But...Biblical faith is trust. In spite of popular misconception, it does not mean "blind belief".
Take Acts 17:31 (NASB), where the word for "faith" is translated as "proof".
"because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished
proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."
Or take Romans 3:3, where a reference is made to the "pistis" of God, translated "faithfulness".
"What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the
faithfulness of God, will it?"
There is Hebrews 11:1 to deal with:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
However, if you look at the list of pillars of the faith that follows, it's clear this does not mean faith is belief without evidence. The list includes people who had direct communication with God or who had seen miracles prior to their acts of faith. Their faith consisted of trusting something that had been proven trustworthy.
If you're going to use the word in the context of Christianity, you can't use the definition "blind belief".
Anyone who rejects evidence on the basis of their "faith" to the contrary is an unmitigated idiot, and they're not using a Christian definition of faith.
There wasn't really any lava in 1980, just pyroclastics. Since that time, new lava domes have been forming, made of a high-silica lava more viscous than tooth paste--this stuff doesn't really flow, it just slowly pushes its way up to the surface.
BTW, before this discussion gets any further, I was JOKING in my original post. The reason the government builds roads is because it has Eminent Domain, i.e., the right to take private property and pay only the reasonable cost.
Obviously, since the free market does not have that right, it would be too costly to build roads.
What you're saying is that eminent domain allows the government to overcome the monopolistic price inflation that property-owners would otherwise engage in. Yes, that's part of it, but that problem could be overcome by regulation--the government could mandate that property owners sell to Road Building Co. for the "reasonable amount" just as easily as to the government.
The "biggest" reason the government builds the roads is the tragedy of the commons. I suppose we could manage it by making everything a toll road, but that would suck. The inconvenience (combined with the overhead costs of the toll booths) means we like government-built, tax-supported roads better.
Note that the government isn't stepping in due to a failure of the free market, but because the market isn't free. Intervention is required to overcome monopoly ownership of the property involved (eminent domain), and intervention is required to make everyone pay for what they use (tax it).
Interesting...You're saying that the state's interest in cases of murder is tax-based.
By that reasoning, wouldn't it be a crime against the state to take any action that lowers another's income?
Come to think of it, wouldn't it be a less serious crime to murder a poor man than to murder a rich man? Could you get a two-for-one deal, where you kill two men who make half as much as another, without any increase in your sentence?
I'll chime in. IANAL, and I have no idea whether allofmp3 actually is in a gray area, or is definitely illegal. However, your analogies don't seem too good.
It's illegal to possess dope in America--it's not illegal to possess illegally-copied music, AFAIK. It's the act of copying or distributing that's illegal.
The marriage might actually be upheld, especially if it could be shown there's no coercion involved.
Yes, Newtonian physics was ridiculously accurate, within the bounds of our ancestors' measurement precision. In fact, it was so accurate that we still use it today. When we looked closer, we found situations where it doesn't work so well, so we had to expand the theory to fit those situations. Specifically, we can't use Newtonian physics when there are extreme amounts of energy (relativity) or when the scale is extremely small (QM).
But that doesn't make Newtownian physics invalid; it's correct, as an approximation. The maths of relativity and QM do reduce to Newtownian math outside those extremeties.
To respond to your implication, no, this does not mean that QM is perfect. Just as we refined & expanded Newtownian physics, we may well have to refine & expand quantum mechanics. That's not a weakness, per se; QM still works almost everywhere we look. (The major exception is quantum gravity, the synthesis of relativity and QM; we don't have that figured out.) But QM still works astoundingly well. I can't imagine it will ever be shown wrong. Incomplete, sure, but not wrong.
Numbers should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt
As you suggest, I ran the figures for a grain of salt through the impact effects calculator.
Specifically, I used a 0.0003 meter grain of salt with a density of 2165 kg/m^3 (suggested by the I'm Feeling Lucky result for how big is a grain of salt) at 17km/s and 45 degree impact, and dropped it in 1000 meters of water.
Results
Impact Energy: This projectile is so small that it burns up during atmospheric traverse
Crater Formed in Seafloor: Are you kidding?
Earthquake: It burns up in the freakin' atmosphere!
Radiant Flux at 100 km: You're an idiot.
I really don't see what you're so worried about.
Re:I refuse to finish reading this post.
on
Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 1
It's amazing how infectioi those i's can be.
I refuse to finish reading this post.
on
Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 1
It is true that scientific theories and hypothesii
Hypothesii? Hypothesii??
I'm afraid I can't keep reading until you provide me with a corrected transcript.
[physics laws] govern the behavior of the entire universe.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Physics laws provide a useful approximation. They are not exact, and they don't govern anything. The best they can do is tell you what will happen in a certain situation. And even then it only does it approximately.
I don't think you're understanding my point. Perhaps it's my fault for using "physical law" in a (potentially) non-standard way. I thought my comment, "That's not to say that we have stated the laws correctly," would make clear the definition I was using.
I know full well that the laws we write about in text books and journal articles are only approximations; good heavens, I had that pounded into me while I was earning my degree in physics and math. I rather doubt we will ever be able to make a single statement of "natural law" that fully describes its subject matter with complete precision and accuracy.
In short, you just said, "Physics laws provide a useful approximation." Approximation of what? Of the actual patterns in which matter/energy behaves, patterns which flow out of the nature of the universe. The physical laws I'm talking about are the principles which determine those patterns, principles which are indeed objective.
That's not to say that we have stated the laws correctly, but the whole of science is founded on the assumption that there are real, rational, understandable physical laws.
If something is too complex for us to predict, we won't do it. There are plenty of things which are completely unpredictable. Some of them we can predict statistically (weather), others not at all. There are also things which we can predict very accurately.
That's fine; that's in complete agreement with what I said. The existence of unpredictable, chaotic, random events is consistent with the existence of real, rational, understandable[1] physical laws.
Still, I'm actually not aware of anything unpredictable in an unpredictable way. That is, an electron acts randomly, but it does so according to its wave function (whether we have that function quite right or not); it does not behave randomly random, if you catch my meaning.
Yes, these laws are simply the properties of matter, but that does nothing to tell us how they could come to be.
Agreed. However, you are making a fundamental assumption. That is, that matter has been created by someone for some purpose.
Wrong. I'm not making that assumption. I haven't said or implied that I'm any kind of theist; I actually am a Christian, and do believe everything was made by the biblical God for a particular purpose, but those conclusions have nothing to do with the argument I'm making.
Matter is simple enough that it doesn't need to have been created; as you put it, it just is.
I respectfully submit that you've completely begged the question. That statement contains a massive--and to my knowledge unsupportable--assumption. What's worse, you're trying to use that assumption as a response to my efforts to point out that assumption.[2]
By what metric do you measure the simplicity of matter, and on what basis do you state that it is simple enough just to be?
However, the concept of a "God" is enormously complex. It's not like the concept of "matter". Matter doesn't do anything; it just has certain properties which cause it to do certain very simple things. Most of the time, lots of simple things abiding by simple rules can form very complex systems, which is what our world is.
I think you're making more unjustified assumptions. We don't know the princples by which matter can exist; we don't know either how it was formed or how it just is; even if true, quantum theory's guess of a big vacuum fluctuation doesn't tell us how or why quantum theory is valid.
Not in the least. The laws of physics do not exist only in the human brain; they govern the behavior of the entire universe. That is how they are all-powerful; everything is bound by them.
That's not to say that we have stated the laws correctly, but the whole of science is founded on the assumption that there are real, rational, understandable physical laws.
Yes, these laws are simply the properties of matter, but that does nothing to tell us how they could come to be. They just are. Before the Big Bang could occur, the rules governing it had to exist. (Or, not before, they just spontaneously generated themselves.)
The principles that our mathematical models seek to describe just are. And saying that is no better than saying, "God just is; nothing made him."
I didn't say that free P2P+ads isn't viable model--I don't really have an opinion on that. The point is that right now, most P2P companies aren't middle-men, because they're not paying the artists whose music they're distributing.
I realize that restraining bad behavior isn't the same as displaying good behavior. That doesn't mean there's any justification for the grandparent's accusation against conservative Christians as a group.
Slashdot Mirror
Take Acts 17:31 (NASB), where the word for "faith" is translated as "proof". Or take Romans 3:3, where a reference is made to the "pistis" of God, translated "faithfulness". There is Hebrews 11:1 to deal with: However, if you look at the list of pillars of the faith that follows, it's clear this does not mean faith is belief without evidence. The list includes people who had direct communication with God or who had seen miracles prior to their acts of faith. Their faith consisted of trusting something that had been proven trustworthy.
If you're going to use the word in the context of Christianity, you can't use the definition "blind belief".
Anyone who rejects evidence on the basis of their "faith" to the contrary is an unmitigated idiot, and they're not using a Christian definition of faith.
Perhaps the intent was to acknowledge that Webspeak is in some sense part of the English language. By "English" the poster meant "English proper".
There wasn't really any lava in 1980, just pyroclastics. Since that time, new lava domes have been forming, made of a high-silica lava more viscous than tooth paste--this stuff doesn't really flow, it just slowly pushes its way up to the surface.
Dang, I hate it when a smack-down back-fires.
Uh, dude? You do know that global warming isn't contested, right? That the argument is over the influence of mankind on global warming...right?
Do you think this will allow me finally to identify the species of my mother-in-law?
BTW, before this discussion gets any further, I was JOKING in my original post. The reason the government builds roads is because it has Eminent Domain, i.e., the right to take private property and pay only the reasonable cost.
Obviously, since the free market does not have that right, it would be too costly to build roads.
What you're saying is that eminent domain allows the government to overcome the monopolistic price inflation that property-owners would otherwise engage in. Yes, that's part of it, but that problem could be overcome by regulation--the government could mandate that property owners sell to Road Building Co. for the "reasonable amount" just as easily as to the government.
The "biggest" reason the government builds the roads is the tragedy of the commons. I suppose we could manage it by making everything a toll road, but that would suck. The inconvenience (combined with the overhead costs of the toll booths) means we like government-built, tax-supported roads better.
Note that the government isn't stepping in due to a failure of the free market, but because the market isn't free. Intervention is required to overcome monopoly ownership of the property involved (eminent domain), and intervention is required to make everyone pay for what they use (tax it).
Interesting...You're saying that the state's interest in cases of murder is tax-based. By that reasoning, wouldn't it be a crime against the state to take any action that lowers another's income? Come to think of it, wouldn't it be a less serious crime to murder a poor man than to murder a rich man? Could you get a two-for-one deal, where you kill two men who make half as much as another, without any increase in your sentence?
Hmm, good point. Assuming those seizures are firmly based in law, the same principle should apply.
I'll chime in. IANAL, and I have no idea whether allofmp3 actually is in a gray area, or is definitely illegal. However, your analogies don't seem too good.
It's illegal to possess dope in America--it's not illegal to possess illegally-copied music, AFAIK. It's the act of copying or distributing that's illegal.
The marriage might actually be upheld, especially if it could be shown there's no coercion involved.
McGuyver can do the same thing using nothing more than belly button lint, a broken LCD watch, and a hairpin. All fitting inside a matchbook, no less.
You're out of date. Nowadays, he would need a little naquadah to finish the job.
Of course, it would only be useful for jammin' to the latest Goa'uld pop hits.
Yes, Newtonian physics was ridiculously accurate, within the bounds of our ancestors' measurement precision. In fact, it was so accurate that we still use it today. When we looked closer, we found situations where it doesn't work so well, so we had to expand the theory to fit those situations. Specifically, we can't use Newtonian physics when there are extreme amounts of energy (relativity) or when the scale is extremely small (QM).
But that doesn't make Newtownian physics invalid; it's correct, as an approximation. The maths of relativity and QM do reduce to Newtownian math outside those extremeties.
To respond to your implication, no, this does not mean that QM is perfect. Just as we refined & expanded Newtownian physics, we may well have to refine & expand quantum mechanics. That's not a weakness, per se; QM still works almost everywhere we look. (The major exception is quantum gravity, the synthesis of relativity and QM; we don't have that figured out.) But QM still works astoundingly well. I can't imagine it will ever be shown wrong. Incomplete, sure, but not wrong.
Specifically, I used a 0.0003 meter grain of salt with a density of 2165 kg/m^3 (suggested by the I'm Feeling Lucky result for how big is a grain of salt) at 17km/s and 45 degree impact, and dropped it in 1000 meters of water.
Results
- Impact Energy: This projectile is so small that it burns up during atmospheric traverse
- Crater Formed in Seafloor: Are you kidding?
- Earthquake: It burns up in the freakin' atmosphere!
- Radiant Flux at 100 km: You're an idiot.
I really don't see what you're so worried about.It's amazing how infectioi those i's can be.
It is true that scientific theories and hypothesii
Hypothesii? Hypothesii??
I'm afraid I can't keep reading until you provide me with a corrected transcript.
I don't think you're understanding my point. Perhaps it's my fault for using "physical law" in a (potentially) non-standard way. I thought my comment, "That's not to say that we have stated the laws correctly," would make clear the definition I was using.
I know full well that the laws we write about in text books and journal articles are only approximations; good heavens, I had that pounded into me while I was earning my degree in physics and math. I rather doubt we will ever be able to make a single statement of "natural law" that fully describes its subject matter with complete precision and accuracy.
In short, you just said, "Physics laws provide a useful approximation." Approximation of what? Of the actual patterns in which matter/energy behaves, patterns which flow out of the nature of the universe. The physical laws I'm talking about are the principles which determine those patterns, principles which are indeed objective.
That's fine; that's in complete agreement with what I said. The existence of unpredictable, chaotic, random events is consistent with the existence of real, rational, understandable[1] physical laws.
Still, I'm actually not aware of anything unpredictable in an unpredictable way. That is, an electron acts randomly, but it does so according to its wave function (whether we have that function quite right or not); it does not behave randomly random, if you catch my meaning.
Wrong. I'm not making that assumption. I haven't said or implied that I'm any kind of theist; I actually am a Christian, and do believe everything was made by the biblical God for a particular purpose, but those conclusions have nothing to do with the argument I'm making.
I respectfully submit that you've completely begged the question. That statement contains a massive--and to my knowledge unsupportable--assumption. What's worse, you're trying to use that assumption as a response to my efforts to point out that assumption.[2]
By what metric do you measure the simplicity of matter, and on what basis do you state that it is simple enough just to be?
I think you're making more unjustified assumptions. We don't know the princples by which matter can exist; we don't know either how it was formed or how it just is; even if true, quantum theory's guess of a big vacuum fluctuation doesn't tell us how or why quantum theory is valid.
Not in the least. The laws of physics do not exist only in the human brain; they govern the behavior of the entire universe. That is how they are all-powerful; everything is bound by them.
That's not to say that we have stated the laws correctly, but the whole of science is founded on the assumption that there are real, rational, understandable physical laws.
Yes, these laws are simply the properties of matter, but that does nothing to tell us how they could come to be. They just are. Before the Big Bang could occur, the rules governing it had to exist. (Or, not before, they just spontaneously generated themselves.)
The principles that our mathematical models seek to describe just are. And saying that is no better than saying, "God just is; nothing made him."
Who created the laws of physics, and how did they become all-powerful?
It's brilliant! As long as our subject races don't have any Mac-compatible computers, it can't fail!
That'll teach me not to hit Preview.
I didn't say that free P2P+ads isn't viable model--I don't really have an opinion on that. The point is that right now, most P2P companies aren't middle-men, because they're not paying the artists whose music they're distributing.
If their "competition" is the music industry, then their product is something to which they don't own the rights.
If it's not the music industry, then you're talking out your ass.
I realize that restraining bad behavior isn't the same as displaying good behavior. That doesn't mean there's any justification for the grandparent's accusation against conservative Christians as a group.
Haven't seen too much of the spirit of charity on display in the latest election, have we?
When you choose not to do something--act spitefully--how do you put it on display?
If you see five people speaking angrily, there may be a thousand restraining themselves.
I wonder if this could be used in some way for parachutes.
Step 1: Flatten self into a 1mm-thick sheet.
Step 2... Uh, actually, we seem to be running into a problem at step 1.