I didn't realize we had battles over simple brass horns..
Not just any brass horns. These ones were way out of tune.
natural rights that every human has
That's just political rhetoric. There are no rights. Perhaps when there were few enough people that you could always walk away from any fight, but now there's nowhere to walk to. Rights are granted to us by those with guns. It's nice when rights are granted to us by our society (and when society gives some people guns in order to protect society), but anything else is just cutesy language to make people feel empowered.
If a company makes a product and claims that it is more accurate than the competition, that claim should be tested. If it doesn't make the claim, then it should be tested anyway. A justice product like this must be held to a standard: if it doesn't work as the legal system believes that it works, then it should not be used as evidence.
Of course, I don't really see what this has to do with source code in this case. Sure, someone might find a bug--if that's what happened, then cool. But what matters is actual performance, not how they achieved that performance. And that is something that should be measured by an independent testing organisation.
Of course, there are bugs that are hard to reproduce. A "if the clock says this, then increase the blood alcohol reading by 10%" bug (or feature) would be hard to test, and easy to see in the source code. That's a contrived example, though.
It doesn't cost you money to answer (and hang up on) a telemarketer. And there's a no-call list in most states that works pretty well.
Don't be absurd. "Time is money" (of course time is really much more valuable than money), and being bothered costs mental energy (also more valuable than money). Just because no corporation is billing you for answering your phone doesn't mean that the effort of doing so is without cost.
(1) Why do you assume that olederid would otherwise have a really good reason for coming to the USA? Contrary to the belief of many of our citizens, there are other perfectly good places to holiday. Maybe the USA was one out of 60 reasonable possibilities, and is not any more. Maybe he wanted to slum--to see how well we're recovering from Bush--and this new piece answers that question without the trouble of an actual trip. Etc.
(2) Maybe national ethics are important to him. Why is it unreasonable to take a moral stance against spending money in countries that have this absurd pattern of human-rights violations? Not that this is one of those, but it's in the same vein. It suggests that we are perhaps continuing to build infrastructure that could support isolationist fear-mongering politics.
I don't see how this tool is so horrible. It's just a tiny little thing, and could be useful. But it undeniably fits the pattern that we've seen throughout Bush's regime, and I'm certainly not going to tell someone that that possibility should be ignored.
What? Where's the art in that? I love the handcoded steganographic puzzles like this (or, really, any of the puzzles in the MIT Mystery Hunt). There is real artistry in designing a unique code and--although it's not exactly standard cryptographic practice--building in enough clues that an outsider can, potentially, with enough caffeine, break it.
As if this forum were a place where any medical practice could actually be trashed. It's as if 90% of/.ers have never heard of controlled studies. When any of these treatments shows up on PubMed, I'll consider that evidence, and if I really care I'll check that the peer-reviewed studies were in fact done well. I'm surprised so few ostensibly educated people act this way.
By the way... it bothers me that your post was "flamebait". It seems that you and I presented the two viable alternatives, and people took sides. I don't think your point is the only answer, but it's completely valid. Mods: what's up with that?
But you can be pro-science without being anti-religion
I disagree. The examination and testing of assumptions--belief in "facts" only as far as they are supported by data--is pretty fundamental to science, whereas faith (ie. belief without proof) is fundamental to religion. There are "religious" people who claim that anything that can be subject to scientific scrutiny is outside the purview of religion, but the claim that some things that they want to believe are not subject to scrutiny is highly suspect. You can say "Here are things I choose to believe without evidence; they are not supportable but they help me anyway", and that's a fine use for religion, but such clarity and intellectual honesty is uncommon.
do we as a society really support the freedom of people to be wrong?
Sure, but at the same time it's helpful to acknowledge that when people act upon wrong beliefs, we can all be harmed. Let's act under the belief that global warming doesn't exist. Let's see where the belief that the Second Coming will happen in the next 10 years takes us. Heck, let's act under the belief that there's nothing wrong with the economy! Actually, that might help... hmmm...
Therefore, while you are free to be wrong, it is in the interest of society to make sure that most people are making good decisions based on sound principles and knowledge. Failing that, those who are making decisions based on fantasies should be marginalised and mocked.
Just what is freedom, anyway? We are not all free all the time. We're not free to ignore gravity, or to murder. Those are two very different things, but faith (belief unsupported by evidence) affects both of them. The first is governed by physics, and the second by the rules that we have found, again based on observation, to lead to a healthier, happier society.
Very good points. I want to emphasise the target audience that you are discussing.
Telling a religious nutcase that he's an idiot, nay, even proving it to him, will never convince him to change his mind. Only the wise will change their minds after being shown that they are wrong. Yes, even if you show a religious person that Ockham's Razor makes a god nigh-impossible, he will usually fall back to "Probability describes only what you can infer given your data. I know that God is real, so your calculation, while valid, does not incorporate data that I have."
However, being intolerant of stupid ideas is still a good idea. While you won't convince religious people, you will have a good chance of convincing those who are on the fence, or who want to question but who have had their questions suppressed by family and "friends". Mocking religious people in private is generally useless (albeit fun), but I wanted to emphasise that public humiliation (cultural pressure) is a great weapon, especially when it has good science behind it.
The target is not the idiots. The target is their potential victims.
But most people don't. That's the problem. We are a society, and we are not, generally, computer-savvy enough to appreciate the benefits of what you've proposed. I use PGP (GPG), but of my hundreds of friends only 4 even realise that encrypting email might be good, let alone the benefits of PGP vs. central key authorities. The ultimate solution is to educate people so that they understand how important decentralisation is (encryption is but a footnote), but meanwhile it seems reasonable to convince people of something closer to their hearts: their breasts.
Ah, so sorry--I wasn't so much disputing the "intimate" part as the "two individuals" part. If sex were just for two, then passers-by would find nothing interesting at all. They do, which I am citing as evidence that sex needn't be for just two people. For that matter, most sex involves just one person... which is also potentially titillating to passers-by.
As for "intimate", that depends on your definition. Are you saying that sex can be intimate, or that it must? The earlier post seemed to assert the latter. I don't have a good definition, but I have seen lots that do not stand up to scrutiny when evaluated vs. the evidence. Many strangers will have sexual interest in watching a couple. Two men who have never met before can have great sex and then never see each other again. This isn't unnatural (not very popular, but not even remotely close to the fringe). Is discipline play intimate? And I think I won't even bother with bestiality, but if sex must be intimate, than the definition had better cover all of those things and much weirder stuff as well. And if sex could be intimate, then the original claim is completely vacuous.
Because one is an intimate act between two individuals; the other is just a normal feeding activity and the real reason why breasts exist.
Nonsense. If sex were an intimate act between two individuals then there would be no laws concerning sex in public--nobody else would give a rat's ass. In fact sex is an exciting act to be part of or to watch, no matter how many people (and ducks or whatnot, to taste) are involved.
Along comes Christianity (and other religions), asserting, contrary to all evidence, that sex is an intimate act between two individuals. Since it's so obviously not, society needs laws so that people who want to maintain their personal delusions about sex can legally threaten and harass anyone who provides evidence to the contrary.
And a side note: if breasts exist for no reason other than feeding/scarring young children, then why do so many people (both men and women) have a sexual response to breast stimulation? Are so many people wired incorrectly? Is it all an artificial, incorrect, and arbitrary artifact of the media? Could they have sexualised knees in exactly the same way? Why do breasts have so much fat? They don't need it for milk production. Breasts are also a signal of sexual fitness. If you were being sarcastic, I apologise; I was up late. Breasts may have been involved...
The rule is simple. If you do not like the rule, go somewhere else.
Who says? What's wrong with trying to change the rules?
In meatspace you just don't have any choice--there is no more land. "If you don't like the country you're in, go start your own" is a great rule, but there are too many people: the countries that already exist cover all the habitable land.
The Internet looks infinite, but it's not. It's only as infinite as peoples' ability to keep track of multiple sites. If I duplicate Facebook's site and change only the breast policy, do you think that people will switch, even though the new one is better?
If I find something offensive, why shouldn't I speak out against it? It is offensive that breasts are regarded as indecent. If it were merely ridiculous I might be able to swallow it, but since there are so many sick fucks out there who believe that the human body is disgusting and evil, what's wrong with trying to change their attitude? Not doing so invites the same thing that allowing any other form of hatred invites: more people brainwashed, and a society in which the majority grow up ill and try to push their perverted self-hatred onto everyone else.
Fucking morons. (1) 1.2 cents per mile REGARDLESS OF CAR TYPE??? This will encourage less efficient vehicles. (2) A gas tax responds to subtler aspects of the same problem: keep your car in good shape, accelerate slowly, take less congested roads, turn the car off at slow red lights, etc... GPS tracking addresses none of this. (3) This would only work with new cars. People should still have to figure out when it makes sense to replace their 10mpg FUV with a Prius. Not that keeping old cars around is a bad thing--manufacturing cars is very energy-intensive--but this system obviates that concern.
This is a tax to reduce congestion, and will be worse than useless as a means to fight pollution. Since gas will be cheaper, more people will drive FUVs due to their perceived safety advantage (incidentally, that "safety advantage" is a lie, but many people are too stupid to check the statistics before they shell out $40k). The law is obviously sponsored by auto manufacturers.
I'd gladly give up all of my rights to privacy if we could solve global warming. Let's have some perspective here. When every country declares martial law due to resource wars, what do you think will happen to your privacy?
The most sensible hypothesis is the simplest (if you want a mathematically precise version of that statement see, for example, http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/papers/ockham.pdf). I have not heard that any god is a simpler, more likely configuration of atoms (or whatever gods are made of) than nature. Nor have I heard that the Greek philosophers were the last word on biology or physics.
But that's not really relevant here. What's relevant is the difference between (1) admitting that you don't know something and don't yet have the technology that will permit the necessary experiments and (2) bullshitting a "logical requirement" and inferring something based on wishful thinking.
Huh? What agenda is that? What really bothers me about religious thought is that they (you?) see everything in terms of agendas. Because religious people have no method for understanding whether something is true or not but only an understanding of competing faiths, they see science as merely a competing faith. Well, it's not. It is a method for refining the understanding of data, improving knowledge, repeatedly analysing and perfecting what we know. There is no agenda. There is only a search for truth.
Of course, that's the ideal. In practice we're all human, filled with petty pride and whatnot, and politics comes up in science too. But no matter what the politics, the fact remains that truth can be tested. Science works.
But compare that with religion. You have a set of "truths"--things that are not subject to investigation. If you don't believe that Jesus or Mohammad or Hermes is the true messenger of God(s), you are cast out from the circle of people who have chosen--CHOSEN--to believe some nonsense. Based not on reason, but on a hunch. In the intellectual world of religions, the best you can ever hope for is to make an argument based on wishful thinking. Science could show you which variety of Christianity or Islam or Zoroastrianism or Hinduism or whatnot is correct, but of course admitting the possibility of finding out that truth is never admitted, for obvious reasons.
There is NO AGENDA. Science seeks truth. Religion simply declares it. If there's an agenda, it is getting all those religious morons to understand the difference between data and wishful thinking.
. That is, aliens evolved & put life on earth. But, the aliens themselves would have had to evolved through some natural process. THAT is his answer to intelligent design. He answered NOTHING, but merely moved the issue to another planet. It is circular reasoning.
Huh. That seems odd. You're right--that's circular reasoning, and has no place in science (at least the version you presented; if Dawkins did the same thing you're right to be shocked). But of course, religious people perpetrate a more extreme version of the same thing: remove "aliens" and insert "god". Who created the universe? Who created Man? Which is more likely to have come about naturally and to put an end to this loop of "A created B": a simpler life form that somehow evolved naturally, or a life form at one time capable of breathing universes into existence (but now strangely capable of miracles on the order of drawing a picture of the Virgin Mary on a grilled-cheese sandwich)? Which is a more sensible hypothesis?
They are Christians in the sense that they take their morality from Christianity, rather than using their brains (or, for that matter, taking their morality from another faith). It doesn't matter whether they believe in Christ (most Christians don't know the first thing about Christ--after all, scholarly work on the subject is difficult); what matters in this thread is whether they try to enforce neo-Christian laws on everyone.
True Christians--well, nobody will agree on what that means. Catholics are the original Christians, but there are hundreds of other well-recognised cults, completely incompatible with Catholic teachings. If we have enough Christians here, someone is going to post "Well, a true follower of Christ would..." but that's bullshit. They're all true followers of some fiction, and there is no way to tell which fiction is correct, because it's a religion: based on faith, by definition the antithesis of reason.
If they call themselves Christians, they are. If they take their morality from people who call themselves Christians, and act like people who call themselves Christians, we may as well call them Christians. Sartre would.
So, yes, 90% of them are seriously mired in Christian morality. Why not call them Christians?
Actually, his existence is also under dispute, which must be quite amusing to Him if the Christians are right after all. Your favourite search engine will direct you to quite a few people disputing it, with varying degrees of eloquency and scholarliness.
On the other hand, xmas might sound more consumerist precisely because the filthy corporations tried to distance themselves from Christ, both to persuade Christians to think more about shopping and to include, er, heathens in the consumerist orgy.
Of course, Christ never had anything to do with Christmas anyway. He was probably born in August-ish if he existed at all, and Christmas was just the Catholics' attempt to usurp yet another pagan holiday that had been around ever since people knew what a solstice was. So perhaps "Xmas" is a (slightly) better thing anyway.
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I didn't realize we had battles over simple brass horns..
Not just any brass horns. These ones were way out of tune.
natural rights that every human has
That's just political rhetoric. There are no rights. Perhaps when there were few enough people that you could always walk away from any fight, but now there's nowhere to walk to. Rights are granted to us by those with guns. It's nice when rights are granted to us by our society (and when society gives some people guns in order to protect society), but anything else is just cutesy language to make people feel empowered.
While I am in favor of them getting trials, I don't think they should have the same rights as US citizens.
Uh, why not? Are they less human?
If a company makes a product and claims that it is more accurate than the competition, that claim should be tested. If it doesn't make the claim, then it should be tested anyway. A justice product like this must be held to a standard: if it doesn't work as the legal system believes that it works, then it should not be used as evidence.
Of course, I don't really see what this has to do with source code in this case. Sure, someone might find a bug--if that's what happened, then cool. But what matters is actual performance, not how they achieved that performance. And that is something that should be measured by an independent testing organisation.
Of course, there are bugs that are hard to reproduce. A "if the clock says this, then increase the blood alcohol reading by 10%" bug (or feature) would be hard to test, and easy to see in the source code. That's a contrived example, though.
It doesn't cost you money to answer (and hang up on) a telemarketer. And there's a no-call list in most states that works pretty well.
Don't be absurd. "Time is money" (of course time is really much more valuable than money), and being bothered costs mental energy (also more valuable than money). Just because no corporation is billing you for answering your phone doesn't mean that the effort of doing so is without cost.
Two things:
(1) Why do you assume that olederid would otherwise have a really good reason for coming to the USA? Contrary to the belief of many of our citizens, there are other perfectly good places to holiday. Maybe the USA was one out of 60 reasonable possibilities, and is not any more. Maybe he wanted to slum--to see how well we're recovering from Bush--and this new piece answers that question without the trouble of an actual trip. Etc.
(2) Maybe national ethics are important to him. Why is it unreasonable to take a moral stance against spending money in countries that have this absurd pattern of human-rights violations? Not that this is one of those, but it's in the same vein. It suggests that we are perhaps continuing to build infrastructure that could support isolationist fear-mongering politics.
I don't see how this tool is so horrible. It's just a tiny little thing, and could be useful. But it undeniably fits the pattern that we've seen throughout Bush's regime, and I'm certainly not going to tell someone that that possibility should be ignored.
Don't be absurd. That can't happen in the USA, because this discovery does not contradict any extant interpretation of the Bible.
What? Where's the art in that? I love the handcoded steganographic puzzles like this (or, really, any of the puzzles in the MIT Mystery Hunt). There is real artistry in designing a unique code and--although it's not exactly standard cryptographic practice--building in enough clues that an outsider can, potentially, with enough caffeine, break it.
As if this forum were a place where any medical practice could actually be trashed. It's as if 90% of /.ers have never heard of controlled studies. When any of these treatments shows up on PubMed, I'll consider that evidence, and if I really care I'll check that the peer-reviewed studies were in fact done well. I'm surprised so few ostensibly educated people act this way.
Hard sayin'. You haven't told us whether you have a girlfriend.
By the way... it bothers me that your post was "flamebait". It seems that you and I presented the two viable alternatives, and people took sides. I don't think your point is the only answer, but it's completely valid. Mods: what's up with that?
But you can be pro-science without being anti-religion
I disagree. The examination and testing of assumptions--belief in "facts" only as far as they are supported by data--is pretty fundamental to science, whereas faith (ie. belief without proof) is fundamental to religion. There are "religious" people who claim that anything that can be subject to scientific scrutiny is outside the purview of religion, but the claim that some things that they want to believe are not subject to scrutiny is highly suspect. You can say "Here are things I choose to believe without evidence; they are not supportable but they help me anyway", and that's a fine use for religion, but such clarity and intellectual honesty is uncommon.
do we as a society really support the freedom of people to be wrong?
Sure, but at the same time it's helpful to acknowledge that when people act upon wrong beliefs, we can all be harmed. Let's act under the belief that global warming doesn't exist. Let's see where the belief that the Second Coming will happen in the next 10 years takes us. Heck, let's act under the belief that there's nothing wrong with the economy! Actually, that might help... hmmm...
Therefore, while you are free to be wrong, it is in the interest of society to make sure that most people are making good decisions based on sound principles and knowledge. Failing that, those who are making decisions based on fantasies should be marginalised and mocked.
Just what is freedom, anyway? We are not all free all the time. We're not free to ignore gravity, or to murder. Those are two very different things, but faith (belief unsupported by evidence) affects both of them. The first is governed by physics, and the second by the rules that we have found, again based on observation, to lead to a healthier, happier society.
Prove that the simplest explanation is the truth? No. Prove that it's the most likely? Absolutely. Check out William H. Jefferys and James O. Berger, Sharpening Ockham's Razor On a Bayesian Strop, 1991 for a quick introduction.
Very good points. I want to emphasise the target audience that you are discussing.
Telling a religious nutcase that he's an idiot, nay, even proving it to him, will never convince him to change his mind. Only the wise will change their minds after being shown that they are wrong. Yes, even if you show a religious person that Ockham's Razor makes a god nigh-impossible, he will usually fall back to "Probability describes only what you can infer given your data. I know that God is real, so your calculation, while valid, does not incorporate data that I have."
However, being intolerant of stupid ideas is still a good idea. While you won't convince religious people, you will have a good chance of convincing those who are on the fence, or who want to question but who have had their questions suppressed by family and "friends". Mocking religious people in private is generally useless (albeit fun), but I wanted to emphasise that public humiliation (cultural pressure) is a great weapon, especially when it has good science behind it.
The target is not the idiots. The target is their potential victims.
I completely agree with everything you say.
But most people don't. That's the problem. We are a society, and we are not, generally, computer-savvy enough to appreciate the benefits of what you've proposed. I use PGP (GPG), but of my hundreds of friends only 4 even realise that encrypting email might be good, let alone the benefits of PGP vs. central key authorities. The ultimate solution is to educate people so that they understand how important decentralisation is (encryption is but a footnote), but meanwhile it seems reasonable to convince people of something closer to their hearts: their breasts.
Baby steps.
Ah, so sorry--I wasn't so much disputing the "intimate" part as the "two individuals" part. If sex were just for two, then passers-by would find nothing interesting at all. They do, which I am citing as evidence that sex needn't be for just two people. For that matter, most sex involves just one person... which is also potentially titillating to passers-by.
As for "intimate", that depends on your definition. Are you saying that sex can be intimate, or that it must? The earlier post seemed to assert the latter. I don't have a good definition, but I have seen lots that do not stand up to scrutiny when evaluated vs. the evidence. Many strangers will have sexual interest in watching a couple. Two men who have never met before can have great sex and then never see each other again. This isn't unnatural (not very popular, but not even remotely close to the fringe). Is discipline play intimate? And I think I won't even bother with bestiality, but if sex must be intimate, than the definition had better cover all of those things and much weirder stuff as well. And if sex could be intimate, then the original claim is completely vacuous.
Because one is an intimate act between two individuals; the other is just a normal feeding activity and the real reason why breasts exist.
Nonsense. If sex were an intimate act between two individuals then there would be no laws concerning sex in public--nobody else would give a rat's ass. In fact sex is an exciting act to be part of or to watch, no matter how many people (and ducks or whatnot, to taste) are involved.
Along comes Christianity (and other religions), asserting, contrary to all evidence, that sex is an intimate act between two individuals. Since it's so obviously not, society needs laws so that people who want to maintain their personal delusions about sex can legally threaten and harass anyone who provides evidence to the contrary.
And a side note: if breasts exist for no reason other than feeding/scarring young children, then why do so many people (both men and women) have a sexual response to breast stimulation? Are so many people wired incorrectly? Is it all an artificial, incorrect, and arbitrary artifact of the media? Could they have sexualised knees in exactly the same way? Why do breasts have so much fat? They don't need it for milk production. Breasts are also a signal of sexual fitness. If you were being sarcastic, I apologise; I was up late. Breasts may have been involved...
The rule is simple. If you do not like the rule, go somewhere else.
Who says? What's wrong with trying to change the rules?
In meatspace you just don't have any choice--there is no more land. "If you don't like the country you're in, go start your own" is a great rule, but there are too many people: the countries that already exist cover all the habitable land.
The Internet looks infinite, but it's not. It's only as infinite as peoples' ability to keep track of multiple sites. If I duplicate Facebook's site and change only the breast policy, do you think that people will switch, even though the new one is better?
If I find something offensive, why shouldn't I speak out against it? It is offensive that breasts are regarded as indecent. If it were merely ridiculous I might be able to swallow it, but since there are so many sick fucks out there who believe that the human body is disgusting and evil, what's wrong with trying to change their attitude? Not doing so invites the same thing that allowing any other form of hatred invites: more people brainwashed, and a society in which the majority grow up ill and try to push their perverted self-hatred onto everyone else.
What's wrong with trying to change minds?
Fucking morons. (1) 1.2 cents per mile REGARDLESS OF CAR TYPE??? This will encourage less efficient vehicles. (2) A gas tax responds to subtler aspects of the same problem: keep your car in good shape, accelerate slowly, take less congested roads, turn the car off at slow red lights, etc... GPS tracking addresses none of this. (3) This would only work with new cars. People should still have to figure out when it makes sense to replace their 10mpg FUV with a Prius. Not that keeping old cars around is a bad thing--manufacturing cars is very energy-intensive--but this system obviates that concern.
This is a tax to reduce congestion, and will be worse than useless as a means to fight pollution. Since gas will be cheaper, more people will drive FUVs due to their perceived safety advantage (incidentally, that "safety advantage" is a lie, but many people are too stupid to check the statistics before they shell out $40k). The law is obviously sponsored by auto manufacturers.
I'd gladly give up all of my rights to privacy if we could solve global warming. Let's have some perspective here. When every country declares martial law due to resource wars, what do you think will happen to your privacy?
The most sensible hypothesis is the simplest (if you want a mathematically precise version of that statement see, for example, http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/papers/ockham.pdf). I have not heard that any god is a simpler, more likely configuration of atoms (or whatever gods are made of) than nature. Nor have I heard that the Greek philosophers were the last word on biology or physics.
But that's not really relevant here. What's relevant is the difference between (1) admitting that you don't know something and don't yet have the technology that will permit the necessary experiments and (2) bullshitting a "logical requirement" and inferring something based on wishful thinking.
evolutionist agenda
Huh? What agenda is that? What really bothers me about religious thought is that they (you?) see everything in terms of agendas. Because religious people have no method for understanding whether something is true or not but only an understanding of competing faiths, they see science as merely a competing faith. Well, it's not. It is a method for refining the understanding of data, improving knowledge, repeatedly analysing and perfecting what we know. There is no agenda. There is only a search for truth.
Of course, that's the ideal. In practice we're all human, filled with petty pride and whatnot, and politics comes up in science too. But no matter what the politics, the fact remains that truth can be tested. Science works.
But compare that with religion. You have a set of "truths"--things that are not subject to investigation. If you don't believe that Jesus or Mohammad or Hermes is the true messenger of God(s), you are cast out from the circle of people who have chosen--CHOSEN--to believe some nonsense. Based not on reason, but on a hunch. In the intellectual world of religions, the best you can ever hope for is to make an argument based on wishful thinking. Science could show you which variety of Christianity or Islam or Zoroastrianism or Hinduism or whatnot is correct, but of course admitting the possibility of finding out that truth is never admitted, for obvious reasons.
There is NO AGENDA. Science seeks truth. Religion simply declares it. If there's an agenda, it is getting all those religious morons to understand the difference between data and wishful thinking.
. That is, aliens evolved & put life on earth. But, the aliens themselves would have had to evolved through some natural process. THAT is his answer to intelligent design. He answered NOTHING, but merely moved the issue to another planet. It is circular reasoning.
Huh. That seems odd. You're right--that's circular reasoning, and has no place in science (at least the version you presented; if Dawkins did the same thing you're right to be shocked). But of course, religious people perpetrate a more extreme version of the same thing: remove "aliens" and insert "god". Who created the universe? Who created Man? Which is more likely to have come about naturally and to put an end to this loop of "A created B": a simpler life form that somehow evolved naturally, or a life form at one time capable of breathing universes into existence (but now strangely capable of miracles on the order of drawing a picture of the Virgin Mary on a grilled-cheese sandwich)? Which is a more sensible hypothesis?
They are Christians in the sense that they take their morality from Christianity, rather than using their brains (or, for that matter, taking their morality from another faith). It doesn't matter whether they believe in Christ (most Christians don't know the first thing about Christ--after all, scholarly work on the subject is difficult); what matters in this thread is whether they try to enforce neo-Christian laws on everyone.
True Christians--well, nobody will agree on what that means. Catholics are the original Christians, but there are hundreds of other well-recognised cults, completely incompatible with Catholic teachings. If we have enough Christians here, someone is going to post "Well, a true follower of Christ would ..." but that's bullshit. They're all true followers of some fiction, and there is no way to tell which fiction is correct, because it's a religion: based on faith, by definition the antithesis of reason.
If they call themselves Christians, they are. If they take their morality from people who call themselves Christians, and act like people who call themselves Christians, we may as well call them Christians. Sartre would.
So, yes, 90% of them are seriously mired in Christian morality. Why not call them Christians?
Oh, look it up for yourself, for Ganesh's sake.
Excuse me, but what is the US Constitution's Second Amendment for, exactly?
Actually, his existence is also under dispute, which must be quite amusing to Him if the Christians are right after all. Your favourite search engine will direct you to quite a few people disputing it, with varying degrees of eloquency and scholarliness.
On the other hand, xmas might sound more consumerist precisely because the filthy corporations tried to distance themselves from Christ, both to persuade Christians to think more about shopping and to include, er, heathens in the consumerist orgy.
Of course, Christ never had anything to do with Christmas anyway. He was probably born in August-ish if he existed at all, and Christmas was just the Catholics' attempt to usurp yet another pagan holiday that had been around ever since people knew what a solstice was. So perhaps "Xmas" is a (slightly) better thing anyway.
Happy Newtonmas, everyone!