least you didn't dredge up the eye here.... Presumably you don't mean "half of one", you mean "something halfway towards one", well, then....
7. The data used to support evolution are neither experiments nor repeatable, nor can they be, since the origin of species on earth was a unique event.
"The origin of species on earth" is a process, not an event. Yes, evolutionary biology, like geology, is a "historical" science, so it makes "retrodictions", but....
Certainly, again, there are nuts who take the Bible waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too literally. But really... how many of them actually read Slashdot again?
At least one, apparently.
cancer is evolution. It's how DNA tries new stuff. If it works, survival. If it doesn't work, death.
Most of that applies to mutation. Are you saying that all cancers are the result of mutation, all mutation causes cancer, or something else?
The problem isn't with the proof, the problem is with the AXIOMS. Very good and convincing proofs of the existence of God are there, if you take a particular set of axioms as the basis for your outlook. That's the faith part.
So does that, ultimately, amount to "you will be convinced of the existence of God if you make assumptions about the world that require the existence of God"? Unless there's a non-faith-based reason to make those assumptions, the proof isn't going to be convincing to people who don't make those assumptions, making it just an entertaining exercise for those who happen to make those assumptions, not something to take seriously as a reason to believe.
It's a real problem in our world today that people take math and science as gospel. Everyone seems to forget that all of math and science are based on axioms, things that we assume must be correct because there's no way to prove it. We have to make those assumptions, though, to do anything at all. You might say "well, so far nothing has shown those assumptions to be wrong, so we must be right!", but that's only good to a point.
Yes, math is a subject where you start with a set of axioms and derive theorems from it, and all that matters is whether the axioms are consistent (i.e., one axiom doesn't contradict another) and, for any theorem, whether derivation is correct.
Science, however, is not such a subject. One might think of a particular scientific theory as having axiom-like assumptions from which one derives theorem-like predictions (although they're not necessarily stated in a mathematical form). However, the theorem-like predictions aren't just proven; they have to be tested against the real world. This means you don't get to choose your axioms arbitrarily and still have your theory taken seriously; if its predictions don't match the real world, you're not likely to be taken seriously unless you can show that there's something wrong with the experiments done to test the predictions.
Newton's law of gravity is correct, but only if you assume a Euclidean geometry.
Well, more accurately, Newton's laws of motion, as laid out by Newton, involve motion in a Euclidean space, and Newton's law of gravity, as laid out by Newton, involves a gravitational force in that space, whereas Einstein's general relativity involves special relativity-style laws of motion in a space-time that might be curved by the presence of matter, so that, the paths of matter not affected by (non-gravitational) forces being "straight lines" (geodesics) in that space-time, those paths might be affected by the presence of matter. However, Newtonian gravity can be formulated in a fashion similar to Einsteinian gravity, curved space and all.
Actually, Apple stopped shipping GCC a long time ago. /usr/bin/gcc is just a compatibility-wrapper on top of LLVM which translates command line options for GCC to the equivalents in LLVM.
Is that "LLVM the project" or "LLVM the code generator and optimizer library"? The latter has no command-line options to translate to. The former includes clang, which is a C/C++/Objective-C front-end that can be combined with the LLVM code generator and optimizer to form a C/C++/Objective-C compiler; that compiler has a set of command-line options that, by and large, are the same as those of GCC. /usr/bin/gcc was, at least in the Lion timeframe, the same as llvm-gcc, which is "a modified version of gcc that compiles C/ObjC programs into native objects, LLVM bitcode or LLVM assembly language, depending upon the options." - GCC front-end, LLVM back-end. Its native command-line options are pretty much the same as those of GCC ("Being derived from the GNU Compiler Collection, llvm-gcc has many of gcc's features and accepts most of gcc's options.").
Perhaps in the latest versions of XCode /usr/bin/gcc runs clang rather than llvm-gcc.
So, no translation - the main C/C++/Objective-C compilers built from the LLVM back end use, by and large, the same command-line options as GCC (why bother making them different just to be different?).
Why is there any interconnect at all between an OS and a GUI ?
Curse Microsoft for presenting the unwashed massed with no difference between hardware device management user input to software.
Probably more like "curse Microsoft for selling a package that contains both the core OS and GUI, rather than selling them separately and encouraging third-party GUIs to run atop the core OS".
You don't have to lose interest in hobby computing, just consumer electronics. I still do hobby computing, but on regular PC hardware running GNU/Linux
And I do it on Apple hardware running OS X.
Poor windows support? I'm running Windows 7 Pro (Bootcamp partition) and OSX right now via Parallels seamlessly at the moment. ...
As I said elsewhere, the person to whom you're replying was, I suspect, talking about iOS machines (e.g., "Android is more flexible and it shows by the market share." - Android's competing with iOS, not OS X), not Macs.
Poor Linux support
Are you serious? Have you been to a Linux conference lately? It's MacBooks as far as the eye can see, because Apple's the only vendor that doesn't have to cut corners on hardware quality.
Poor Windows support.
Seems to me that offering up Windows drivers and a free multi-booting utility is plenty for Apple to do. They're not in the business of making life better for the proles who have to settle for Windows, after all.
The person to whom you're replying was, I suspect, talking about iOS machines (e.g., "Android is more flexible and it shows by the market share." - Android's competing with iOS, not OS X), not Macs.
No they don't at least the few people who I know using them professionally for mixing and mastering.
(One has gone to Windows for now running on a mac pro - learning a new application from scratch (He knows his trade but people don't do what he has without good reason).
The other one is fairly pissed off also.
I suspect what pisses them off isn't the lack of a requirement to screw around with the machine. Perhaps it's some of the consequences of stuff Apple's chosen to do in order to reduce the requirement to screw around with the machine, or perhaps it's something else.
They want it to Just Work. They want to buy it, plug it in, go pointy-clicky and have it work. People have an expectation that computers and technological devices (tablets, phones, etc) work without screwing around with them.
Or, in my case, I want my laptop to Just Work without screwing around with it, especially in the places where I don't care (life's too short to spend any of it dicking around with, say, sound or trackpad or graphics drivers or tweaking random configuration files), but allow me to sudo^Wscrew around with it, in the places where I care, if I want to. So far, OS X has done pretty well for me on that score.
(And Ubuntu might also do well there as well, at least if I choose my hardware well. I'd mention Fedora, but I largely think of it as "the OS whose SELinux implementation gets in the way of VMware running hgfs"; given that I can scp stuff to and from my Fedora VM without too much trouble, and don't do it very often, and don't run that VM very often in any case, it hasn't been worth the effort to figure out how to beat SELinux into shape there.)
I bet a shot of good scotch and a pint of Guinness on my prediction. Will you bet against me?
Yes.