Though I think you're arguing against a strawman also...
The point of transhumanism isn't to just stick our brains into a robot, which may be still inferior. It's about improving our bodies, either with machinery or genetics.
Initially this could be by implants to enhance our abilities (we already have such things, for example for deaf people; conceivably in future the implants could surpass the abilities of natural humans). No one is willingly going to switch to a mechanical equivalent unless it is better.
Whatever our current state of technology, it does not follow that not being human is inherently bad. No one is suggesting we give up the ability to "touch and feel and listen and eat and sleep and make love and sing" as you say in your earlier post - the point is that we find ways to do all these things better.
You may be right (I hope not), but if that happens, you won't be flying to other planets either. If we don't solve the energy problem, we won't be having any form of technologically advanced society, nevermind just transhumanism.
The reason it's a valid question for scientists to ask, as opposed to asking whether invisible elephants exist, is that God's potential existence has far greater implications than unicorns, changing the way we perceive our own existence as well as our motivation for scientific study.
But is it? ID is an untestable hypothesis. Whether or not the Universe was started by a God or not; whether there was some intelligent force creating life, are things which have no implication on our world, unless we have some way to test those ideas.
God is a far more mature topic of discussion than unicorns, and a remark like this is an ethnocentric insult to thousands of cultures around the world.
Where did I insult anyone? It's insulting to suggest that "God" is better than any other ideas (and from what I gather, the Creationists only want their ID ideas taught in science lessons - they aren't willing to give equal time to the thousands of other creation myths out there). I never said that there is anything bad about believing in Unicorns, it is you who assumed that to be an insult.
If you dislike me comparing to "Unicorns" or "Invisible Elephants", then consider believing in things like fairies, angels, magic, ghosts, astrology, numerology. There are people who believe such things, and their belief is no less valid than belief in God. Should we give "equal time" to all of these "theories" too, or are you going to insult their beliefs and culture by saying they're not as important as belief in God?
He never said he considered ditching his current system for a new one, he just stated why he had never purchased one, since sometimes people do buy new computers, and some people are happy to buy a different platform to their previous one.
And yes, all things being equal, one probably wouldn't switch to a new platform either. But he didn't say he wanted a Mac and games were the only reason he couldn't - he just stated games as one reason which was sufficient to prevent him from doing so.
Obviously we can't say anymore about what he thinks of Windows unless he actually says so - until then, I believe it's unfounded to suggest that he, or people in general, are using a system they hate just because of a lack of games on the Mac.
Perhaps next time that a Mac user says they can't use Windows because of viruses, I'll assume that they actually hate Macs, and would be far better off running a virus checker, as it's a small price to pay if it means they get to use the OS they prefer?
I've never understood this argument. You're willing to put up with the sucky OS that is Windows the rest of the time you're using your computer (i.e., when you're not playing games) just so you can play games?
Because not everyone thinks that Windows is "the sucky OS".
Nowhere did the OP say he thought that Windows was sucky. He said he was unwilling to buy into a new platform that lacked software he wanted such as games.
Why not 'correspondent' or 'playwright' or 'columnist' or 'reviewer' or 'novelist' or 'scriptwriter'? A blogger is a specific kind of writing, just as all those other ones are specific.
Example: Q) What do you write? A) An uncommissioned opinion piece which is half-researched, half-opinion, possibly quite local in scope in the form of a journal, but perhaps with some conversational elements?
Oh, you mean a blog.
Though to be fair, professional or commissioned journalism doesn't always well researched or free from bias and opinion. In fact, often quite the opposite, sadly.
I agree that using more specific terms than just "writer" is a good thing, but the problem with "blogger" is that it is not specific in the same way at all. A "blogger" could be keeping a journal, talking to their friends, posting some creative writing, giving opinion on news events or anything else. Whilst not all bloggers may be writers, is someone no longer a writer if they post onto a web page? Of course not.
The only thing specific about "blogger" is the technology being used, which is independent of what is being written.
You used to have to put together your own site and have some idea of what you were doing and make some effort and you had to construct the way you were going to say things and present them and categorize them. Now you can just sign up for a free blogging account at google and start spouting off inane crap about your boring life and try to impress people with how cool and insightful you are.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
And please - do you really want a return to the days of when everyone had to have their homepage, which was often badly designed, lacking any real content, and full of stupid animgifs? Whatever you may think of blogs, at least it lets me read what people have to say without putting up with awful design; I can read it without having to visit every blog manually (eg, RSS or LiveJournal); and the content I see is limited to information which is recent, rather than homepages which often got years out of date.
Instead of having 5,000,000 individual "sites" (blogs) commenting on the same subject-of-the-day and expecting people to come to them, they should be sharing their comments (unless they're so utterly different and unique and special or whatever) in community forums like Slashdot.
That might apply to standalone blogs, but it doesn't apply to places like LiveJournal (which you nonetheless include in your critisms), since they allow comments and have a community just as much as Slashdot (probably far bigger, in fact).
Can you imagine if, rather than reading a page under an article on slashdot to get everyone's thoughts on it - you had to visit each of the poster's websites, look for today's date and then read their thoughts on it?
You obviously haven't used LiveJournal, or heard of RSS.
What you say applies to the bad old days of "homepages", and standalone blogs without RSS.
Blogs segregate the internet. Every person - every individual - becomes their own outlet so the information is no longer aggregated except for third party systems Technorati or Digg. So now instead of having a lot of people participating in a few sites you have one site and source for each person and view.
No, blogs have done the complete opposite. Now I can sit and read information from a variety of sources, be it my friends' lives, news items or discussion points. Before, I had to go to a million different websites, or email people individually, and so on.
Prices are usually between 50% and 100% more than online (eg Amazon).
But it would be fairer and more accurate to compare to other shops, not online. Online is almost always cheaper (at the expense of not being able to see or try before you buy, not being able to obtain the product immediately, and not having a nearby shop to go to if you need to return the item), there's no news here.
I'm not arguing God is more logical a conclusion, just an equally valid conclusion as no God. Either works for science, and it's more convenient for scientists to get their job done without bringing up questions of God. However, it still is a valid questions for scientists to ask as they carry out their scientific work.
I agree entirely up until your last sentence here. Since whether God exists makes no difference to science, it is not a valid part of the scientific process, anymore than asking how many angels dance on a pinhead, or wondering if invisible elephants exist (sure, someone who is a scientist can ponder such questions, but it isn't part of the scientific method, and it shouldn't be part of science lessons).
Also, I haven't really seen anyone concluding that there is no God, so arguing that it is "just as valid" doesn't really help - I don't believe it is scientifically valid to conclude there is a God (I make no comment on anyone who might conclude there is no God, just as I don't care about people who conclude there are no unicorns).
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy.
If a group of people commit atrocities against another another group of people, it doesn't matter how terrible those crimes are: that in no way justifies further terrible acts against a third group of people, just because they share the same race, religion or nationality.
The sort of attitude that they are deserving of such acts against them is the very sort of attitude which puts entire nations to war in the first place.
To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Really? What, I can't have sympathy for both?
Sure, perhaps there should be more sympathy of the crimes committed by the Japanese military, but this does not mean we should stop feeling sympathy for people killed or injured in a nuclear attack. And no, it is not justified to ignore the suffering of the German people either.
What would you have done, had you have been born in Germany or Japan at that time?
I am not confusing creationism and Intelligent Design. Whilst the latter may drop various religion-specific aspects, it is, in the context of this thread, still about intelligent design of life, as an alternative to evolution, as opposed to intelligent design of the universe.
The linked articles clearly talk about ID being taught as an alternative to evolution, and not an alternative to big bang theory or whatever.
Your suggestion that ID belongs in philosophy is rediculous -- philosophers are free to asume anything they want; they don't need to justify the existance of a god with science.
Assuming anything they want, such as God, sounds like the IDers if you ask me...
Where else should questions like "Where did the Universe come from?" be taught?
Not quite. See, our universe was created by something else. Something eternal. Be it a meta-universe, or god. I can tell because our universe is finite in time, according to age estimates of about 20 billion years, plus you can throw in the second law of thermodynamics, and the fact that our universe will not collapse on itself again to possibly repeat an infitite cycle. So, it is legitimate to ask what caused our universe and how was it caused.
Sure it's legitimate, but the questions we don't have any scientific models or evidence for do not belong in science lessons, but in philosophy or religion lessons. Science is about building models to explain and predict observable data; pondering questions of where things came from when we have no way to tell yet is philosophy.
Furthermore, yes I might accept that it's science to ask the questions. However, making up answers that either do not fit the evidence or are unfalsifiable, and answers which make no testable predictions, is not science.
I don't feel it's really science to come up with ideas which aren't supported by evidence, and to then argue that these ideas are true, or should be considered as theories. Okay, I can agree that perhaps conjecture can be the first step in science - if all you meant was that creationism deserves a mention as conjecture, then I misunderstood what you were saying. But I still don't feel it deserves anymore of a mention than "some people believe that we live in a computer simulation", or indeed "some people believe in magic". Perhaps they could be covered as a set of "possible ideas which are not supported by current evidence", but this is probably better suited to philosophy.
And the archeologist would rely on evidence to tell him that an artifact he found was designed - he wouldn't go "well that other thing I found was designed, therefore this cave I'm standing in must have been designed too".
At the moment, I think their best bet is to argue from the fine-tuning of the universe, a fact which most scientists agree about
But that the Universe may have had an intelligent designer is not the same thing as ID in the context of this article - these people believe that life as we see it today was designed, rather than evolving.
I wouldn't mind a discussion in lessons of why the Universe is the way it is, but again, this is philosophy, not science, and that point would need to be made clear if it was covered in science lessons.
Intelligent Design does deserve mention in science class, as it is a valid science (if you think otherwise, please take the time to educate yourself).
So you can educate me with: Evidence supporting ID (something better than "we don't know how it happened, so this random idea must be true", please)? Falsifiable predictions which it makes? Examples of predictions which have been tested and found to be true?
Maths might be a foundation for science, but maths is not itself science.
Creationism has a huge gaping hole in it - where did God come from? Without an answer, it doesn't explain anything, and merely shifts the question from where we came from, to where God came from.
Axioms are statements in logic that are assumed to be true - they are not things which physically exist (as would have to be the case with God) that we assume to be true.
We assume axioms are true so we can build up a set of mathematical statements which can model the real world - but whether the maths is an accurate model of the real world is something which needs to be scientifically tested.
Can you show me anything in science which relies on a mathematical axiom being true, but which has not been experimentally verified?
God is not an axiom. The concept is not used to model anything, and instead God's existance is a requirement to explain things in a way which is unsupported by experimental evidence.
And what happens when, despite firewalls and anti-virus software, a new one manages to slip through? Do you (a) Take steps to remove it, or (b) Leave your machine infected with the virus, as you don't want to harm an innocent computer program, and you deserve to live with the consequences of your actions?
I don't think anyone in favour of abortion claims that abortion is better than prevention.
Well that's part of the problem with Creationism - it's unfalsifiable. Something which cannot be disproven or proven isn't a theory, and has no place in science.
In response to the GP's post, evolution is both a fact and a theory. Yes, the theory may not be 100% correct, but it is the best model fitting the observed facts, rather than an idea based on a book (which one might reasonably describe as a work of fiction).
You cannot prove God doesn't exist, but you're absolutely, totally, unalterably sure he doesn't, so much so that you're more than willing to insult others who do believe in God.
I don't think he said that, he just said that Creationism is fiction.
Look, I'm a Christian, and I believe in God. I also believe it's entirely possible God set things into motion billions of years ago that allowed humans to evolve into what we are today. This is the "non-interventionist" view of God as opposed to the interactive God preached by so many today. My particular viewpoint on the creation of the universe and man in particular is not incompatible with the current theory of evolution, and since you cannot prove God does not exist any more than I can prove he does, my viewpoint is no less valid than yours.
Hang on a minute - surely this means you believe in evolution (or at least believe it a plausible explanation), and not ID/creationism?
ID/Creationism in the context of this article does not mean "God created the Universe and then let things run their course", but instead "evolution isn't true, and instead God directly designed things as we see them today".
Evolution says nothing about how the Universe was created, how life was started, or whether there's a God - it does say that we weren't designed by an intelligent being.
And what happens when your employer finds someone who is prepared to work 40 hour weeks for half the money?
I'm from a land where you can't be fired for no reason, and I'm not sure what things are like in the US - is there pressure for everyone to take pay cuts? My impression was that this isn't the case (indeed, the US tends to have higher salaries than elsewhere), so I wonder why people fear they need to work as many hours as possible, but they don't feel pressured into taking a pay cut?
Gosh, it's lucky that your friends son wasn't selected to be harvested for stem cells when he was an embryo, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents didn't decide to use contraception when you were conceived, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents had sex when they did, rather than not bothering that night, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents met at all, isn't it?
If his friend's son had never been born, then he wouldn't have ever existed for him, or anyone else, to consider the situation. Or would you suggest we ban abortions, contraception, masturbation, and put women in baby-making-factories where they have children as often as possible, because it would be immoral if a person who lived hadn't been born?
It's whining when every time soembody attempts to count how popular each browser is, somebody has to point out how innaccurate it is because `it doesnt' count Opera users properly.'
It's whining to point out that a study is innacurate?
And as for the users, if they feel that it's important that Opera be counted properly, the first thing they need to do is make sure their own personal installations report their User agents correctly.
And you know that the Opera users who "whine" have not changed this?
It doesn't matter even if Opera Software specifically wanted to hide the usage of their brower, or if most Opera users don't bother changing their preferences - it is still a fact that a study based on User Agent reporting is innacurate as far as Opera is concerned, and it is not "whining" if a user, or indeed a non-user, points this out.
One question I have - as I understand it, in many US states you can be fired for any reason at all. I have no problem with a no-compete contract if it is short term as you say, *and* I live in a country where I could not be fired for no good reason, and the company can only make my job redundant (as is the case where I do live, the UK).
Put it this way - it seems ridiculously unfair if a company can fire an employee and hire another on in their place if it suits them better, but an employee can't leave a job and go straight to another one if it would suit them better.
So, my question, assuming I am right about the situation in the US, is do these no-compete contracts apply in states where people can be fired for any reason?
Their PR assault during the last election boiled down to, while the other two parties slogged it out over immigration, ID cards and the War in Iraq, the Lib Dem PR machine putting out a statement that Kennedy's wife had had a baby
That's not right. I saw plenty of coverage from the Lib Dems regarding issues such as ID cards and the war in Iraq. I didn't see any official publicity about the baby, just some coverage in the news as would be expected.
I don't think anyone seriously expected them to *win* this election - and did they really have a target of beating the Conservatives?
I would say that they met many of their targets this election. They gained their share of the vote, won more seats, and also moved from 3rd to 2nd place in many places (the problem with our first-past-the-post system is that 3rd parties have a long way to go before increased vote share translates into winning large numbers of seats).
I don't think anyone expected them to suddenly gain power this election - you've got to look at things long term.
The problem with the British political system is that, while stable, every party looks pretty much like every other party, only with slightly different reasons to hate them - in other words, people do not vote for the best, they vote for the least worst.
Are there countries where this isn't the case?;) It certainly beats the US by far, where you have a choice between two similar candidates of "very bad" and "not quite as bad", and people tend to vote for who they hate least.
I'd also argue that this is as much a problem with the voting system (only having one vote), than the choice of parties.
And I agree with the other replies - I wouldn't say Lib Dems are "very left-wing", and there are many other parties at least as significant as the BNP.
To be fair, all we know right now is that he ran away from people in plain clothes who were following him.
I really hope their evidence was more than "Well he was wearing unusual clothes and went on the tube". Not to mention that the police didn't challenge him when he went on the bus, also a prime terrorist target.
To be honest, I don't see a *huge* problem with mandatory ID cards.
The problem is that people keep confusing the general concept of "ID card", with what the UK Government is proposing. I doubt there are many people have problem with the concept of ID at all. I have no problem with "mandatory ID card" if it's something that the Government sends me in the post for free when I'm 16, and I put it in my desk and forget about it (eg, as happens with National Insurance cards).
I do have a problem with mandatory having-to-pay-a-load-of-money for no good reason. I do have a problem with needing to carry a particular card to use all sorts of public services.
Now, I do object to being unable to know all of the data stored on your ID card. I'm also leery of these systems using RFID. But as long as the cost of issuing the IDs is kept to an absolute minimum, I just don't get why everyone's so worked up over this
But the cost won't be kept to an absolute minimum. So that's three big reasons why you object to it (data, RFID, cost), so surely you see why people are being worked up about it?
Slashdot Mirror
Though I think you're arguing against a strawman also...
The point of transhumanism isn't to just stick our brains into a robot, which may be still inferior. It's about improving our bodies, either with machinery or genetics.
Initially this could be by implants to enhance our abilities (we already have such things, for example for deaf people; conceivably in future the implants could surpass the abilities of natural humans). No one is willingly going to switch to a mechanical equivalent unless it is better.
Whatever our current state of technology, it does not follow that not being human is inherently bad. No one is suggesting we give up the ability to "touch and feel and listen and eat and sleep and make love and sing" as you say in your earlier post - the point is that we find ways to do all these things better.
You may be right (I hope not), but if that happens, you won't be flying to other planets either. If we don't solve the energy problem, we won't be having any form of technologically advanced society, nevermind just transhumanism.
The reason it's a valid question for scientists to ask, as opposed to asking whether invisible elephants exist, is that God's potential existence has far greater implications than unicorns, changing the way we perceive our own existence as well as our motivation for scientific study.
But is it? ID is an untestable hypothesis. Whether or not the Universe was started by a God or not; whether there was some intelligent force creating life, are things which have no implication on our world, unless we have some way to test those ideas.
God is a far more mature topic of discussion than unicorns, and a remark like this is an ethnocentric insult to thousands of cultures around the world.
Where did I insult anyone? It's insulting to suggest that "God" is better than any other ideas (and from what I gather, the Creationists only want their ID ideas taught in science lessons - they aren't willing to give equal time to the thousands of other creation myths out there). I never said that there is anything bad about believing in Unicorns, it is you who assumed that to be an insult.
If you dislike me comparing to "Unicorns" or "Invisible Elephants", then consider believing in things like fairies, angels, magic, ghosts, astrology, numerology. There are people who believe such things, and their belief is no less valid than belief in God. Should we give "equal time" to all of these "theories" too, or are you going to insult their beliefs and culture by saying they're not as important as belief in God?
He never said he considered ditching his current system for a new one, he just stated why he had never purchased one, since sometimes people do buy new computers, and some people are happy to buy a different platform to their previous one.
And yes, all things being equal, one probably wouldn't switch to a new platform either. But he didn't say he wanted a Mac and games were the only reason he couldn't - he just stated games as one reason which was sufficient to prevent him from doing so.
Obviously we can't say anymore about what he thinks of Windows unless he actually says so - until then, I believe it's unfounded to suggest that he, or people in general, are using a system they hate just because of a lack of games on the Mac.
Perhaps next time that a Mac user says they can't use Windows because of viruses, I'll assume that they actually hate Macs, and would be far better off running a virus checker, as it's a small price to pay if it means they get to use the OS they prefer?
I've never understood this argument. You're willing to put up with the sucky OS that is Windows the rest of the time you're using your computer (i.e., when you're not playing games) just so you can play games?
Because not everyone thinks that Windows is "the sucky OS".
Nowhere did the OP say he thought that Windows was sucky. He said he was unwilling to buy into a new platform that lacked software he wanted such as games.
Why not 'correspondent' or 'playwright' or 'columnist' or 'reviewer' or 'novelist' or 'scriptwriter'? A blogger is a specific kind of writing, just as all those other ones are specific.
Example: Q) What do you write? A) An uncommissioned opinion piece which is half-researched, half-opinion, possibly quite local in scope in the form of a journal, but perhaps with some conversational elements?
Oh, you mean a blog.
Though to be fair, professional or commissioned journalism doesn't always well researched or free from bias and opinion. In fact, often quite the opposite, sadly.
I agree that using more specific terms than just "writer" is a good thing, but the problem with "blogger" is that it is not specific in the same way at all. A "blogger" could be keeping a journal, talking to their friends, posting some creative writing, giving opinion on news events or anything else. Whilst not all bloggers may be writers, is someone no longer a writer if they post onto a web page? Of course not.
The only thing specific about "blogger" is the technology being used, which is independent of what is being written.
You used to have to put together your own site and have some idea of what you were doing and make some effort and you had to construct the way you were going to say things and present them and categorize them. Now you can just sign up for a free blogging account at google and start spouting off inane crap about your boring life and try to impress people with how cool and insightful you are.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
And please - do you really want a return to the days of when everyone had to have their homepage, which was often badly designed, lacking any real content, and full of stupid animgifs? Whatever you may think of blogs, at least it lets me read what people have to say without putting up with awful design; I can read it without having to visit every blog manually (eg, RSS or LiveJournal); and the content I see is limited to information which is recent, rather than homepages which often got years out of date.
Instead of having 5,000,000 individual "sites" (blogs) commenting on the same subject-of-the-day and expecting people to come to them, they should be sharing their comments (unless they're so utterly different and unique and special or whatever) in community forums like Slashdot.
That might apply to standalone blogs, but it doesn't apply to places like LiveJournal (which you nonetheless include in your critisms), since they allow comments and have a community just as much as Slashdot (probably far bigger, in fact).
Can you imagine if, rather than reading a page under an article on slashdot to get everyone's thoughts on it - you had to visit each of the poster's websites, look for today's date and then read their thoughts on it?
You obviously haven't used LiveJournal, or heard of RSS.
What you say applies to the bad old days of "homepages", and standalone blogs without RSS.
Blogs segregate the internet. Every person - every individual - becomes their own outlet so the information is no longer aggregated except for third party systems Technorati or Digg. So now instead of having a lot of people participating in a few sites you have one site and source for each person and view.
No, blogs have done the complete opposite. Now I can sit and read information from a variety of sources, be it my friends' lives, news items or discussion points. Before, I had to go to a million different websites, or email people individually, and so on.
Some guy who sits around saying "Bush Sucks" or "Liberals Suck" or "I installed Foo .9.3 on my Gentoo Box!!111!1"
You're talking about Slashdot here, right?
Prices are usually between 50% and 100% more than online (eg Amazon).
But it would be fairer and more accurate to compare to other shops, not online. Online is almost always cheaper (at the expense of not being able to see or try before you buy, not being able to obtain the product immediately, and not having a nearby shop to go to if you need to return the item), there's no news here.
How do Dixons compare to other shops?
I'm not arguing God is more logical a conclusion, just an equally valid conclusion as no God. Either works for science, and it's more convenient for scientists to get their job done without bringing up questions of God. However, it still is a valid questions for scientists to ask as they carry out their scientific work.
I agree entirely up until your last sentence here. Since whether God exists makes no difference to science, it is not a valid part of the scientific process, anymore than asking how many angels dance on a pinhead, or wondering if invisible elephants exist (sure, someone who is a scientist can ponder such questions, but it isn't part of the scientific method, and it shouldn't be part of science lessons).
Also, I haven't really seen anyone concluding that there is no God, so arguing that it is "just as valid" doesn't really help - I don't believe it is scientifically valid to conclude there is a God (I make no comment on anyone who might conclude there is no God, just as I don't care about people who conclude there are no unicorns).
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy.
If a group of people commit atrocities against another another group of people, it doesn't matter how terrible those crimes are: that in no way justifies further terrible acts against a third group of people, just because they share the same race, religion or nationality.
The sort of attitude that they are deserving of such acts against them is the very sort of attitude which puts entire nations to war in the first place.
To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Really? What, I can't have sympathy for both?
Sure, perhaps there should be more sympathy of the crimes committed by the Japanese military, but this does not mean we should stop feeling sympathy for people killed or injured in a nuclear attack. And no, it is not justified to ignore the suffering of the German people either.
What would you have done, had you have been born in Germany or Japan at that time?
I am not confusing creationism and Intelligent Design. Whilst the latter may drop various religion-specific aspects, it is, in the context of this thread, still about intelligent design of life, as an alternative to evolution, as opposed to intelligent design of the universe.
The linked articles clearly talk about ID being taught as an alternative to evolution, and not an alternative to big bang theory or whatever.
Your suggestion that ID belongs in philosophy is rediculous -- philosophers are free to asume anything they want; they don't need to justify the existance of a god with science.
Assuming anything they want, such as God, sounds like the IDers if you ask me...
Where else should questions like "Where did the Universe come from?" be taught?
Not quite. See, our universe was created by something else. Something eternal. Be it a meta-universe, or god. I can tell because our universe is finite in time, according to age estimates of about 20 billion years, plus you can throw in the second law of thermodynamics, and the fact that our universe will not collapse on itself again to possibly repeat an infitite cycle. So, it is legitimate to ask what caused our universe and how was it caused.
Sure it's legitimate, but the questions we don't have any scientific models or evidence for do not belong in science lessons, but in philosophy or religion lessons. Science is about building models to explain and predict observable data; pondering questions of where things came from when we have no way to tell yet is philosophy.
Furthermore, yes I might accept that it's science to ask the questions. However, making up answers that either do not fit the evidence or are unfalsifiable, and answers which make no testable predictions, is not science.
I don't feel it's really science to come up with ideas which aren't supported by evidence, and to then argue that these ideas are true, or should be considered as theories. Okay, I can agree that perhaps conjecture can be the first step in science - if all you meant was that creationism deserves a mention as conjecture, then I misunderstood what you were saying. But I still don't feel it deserves anymore of a mention than "some people believe that we live in a computer simulation", or indeed "some people believe in magic". Perhaps they could be covered as a set of "possible ideas which are not supported by current evidence", but this is probably better suited to philosophy.
And the archeologist would rely on evidence to tell him that an artifact he found was designed - he wouldn't go "well that other thing I found was designed, therefore this cave I'm standing in must have been designed too".
At the moment, I think their best bet is to argue from the fine-tuning of the universe, a fact which most scientists agree about
But that the Universe may have had an intelligent designer is not the same thing as ID in the context of this article - these people believe that life as we see it today was designed, rather than evolving.
I wouldn't mind a discussion in lessons of why the Universe is the way it is, but again, this is philosophy, not science, and that point would need to be made clear if it was covered in science lessons.
Intelligent Design does deserve mention in science class, as it is a valid science (if you think otherwise, please take the time to educate yourself).
So you can educate me with: Evidence supporting ID (something better than "we don't know how it happened, so this random idea must be true", please)? Falsifiable predictions which it makes? Examples of predictions which have been tested and found to be true?
Maths might be a foundation for science, but maths is not itself science.
Creationism has a huge gaping hole in it - where did God come from? Without an answer, it doesn't explain anything, and merely shifts the question from where we came from, to where God came from.
Axioms are statements in logic that are assumed to be true - they are not things which physically exist (as would have to be the case with God) that we assume to be true.
We assume axioms are true so we can build up a set of mathematical statements which can model the real world - but whether the maths is an accurate model of the real world is something which needs to be scientifically tested.
Can you show me anything in science which relies on a mathematical axiom being true, but which has not been experimentally verified?
God is not an axiom. The concept is not used to model anything, and instead God's existance is a requirement to explain things in a way which is unsupported by experimental evidence.
And what happens when, despite firewalls and anti-virus software, a new one manages to slip through? Do you (a) Take steps to remove it, or (b) Leave your machine infected with the virus, as you don't want to harm an innocent computer program, and you deserve to live with the consequences of your actions?
I don't think anyone in favour of abortion claims that abortion is better than prevention.
You can no more prove Creationism is fiction
Well that's part of the problem with Creationism - it's unfalsifiable. Something which cannot be disproven or proven isn't a theory, and has no place in science.
In response to the GP's post, evolution is both a fact and a theory. Yes, the theory may not be 100% correct, but it is the best model fitting the observed facts, rather than an idea based on a book (which one might reasonably describe as a work of fiction).
You cannot prove God doesn't exist, but you're absolutely, totally, unalterably sure he doesn't, so much so that you're more than willing to insult others who do believe in God.
I don't think he said that, he just said that Creationism is fiction.
Look, I'm a Christian, and I believe in God. I also believe it's entirely possible God set things into motion billions of years ago that allowed humans to evolve into what we are today. This is the "non-interventionist" view of God as opposed to the interactive God preached by so many today. My particular viewpoint on the creation of the universe and man in particular is not incompatible with the current theory of evolution, and since you cannot prove God does not exist any more than I can prove he does, my viewpoint is no less valid than yours.
Hang on a minute - surely this means you believe in evolution (or at least believe it a plausible explanation), and not ID/creationism?
ID/Creationism in the context of this article does not mean "God created the Universe and then let things run their course", but instead "evolution isn't true, and instead God directly designed things as we see them today".
Evolution says nothing about how the Universe was created, how life was started, or whether there's a God - it does say that we weren't designed by an intelligent being.
And what happens when your employer finds someone who is prepared to work 40 hour weeks for half the money?
I'm from a land where you can't be fired for no reason, and I'm not sure what things are like in the US - is there pressure for everyone to take pay cuts? My impression was that this isn't the case (indeed, the US tends to have higher salaries than elsewhere), so I wonder why people fear they need to work as many hours as possible, but they don't feel pressured into taking a pay cut?
Gosh, it's lucky that your friends son wasn't selected to be harvested for stem cells when he was an embryo, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents didn't decide to use contraception when you were conceived, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents had sex when they did, rather than not bothering that night, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents met at all, isn't it?
If his friend's son had never been born, then he wouldn't have ever existed for him, or anyone else, to consider the situation. Or would you suggest we ban abortions, contraception, masturbation, and put women in baby-making-factories where they have children as often as possible, because it would be immoral if a person who lived hadn't been born?
Well more accurately, he's flaming Opera users.
It's whining when every time soembody attempts to count how popular each browser is, somebody has to point out how innaccurate it is because `it doesnt' count Opera users properly.'
It's whining to point out that a study is innacurate?
And as for the users, if they feel that it's important that Opera be counted properly, the first thing they need to do is make sure their own personal installations report their User agents correctly.
And you know that the Opera users who "whine" have not changed this?
It doesn't matter even if Opera Software specifically wanted to hide the usage of their brower, or if most Opera users don't bother changing their preferences - it is still a fact that a study based on User Agent reporting is innacurate as far as Opera is concerned, and it is not "whining" if a user, or indeed a non-user, points this out.
One question I have - as I understand it, in many US states you can be fired for any reason at all. I have no problem with a no-compete contract if it is short term as you say, *and* I live in a country where I could not be fired for no good reason, and the company can only make my job redundant (as is the case where I do live, the UK).
Put it this way - it seems ridiculously unfair if a company can fire an employee and hire another on in their place if it suits them better, but an employee can't leave a job and go straight to another one if it would suit them better.
So, my question, assuming I am right about the situation in the US, is do these no-compete contracts apply in states where people can be fired for any reason?
Their PR assault during the last election boiled down to, while the other two parties slogged it out over immigration, ID cards and the War in Iraq, the Lib Dem PR machine putting out a statement that Kennedy's wife had had a baby
;) It certainly beats the US by far, where you have a choice between two similar candidates of "very bad" and "not quite as bad", and people tend to vote for who they hate least.
That's not right. I saw plenty of coverage from the Lib Dems regarding issues such as ID cards and the war in Iraq. I didn't see any official publicity about the baby, just some coverage in the news as would be expected.
I don't think anyone seriously expected them to *win* this election - and did they really have a target of beating the Conservatives?
I would say that they met many of their targets this election. They gained their share of the vote, won more seats, and also moved from 3rd to 2nd place in many places (the problem with our first-past-the-post system is that 3rd parties have a long way to go before increased vote share translates into winning large numbers of seats).
I don't think anyone expected them to suddenly gain power this election - you've got to look at things long term.
The problem with the British political system is that, while stable, every party looks pretty much like every other party, only with slightly different reasons to hate them - in other words, people do not vote for the best, they vote for the least worst.
Are there countries where this isn't the case?
I'd also argue that this is as much a problem with the voting system (only having one vote), than the choice of parties.
And I agree with the other replies - I wouldn't say Lib Dems are "very left-wing", and there are many other parties at least as significant as the BNP.
To be fair, all we know right now is that he ran away from people in plain clothes who were following him.
I really hope their evidence was more than "Well he was wearing unusual clothes and went on the tube". Not to mention that the police didn't challenge him when he went on the bus, also a prime terrorist target.
To be honest, I don't see a *huge* problem with mandatory ID cards.
The problem is that people keep confusing the general concept of "ID card", with what the UK Government is proposing. I doubt there are many people have problem with the concept of ID at all. I have no problem with "mandatory ID card" if it's something that the Government sends me in the post for free when I'm 16, and I put it in my desk and forget about it (eg, as happens with National Insurance cards).
I do have a problem with mandatory having-to-pay-a-load-of-money for no good reason. I do have a problem with needing to carry a particular card to use all sorts of public services.
Now, I do object to being unable to know all of the data stored on your ID card. I'm also leery of these systems using RFID. But as long as the cost of issuing the IDs is kept to an absolute minimum, I just don't get why everyone's so worked up over this
But the cost won't be kept to an absolute minimum. So that's three big reasons why you object to it (data, RFID, cost), so surely you see why people are being worked up about it?