There are already so many comments I'm sure this won't be read, but I'll say it anyway:
Accepting your relativity analysis at face value, it does not mean that the article was wrong to use the word "already". That's correct, within our reference frame. At most it means your hypothetical observer would also be correct to say it "will" happen. In other words, we can say it already happened, we just can't claim that's correct in all reference frames.
My 2 cents. IAAPBIHSRTM. (I Am A Physicist But I Haven't Studied Relativity That Much)
Let's put it down simply like this: if you can't have a gun, is unlikely that someone else is easily going to get one, so you're safer than going around armed knowing that everyone else is in the same situation.
Even accepting your premise about likelihood of getting a gun: If you are a 120 lbs woman, do you feel safer knowing that because you don't have a gun, the 240 lbs man attacking you only has a knife?
What I understand by 'theistic evolution' is that evolution proceeds naturally, but that God intervenes from time to time to adjust its direction, like an alien with a Monolith, with some ultimate aim in mind. What you have there is something different, which I'd call 'deism': God rigs the universe at the outset, presses the detonator switch for the Big Bang, and then walks away.
"Theistic evolutionist" means a theist who believes in common descent through evolution. It includes ID types who believe in common descent with God miraculously tweaking the process, but it also refers to people who believe God created life entirely through the secondary cause of natural laws. Yes, the latter sounds sort of like deism. But there's a major difference. IIRC, deists believe that God set up the universe and walked away, and does not interact with humanity in any kind of personal way--the deist God is entirely impersonal. (There may be exceptions to that. At the least, deists don't believe in miracles.) Theistic evolution only refers to the development of life. Christian theistic evolutionists still believe that God really did pick out Abraham and the Jews to bless all humanity (ultimately through Jesus), and some will believe that most of the Bible after Genesis 11 is true history.
Even young-earth creationists believe that God can (and does) act in that so-called "deistic" fashion. For instance, they believe that God knits us together in our mothers' wombs, makes the grass grow, and clothes the daisies in splendor. But that doesn't mean he interrupts natural law--he made and sustains the universe, including natural law. (The biggest problem creationists have with evolution is that it doesn't fit with a straight-forward reading of Genesis as a historical account.)
Someone else already pointed that out. I know that's a valid criticism. But someone else pointed out that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not in energy used to make and ship the products. So I might still be right. Or I might be wrong even more than the trade deficit would indicate.
(I accidentally posted this reply in the wrong spot. I'm reposting it here.)
Wait, RexRino made an interesting point. He said that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not the energy involved in producing and shipping products. So it's possible I was right. We would have to break down the specifics of what's being imported and exported.
Wait, RexRino made an interesting point. He said that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not the energy involved in producing and shipping products. So it's possible I was right. We would have to break down the specifics of what's being imported and exported.
Now I'm curious.
But not enough to actually research it.
Oh, now you're just being silly. That was a randomly chosen example of something being manufactured and exported. I didn't imply all computers are made for export.
The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide.
I really doubt that's true. Not that 25% of the world's energy use takes place in America, but that a good energy accounting system would assign all that use to Americans.
Say what?
What I mean is, America uses more energy per capita in a simple account, but think about what we're using that energy for. At least some of it is going toward production of goods & services for export. Should the energy used to manufacture and ship a computer be assigned to us, or to whoever buys it in another country? I think the latter.
Even taking that into account, I would guess that we still use more per capita. But not 5x as much.
Whenever someone discovers something amazingly useful, it always turns out to have negative side effects. I believe that's called the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Yeah, like when they figured out how to replace vacuum tubes with transistors--only to discover that after 60 years, all transistors mutate into rampaging insectoid machines that think of nothing but murder all day.
While everyone else piles on this bigoted response, I'd like to point out how widespread this person's misconception is. Probably the most damaging thing done by Bush and the Republicans is to play to this sort of bigotry and, in doing so, make us much less secure.
If you'd criticized Bush for playing to the impression that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, I would be right there with you. But this one is new by me. When have Bush and the Republicans played to the idea that "so far all the terrorists have been Muslim"?
If they haven't, then aren't you yourself engaging in knee-jerk, unthoughtful stereotyping?
Dude, did you even read the Wikipedia article you linked to? Copernicus' contribution to astronomy wasn't "The Earth is round." Everyone[1] already knew the Earth is round. The problem was geocentrism; they believed the sun moved around the Earth. Copernicus said "The earth moves around the sun"--heliocentrism.
And in case you were wondering, Columbus was not mocked because they thought his ships would fall off the edge of the earth. He was mocked because they thought (correctly) that you couldn't sail directly from Europe to Asia--you couldn't carry enough supplies.
But your point still stands. Just rephrase it: "Before five hundred years ago I learned that the Earth was the center of the universe and I see no reason to unlearn it. Why should I?"
[1]OK, maybe not everyone. I have no idea what the masses believed. Maybe lots of people did still believe the earth was flat--but well-educated people knew different.
Re:Time to dust off my software patent directive!
on
EU Patent Wars to Resume
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· Score: 2, Informative
In my opinion, it would be better to say: "(to whom they are not accountable)"
I'll explain why.
"To whom" vs. "to which": Most of the time, when you're refering back to a person or to a group of people, you should use "to whom". "To which" is used mainly used for objects, or animals. It's like the word "it". A rule of thumb: If you wouldn't use "it" as a pronoun, you shouldn't use "which".
"Have to answer to" vs. "accountable": Both are correct, but using "accountable" doesn't require as many words. The sentence is a bit simpler and more elegant, IMO.
The dangling "to" at the end: The "to" at the end was redundant. The "to" in "answer to" got moved to the beginning--"answer to" got split up into "to whom...answer". In other words, you're changing
I'm just surprised you were able to manage to type that lot in without drooling and shitting all over yourself.
Yeah...I actually saw a physical therapist for a few years to help me out with that. Most days I can manage to control most of my bodily functions, though--and when it's too difficult, I just use a speech-to-text program. Thanks for your concern, bro!
The Catholic church does not object to evolutionary theory, on the premise that "life evolved" and "God created life" are compatible--by way of "God used evolution to create life". (In much the same way, no Christian I've heard of objects to the study of embryology, even though Psalm 139 talks about God "knitting together" the psalmist in his mother's womb.) The reason people like me remain creationists isn't because God couldn't create with evolution, but because common descent isn't compatible with the Genesis account.
So why should the pope object to the idea of God creating using a Big Bang? Theologically speaking, that would be no different from God creating life using evolution.
Actualy, article 6 says something like "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." in it.
This means that all laws, treaties and anything else passed in the United State must comply with the constitution.
That's completely correct, and completely irrelevant.
Yes, all laws must comply with every provision of the constitution. And since the text of the 1st Amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law...", a state can go right ahead and pass a law establishing a religion or abridging freedom of speech. Because the 1st Amendment just says that Congress shall make no such laws.
Just read the Wikipedia entry, man. It describes the 1833 Supreme Court case where they specifically ruled that the Bill of Rights doesn't protect against the actions of the states (except where the states are specifically mentioned.)
It wasn't till the 14th Amendment that the BoR protected against states' actions, and the 14th Amendment was not at all redundant in that respect.
Um, yeah it does. No state constitution can abridge a freedom guaranteed under the US Constitution. The 10th Amendment states that: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
That more or less reads, if we do not specifically say something here, then it is up to the states or the people to make up their own laws/rights in regard to the issue. Now, what constitutional clause does it violate? Freedom of speech.
OK, you're correct that if the U.S. Constitution says the states can't do something, they can't do it. And you're correct that the Supreme Court has ruled the states cannot violate the Bill of Rights--the first ten amendments. (Almost, see below.) But as originally written, the BoR did not apply to the states. The BoR only restricts the actions of the federal government.
It's the 14th Amendment that extended the BoR prohibitions to the states. And that wasn't even decided till a Supreme Court case in 1925 (Gitlow v. New York).
But even then, they didn't rule that the entire BoR applies to the states. For instance, they have never ruled on whether the Second Amendment applies to the states.
Don't be nebulous. "A lot of the things"? Which things? I said I didn't believe he'd heard two things--"dinosaurs never existed" and "they shouldn't teach biology". (Note: I don't doubt they insulted the professors for teaching evolution. It's the "biology" phrasing I don't believe.) Are you saying you've heard some of the kids at your university say, "Dinosaurs never existed"?
Now, I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks that. I had a friend who tried to convince Atlantis had nukes. But does it happen enough to be significant? I don't buy it. (And it's definitely not said by any "mainstream" creationist or ID organization.)
My point wasn't to hold myself up as a model case--of homeschoolers, religious people, fundamentalists, or any other group. That would be pretty superficial generalization.
Here's where most of my point was:
To accomplish all this, there was no shift away from my upbringing. I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. There were no shackles of dogma to throw off. I didn't have to learn that Science Isn't The Bad Guy, because I was never taught that it was. None of the creationist stuff I was taught growing up affected my scientific reasoning skills--even the arguments I've since decided are complete drivel.
I think I should rephrase the last part a bit. The last sentence probably made you think I was saying, "I was able to keep good reasoning skills in spite of being taught drivel." That wasn't what I meant.
My point was, I wasn't taught poor reasoning skills! My point was, I never "grew out of" fundamentalism, and I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. My point was, I was taught to be rigorously analytical by creationists. There was never any point that my creationist views interfered with my scientific reasoning skills. There is no inconsistency between being an IDer and acing that standardized test.
Now, I do think there's a lot of very bad creationist arguments, and that your average layperson doesn't realize how bad they are because they lack the training, and they don't spend the time and effort required. But I also think your little thesis in the grandparent post exemplifies pretty much the same sort of sloppy reasoning. The "unthoughtful, knee-jerk crap" was the idea that the efforts of ID & creationist groups are responsible for the decline of science ability in current teens. It has only the thinnest veneer of rationale.
I can't tell you how many 12-18yr olds I have heard rant about how their classmates are so stupid for believing that dinosaurs existed because their parents taught them the world is only 6000 years old.
I don't believe you. At all. I don't think you're lying, but I think there's about a 98% chance that your memory is, *ahem*, confused. I'm sure you've heard many teens rant about evolution, or radiometric dating, or the Big Bang, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but I don't believe you've heard them rant about the existence of dinosaurs. It just didn't happen. Maybe one or two, but I doubt even that many. "Dinosaurs don't exist" is about as far from the modern creationist movement as the Flat Earth Society.
How they rant about how stupid their teachers are and how they lie and are sinners because they teach biology instead of pure fundamentalist creationism.
Really? Did they say that, or did they say, "because they teach evolution"? Do you understand why changing words for greater rhetorical effect makes it difficult for me to take you seriously?
So its not just kneejerk, it really does happen that way out there.
See what I said about "my point" up above. Even if your alleged teens said exactly what you seem to think, it wouldn't matter, and it would be irrelevant to the superficiality of your argument.
I'm not sure why you see this as an attack on religion...it isn't. It is an attack on teaching poor reasoning skills that largely are continued on through fundamentalist beliefs.
I'm not sure why you think I see this as an attack on religion. I didn't say that I do. I didn't imply that I do. I don't.
I'm sure many fundamentalists have poor reasoning skills. What I do doubt is that the average is much worse than the general population, if at all. (And incidentally, I still consider myself a fundamentalist--but I rarely use the term, since hardly anyone has quite the same definition.)
I was raised in your stereotypical conservative, evangelical Christian home. I was homeschooled through middleschool. I watched Kent Hovind videos in youth group. I went to church camps. After high school, I went to a conservative Christian leadership camp that included lectures from Duane Gish.
I also graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics. (That's a lifetime 4.0 GPA.) I just finished the first year of my Master's applied physics program in semiconductor microelectronics, and am doing an internship at AMD. I don't think I'm a genius, but I'm good at this stuff, and am told so by my classmates and professors.
To accomplish all this, there was no shift away from my upbringing. I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. There were no shackles of dogma to throw off. I didn't have to learn that Science Isn't The Bad Guy, because I was never taught that it was. None of the creationist stuff I was taught growing up affected my scientific reasoning skills--even the arguments I've since decided are complete drivel.
I agree that there's a veritable crap-ton of idiotic drivel being shoveled out by people arguing for creationism. That stuff is accepted by people who don't know better, and it's accepted because they don't have the time or skills to trace through the logic carefully and recognize the mistakes. But the existence of the drivel doesn't cause the lack of skill--it's the other way around!
Slashdot Mirror
Suh-NAP!
Just doesn't carry the same sex-appeal as Quantum Physics.
Same-sex appeal? I didn't know quantum physicists were mostly gay...
There are already so many comments I'm sure this won't be read, but I'll say it anyway:
Accepting your relativity analysis at face value, it does not mean that the article was wrong to use the word "already". That's correct, within our reference frame. At most it means your hypothetical observer would also be correct to say it "will" happen. In other words, we can say it already happened, we just can't claim that's correct in all reference frames.
My 2 cents. IAAPBIHSRTM. (I Am A Physicist But I Haven't Studied Relativity That Much)
One word for you: Marijuana.
Another word: Prohibition.
Even accepting your premise about likelihood of getting a gun: If you are a 120 lbs woman, do you feel safer knowing that because you don't have a gun, the 240 lbs man attacking you only has a knife?
What I understand by 'theistic evolution' is that evolution proceeds naturally, but that God intervenes from time to time to adjust its direction, like an alien with a Monolith, with some ultimate aim in mind. What you have there is something different, which I'd call 'deism': God rigs the universe at the outset, presses the detonator switch for the Big Bang, and then walks away.
"Theistic evolutionist" means a theist who believes in common descent through evolution. It includes ID types who believe in common descent with God miraculously tweaking the process, but it also refers to people who believe God created life entirely through the secondary cause of natural laws. Yes, the latter sounds sort of like deism. But there's a major difference. IIRC, deists believe that God set up the universe and walked away, and does not interact with humanity in any kind of personal way--the deist God is entirely impersonal. (There may be exceptions to that. At the least, deists don't believe in miracles.) Theistic evolution only refers to the development of life. Christian theistic evolutionists still believe that God really did pick out Abraham and the Jews to bless all humanity (ultimately through Jesus), and some will believe that most of the Bible after Genesis 11 is true history.
Even young-earth creationists believe that God can (and does) act in that so-called "deistic" fashion. For instance, they believe that God knits us together in our mothers' wombs, makes the grass grow, and clothes the daisies in splendor. But that doesn't mean he interrupts natural law--he made and sustains the universe, including natural law. (The biggest problem creationists have with evolution is that it doesn't fit with a straight-forward reading of Genesis as a historical account.)
Oooh, good, I've been looking for some new fiction to read.
(Let the flamewar commence.)
And have a virtual metamoderation yourself. :)
Someone else already pointed that out. I know that's a valid criticism. But someone else pointed out that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not in energy used to make and ship the products. So I might still be right. Or I might be wrong even more than the trade deficit would indicate.
(I accidentally posted this reply in the wrong spot. I'm reposting it here.)
Wait, RexRino made an interesting point. He said that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not the energy involved in producing and shipping products. So it's possible I was right. We would have to break down the specifics of what's being imported and exported.
Now I'm curious.
But not enough to actually research it.
Crap! I attached this to the wrong post. I meant to attach this to my reply to greppling. *sigh* Not my day.
Wait, RexRino made an interesting point. He said that the trade deficit is measured in dollars, not the energy involved in producing and shipping products. So it's possible I was right. We would have to break down the specifics of what's being imported and exported. Now I'm curious. But not enough to actually research it.
Oh, now you're just being silly. That was a randomly chosen example of something being manufactured and exported. I didn't imply all computers are made for export.
Well, crap, there goes my little idea.
The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide.
I really doubt that's true. Not that 25% of the world's energy use takes place in America, but that a good energy accounting system would assign all that use to Americans.
Say what?
What I mean is, America uses more energy per capita in a simple account, but think about what we're using that energy for. At least some of it is going toward production of goods & services for export. Should the energy used to manufacture and ship a computer be assigned to us, or to whoever buys it in another country? I think the latter.
Even taking that into account, I would guess that we still use more per capita. But not 5x as much.
Whenever someone discovers something amazingly useful, it always turns out to have negative side effects. I believe that's called the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Yeah, like when they figured out how to replace vacuum tubes with transistors--only to discover that after 60 years, all transistors mutate into rampaging insectoid machines that think of nothing but murder all day.
While everyone else piles on this bigoted response, I'd like to point out how widespread this person's misconception is. Probably the most damaging thing done by Bush and the Republicans is to play to this sort of bigotry and, in doing so, make us much less secure.
If you'd criticized Bush for playing to the impression that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, I would be right there with you. But this one is new by me. When have Bush and the Republicans played to the idea that "so far all the terrorists have been Muslim"?
If they haven't, then aren't you yourself engaging in knee-jerk, unthoughtful stereotyping?
Dude, did you even read the Wikipedia article you linked to? Copernicus' contribution to astronomy wasn't "The Earth is round." Everyone[1] already knew the Earth is round. The problem was geocentrism; they believed the sun moved around the Earth. Copernicus said "The earth moves around the sun"--heliocentrism.
And in case you were wondering, Columbus was not mocked because they thought his ships would fall off the edge of the earth. He was mocked because they thought (correctly) that you couldn't sail directly from Europe to Asia--you couldn't carry enough supplies.
But your point still stands. Just rephrase it: "Before five hundred years ago I learned that the Earth was the center of the universe and I see no reason to unlearn it. Why should I?"
[1]OK, maybe not everyone. I have no idea what the masses believed. Maybe lots of people did still believe the earth was flat--but well-educated people knew different.
In my opinion, it would be better to say: "(to whom they are not accountable)"
I'll explain why.
"To whom" vs. "to which": Most of the time, when you're refering back to a person or to a group of people, you should use "to whom". "To which" is used mainly used for objects, or animals. It's like the word "it". A rule of thumb: If you wouldn't use "it" as a pronoun, you shouldn't use "which".
"Have to answer to" vs. "accountable": Both are correct, but using "accountable" doesn't require as many words. The sentence is a bit simpler and more elegant, IMO.
The dangling "to" at the end: The "to" at the end was redundant. The "to" in "answer to" got moved to the beginning--"answer to" got split up into "to whom...answer". In other words, you're changing
"They do not have to answer to the citizens"
into
"citizens (to which they do not have to answer)"
Does that make sense?
...the pope was being silly.
The Catholic church does not object to evolutionary theory, on the premise that "life evolved" and "God created life" are compatible--by way of "God used evolution to create life". (In much the same way, no Christian I've heard of objects to the study of embryology, even though Psalm 139 talks about God "knitting together" the psalmist in his mother's womb.) The reason people like me remain creationists isn't because God couldn't create with evolution, but because common descent isn't compatible with the Genesis account.
So why should the pope object to the idea of God creating using a Big Bang? Theologically speaking, that would be no different from God creating life using evolution.
Yes, all laws must comply with every provision of the constitution. And since the text of the 1st Amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law...", a state can go right ahead and pass a law establishing a religion or abridging freedom of speech. Because the 1st Amendment just says that Congress shall make no such laws.
Just read the Wikipedia entry, man. It describes the 1833 Supreme Court case where they specifically ruled that the Bill of Rights doesn't protect against the actions of the states (except where the states are specifically mentioned.)
It wasn't till the 14th Amendment that the BoR protected against states' actions, and the 14th Amendment was not at all redundant in that respect.
It's the 14th Amendment that extended the BoR prohibitions to the states. And that wasn't even decided till a Supreme Court case in 1925 (Gitlow v. New York).
But even then, they didn't rule that the entire BoR applies to the states. For instance, they have never ruled on whether the Second Amendment applies to the states.
Don't be nebulous. "A lot of the things"? Which things? I said I didn't believe he'd heard two things--"dinosaurs never existed" and "they shouldn't teach biology". (Note: I don't doubt they insulted the professors for teaching evolution. It's the "biology" phrasing I don't believe.) Are you saying you've heard some of the kids at your university say, "Dinosaurs never existed"?
Now, I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks that. I had a friend who tried to convince Atlantis had nukes. But does it happen enough to be significant? I don't buy it. (And it's definitely not said by any "mainstream" creationist or ID organization.)
Here's where most of my point was:
I think I should rephrase the last part a bit. The last sentence probably made you think I was saying, "I was able to keep good reasoning skills in spite of being taught drivel." That wasn't what I meant.
My point was, I wasn't taught poor reasoning skills! My point was, I never "grew out of" fundamentalism, and I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. My point was, I was taught to be rigorously analytical by creationists. There was never any point that my creationist views interfered with my scientific reasoning skills. There is no inconsistency between being an IDer and acing that standardized test.
Now, I do think there's a lot of very bad creationist arguments, and that your average layperson doesn't realize how bad they are because they lack the training, and they don't spend the time and effort required. But I also think your little thesis in the grandparent post exemplifies pretty much the same sort of sloppy reasoning. The "unthoughtful, knee-jerk crap" was the idea that the efforts of ID & creationist groups are responsible for the decline of science ability in current teens. It has only the thinnest veneer of rationale.
I can't tell you how many 12-18yr olds I have heard rant about how their classmates are so stupid for believing that dinosaurs existed because their parents taught them the world is only 6000 years old.
I don't believe you. At all. I don't think you're lying, but I think there's about a 98% chance that your memory is, *ahem*, confused. I'm sure you've heard many teens rant about evolution, or radiometric dating, or the Big Bang, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but I don't believe you've heard them rant about the existence of dinosaurs. It just didn't happen. Maybe one or two, but I doubt even that many. "Dinosaurs don't exist" is about as far from the modern creationist movement as the Flat Earth Society.
How they rant about how stupid their teachers are and how they lie and are sinners because they teach biology instead of pure fundamentalist creationism.
Really? Did they say that, or did they say, "because they teach evolution"? Do you understand why changing words for greater rhetorical effect makes it difficult for me to take you seriously?
So its not just kneejerk, it really does happen that way out there.
See what I said about "my point" up above. Even if your alleged teens said exactly what you seem to think, it wouldn't matter, and it would be irrelevant to the superficiality of your argument.
I'm not sure why you see this as an attack on religion...it isn't. It is an attack on teaching poor reasoning skills that largely are continued on through fundamentalist beliefs.
I'm not sure why you think I see this as an attack on religion. I didn't say that I do. I didn't imply that I do. I don't.
I'm sure many fundamentalists have poor reasoning skills. What I do doubt is that the average is much worse than the general population, if at all. (And incidentally, I still consider myself a fundamentalist--but I rarely use the term, since hardly anyone has quite the same definition.)
I was raised in your stereotypical conservative, evangelical Christian home. I was homeschooled through middleschool. I watched Kent Hovind videos in youth group. I went to church camps. After high school, I went to a conservative Christian leadership camp that included lectures from Duane Gish.
I also graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics. (That's a lifetime 4.0 GPA.) I just finished the first year of my Master's applied physics program in semiconductor microelectronics, and am doing an internship at AMD. I don't think I'm a genius, but I'm good at this stuff, and am told so by my classmates and professors.
To accomplish all this, there was no shift away from my upbringing. I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. There were no shackles of dogma to throw off. I didn't have to learn that Science Isn't The Bad Guy, because I was never taught that it was. None of the creationist stuff I was taught growing up affected my scientific reasoning skills--even the arguments I've since decided are complete drivel.
I agree that there's a veritable crap-ton of idiotic drivel being shoveled out by people arguing for creationism. That stuff is accepted by people who don't know better, and it's accepted because they don't have the time or skills to trace through the logic carefully and recognize the mistakes. But the existence of the drivel doesn't cause the lack of skill--it's the other way around!