I think the problem here is the definition of "good". While it might be inventive or very efficient, it will probably not be very readable or maintainable. Thirteen year old programmers aren't thinking about commenting, portability, planning for future changes, etc. Experience counts for an awful lot because you know how to avoid the pitfalls that will surprise the novice programmer. Version 1.0 will look great. But creating 2.0 could be a nightmare, and only the original coder will have a chance of pulling it off. A well organized and experienced programmer at a major company can produce code that can be maintained for years and handle many different scenarios. A software company is worried about the entire life-cycle of a product and has to be concerned with the usual programmer turnover.
A thirteen year old prodigy has a lot of potential, but without proper guidance and, most importantly, experience, they will not be able to compete with a solid, seasoned programmer long term.
How do we know that Neanderthals are in fact a different species from Homo Sapiens? If we are discovering that they are in many ways extremely similar to humans, is it not possible that they are just another race of man that was killed off or died out in a catastrophe many years ago?
Even today, there is a wide variety in skeletal structures among humans. This is a fact that helps forensic scientists determine the identity of an individual from skeletal remains -- the race can usually be easily determined. While I do not condone racism in any way, it is verifiable that there are at least five distinct races of man.
If we had never heard of the Pygmy races and discovered a Pygmy burial site, would we be likely to conclude that the bones were from a separate species? How can we determine if a specimen is truly a new species just from bone samples? Could the Neanderthals even be a variation of one of the races that exist today?
The Bible is also very INaccurate about a lot of things. Why do you count the hits and forget the misses?
Do you have any examples? This charge has been made against the Bible before, and in countless instances, that which was thought to be wrong later proved to actually be correct by archaeology.
Except it doesn't. "God did it" doesn't really explain anything.
Actually, this explains a great deal. It explains why there is an order and method to the universe. This fact was what launch modern science following the Reformation as many Christian scientists (not to be confused with the modern religion) sought to understand nature and physics since they knew that God was a God of order. The fact that God did it does not diminish the need or wonder of understanding how our universe works.
Evolution doesn't have to, because that's not what evolution is about.
Good point. I should have said science as there are scientific attempts to answer the origin question.
How do you define "perfection" when it comes to universes? How do you know our universe is "perfect" without something else to compare it against?
Some additional good points. What I meant by "perfect" is that our universe has been designed upon simple principles that have allowed a tremendous amount of complexity. The building blocks have been arranged so carefully and with such precision that it is truly astounding. Consider that if the atoms of the water molecule did not arrange themselves in the strange way that they do, life as we know it could not exist. DNA is based on a four letter language, and yet the variety that stems out of this simple programming language is astounding. This is why I can it perfect: it is incredibly balanced and works with a precision that we cannot fathom. Consider how we humans struggle to make a simple computer operating system work without errors, and yet the universe with its infinite complexity works smoothly day after day. While there may be other "better" universes (who can compare), this system has a balance and design that renders the greatest of human achievement or intelligence utterly inconsequential in comparison.
And who says it's unchanging? It's not.
While there are aspects of the universe that are changing, the fundamental laws of the universe do not. This is why they are considered laws, and why we can trust technology. The physical reactions that worked yesterday will work tomorrow. This is what I mean by unchanging, and even as some things change, we do not know that they are also not some part of a new underlying pattern or law in the system.
I cannot speak for Arminw, but here are the reasons why I believe the Bible.
First, unlike most religious books, much of the Bible is essentially a book about history and the reflections of its worldview as seen in historical events. This historical account has proven to be incredibly accurate -- far more so than any other writings from its time frame. It contains details that have stood up against tremendous scrutiny, and whenever someone thinks they have found an error in its account, archaeology eventually proves that the Biblical account was actually correct from the start (if you want examples, I can give you some, but for the sake of brevity, I will move on).
Further, the textual scrutiny and techniques given to ensure the accuracy of our manuscripts is unparalleled by any other work of ancient writings. The entire Old Testament except for the book of Ester was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back to 100 B.C. These manuscripts were found to be nearly identical to the manuscripts that had been used to translate most versions of the Bible. This means that the Bible we have today -- especially in the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic -- are essentially identical to the original writings with an accuracy that no other ancient document can touch.
These two facts make the writing of the Bible highly reliable as a record of ancient history and culture. If the Bible is so accurate in these little things, it makes me take what it says about God, life, the state of humanity, and how we should live our lives very seriously. It is one of the few religions to state that man is basically evil -- we are all capable of horrendous acts. This, I think, best explains the sorrows and atrocities we see in the world today.
It also explains how our universe came into being. Unlike most religions, it identifies the source of all things while most theories do not. Evolution cannot explain where the matter and energy came from in the first place. The theory of aliens populating our planet does not explain where the aliens themselves came from. Reincarnation does not explain the original source of our souls. Also, where did the laws of our universe come from? Why are we able to describe mathematically how our universe works with accuracy and predictability with formulas that are simple and eloquent? If the universe is run by collective consciousness or random chance, how could such an unchanging and perfect system come into being?
The Bible identifies God as the uncaused cause -- the singularity of eternal existence from which all things derive their existence. God created the laws that govern our universe and ensures that they remain unchanged to this day. The Bible also tells us that far from being an impersonal force, God desires to have a relationship with His creation, and that the Bible was His way of communicating with us.
Regarding the apocryphal and gnostic works, there were rules and procedures for choosing which books were considered scriptural. One of the most important rules was that the author needed to be a witness of Jesus Christ or directly associated with the original Apostles. Many of the gnostic gospels were actually written two to three hundred years after the events of the New Testament. The "Gospel of Judas" was written, for example, around 290 A.D., and its account is such a vast departure from the rest of the gospels, it would be hard to argue its accuracy and be intellectually honest. Another rule was the agreement of these works with the established scriptures -- the Old Testament. In short, it was a rigorous process and ultimately, these excluded works are a red herring. The fundamental aspects of Christianity can be found throughout all of the books of the Bible so that even if you removed some of the existing books, you would lose none of the essential doctrines.
This post is already getting quite long, and so I will pass on a detailed discussion of the Trinity, but it should be noted that the roots of this doctrine can even be found in the Jewish custom of Passover, the physical manifestations of God in the Old Testament (the incarnate God, Jesus Christ) and even the use of plural forms when God speaks in Creation ("let Us create...").
The problem is that this approach often doesn't work. For one thing, it annoys the piss out of experience users. For another thing, new users tend to ignore most of that information... mainly because they are being overwhelmed by new information and can't possibly assimilate it all.
You make some good points, but this is where that "Do not show this message anymore" check box can come into play. Experienced users can click on this and disable the pop-ups. Novice users, even if they don't read it the first time, might read it the second time (or third or fourth). I'm not saying that it is a perfect solution, but it is certainly workable.
The virgin birth was/is an essential part of the Messianic prophecies of the Jewish people. It derives from Isaiah 7:14:
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
This passage has been dated to a date prior to the death of Christ in the Dead Sea Scrolls -- somewhere between 335 and 107 BC. So the idea of a virgin birth was well established long before Jesus' actual birth as are many of the miracles that Jesus performed. In fact, if you study the history of the time you will find that there were many others who claimed to be the Messiah and fulfill various prophecies including King Herod himself (the king who killed all of the male babies in Bethlehem in an attempt to end Jesus' life). According to the gospels in the New Testament, Jesus has fulfilled nearly every Messianic prophecy -- far more than any other figure in history.
The only prophecy Jesus has yet to fulfill is the establishment of an eternal government of peace and holiness which Christians believe will occur at his second coming. The fact that he did not fulfill this prophecy is one of the primary reasons that Jews of that day and even today rejected Jesus as their Messiah.
There is a lot more information here to cover than I can possibly relate in a Slashdot post, but there is far, far more to Biblical and Messianic prophecies that you realize. Each miraculous act and many of the statements attributed to Jesus in the New Testament are loaded with meaning and significance to people who understand the Old Testament -- most clearly in the book of Isaiah.
Ron Paul has repeatedly said that some of his personal heroes are Martin Luther King Jr and Ghandi -- very odd choices for a white supremacist. He also said in an interview that he would consider someone like Walter Williams, a black economist, as his running mate.
The article posted has long since been dismissed as the writing of a ghost writer that was subsequently removed from his staff. His public life of service has shown no other evidence of any racism beyond this single article from the early nineties as was covered in Free Market News
From that article is the following quote by Ron Paul:
The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. In a free market, businesses that discriminate lose customers, goodwill, and valuable employees - while rational businesses flourish by choosing the most qualified employees and selling to all willing buyers. More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism.
It really is amazing that in 10 terms in congress and being in the public spotlight for 30 years, this is the only thing that the media can dig up against Ron Paul.
My understanding is that the first movie was toned down to be less offensive to Christians. Consider the following quotes by the director (lifted off of plugged-in reviews):
"How does one go about adapting a book that has controversial elements into a film that a very wide variety of people can enjoy, without betraying the original?" asks director Chris Weitz. "One tries to be clever about it. I realized that the overt stating of some of the themes in... The Golden Compass would never--this is important to make clear--never ever get across the goal line. There isn't a wide enough audience for that--yet. If I wanted to popularize this series of extraordinary books and open them to a wider reading public than ever before, I was going to have to make some compromises."
"Whereas The Golden Compass had to be introduced to the public carefully, the religious themes in the second and third books can't be minimized without destroying the spirit of these books.... I will not be involved with any 'watering down' of books two and three."
This was the concern of Christians: not that the first one was terrible, but that they knew which direction the series was headed.
That being said, it sounds like the movie itself had some serious flaws.
You have drifted wildly off of the mark here, in that I originally stated that Paul's election would not result in "reducing the government regulations and protecting personal liberties", but would instead have the opposite effect. You attempt to steer this way off course in your adamant defense of Paul's policies.
Not really. In the case of immigration, he will be enforcing the rule of law and in essence protecting the liberties of American citizens by ensuring that their tax payer dollars are not redistributed to illegal immigrants. In the case of abortion, he is adamantly for protecting the personal liberties of the unborn. He wants to eliminate taxes and many government programs including subsidies and entitlement programs. He has never accepted lobbyist money, so he is not sold out to corporate interests. He also believes in protecting gay rights in the military by not imposing an arbitrary ruling against them -- they can choose their own lifestyle as long as it does not disrupt their service to their country. At the same time, harsher punishment would be enforced for heterosexual adultery with the same critiera.
You are focusing so much on these particular issues that you don't see the bigger picture. Ron Paul is adamantly against the PATRIOT Act and other similar laws that have greatly expanded the power of the executive branch in the name of fighting terrorism. These acts have severely attacked our civil liberties by suspending habeas corpus, allowing the FBI to manufacture search warrants at will, and allowing American citizens to be detained against their will without access to a lawyer or trial simply for being considered an terrorist threat. By repealing these laws, Ron Paul would ensure that these essential liberties to free society are protected.
I am not entirely sure of your point on expatriation. Your quote seems to speak more toward immigration than birthright citizenship. Given your concern regarding the redistribution of wealth elsewhere, I am surprised that you would want to spend money educating and providing welfare for those who have entered our country illegally. The country's first responsibility, after defending the Constitution itself, is to protect the liberties of its own citizens. If you want a share of those liberties, you need to take the responsibility of becoming an American citizen. By removing birthright citizenship, Ron Paul is trying to protect against abuses to the system where illegal immigrants are trying to get access to government benefits to which they have no claim.
Be honest now; this cannot be done in our lifetimes, so any tax breaks that Paul gives now to his special groups is a privileged class. I did not elaborate, but his schooling tax breaks are odious for another primary reason: many will be eligible for these tax breaks because they send their offspring off to parochial schools which many others, who are forced to shoulder the breeders' true societal costs, would consider to be personally heretical.
Breeders? You are starting to sound a little bitter. Are you upset that your mother and father decided to carry you to term and sacrifice the next 18+ years of her life to raise you to adulthood?
Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education and eliminate federal funding for education. Education decisions should be handled at the state level if not even more local. This would allow people like you who do not want to support other forms of education to either push your state to not support such activities or move to a state that has a view more like your own. I have issues with some of the curriculum taught in public schools, but my tax payer dollars still go toward education. Should we simply eliminate all forms of government education programs? While that might be "libertarian", I think we would all agree that having a public education system is beneficial to our society as a whole.
Pro-Life Wisconsin certainly believes that a woman should be forced to carry all of the above pregnancies (incest, rape, woman's life is in danger) to term. Do you?
By addressing the fact that the unborn baby is in fact human, we provide the appropriate weight to the issue. Whenever one deals with issues pertaining to the life of another, it should done with great deliberation. By calling the unborn a fetus and downplaying their humanity, we are far more likely to casually dismiss them as unimportant.
First, the cases you mention are actually quite rare (2% for ectopic pregnancies as you indicated). I think there is certainly room for exceptions in these extraordinary cases -- especially from a legislative view point. The problem is that the vast majority of abortions are not done for these reasons which really makes your argument seem a little forced. As to the particular cases, I believe that when the mother's life is in danger that there is justifiable cause to allow an abortion in that case. In the case of rape or incest, a case could also be made, but I would argue that it would be better to assist the mother to deliver the baby and put it up for adoption. There are many people in this country who desire greatly to adopt and would be more than willing to help foot the medical bill.
Yet again, by pushing this issue back to the states, it allows more options for American citizens to have a voice in legislation or, if necessary, to move to a state that aligns more closely with their own point of view.
First, it should be noted that Ron Paul does not himself claim to be a true Libertarian as he recognizes that many of his positions are contrary to the standard Libertarian platform.
Paul's whole anti-immigrant posturing is both anti-libertarian, and counter to the original Intents of This Nation's founding. If you are opposed to non-American born residents in the U.S., that is one thing, but DO NOT attempt to foist off this belief as "protecting personal liberties", as it hinders the personal liberty of many, who are just looking for a better life. It is facially opposed to The LPs Immigration plank too. This proposed Constitutional Amendment would go even farther, and would withhold citizenship from even humans born within The Nation's Border.
The question here is really whose rights are we protecting. This is talking about the rights of illegal immigrants. They are not citizens of the United States, so they do not automatically get the rights specifically reserved for citizens of our country. While you may disagree with the proposal, it is not an attack on the liberties set forth by the Constitution.
Whether or not these are good policies is beside the point. They are targeted tax-breaks to a select population; it creates a special new privileged class who pay a lesser amount of taxes, and schools are already big benefactors of the state's treasury outlays. Those who are not within this privileged group, must shoulder a higher tax burden to aid those who are members of the group. It also seems unjust that persons who have chosen not to procreate would be forced to bear any of the costs of others' reproduction. Wealth redistribution by any name is just as evil.
Ron Paul has stated that he wants to abolish the income tax altogether which would end the redistribution of wealth permanently. At that point, these laws would be rendered moot. In the meantime, he wants to give some tax cuts to people who really need them while also reducing the burden on all tax payers by reducing the size of government.
Paul is attempting to coerce his will over evolving standards of sexuality in society through a method of legislative gangsterism, which would elevate the power of Congress higher than its proper place at the cost of the judiciary. While he's at it, he would nullify the privileges or immunities and due process of law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, but this would not be an equal across the board gutting of it either, as Paul uses the Fourteenth to justify another of his proposed bills. This is also diametrically opposed to the Sexuality and Gender Plank of The LP.
Not at all. Consider that just as these keeps courts from ruling for homosexual rights, it also protects the courts from ruling against them as well.
This is god-damned insane. Here Paul is attempting to define a fetus at conception as a person under the due process clause of fourteenth amendment. It would be the greatest entitlement program ever instituted, and would inhibit the liberty of all Female American Citizens. It would also mean that the Federal Government would be intimately involved with the private affairs of all citizens, acting as a coercive watchdog, and there would be many many new crimes with which the state would then use to prosecute the citizenry. The state should not be in the business of either funding, nor prohibiting abortions; it is a question of personal morality, as well as personal health.
I really don't understand how this position is "insane". Is it better to kill defenseless babies simply because they have yet to leave the womb? My wife just recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy who was three months premature. What was the difference between my son when he was born and that of another baby who was still in the womb at the same duration of gestation? None. But we call one a human and one expendable. Is it really such
Except for the right of a woman to have an abortion. In other words, he wants more government regulation of what a person can do with their body and more restrictions on personal liberty.
It could be said that he would like to protect the individual liberties of the unborn, but that is beside the point. His position on abortion is that it should not be addressed at the federal level at all, but left to the states to decide.
If this trend of losing liberties concerns you, I suggest you research Ron Paul and his positions. He is the only Republican candidate who is committed to reducing the government regulations and protecting personal liberties. The others all seem intent on continuing down the same path G.W. Bush has been, and the leading Democrats do not look much better.
They did all this with total world populations smaller than one large city today.
You missed my point entirely. It is this very innovation that you mention among all people groups that makes me question our current views of history. People innovate and create and invent. It is how we are programmed. Yet, according to our current view of history, nothing happened prior to around 10,000 BC (and even this is a guess). In essence, they are saying there was little to no innovation for 25,000+ years, but that just doesn't line up with what we see even in the most "primitive" civilizations.
When you look at the first civilizations, they also had a very small population base. In ancient times, 90% of the people had to work entirely on food production to feed everyone leaving only 10% of the people to be merchants, leaders, warriors, and inventors. Even with this serious handicap, they made incredible advancements in a very short period of time. Why did the human race spend up to 96% of their time on earth (according to this article) with very little innovation, and then suddenly spring into action around 5000 BC? Wouldn't it seem that they would have been innovating and inventing during that time instead. Would it really have taken over 100,000 years to develop agriculture? That is an incredibly long amount of time. We can scarcely imagine how much time that actually is. That is a full 2500 generations -- more if you lower the generation to 30 or 25 years as some have proposed. In my mind, it doesn't add up.
Even if you ignore the past 100 years or even the last 1000 years of history, ancient history is replete with advanced civilizations that rose up and thrived. We have written documents, monuments, and evidence of their civilization. But we have little to nothing before 5100 BC. Why did civilization suddenly start rising up in various places around the world after 5100 BC, but for 160,000 years before, there was virtually nothing? Doesn't that seem odd?
I don't know what the reasons for the discrepancy between the speed of advance between difference cultures are, though I suspect it has to do with environmental pressures (if you don't need steel to support your family, you won't get around to discovering it). But they exist, and they demonstrate that humans could have existed for millennia without advancing beyond simple stone tools. Because some did.
I see what you are saying, but I can also argue the opposite -- because some didn't. For every primitive society, we have an advanced society that developed. Consider the Aztecs, Chinese, Egyptians, and even the advanced African cultures that we are just now starting to learn about. These cultures often developed independently of one another and in areas where primitive cultures continued to exist nearby. I find it hard to believe that tens of thousands of years would have passed without even one advanced civilization coming forth -- especially when you see the number of such civilizations that have arisen in the past five thousand years.
It is funny that I keep seeing this response (I have responded several times to this argument already). Humans are social creatures. We like to interact with each other. If anything, communication would have developed very much over 160,000 years. Even if we were lazy and content with full bellies from what we hunted or gathered, we would still want to sit and talk around the fire. Oral traditions are very strong in "primitive" cultures as a means to pass information from one generation to the next. Ancient languages are often far more descriptive than our modern languages. If anything, advanced language skills would have developed very early on leading to technological progress with the sharing of ideas.
Without advanced language skills, any "technological" progress (including improved language skills) would have been easily lost during times of plague or famine.
Humans are social creatures. I do not doubt that they found ways to communicate with each other from the very beginning. If nothing else, communication would have been used and honed over those 160,000 years, and oral traditions are very strong in "primitive" cultures today. Information sharing did exist.
Also, consider that many of the ancient written languages are far more complex and descriptive than our modern languages. In fact, I would argue that the development of communication would actually support my argument rather than refute it. We had 160,000 years to develop language, communication, and art -- regardless of agriculture or tools, these other forms would certainly have flourished.
Granted, but we are still talking about 160,000 years. This is the entire scope of our known history repeated 32 times. While certain people groups may have become isolated and backward, there is a lot of time in there for civilizations to emerge. Even looking at our recent history, we see the rise of advanced civilizations (such as the Aztecs) where there was relatively primitive civilization before. Also, most areas of the world are not as remote as Australia, so the flow of ideas would be relatively open. Given the social characteristics of people, communication and culture certainly would have developed in this time leading to a sharing of ideas as well.
One other point to bring up is that archaeologists are continually finding that the ancient civilizations were far more advanced than we realized. The ancient Minoans (2700-1450BC), for example, had indoor plumbing. The writing forms and languages of the ancient civilization are often even more complex and descriptive than our modern languages. This innovation had to come from somewhere.
In regards to the reverse Moore's law, I am willing to concede to the idea... up to a point. But we are talking about 160,000 years. While the growth rate may have been slower at the beginning, it would have to be virtually non-existent for twenty five times longer than our current technological growth rate. Besides, the advancements made in the very earliest known civilizations would have seemed impossibly huge compared to the absolute void of activity that had taken place before.
As for population growth, plagues have often drastically reduced the number of humans on the planet at any one time. Without the previously mentioned technology/knowledge, the environment would only support so many humans.
This is true, but even with the limits of the environment, the earth could sustain a fairly substantial population. The constraints of the food source would also have prompted people to search for new areas with fresh food supplies. As a result, you would expect to find human civilization on every continent dating back tens of thousands of years. The only thing that would slow down this expansion would in fact be civilization and technology.
What's not adding up is that you're not considering that until around 10,000 years ago, the Earth was in an ice age, which made survival much more tricky than it is today. Even the areas that weren't covered with ice were much drier at that time, making agriculture nearly impossible.
I don't buy this argument either. Even in an ice age, there would be plenty of areas that would be quite habitable. Further, agriculture could not be impossible as then no life would have survived. It does not take a great deal of moisture for agriculture to exist. Hay and wheat are often grown in arid climates where the more demanding crops are difficult to raise.
Even the most dire predictions for the ice age leave a very large land mass of habitable land -- more than enough to suit a sizable population over thousands of years. Besides, humans have shown an incredible ability to adapt to often hostile environments. I find it hard to believe that the Ice Age would have been more than a temporary setback and that people would not have found a way to thrive in that environment (consider the Vikings).
What is new in this article is the early date for the use of ochre dye, small "complex" tools, and shellfish in the diet which are all taken as evidence for modern-like human cultural behavior at 165,000 years ago.
As I posted elsewhere under this article, this just doesn't make sense to me from a historical and technological development standpoint. Known history from the most ancient civilization dates back to only 5100 BC with Sumeria ("Epic of Gilgamesh"). Since that time, there has been incredible advances in human civilization. But this evidence is saying that for 160,000 years, there was virtually no technological development. There would also be virtually no population growth.
We cannot even fathom that 160,000 years is. Even the dark ages seem incredibly ancient in our minds, and that is only one millennium ago. I find it incomprehensible that in 160,000 years that human beings as intelligent and creative as we are today failed to have any technological innovation in all of that time. Agriculture really is not that big of a stretch intellectually. Can someone explain how this is even plausible?
The "acts human" date still remains circa 40,000 to 60,000 B.C.
This actually brings up one of my serious hangups with the currently accepted view of history. Forty thousand years is an incredibly long amount of time. Consider that the ancient civilization of Sumeria (Epic of Gilgamesh) is only dated at 3100 BC with the first evidence of civilization in Egypt also around that time. How much has happened in the last 5000 years? Consider that we even consider the Dark Ages as ancient history and that was only 1000 years ago. We know very little about the history of that time.
When you consider the advances that mankind has made in technology over the past 5000 years, it is astounding. It is even more astounding to think that for the preceding 35,000 years, there was virtually no technological advancement at all! Now we hear that the date may be pushed back even further, and my incredulity grows.
The picture gets even more murky when you consider population growth. Population only really stagnates in a primitive society based on limited resources. Even with the worst estimates of the extent of impact from the last ice age, there would be plenty of land mass available for very habitable land for man to expand into. If mankind had been reproducing for 35,000 to 200,000 years, would we not have many, many more people today? Something is just not adding up here.
Not to be offensive, but I'd consider that theory of increased charitable giving and it solving lots of problems about as credible as the idea that communism works flawlessly because all people will naturally want to do their best and work hard at their jobs despite there being no incentive for it.
There is a key difference here. In communism, the economy basically requires everyone to work hard and do their best to benefit society. However in the case of tax savings, those who are already philanthropic will be enabled to give even more money to charity. There will be some who would like to give to charity but do not think they can afford to on their current salary. With more money in their pocket, they too might be more inclined to give. The key here is that it does not require everyone to give to increase charity -- only some. Charitable giving certainly won't decrease because there is not likely to be anyone who would give less because they have more money. By allowing people to keep their money and spend it as they see fit, there will be an increase in charitable giving.
The other huge key to consider here is the inordinate waste that is inherently involved with government spending -- especially when compared to personal charities. For example, Compassion International reports that 83.8% of their giving goes directly to help children around the world in providing food, education, and health care. There are many charities (both religious and secular) that have comparable efficiencies. Out of the billions of dollars spent by the United States government, how much of it actually reaches the people who need it most. Does anyone seriously think the government ratio comes anywhere near 80%? Even 50%? If you have any doubts, consider the fiasco in Katrina relief we have witnessed lately.
Therefore, by eliminating wasteful foreign aid and allowing individual Americans to donate to world causes directly and efficiently, the net result is a gain for the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the problem here is the definition of "good". While it might be inventive or very efficient, it will probably not be very readable or maintainable. Thirteen year old programmers aren't thinking about commenting, portability, planning for future changes, etc. Experience counts for an awful lot because you know how to avoid the pitfalls that will surprise the novice programmer. Version 1.0 will look great. But creating 2.0 could be a nightmare, and only the original coder will have a chance of pulling it off. A well organized and experienced programmer at a major company can produce code that can be maintained for years and handle many different scenarios. A software company is worried about the entire life-cycle of a product and has to be concerned with the usual programmer turnover.
A thirteen year old prodigy has a lot of potential, but without proper guidance and, most importantly, experience, they will not be able to compete with a solid, seasoned programmer long term.
How do we know that Neanderthals are in fact a different species from Homo Sapiens? If we are discovering that they are in many ways extremely similar to humans, is it not possible that they are just another race of man that was killed off or died out in a catastrophe many years ago?
Even today, there is a wide variety in skeletal structures among humans. This is a fact that helps forensic scientists determine the identity of an individual from skeletal remains -- the race can usually be easily determined. While I do not condone racism in any way, it is verifiable that there are at least five distinct races of man.
If we had never heard of the Pygmy races and discovered a Pygmy burial site, would we be likely to conclude that the bones were from a separate species? How can we determine if a specimen is truly a new species just from bone samples? Could the Neanderthals even be a variation of one of the races that exist today?
The Bible is also very INaccurate about a lot of things. Why do you count the hits and forget the misses?
Do you have any examples? This charge has been made against the Bible before, and in countless instances, that which was thought to be wrong later proved to actually be correct by archaeology.
Except it doesn't. "God did it" doesn't really explain anything.
Actually, this explains a great deal. It explains why there is an order and method to the universe. This fact was what launch modern science following the Reformation as many Christian scientists (not to be confused with the modern religion) sought to understand nature and physics since they knew that God was a God of order. The fact that God did it does not diminish the need or wonder of understanding how our universe works.
Evolution doesn't have to, because that's not what evolution is about.
Good point. I should have said science as there are scientific attempts to answer the origin question.
How do you define "perfection" when it comes to universes? How do you know our universe is "perfect" without something else to compare it against?
Some additional good points. What I meant by "perfect" is that our universe has been designed upon simple principles that have allowed a tremendous amount of complexity. The building blocks have been arranged so carefully and with such precision that it is truly astounding. Consider that if the atoms of the water molecule did not arrange themselves in the strange way that they do, life as we know it could not exist. DNA is based on a four letter language, and yet the variety that stems out of this simple programming language is astounding. This is why I can it perfect: it is incredibly balanced and works with a precision that we cannot fathom. Consider how we humans struggle to make a simple computer operating system work without errors, and yet the universe with its infinite complexity works smoothly day after day. While there may be other "better" universes (who can compare), this system has a balance and design that renders the greatest of human achievement or intelligence utterly inconsequential in comparison.
And who says it's unchanging? It's not.
While there are aspects of the universe that are changing, the fundamental laws of the universe do not. This is why they are considered laws, and why we can trust technology. The physical reactions that worked yesterday will work tomorrow. This is what I mean by unchanging, and even as some things change, we do not know that they are also not some part of a new underlying pattern or law in the system.
I cannot speak for Arminw, but here are the reasons why I believe the Bible.
First, unlike most religious books, much of the Bible is essentially a book about history and the reflections of its worldview as seen in historical events. This historical account has proven to be incredibly accurate -- far more so than any other writings from its time frame. It contains details that have stood up against tremendous scrutiny, and whenever someone thinks they have found an error in its account, archaeology eventually proves that the Biblical account was actually correct from the start (if you want examples, I can give you some, but for the sake of brevity, I will move on).
Further, the textual scrutiny and techniques given to ensure the accuracy of our manuscripts is unparalleled by any other work of ancient writings. The entire Old Testament except for the book of Ester was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back to 100 B.C. These manuscripts were found to be nearly identical to the manuscripts that had been used to translate most versions of the Bible. This means that the Bible we have today -- especially in the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic -- are essentially identical to the original writings with an accuracy that no other ancient document can touch.
These two facts make the writing of the Bible highly reliable as a record of ancient history and culture. If the Bible is so accurate in these little things, it makes me take what it says about God, life, the state of humanity, and how we should live our lives very seriously. It is one of the few religions to state that man is basically evil -- we are all capable of horrendous acts. This, I think, best explains the sorrows and atrocities we see in the world today.
It also explains how our universe came into being. Unlike most religions, it identifies the source of all things while most theories do not. Evolution cannot explain where the matter and energy came from in the first place. The theory of aliens populating our planet does not explain where the aliens themselves came from. Reincarnation does not explain the original source of our souls. Also, where did the laws of our universe come from? Why are we able to describe mathematically how our universe works with accuracy and predictability with formulas that are simple and eloquent? If the universe is run by collective consciousness or random chance, how could such an unchanging and perfect system come into being?
The Bible identifies God as the uncaused cause -- the singularity of eternal existence from which all things derive their existence. God created the laws that govern our universe and ensures that they remain unchanged to this day. The Bible also tells us that far from being an impersonal force, God desires to have a relationship with His creation, and that the Bible was His way of communicating with us.
Regarding the apocryphal and gnostic works, there were rules and procedures for choosing which books were considered scriptural. One of the most important rules was that the author needed to be a witness of Jesus Christ or directly associated with the original Apostles. Many of the gnostic gospels were actually written two to three hundred years after the events of the New Testament. The "Gospel of Judas" was written, for example, around 290 A.D., and its account is such a vast departure from the rest of the gospels, it would be hard to argue its accuracy and be intellectually honest. Another rule was the agreement of these works with the established scriptures -- the Old Testament. In short, it was a rigorous process and ultimately, these excluded works are a red herring. The fundamental aspects of Christianity can be found throughout all of the books of the Bible so that even if you removed some of the existing books, you would lose none of the essential doctrines.
This post is already getting quite long, and so I will pass on a detailed discussion of the Trinity, but it should be noted that the roots of this doctrine can even be found in the Jewish custom of Passover, the physical manifestations of God in the Old Testament (the incarnate God, Jesus Christ) and even the use of plural forms when God speaks in Creation ("let Us create...").
I hope this has helped.
You make some good points, but this is where that "Do not show this message anymore" check box can come into play. Experienced users can click on this and disable the pop-ups. Novice users, even if they don't read it the first time, might read it the second time (or third or fourth). I'm not saying that it is a perfect solution, but it is certainly workable.
The virgin birth was/is an essential part of the Messianic prophecies of the Jewish people. It derives from Isaiah 7:14:
This passage has been dated to a date prior to the death of Christ in the Dead Sea Scrolls -- somewhere between 335 and 107 BC. So the idea of a virgin birth was well established long before Jesus' actual birth as are many of the miracles that Jesus performed. In fact, if you study the history of the time you will find that there were many others who claimed to be the Messiah and fulfill various prophecies including King Herod himself (the king who killed all of the male babies in Bethlehem in an attempt to end Jesus' life). According to the gospels in the New Testament, Jesus has fulfilled nearly every Messianic prophecy -- far more than any other figure in history.
The only prophecy Jesus has yet to fulfill is the establishment of an eternal government of peace and holiness which Christians believe will occur at his second coming. The fact that he did not fulfill this prophecy is one of the primary reasons that Jews of that day and even today rejected Jesus as their Messiah.
There is a lot more information here to cover than I can possibly relate in a Slashdot post, but there is far, far more to Biblical and Messianic prophecies that you realize. Each miraculous act and many of the statements attributed to Jesus in the New Testament are loaded with meaning and significance to people who understand the Old Testament -- most clearly in the book of Isaiah.
Ron Paul has repeatedly said that some of his personal heroes are Martin Luther King Jr and Ghandi -- very odd choices for a white supremacist. He also said in an interview that he would consider someone like Walter Williams, a black economist, as his running mate.
The article posted has long since been dismissed as the writing of a ghost writer that was subsequently removed from his staff. His public life of service has shown no other evidence of any racism beyond this single article from the early nineties as was covered in Free Market News
From that article is the following quote by Ron Paul:
It really is amazing that in 10 terms in congress and being in the public spotlight for 30 years, this is the only thing that the media can dig up against Ron Paul.
Not really. In the case of immigration, he will be enforcing the rule of law and in essence protecting the liberties of American citizens by ensuring that their tax payer dollars are not redistributed to illegal immigrants. In the case of abortion, he is adamantly for protecting the personal liberties of the unborn. He wants to eliminate taxes and many government programs including subsidies and entitlement programs. He has never accepted lobbyist money, so he is not sold out to corporate interests. He also believes in protecting gay rights in the military by not imposing an arbitrary ruling against them -- they can choose their own lifestyle as long as it does not disrupt their service to their country. At the same time, harsher punishment would be enforced for heterosexual adultery with the same critiera.
You are focusing so much on these particular issues that you don't see the bigger picture. Ron Paul is adamantly against the PATRIOT Act and other similar laws that have greatly expanded the power of the executive branch in the name of fighting terrorism. These acts have severely attacked our civil liberties by suspending habeas corpus, allowing the FBI to manufacture search warrants at will, and allowing American citizens to be detained against their will without access to a lawyer or trial simply for being considered an terrorist threat. By repealing these laws, Ron Paul would ensure that these essential liberties to free society are protected.
I am not entirely sure of your point on expatriation. Your quote seems to speak more toward immigration than birthright citizenship. Given your concern regarding the redistribution of wealth elsewhere, I am surprised that you would want to spend money educating and providing welfare for those who have entered our country illegally. The country's first responsibility, after defending the Constitution itself, is to protect the liberties of its own citizens. If you want a share of those liberties, you need to take the responsibility of becoming an American citizen. By removing birthright citizenship, Ron Paul is trying to protect against abuses to the system where illegal immigrants are trying to get access to government benefits to which they have no claim.
Breeders? You are starting to sound a little bitter. Are you upset that your mother and father decided to carry you to term and sacrifice the next 18+ years of her life to raise you to adulthood?
Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education and eliminate federal funding for education. Education decisions should be handled at the state level if not even more local. This would allow people like you who do not want to support other forms of education to either push your state to not support such activities or move to a state that has a view more like your own. I have issues with some of the curriculum taught in public schools, but my tax payer dollars still go toward education. Should we simply eliminate all forms of government education programs? While that might be "libertarian", I think we would all agree that having a public education system is beneficial to our society as a whole.
By addressing the fact that the unborn baby is in fact human, we provide the appropriate weight to the issue. Whenever one deals with issues pertaining to the life of another, it should done with great deliberation. By calling the unborn a fetus and downplaying their humanity, we are far more likely to casually dismiss them as unimportant.
First, the cases you mention are actually quite rare (2% for ectopic pregnancies as you indicated). I think there is certainly room for exceptions in these extraordinary cases -- especially from a legislative view point. The problem is that the vast majority of abortions are not done for these reasons which really makes your argument seem a little forced. As to the particular cases, I believe that when the mother's life is in danger that there is justifiable cause to allow an abortion in that case. In the case of rape or incest, a case could also be made, but I would argue that it would be better to assist the mother to deliver the baby and put it up for adoption. There are many people in this country who desire greatly to adopt and would be more than willing to help foot the medical bill.
Yet again, by pushing this issue back to the states, it allows more options for American citizens to have a voice in legislation or, if necessary, to move to a state that aligns more closely with their own point of view.
First, it should be noted that Ron Paul does not himself claim to be a true Libertarian as he recognizes that many of his positions are contrary to the standard Libertarian platform.
The question here is really whose rights are we protecting. This is talking about the rights of illegal immigrants. They are not citizens of the United States, so they do not automatically get the rights specifically reserved for citizens of our country. While you may disagree with the proposal, it is not an attack on the liberties set forth by the Constitution.
Ron Paul has stated that he wants to abolish the income tax altogether which would end the redistribution of wealth permanently. At that point, these laws would be rendered moot. In the meantime, he wants to give some tax cuts to people who really need them while also reducing the burden on all tax payers by reducing the size of government.
Not at all. Consider that just as these keeps courts from ruling for homosexual rights, it also protects the courts from ruling against them as well.
I really don't understand how this position is "insane". Is it better to kill defenseless babies simply because they have yet to leave the womb? My wife just recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy who was three months premature. What was the difference between my son when he was born and that of another baby who was still in the womb at the same duration of gestation? None. But we call one a human and one expendable. Is it really such
It could be said that he would like to protect the individual liberties of the unborn, but that is beside the point. His position on abortion is that it should not be addressed at the federal level at all, but left to the states to decide.
If this trend of losing liberties concerns you, I suggest you research Ron Paul and his positions. He is the only Republican candidate who is committed to reducing the government regulations and protecting personal liberties. The others all seem intent on continuing down the same path G.W. Bush has been, and the leading Democrats do not look much better.
You missed my point entirely. It is this very innovation that you mention among all people groups that makes me question our current views of history. People innovate and create and invent. It is how we are programmed. Yet, according to our current view of history, nothing happened prior to around 10,000 BC (and even this is a guess). In essence, they are saying there was little to no innovation for 25,000+ years, but that just doesn't line up with what we see even in the most "primitive" civilizations.
When you look at the first civilizations, they also had a very small population base. In ancient times, 90% of the people had to work entirely on food production to feed everyone leaving only 10% of the people to be merchants, leaders, warriors, and inventors. Even with this serious handicap, they made incredible advancements in a very short period of time. Why did the human race spend up to 96% of their time on earth (according to this article) with very little innovation, and then suddenly spring into action around 5000 BC? Wouldn't it seem that they would have been innovating and inventing during that time instead. Would it really have taken over 100,000 years to develop agriculture? That is an incredibly long amount of time. We can scarcely imagine how much time that actually is. That is a full 2500 generations -- more if you lower the generation to 30 or 25 years as some have proposed. In my mind, it doesn't add up.
Even if you ignore the past 100 years or even the last 1000 years of history, ancient history is replete with advanced civilizations that rose up and thrived. We have written documents, monuments, and evidence of their civilization. But we have little to nothing before 5100 BC. Why did civilization suddenly start rising up in various places around the world after 5100 BC, but for 160,000 years before, there was virtually nothing? Doesn't that seem odd?
I see what you are saying, but I can also argue the opposite -- because some didn't. For every primitive society, we have an advanced society that developed. Consider the Aztecs, Chinese, Egyptians, and even the advanced African cultures that we are just now starting to learn about. These cultures often developed independently of one another and in areas where primitive cultures continued to exist nearby. I find it hard to believe that tens of thousands of years would have passed without even one advanced civilization coming forth -- especially when you see the number of such civilizations that have arisen in the past five thousand years.
And it is even funnier that I replied twice to the same question. :-)
It is funny that I keep seeing this response (I have responded several times to this argument already). Humans are social creatures. We like to interact with each other. If anything, communication would have developed very much over 160,000 years. Even if we were lazy and content with full bellies from what we hunted or gathered, we would still want to sit and talk around the fire. Oral traditions are very strong in "primitive" cultures as a means to pass information from one generation to the next. Ancient languages are often far more descriptive than our modern languages. If anything, advanced language skills would have developed very early on leading to technological progress with the sharing of ideas.
Humans are social creatures. I do not doubt that they found ways to communicate with each other from the very beginning. If nothing else, communication would have been used and honed over those 160,000 years, and oral traditions are very strong in "primitive" cultures today. Information sharing did exist.
Also, consider that many of the ancient written languages are far more complex and descriptive than our modern languages. In fact, I would argue that the development of communication would actually support my argument rather than refute it. We had 160,000 years to develop language, communication, and art -- regardless of agriculture or tools, these other forms would certainly have flourished.
Granted, but we are still talking about 160,000 years. This is the entire scope of our known history repeated 32 times. While certain people groups may have become isolated and backward, there is a lot of time in there for civilizations to emerge. Even looking at our recent history, we see the rise of advanced civilizations (such as the Aztecs) where there was relatively primitive civilization before. Also, most areas of the world are not as remote as Australia, so the flow of ideas would be relatively open. Given the social characteristics of people, communication and culture certainly would have developed in this time leading to a sharing of ideas as well.
One other point to bring up is that archaeologists are continually finding that the ancient civilizations were far more advanced than we realized. The ancient Minoans (2700-1450BC), for example, had indoor plumbing. The writing forms and languages of the ancient civilization are often even more complex and descriptive than our modern languages. This innovation had to come from somewhere.
In regards to the reverse Moore's law, I am willing to concede to the idea... up to a point. But we are talking about 160,000 years. While the growth rate may have been slower at the beginning, it would have to be virtually non-existent for twenty five times longer than our current technological growth rate. Besides, the advancements made in the very earliest known civilizations would have seemed impossibly huge compared to the absolute void of activity that had taken place before.
This is true, but even with the limits of the environment, the earth could sustain a fairly substantial population. The constraints of the food source would also have prompted people to search for new areas with fresh food supplies. As a result, you would expect to find human civilization on every continent dating back tens of thousands of years. The only thing that would slow down this expansion would in fact be civilization and technology.
I don't buy this argument either. Even in an ice age, there would be plenty of areas that would be quite habitable. Further, agriculture could not be impossible as then no life would have survived. It does not take a great deal of moisture for agriculture to exist. Hay and wheat are often grown in arid climates where the more demanding crops are difficult to raise.
Even the most dire predictions for the ice age leave a very large land mass of habitable land -- more than enough to suit a sizable population over thousands of years. Besides, humans have shown an incredible ability to adapt to often hostile environments. I find it hard to believe that the Ice Age would have been more than a temporary setback and that people would not have found a way to thrive in that environment (consider the Vikings).
As I posted elsewhere under this article, this just doesn't make sense to me from a historical and technological development standpoint. Known history from the most ancient civilization dates back to only 5100 BC with Sumeria ("Epic of Gilgamesh"). Since that time, there has been incredible advances in human civilization. But this evidence is saying that for 160,000 years, there was virtually no technological development. There would also be virtually no population growth.
We cannot even fathom that 160,000 years is. Even the dark ages seem incredibly ancient in our minds, and that is only one millennium ago. I find it incomprehensible that in 160,000 years that human beings as intelligent and creative as we are today failed to have any technological innovation in all of that time. Agriculture really is not that big of a stretch intellectually. Can someone explain how this is even plausible?
This actually brings up one of my serious hangups with the currently accepted view of history. Forty thousand years is an incredibly long amount of time. Consider that the ancient civilization of Sumeria (Epic of Gilgamesh) is only dated at 3100 BC with the first evidence of civilization in Egypt also around that time. How much has happened in the last 5000 years? Consider that we even consider the Dark Ages as ancient history and that was only 1000 years ago. We know very little about the history of that time.
When you consider the advances that mankind has made in technology over the past 5000 years, it is astounding. It is even more astounding to think that for the preceding 35,000 years, there was virtually no technological advancement at all! Now we hear that the date may be pushed back even further, and my incredulity grows.
The picture gets even more murky when you consider population growth. Population only really stagnates in a primitive society based on limited resources. Even with the worst estimates of the extent of impact from the last ice age, there would be plenty of land mass available for very habitable land for man to expand into. If mankind had been reproducing for 35,000 to 200,000 years, would we not have many, many more people today? Something is just not adding up here.
There is a key difference here. In communism, the economy basically requires everyone to work hard and do their best to benefit society. However in the case of tax savings, those who are already philanthropic will be enabled to give even more money to charity. There will be some who would like to give to charity but do not think they can afford to on their current salary. With more money in their pocket, they too might be more inclined to give. The key here is that it does not require everyone to give to increase charity -- only some. Charitable giving certainly won't decrease because there is not likely to be anyone who would give less because they have more money. By allowing people to keep their money and spend it as they see fit, there will be an increase in charitable giving.
The other huge key to consider here is the inordinate waste that is inherently involved with government spending -- especially when compared to personal charities. For example, Compassion International reports that 83.8% of their giving goes directly to help children around the world in providing food, education, and health care. There are many charities (both religious and secular) that have comparable efficiencies. Out of the billions of dollars spent by the United States government, how much of it actually reaches the people who need it most. Does anyone seriously think the government ratio comes anywhere near 80%? Even 50%? If you have any doubts, consider the fiasco in Katrina relief we have witnessed lately.
Therefore, by eliminating wasteful foreign aid and allowing individual Americans to donate to world causes directly and efficiently, the net result is a gain for the rest of the world.