No, God does have an empirical effect on the universe. But because he acts on the universe from outside then you cannot set up a controlled experiment of known causes to 'make him do something' that can be measured and repeated. That's what I meant when I said that the scientific method of setting up known conditions and observing the repeatable consequence isn't likely to work with God.
Empirical evidence is essential for Christianity. If there was no evidence, then there would be nothing to suggest that it is true, and there would be no reason to believe. We seem to agree on that though.
First let me say that I believe that truth is an absolute concept. 'True for me' doesn't mean anything (except in the very trivial sense of 'I am happy' meaning it is true that I am happy even if you are not).
Truth also is often unknown. Sometimes unknowable. Most of the time what we believe is only an approximation to the truth.
I hope we are agreed on that so far. That's just to clear up any misconception that I might believe in some kind of 'personal truth'.
As far as my beliefs about God are concerned the same applies. What I believe will be some approximation to the truth. How good an approximation remains to be seen.
I also think it is important to acknowledge that there are many valid reasons for believing things. The scientific method of setting up known conditions and observing the repeatable consequence is actually a very limited (though powerful) way of establishing truth. But mostly we don't have that opportunity. Historians, archeologists, lawyers, (even astronomers!) etc, are all well-used to searching for truth in other ways. Just something to think about.
That's precisely why those who demand a scientific, or repeatable (press this button, watch the evidence pop out just here), type of proof of the existance of God are always going to be disappointed, regardless of the truth or otherwise of the hypothesis 'God exists'.
Unless 'God' is nothing more than an artifact of the natural world, then the idea that you can expect normal scientific cause and effect to apply to him is at best silly and quite possibly rather arrogant. So scientific repeatability is out of the window before you have even started.
Once you understand that then there may be some value in considering what other types of reasons we might have for believing certain things to be true.
Why do you think that blindness is a critical component of faith?
Maybe it depends on how you define faith. It's very easy to critisise an idea if you get to define it.
But if you define faith the same way that most Christians do, then it is about trusting God - being faithful to him - who has proven himself trustworthy and worthy of faith. That's anything but blind faith.
There's no merit in putting your faith in someone or something that is not worthy of that faith. I don't think you'll find a single Christian who would argue otherwise.
it is scientifically ridiculous to believe that a dead person 2000 years ago could reanimate at the behest of a supernatural power.
Whoa! Stop there. Do you realise what you just wrote?
Don't you realise that saying something is 'supernatural' is another way of saying it is outside the realm of nature? Since science is the study of the natural world, then how can you use science to argue that something outside the natural world - outside the scope of science - is ridiculous?
The best you can really do is to say is that you don't think anything exists outside the scope of science. But that's just an assertion. You can't prove it with science.
You are right, but it has very little to do with what I wrote.
I agree that if you are doing QA testing against a specific browser then you would ideally want some way to ensure that everyone uses the browser you have QA tested against. The Microsoft X-UA-Compatible header does exactly that by forcing new versions of IE to behave as the old version you did your QA testing on.
But some of us do not want to target any specific browser at all. This is the point I was making. Having to insert browser-specific code in order to not target a specific browser is an anathema.
The new proposal still gives you what you want - you can put in your browser-targeting header. It also gives the rest of us what we want by allowing us not to target a specific browser. Everyone should be happy.
(Except for those who used a valid DOCTYPE and then still wrote browser-specific code. But they deserve to be punished;-) )
I try to minimize breaking most of the time and in non-gridlock situations I can keep from touching my break pedal probably 80% of the time
What's interesting is that this may inadvertently be adding to the problem - though no fault of your own I hasten to add.
Humans are extremely poor at judging closing speed [citation needed;-)]. That's why we have brake lights in the first place.
The problem is that when the person following you is not paying sufficient attention, they won't notice that you have slowed down without braking, until they get quite a bit closer. They then find themselves having to brake harder than they would have done if they had seen a brake light and reacted to it as soon as you started slowing.
It is specifically this 'slowing more than the person in front' that causes the instability leading to the phantom jams.
Actually, what do I know? But I do believe that Firewire doesn't have the concept of host and slave nodes. All nodes on a Firewire network are equivalent AFAIK.
If it were necessary to explictly allow direct memory access on a node whenever it was requested, you would not be able to plug a Firewire cable into a control-less box (for example) and do things with it, without first accessing the control-less box through a non-Firewire method to enable Firewire DMA.
Anyway, that's my ignorance on the subject. And as Adam Boileau says, it is a Feature, not a Bug. It is intended behaviour, so there must be a good reason (even if it is not the above).
developers were being asked to touch each page of their sites and tell IE to use its more standards compliant mode. That discussion is what was at play here.
Actually I don't think that was really the issue. It might be a pain to add the X-UA-Compatible line to every page, but a script could do it, or you could send an equivalent HTTP header.
No, the real issue was that Microsoft was requiring developers to write browser-specific code targeted specifically at IE8 in order to create pages that are not targeted at a specific browser. It doesn't take a degree to see the inherent contradiction here.
(The fact that the meta tag validates is beside the point. It is the fact that it is targeted at a specific browser that raises the hackles of standards-oriented developers so much.)
If you are developing for Mac OS X, use Apple's (link already given by someone else).
If you are developing for Gnome, use the Gnome guidelines.
You get the general idea. Also, don't invent your own controls/widgets unless you Really Have To.
If you are writing a cross-platform application, it's a bit more difficult. Find an application framework that adopts the user interface guidelines of the hosting environment, so that you don't have to do the work yourself. (This is left as an exercise for the reader...)
You're saying that usage caps and traffic shaping are a bad thing? I have to disagree. There is no such thing as unlimited broadband. I prefer to know the limits up-front, and not to be subsidising the top 1% who run peer-to-peer file sharing 24x7.
I think that critisism directed at PlusNet is a little unfair. PlusNet are one of the few UK ISPs that do not advertise unlimited bandwidth, and are in fact very up-front about their traffic-shaping in order to prioritise real-time data over e.g. peer-to-peer.
If you read the conclusion of the article, you'll see the author writes
We aren't saying that the growth of streaming isn't a scary proposition... but it's got to be even more scary for some.
In other words, it's uncomfortable for PlusNet, but it's going to be much worse for the ISPs who pretend to offer unlimited bandwidth and don't have any effective traffic-shaping.
This is rather more PlusNet blowing their own trumpet than whining about how bad everything is becoming.
The focus on Facebook is really obscuring the main issue, which is that anything that you make public on the Internet remains public. Have people never heard of the Wayback Machine and other such services?
Many of them may well have removal policies, but are you really going to know about every web server that holds a cache containing information about you, and go through the trouble of contacting the administrator of each one to get it removed? Forget it. Once it is public it remains public.
a) the measurements are not rounded. This seems quite unlikely for a start. Should the author have written "He made the Sea... measuring nine point five five cubits from rim to rim..."?
b) the Sea was a plain cylinder. Another possibility, not ruled out by the text, and certainly well within the realms of probability is that the rim had a lip or a flare to it. So the distance from rim to rim would be greater than the distance across the circumference measured lower down by the line. (Think about the practical difficulty of measuring with a line around the outside of a flared rim.)
In fact it doesn't matter which of the above two explanations is more likely, since no one (apart from those trying to point out inconsistencies in the Bible) is asserting that the story quoted says anything at all about the accurate value for pi.
The general rule seems to be the 5% are those who leave peer-to-peer file-sharing running 24 hours a day and couldn't care less about trying to limit their heavy use to the off-peak hours.
Actually some ISPs reckon the proportion of customers doing this and using >50% of the bandwidth is much smaller than 5%.
OK, I saw the 'tongue in cheek' emoticon, but I'd still like to reply to this...
1. Who is trying to explain "that we are only the way we are through creation"? I don't think even those who do not accept evolution as true would make that claim.
2. Do the robots indeed learn themselves and evolve themselves? I don't think so. This experiment didn't spring spontaneously into existence.
3. Are these really the same attributes? I think there is perhaps a bit to much anthropomorphisation going on.
4. What has any of this got to do with disproving evolution?
Same thing for restaurants, if you know a good, cheap restaurant, you' ll tell everybody it serves disgusting, expensive crap because otherwise the next time you won't get a table, the prices will be higher and the portions smaller.
Why is this disturbing? I don't think it is that surprising that in a kind of evolution simulation there should be some individuals that act in a different way to the others. If that behaviour is makes their survival more likely and they are able to pass that behaviour on to their 'offspring' then the behaviour will become more common.
I imagine that if this experiment is continued to the point where the uncooperative robots become too numerous, their uncooperative strategy will become less advantageous and another strategy might start to prevail. Who knows? I'd certainly be interested to see what happens.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. The article's use of the word 'lie' was inappropriate and adds a level of description that is not applicable.
(Ok, maybe the thought that humans could create something with unforeseen consequences is slightly disturbing, but that would never happen, would it?)
[C++ is] a half-assed attempt at an object-oriented language, combining the easy memory model of C with...
Took me a moment to realise you were being sarcastic.
Seriously though, what's so difficult about the memory management model of C? I find it hard to think of anything much simpler. The great thing about C (IMHO) is that if you didn't write it, it won't happen.
you can only set up a direct debit to certain registered things, one of them being charities
(emphasis mine). Telecom companies fall under the category of 'certain registered things'.
Point is that you and the bank know exactly to whom the money has gone (they are registered) and you can always get the money back, no questions asked, through the Direct Debit Guarantee.
Faith certainly does require reason. I don't put my faith in anything without a reason.
That reason can be personal experience, second-hand experience gleaned from others; it can even be logical deduction or scientific knowledge (which is really just a special kind of second-hand experience, one that is expected to be repeatable on demand).
I suppose though that 'reason' in the sense I've just used it is not quite the same as 'evidence' required for the scientific method, in that it can include scientific evidence but is not limited to that.
Your other point:
you believe in God in order to explain all the evidence
No. I can believe something because reason or evidence points to it without having to to say that the thing I believe is an explanation of the evidence.
and that if there was no evidence, you wouldn't believe in God
That's true, or at least if there was no reason (acknowledging that reason and evidence are not necessarily the same).
The notion that 'God' is an explanation for all the things that science and reason has not yet adequately explained is a common one, but rather out-dated. It is a mistake that has been made by Christians and non-Christians alike.
Suffice it to say that most Christians who have given any significant thought to the matter do not believe in 'God of the gaps', so the argument that the traffic is all one way from 'religious explanations' to scientific explanations is simply not relevant.
To put it another way, I don't believe in God in order to explain anything. I believe in God because I think all the evidence points that being true.
Slashdot Mirror
No, God does have an empirical effect on the universe. But because he acts on the universe from outside then you cannot set up a controlled experiment of known causes to 'make him do something' that can be measured and repeated. That's what I meant when I said that the scientific method of setting up known conditions and observing the repeatable consequence isn't likely to work with God.
Empirical evidence is essential for Christianity. If there was no evidence, then there would be nothing to suggest that it is true, and there would be no reason to believe. We seem to agree on that though.
First let me say that I believe that truth is an absolute concept. 'True for me' doesn't mean anything (except in the very trivial sense of 'I am happy' meaning it is true that I am happy even if you are not).
Truth also is often unknown. Sometimes unknowable. Most of the time what we believe is only an approximation to the truth.
I hope we are agreed on that so far. That's just to clear up any misconception that I might believe in some kind of 'personal truth'.
As far as my beliefs about God are concerned the same applies. What I believe will be some approximation to the truth. How good an approximation remains to be seen.
I also think it is important to acknowledge that there are many valid reasons for believing things. The scientific method of setting up known conditions and observing the repeatable consequence is actually a very limited (though powerful) way of establishing truth. But mostly we don't have that opportunity. Historians, archeologists, lawyers, (even astronomers!) etc, are all well-used to searching for truth in other ways. Just something to think about.
Is evidence of cause and effect that can be repeated at will the only kind of evidence?
That's precisely why those who demand a scientific, or repeatable (press this button, watch the evidence pop out just here), type of proof of the existance of God are always going to be disappointed, regardless of the truth or otherwise of the hypothesis 'God exists'.
Unless 'God' is nothing more than an artifact of the natural world, then the idea that you can expect normal scientific cause and effect to apply to him is at best silly and quite possibly rather arrogant. So scientific repeatability is out of the window before you have even started.
Once you understand that then there may be some value in considering what other types of reasons we might have for believing certain things to be true.
Why do you think that blindness is a critical component of faith?
Maybe it depends on how you define faith. It's very easy to critisise an idea if you get to define it.
But if you define faith the same way that most Christians do, then it is about trusting God - being faithful to him - who has proven himself trustworthy and worthy of faith. That's anything but blind faith.
There's no merit in putting your faith in someone or something that is not worthy of that faith. I don't think you'll find a single Christian who would argue otherwise.
Don't you realise that saying something is 'supernatural' is another way of saying it is outside the realm of nature? Since science is the study of the natural world, then how can you use science to argue that something outside the natural world - outside the scope of science - is ridiculous?
The best you can really do is to say is that you don't think anything exists outside the scope of science. But that's just an assertion. You can't prove it with science.
You are right, but it has very little to do with what I wrote.
;-) )
I agree that if you are doing QA testing against a specific browser then you would ideally want some way to ensure that everyone uses the browser you have QA tested against. The Microsoft X-UA-Compatible header does exactly that by forcing new versions of IE to behave as the old version you did your QA testing on.
But some of us do not want to target any specific browser at all. This is the point I was making. Having to insert browser-specific code in order to not target a specific browser is an anathema.
The new proposal still gives you what you want - you can put in your browser-targeting header. It also gives the rest of us what we want by allowing us not to target a specific browser. Everyone should be happy.
(Except for those who used a valid DOCTYPE and then still wrote browser-specific code. But they deserve to be punished
Humans are extremely poor at judging closing speed [citation needed
The problem is that when the person following you is not paying sufficient attention, they won't notice that you have slowed down without braking, until they get quite a bit closer. They then find themselves having to brake harder than they would have done if they had seen a brake light and reacted to it as soon as you started slowing.
It is specifically this 'slowing more than the person in front' that causes the instability leading to the phantom jams.
Because it is not USB.
Actually, what do I know? But I do believe that Firewire doesn't have the concept of host and slave nodes. All nodes on a Firewire network are equivalent AFAIK.
If it were necessary to explictly allow direct memory access on a node whenever it was requested, you would not be able to plug a Firewire cable into a control-less box (for example) and do things with it, without first accessing the control-less box through a non-Firewire method to enable Firewire DMA.
Anyway, that's my ignorance on the subject. And as Adam Boileau says, it is a Feature, not a Bug. It is intended behaviour, so there must be a good reason (even if it is not the above).
No, the real issue was that Microsoft was requiring developers to write browser-specific code targeted specifically at IE8 in order to create pages that are not targeted at a specific browser. It doesn't take a degree to see the inherent contradiction here.
(The fact that the meta tag validates is beside the point. It is the fact that it is targeted at a specific browser that raises the hackles of standards-oriented developers so much.)
I can only amplify what the parent poster has said.
Follow the design style guide of the hosting desktop environment.
If you are developing for Windows, use Microsoft's own guidelines.
If you are developing for Mac OS X, use Apple's (link already given by someone else).
If you are developing for Gnome, use the Gnome guidelines.
You get the general idea. Also, don't invent your own controls/widgets unless you Really Have To.
If you are writing a cross-platform application, it's a bit more difficult. Find an application framework that adopts the user interface guidelines of the hosting environment, so that you don't have to do the work yourself. (This is left as an exercise for the reader...)
If you read the conclusion of the article, you'll see the author writes In other words, it's uncomfortable for PlusNet, but it's going to be much worse for the ISPs who pretend to offer unlimited bandwidth and don't have any effective traffic-shaping.
This is rather more PlusNet blowing their own trumpet than whining about how bad everything is becoming.
I write as a (fairly) satisfied PlusNet customer.
Absolutely right.
The focus on Facebook is really obscuring the main issue, which is that anything that you make public on the Internet remains public. Have people never heard of the Wayback Machine and other such services?
Many of them may well have removal policies, but are you really going to know about every web server that holds a cache containing information about you, and go through the trouble of contacting the administrator of each one to get it removed? Forget it. Once it is public it remains public.
But if the rim is flared then there is no redundancy.
(Your other respondant is also right btw.)
Except that your explanation assumes:
... measuring nine point five five cubits from rim to rim..."?
a) the measurements are not rounded.
This seems quite unlikely for a start. Should the author have written "He made the Sea
b) the Sea was a plain cylinder.
Another possibility, not ruled out by the text, and certainly well within the realms of probability is that the rim had a lip or a flare to it. So the distance from rim to rim would be greater than the distance across the circumference measured lower down by the line. (Think about the practical difficulty of measuring with a line around the outside of a flared rim.)
In fact it doesn't matter which of the above two explanations is more likely, since no one (apart from those trying to point out inconsistencies in the Bible) is asserting that the story quoted says anything at all about the accurate value for pi.
I don't think you are one of their 5%.
The general rule seems to be the 5% are those who leave peer-to-peer file-sharing running 24 hours a day and couldn't care less about trying to limit their heavy use to the off-peak hours.
Actually some ISPs reckon the proportion of customers doing this and using >50% of the bandwidth is much smaller than 5%.
If you want to know what "as such" means, find the person who wrote it into that particular law, and #*&#@ ask them what they meant by it.
Seriously, this sort of thing makes me so angry. Words are supposed to communicate meaning, not to obfuscate.
(Yes, I know that my suggestion is not practical, because doubtless in this case the words "as such" were not intended to provide clarity of meaning.)
OK, I saw the 'tongue in cheek' emoticon, but I'd still like to reply to this...
;-)
1. Who is trying to explain "that we are only the way we are through creation"? I don't think even those who do not accept evolution as true would make that claim.
2. Do the robots indeed learn themselves and evolve themselves? I don't think so. This experiment didn't spring spontaneously into existence.
3. Are these really the same attributes? I think there is perhaps a bit to much anthropomorphisation going on.
4. What has any of this got to do with disproving evolution?
5. I've been well and truly trolled
Why is this disturbing? I don't think it is that surprising that in a kind of evolution simulation there should be some individuals that act in a different way to the others. If that behaviour is makes their survival more likely and they are able to pass that behaviour on to their 'offspring' then the behaviour will become more common.
I imagine that if this experiment is continued to the point where the uncooperative robots become too numerous, their uncooperative strategy will become less advantageous and another strategy might start to prevail. Who knows? I'd certainly be interested to see what happens.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. The article's use of the word 'lie' was inappropriate and adds a level of description that is not applicable.
(Ok, maybe the thought that humans could create something with unforeseen consequences is slightly disturbing, but that would never happen, would it?)
Seriously though, what's so difficult about the memory management model of C? I find it hard to think of anything much simpler. The great thing about C (IMHO) is that if you didn't write it, it won't happen.
Point is that you and the bank know exactly to whom the money has gone (they are registered) and you can always get the money back, no questions asked, through the Direct Debit Guarantee.
That reason can be personal experience, second-hand experience gleaned from others; it can even be logical deduction or scientific knowledge (which is really just a special kind of second-hand experience, one that is expected to be repeatable on demand).
I suppose though that 'reason' in the sense I've just used it is not quite the same as 'evidence' required for the scientific method, in that it can include scientific evidence but is not limited to that.
Your other point: No. I can believe something because reason or evidence points to it without having to to say that the thing I believe is an explanation of the evidence. That's true, or at least if there was no reason (acknowledging that reason and evidence are not necessarily the same).
The notion that 'God' is an explanation for all the things that science and reason has not yet adequately explained is a common one, but rather out-dated. It is a mistake that has been made by Christians and non-Christians alike.
It has been given the moniker 'God of the gaps' and there is a description on Wikipedia.
Suffice it to say that most Christians who have given any significant thought to the matter do not believe in 'God of the gaps', so the argument that the traffic is all one way from 'religious explanations' to scientific explanations is simply not relevant.
To put it another way, I don't believe in God in order to explain anything. I believe in God because I think all the evidence points that being true.