This is a result of something deeper, in part. There's no canonical solution to even a rigorously defined problem. Solutions vary and so will their bytecode or other mathematical representation. Your mileage will vary.
"To solve this we need to focus on just what those tasks really are, and how people think about them. Most people think about the results they want; few can think about the steps needed to achieve those results. What will work better for the age of information is tools that work better with the concepts that average people (as opposed to academics) really think about, and use that to produce what they want."
The trouble with this whole concept is really simple and has nothing to do with computers, but with problem solving in general: people DON'T know what they want! You're asking for a DWIM machine. You may as well forget about it cause it ain't gonna happen.
"I suspect that a proof of Goldbach's conjecture might entail a more fundamental formula or series that could generate the set of all primes. That would be a much more important finding since it would shatter the mathematical security of many cryptographic algorithms --- particularly the RSA PK (public key) system. (There's billions of $ at stake in that case)."
It has already been proven that no formula can generate the Nth digit of PI. I believe (but I'm not sure) there such a proof for the non-existence of any formula for finding the Nth prime (without the preceding primes) as well. Can anyone verify that?
Overdoses of vitamin B12 can lead to destruction of the neurology that is responsible for proprioception. This means there are people who don't know where their limbs are if they're not looking at them!!
Right. But cyber credit card theft is potentially dangerous in ways that personal CC number theft is not. Even if you work all day at stealing credit card numbers, you can only steal a handful when compared with a fully automated digital attack. The real risk is not with credit card users. It's with the banking industry. A serious attack that got say a million+ usable CC numbers could bankrupt even the largest credit card company or at least become the source of a truly/staggering/ problem. A "terrorist" might even be able to destabilize the whole economy if large-scale automated CC fraud were part of a well orchestrated attack.
I personally don't see how we can avoid a really serious security meltdown on the internet. People are taking very large risks with technology that is not *fundamentally* secure. The only thing we/know/ will keep the internet secure at this point is not to have one. All this other "secutiry" is pure conjecture.
Unless you're 60 or 70 now, that's a real heads in the sand attitude. Technical/scientific progress is so nonlinear now that it's incredibly hard to forecast even 5 years into the future. 5 years ago, people would have laughed at you if you suggested you could clone anything at all. Five years from now, it may be routine. It's all very hard to predict. It may turn out that this or that barrier to genetic modification of humans is difficult or the barriers may turn out to be trivial... depending on all kinds of related and even seemingly unrelated new discoveries which are impossible to forecast.
How does this differ from the way things are now? Seems like we're already there, except that we still tell ourselves this bedtime story that things are somehow fair because "anyone can 'make it'" (because we're all "free" and human). The only new development is that the (already irrelevant) bedtime story is going to be obviously implausible now.
According to the MIT research below... Each fringe pattern (frame) is about 6MB and that's in a highly *compressed* form. When you uncompress it, it's about 36MB per frame. It'll be a couple of years still, but this *certainly* should suck up most of that space! i always mess up the math, but here goes...
so your 2.3TB disk will only hold about 3.5 hours of holographic video. so this miracle disk is already too small to hold the holovideo of branaugh's hamlet...
guess you'll just have to switch disks...;-)
http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/spi/holovideo.ht ml http://www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/holo/hol ovideo-timeline.html http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/ holo/PhDthesis/contents.html http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/ holo/papers.html#SIGGRAPH95
This is going to be one hellish invention for the music industry...
I can fit about 350 songs onto a gigabyte at a reasonable quality. but let's just go with 200 assuming a little better quality. 200 * 2300 = 460,000 songs on a credit card. so then the problem for the music industry is that a copy of everything they own could get out and it might fit in your wallet. whoops!
only problem is that at 100Mbit/sec or 12.5Mbytes/sec one of these puppies would take a *while* to copy. 12.5Mbytes/sec is "only" around 45 gigs an hour. so 2300 gigs would take 51 hours (a bit more than 2 days) to copy!! (that is, if i did my math right...;-))
and what the heck kind of file system is this going to run? i can just see it now...
C:\>dir
Volume in drive C is BOOT Volume Serial Number is C09E-B641
"This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty."
Although the issue of race is important, I think the deeper issue is the economics of technology in general. Technology is power. That power will create equality only in proportion to the good intentions of those who wield it. I don't see much in the way of good intentions and I think the economic benefits are going to be short lived. Once the hardware and software infrastructure are in place, the internet may very well serve to accelerate the exploitation of the poor and the undermining of Democracy. It has the *potential* for the opposite effect, but that potential is dependent upon the moral values and motivations of those who have economic and technological power (primarily the multinationals). Just because the internet has great potential, doesn't mean it will realize that potential. Just look at basic areas of human life like food and drugs. We have the technology to feed the world and provide cures for deadly diseases while a huge proportion of people suffers needlessly anyway. Why should we expect the internet to be any different?
Seems like an extremely long winded way of saying what every 4 year old already knows intuitively. At least until the competitive capitalist system beats it out of him.
Well, yes. But I'm not that concerned about omnipotent beings manipulating my thoughts (although I admit that to be a possibility). What I'm suggesting more subtle, more simple and perhaps impossible to disprove. Suppose that everything is exactly the way we perceive it, and yet our Reality turns out not to be the extent of things at all. Rather it's just a dream state. A bit like the problem of the pushing and popping potions in Godel Escher Bach... it's confusing, and once you become aware of the possibility of systemic containment, nobody can ever be sure what's *outside* the system. Not even a god (should He or they exist) can know for sure that they are the extent of things, as they would be subject to the same kind of problem. Is there any "outside"? Are we just flatlanders who can't see some extra dimension? Is there only one Universe or are there an uncountably infinite number of them? One thing for sure about life... it's both beautiful and horrible... from a human perspective, anyway.
Like the media, teachers are often used as tools (often unwittingly, but sometimes coercively) for power (corporations, religions, governments, special interest groups, etc.) to disseminate propaganda. As a participant in the Evergreen educational experiment, I think that following the Evergreen model would alleviate a lot of the problems we see today. Rather than forcing students to eat a certain mental diet, we should open up and let them choose freely. In my opinion, the ideal educational instutions would have no requirements and no grades, just like Evergreen. However, Evergreen failed in some ways because it stopped just short of the real ideal. There really should be no degrees, and education should be viewed as an all-ages lifelong process. Already degrees mean very little in the workplace. Mostly they indicate that you're willing to stick with something for a while. But a list of courses and an interview process are *far* more effective in determining someone's education than a grade. That's why nobody really pays attention to grades and diplomas anymore. If you've got the skills, you're in. So getting rid of all this baggage makes perfect sense in a modern contect, because when you need to learn something, you just go back to school and learn it. The idea that 4 years and a degree makes you fit for another 40 or 50 years of living is crazy in a society experiencing as much change as we do. The nice thing about dropping all these requirements is that you suddenly get something you've never had before: MOTIVATED LEARNERS! Why? Because there's no other reason to be in school! It's hard and it costs money! If you're not learning something in a system that has no external socio-economic goals (grades/diploma etc) then you've got no reason to be in school. Instantly all the people that don't really want to be in school would leave. Or just take courses that they liked. Factoring education out of the power structure entirely and making it free and open would have a tremendous positive impact on our nation. The kids that want to learn X will learn it. The kids that don't want to won't learn it right away, but they might come back later when and if they're ready. No longer would people go to school for a "degree". They'd go for *an education*! What's more, it would greatly reduce the political problem of determining what gets taught in schools because students would pick and choose what they want to learn rather than having it rammed down their throats. We need a free marketplace of ideas and thinkers, not a political process for determining propaganda.
You make it sounds like I'm waiting expectantly for God or something. To add to my healthy list of skeptical thoughts...
- The Universe might have no beginning - I may have no inherent existence - Reality may not exist the way we think it does - I might be trapped in Samsara or a Dream World - I don't necessarily think I'll find out one way or the other - It may not be possible for *anyone* to know how the Universe was created - Knowing how the Universe came into being doesn't explain *why* it's here
I don't think I fully believe or disbelieve any of these things. There's just not enough evidence. Worse, it may be logically impossible to have enough evidence!
I more or less agree with the general direction of your argument and I really like the idea of encouraging tolerance. However, I think you either misunderstand or misrepresent what you understand about evolution somewhat. It's not the 'accidents' that survive. So the human hand's trial and error design over vast numbers of generations of evolution is no 'accident'. It's the result of all the 'accidents' getting filtered out due to their inappropriateness to survival. What remains is the most *ideal* set of "solutions" resulting from all accidental genetic mutations over time.
Also, I would personally back up one more step from literalism with religion in general and think of it as more metaphorical and ethical in nature. Spirituality addresses all these 'hard' problems that Science can't even pose properly, let alone answer. Given this, I find that many of the Eastern religions speak to me more, especially in terms of ethics, than Christianity. But as far as Christianity goes, do I think God literally created humans? Seems pretty far fetched given what we know about stellar, planetary, geological, chemical and biological evolution. Did the universe start with a Big Bang? Maybe. Did some God-like superbeing create the universe and its laws? Who knows!? Maybe! I think the absolute question of origins is totally open and probably always will be. Hey, maybe the Hindus/Buddhists are right and the whole creationism vs. science debate is totally pointless because everything we experience here in the universe is a dream (and thus Reality and Mysticism can be true at the same time). Hard to logically argue with that huh?
I've never understood the whole Christian Hell thing. It doesn't make logical sense to me in a myriad of ways.
I still think you're right about the possibility of Science and Religion co-existing. I certainly am willing to respect your beliefs if you'll respect mine. Via con Dios! May you be happy, well and peaceful.
I more or less agree with the general direction of your argument and I really like the idea of encouraging tolerance. However, I think you either misunderstand or misrepresent what you understand about evolution somewhat. It's not the 'accidents' that survive. So the human hand's trial and error design over vast numbers of generations of evolution is no 'accident'. It's the result of all the 'accidents' getting filtered out due to their inappropriateness to survival. What remains is the most *ideal* set of "solutions" resulting from all accidental genetic mutations over time.
Also, I would personally back up one more step from literalism with religion in general and think of it as more metaphorical and ethical in nature. Spirituality addresses all these 'hard' problems that Science can't even pose properly, let alone answer. Given this, I find that many of the Eastern religions speak to me more, especially in terms of ethics, than Christianity. But as far as Christianity goes, do I think God literally created humans? Seems pretty far fetched given what we know about stellar, planetary, geological, chemical and biological evolution. Did the universe start with a Big Bang? Maybe. Did some God-like superbeing create the universe and its laws? Who knows!? Maybe! I think the absolute question of origins is totally open and probably always will be. Hey, maybe the Hindus/Buddhists are right and the whole creationism vs. science debate is totally pointless because everything we experience here in the universe is a dream (and thus Reality and Mysticism can be true at the same time). Hard to logically argue with that huh?
I feel fairly convinced that mankind's evolution on Earth from primordial chemicals within the reality that we perceive is "proven" (as much as it could ever be) by Darwin's theory. But my mind is still totally open on the question of the origins of the universe. There's even the disturbing possibility, raised by many religions but especially Hinduism/Buddhism, that somehow this isn't a solid reality, but rather a dream state or illusion of sorts (which, as an argument, makes an unarguable end run around science completely, because science and "reality" themselves are subsumed as part of the dream).
Anyway, how this all got here, and more importantly *why*, seems to be one hell of a mystery (to us). So I can't say there's no universe-creating-being with surety, *but* it seems quite remote to me that Christianity (or any other earth based religion) is literally correct. Seems to me we're all just guessing. Even Science is really just guessing that Objective Reality (what human beings can perceive) is all there is. What's more, it makes no attempt (nor should it, necessarily) to understand the 'why' of the universe's existence. In light of all this logical and reasonable doubt, Fundamentalist Christianity seems crazy to me. I guess that's why it's a Faith. But given that God (the Fundamentalist Christian one, anyway) really only exists through man's faith, isn't He rather like an imaginary friend for adults?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless it's made illegal.
This is a result of something deeper, in part. There's no canonical solution to even a rigorously defined problem. Solutions vary and so will their bytecode or other mathematical representation. Your mileage will vary.
"To solve this we need to focus on just what those tasks really are, and how people think about them. Most people think about the results they want; few can think about the steps needed to achieve those results. What will work better for the age of information is tools that work better with the concepts that average people (as opposed to academics) really think about, and use that to produce what they want."
The trouble with this whole concept is really simple and has nothing to do with computers, but with problem solving in general: people DON'T know what they want! You're asking for a DWIM machine. You may as well forget about it cause it ain't gonna happen.
"I suspect that a proof of Goldbach's conjecture might entail a more fundamental formula or series that could generate the set of all primes. That would be a much more important finding since it would shatter the mathematical security of many cryptographic algorithms --- particularly the RSA PK (public key) system. (There's billions of $ at stake in that case)."
It has already been proven that no formula can generate the Nth digit of PI. I believe (but I'm not sure) there such a proof for the non-existence of any formula for finding the Nth prime (without the preceding primes) as well. Can anyone verify that?
is our sense of humor. This has been linked to stimulation of the "funny" bone. The funny bone is connected to the... oh never mind...
Overdoses of vitamin B12 can lead to destruction of the neurology that is responsible for proprioception. This means there are people who don't know where their limbs are if they're not looking at them!!
run don't walk to:
http://www.lumpymilk.com
okay, so it's not registered (yet...)
but surely it's good enough that you can
email me a slashdot t-shirt.
thanks!
Right. But cyber credit card theft is potentially dangerous in ways that personal CC number theft is not. Even if you work all day at stealing credit card numbers, you can only steal a handful when compared with a fully automated digital attack. The real risk is not with credit card users. It's with the banking industry. A serious attack that got say a million+ usable CC numbers could bankrupt even the largest credit card company or at least become the source of a truly /staggering/ problem. A "terrorist" might even be able to destabilize the whole economy if large-scale automated CC fraud were part of a well orchestrated attack.
/know/ will keep the internet secure at this point is not to have one. All this other "secutiry" is pure conjecture.
I personally don't see how we can avoid a really serious security meltdown on the internet. People are taking very large risks with technology that is not *fundamentally* secure. The only thing we
I really didn't think "Battleship Potempkin" was *that* influential myself... ;-)
Unless you're 60 or 70 now, that's a real heads in the sand attitude. Technical/scientific progress is so nonlinear now that it's incredibly hard to forecast even 5 years into the future. 5 years ago, people would have laughed at you if you suggested you could clone anything at all. Five years from now, it may be routine. It's all very hard to predict. It may turn out that this or that barrier to genetic modification of humans is difficult or the barriers may turn out to be trivial... depending on all kinds of related and even seemingly unrelated new discoveries which are impossible to forecast.
How does this differ from the way things are now? Seems like we're already there, except that we still tell ourselves this bedtime story that things are somehow fair because "anyone can 'make it'" (because we're all "free" and human). The only new development is that the (already irrelevant) bedtime story is going to be obviously implausible now.
Cut that oot or we'll give you something to cry aboot, eh!?
HA! Is there a URL to this story?
If so, please send it to me. I have
a couple friends who would be really
interested in this. Thanks.
According to the MIT research below...
Each fringe pattern (frame) is about 6MB and that's in a highly *compressed* form. When you uncompress it, it's about 36MB per frame. It'll be a couple of years still, but this *certainly* should suck up most of that space! i always mess up the math, but here goes...
6MB * 30 f/sec = 180MB/sec
180MB/sec * 3600 = 648GB/hr
so your 2.3TB disk will only hold about 3.5 hours of holographic video. so this miracle disk is already too small to hold the holovideo of branaugh's hamlet...
guess you'll just have to switch disks...
http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/spi/holovideo.h
http://www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/holo/ho
http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente
http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente
This is going to be one hellish invention for the music industry...
;-))
I can fit about 350 songs onto a gigabyte at a reasonable quality. but let's just go with 200 assuming a little better quality. 200 * 2300 = 460,000 songs on a credit card. so then the problem for the music industry is that a copy of everything they own could get out and it might fit in your wallet. whoops!
only problem is that at 100Mbit/sec or 12.5Mbytes/sec one of these puppies would take a *while* to copy. 12.5Mbytes/sec is "only" around 45 gigs an hour. so 2300 gigs would take 51 hours (a bit more than 2 days) to copy!! (that is, if i did my math right...
and what the heck kind of file system is this going to run? i can just see it now...
C:\>dir
Volume in drive C is BOOT
Volume Serial Number is C09E-B641
Directory of C:\
08/25/99 10:54p 6 foo
1 File(s) 6 bytes
2,300,000,000,000 bytes free
C:\>
sheesh!
i can just see the error messages now...
please free up some disk space. NT workstation requires 1.5 terabytes to install. thankyou.
"This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty."
Although the issue of race is important, I think the deeper issue is the economics of technology in general. Technology is power. That power will create equality only in proportion to the good intentions of those who wield it. I don't see much in the way of good intentions and I think the economic benefits are going to be short lived. Once the hardware and software infrastructure are in place, the internet may very well serve to accelerate the exploitation of the poor and the undermining of Democracy. It has the *potential* for the opposite effect, but that potential is dependent upon the moral values and motivations of those who have economic and technological power (primarily the multinationals). Just because the internet has great potential, doesn't mean it will realize that potential. Just look at basic areas of human life like food and drugs. We have the technology to feed the world and provide cures for deadly diseases while a huge proportion of people suffers needlessly anyway. Why should we expect the internet to be any different?
Seems like an extremely long winded way of saying what every 4 year old already knows intuitively. At least until the competitive capitalist system beats it out of him.
"The only truly uncopyable music is also unlistenable music."
;-)
Then perhaps John Cage is the answer to all Microsoft's problems...
TN actually had a law (which
Well, yes. But I'm not that concerned about omnipotent beings manipulating my thoughts (although I admit that to be a possibility). What I'm suggesting more subtle, more simple and perhaps impossible to disprove. Suppose that everything is exactly the way we perceive it, and yet our Reality turns out not to be the extent of things at all. Rather it's just a dream state. A bit like the problem of the pushing and popping potions in Godel Escher Bach... it's confusing, and once you become aware of the possibility of systemic containment, nobody can ever be sure what's *outside* the system. Not even a god (should He or they exist) can know for sure that they are the extent of things, as they would be subject to the same kind of problem. Is there any "outside"? Are we just flatlanders who can't see some extra dimension? Is there only one Universe or are there an uncountably infinite number of them? One thing for sure about life... it's both beautiful and horrible... from a human perspective, anyway.
Like the media, teachers are often used as tools (often unwittingly, but sometimes coercively) for power (corporations, religions, governments, special interest groups, etc.) to disseminate propaganda. As a participant in the Evergreen educational experiment, I think that following the Evergreen model would alleviate a lot of the problems we see today. Rather than forcing students to eat a certain mental diet, we should open up and let them choose freely. In my opinion, the ideal educational instutions would have no requirements and no grades, just like Evergreen. However, Evergreen failed in some ways because it stopped just short of the real ideal. There really should be no degrees, and education should be viewed as an all-ages lifelong process. Already degrees mean very little in the workplace. Mostly they indicate that you're willing to stick with something for a while. But a list of courses and an interview process are *far* more effective in determining someone's education than a grade. That's why nobody really pays attention to grades and diplomas anymore. If you've got the skills, you're in. So getting rid of all this baggage makes perfect sense in a modern contect, because when you need to learn something, you just go back to school and learn it. The idea that 4 years and a degree makes you fit for another 40 or 50 years of living is crazy in a society experiencing as much change as we do. The nice thing about dropping all these requirements is that you suddenly get something you've never had before: MOTIVATED LEARNERS! Why? Because there's no other reason to be in school! It's hard and it costs money! If you're not learning something in a system that has no external socio-economic goals (grades/diploma etc) then you've got no reason to be in school. Instantly all the people that don't really want to be in school would leave. Or just take courses that they liked. Factoring education out of the power structure entirely and making it free and open would have a tremendous positive impact on our nation. The kids that want to learn X will learn it. The kids that don't want to won't learn it right away, but they might come back later when and if they're ready. No longer would people go to school for a "degree". They'd go for *an education*! What's more, it would greatly reduce the political problem of determining what gets taught in schools because students would pick and choose what they want to learn rather than having it rammed down their throats. We need a free marketplace of ideas and thinkers, not a political process for determining propaganda.
You make it sounds like I'm waiting expectantly for God or something. To add to my healthy list of skeptical thoughts...
- The Universe might have no beginning
- I may have no inherent existence
- Reality may not exist the way we think it does
- I might be trapped in Samsara or a Dream World
- I don't necessarily think I'll find out one way or the other
- It may not be possible for *anyone* to know how the Universe was created
- Knowing how the Universe came into being doesn't explain *why* it's here
I don't think I fully believe or disbelieve any of these things. There's just not enough evidence. Worse, it may be logically impossible to have enough evidence!
I more or less agree with the general direction of your argument and I really like the idea of encouraging tolerance. However, I think you either misunderstand or misrepresent what you understand about evolution somewhat. It's not the 'accidents' that survive. So the human hand's trial and error design over vast numbers of generations of evolution is no 'accident'. It's the result of all the 'accidents' getting filtered out due to their inappropriateness to survival. What remains is the most *ideal* set of "solutions" resulting from all accidental genetic mutations over time.
Also, I would personally back up one more step from literalism with religion in general and think of it as more metaphorical and ethical in nature. Spirituality addresses all these 'hard' problems that Science can't even pose properly, let alone answer. Given this, I find that many of the Eastern religions speak to me more, especially in terms of ethics, than Christianity. But as far as Christianity goes, do I think God literally created humans? Seems pretty far fetched given what we know about stellar, planetary, geological, chemical and biological evolution. Did the universe start with a Big Bang? Maybe. Did some God-like superbeing create the universe and its laws? Who knows!? Maybe! I think the absolute question of origins is totally open and probably always will be. Hey, maybe the Hindus/Buddhists are right and the whole creationism vs. science debate is totally pointless because everything we experience here in the universe is a dream (and thus Reality and Mysticism can be true at the same time). Hard to logically argue with that huh?
I've never understood the whole Christian Hell thing. It doesn't make logical sense to me in a myriad of ways.
I still think you're right about the possibility of Science and Religion co-existing. I certainly am willing to respect your beliefs if you'll respect mine. Via con Dios! May you be happy, well and peaceful.
I more or less agree with the general direction of your argument and I really like the idea of encouraging tolerance. However, I think you either misunderstand or misrepresent what you understand about evolution somewhat. It's not the 'accidents' that survive. So the human hand's trial and error design over vast numbers of generations of evolution is no 'accident'. It's the result of all the 'accidents' getting filtered out due to their inappropriateness to survival. What remains is the most *ideal* set of "solutions" resulting from all accidental genetic mutations over time.
Also, I would personally back up one more step from literalism with religion in general and think of it as more metaphorical and ethical in nature. Spirituality addresses all these 'hard' problems that Science can't even pose properly, let alone answer. Given this, I find that many of the Eastern religions speak to me more, especially in terms of ethics, than Christianity. But as far as Christianity goes, do I think God literally created humans? Seems pretty far fetched given what we know about stellar, planetary, geological, chemical and biological evolution. Did the universe start with a Big Bang? Maybe. Did some God-like superbeing create the universe and its laws? Who knows!? Maybe! I think the absolute question of origins is totally open and probably always will be. Hey, maybe the Hindus/Buddhists are right and the whole creationism vs. science debate is totally pointless because everything we experience here in the universe is a dream (and thus Reality and Mysticism can be true at the same time). Hard to logically argue with that huh?
I feel fairly convinced that mankind's evolution on Earth from primordial chemicals within the reality that we perceive is "proven" (as much as it could ever be) by Darwin's theory. But my mind is still totally open on the question of the origins of the universe. There's even the disturbing possibility, raised by many religions but especially Hinduism/Buddhism, that somehow this isn't a solid reality, but rather a dream state or illusion of sorts (which, as an argument, makes an unarguable end run around science completely, because science and "reality" themselves are subsumed as part of the dream).
Anyway, how this all got here, and more importantly *why*, seems to be one hell of a mystery (to us). So I can't say there's no universe-creating-being with surety, *but* it seems quite remote to me that Christianity (or any other earth based religion) is literally correct. Seems to me we're all just guessing. Even Science is really just guessing that Objective Reality (what human beings can perceive) is all there is. What's more, it makes no attempt (nor should it, necessarily) to understand the 'why' of the universe's existence. In light of all this logical and reasonable doubt, Fundamentalist Christianity seems crazy to me. I guess that's why it's a Faith. But given that God (the Fundamentalist Christian one, anyway) really only exists through man's faith, isn't He rather like an imaginary friend for adults?