Oh please. "It was never perfect, it never truly reached its potential, therefore it's a failure and it's all the Christians' fault." That's not only a logical fallacy (ironic coming from one who criticizes others for being "critical-thinking challenged"), but If it wasn't for the Christians, the USA would not exist.
Here is what happens when atheism (which opposes religion) creates a government: Communism, a government which sees its citizens not as human beings, but as bags of random organic goo, resources to be exploited--and why not, since their lives are ultimately meaningless and amount to nothing in the end? It's so trendy to complain about the aristocracy--well that's just what you get when the atheists are in charge: with no ultimate foundation for moral values, they will do whatever they want, and whatever they can, to maintain their power and elite status, no matter the cost to humanity.
There is no human who is not religious. One either worships God or worships his own god: himself. The sin of self-worship is the utter core of the evil in the world today: putting oneself above others is the fundamental problem facing humanity. Oh, and guess what? Christianity teaches that one should love others as oneself, and even to the point of giving one's life for others. Hmm, how about that. But, of course, since every Christian is still human, and still just as broken as any other human being, every Christian still messes up, and the rabid atheists pounce on them for not being perfect, and cite it as evidence to invalidate Christianity.
Of course, that's a generalization and a logical fallacy, but most people don't think critically enough to see through it. But the wolves on Slashdot are keen to pull the wool over the sheep's eyes, and the sheep are happy to mod them up for it.
Let me translate: "If you disagree with me, you should be prohibited from serving in public office. Further, you should be put under house arrest, so you won't be able to influence anyone else against my views."
Now for some truth: Communism, rooted deep in athiesm, resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century--but to those communists, nothing was lost, since without God, humans are nothing but bags of random organic goo, resources to be exploited, since they amount to nothing in the end. On the other hand, it's because of the intrinsic value of human life that is central to Christianity that resulted in the formation of the USA and all its associated values of individual liberty, which have had a strong positive impact on the rest of the world--which you would so grossly trample.
You're nothing but a hypocrite. But of course, "+5 Insightful" on Slashdot.
Some of the greatest intellectual leaders of all time had strong religious faith. It's only in the cult of scientism--in which science itself is practically worshipped as a religion--that religion and reason are said to be incompatible.
You're really going to play it like that? After what you said--which certainly does imply that you believe God doesn't exist--you expect me to believe that you do believe in God? What god do you believe in?
Or are you just using the "you can't even comprehend what I say" excuse to avoid having a discussion? (The condescension was a nice touch, by the way.)
The reason people in the third world have so many children is because of infant mortality and the need for large families to work and make a living. Telling them to have fewer kids would be like telling them to commit suicide.
The point is that, to one who didn't understand the concept of binary, or even of counting, it would seem impossible. It makes perfect sense that a civilization so advanced that it could completely harness the power of a star would have technology so far advanced beyond our own that it would be beyond our current understanding.
It's good that people are thinking beyond what we can see--but this is surely not a good use of money. SETI is bad enough, but this is worse.
The emotional feeling is one thing. But what about this kind of love?
"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous personâ"though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to dieâ"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
That kind of love doesn't propagate any genes. It makes no sense from a Darwinian perspective.
You build a box and try to fit God inside it. When he doesn't fit, you conclude he doesn't exist. The irony is that God created the one who created the box in which God does not fit. I find that you are not even aware of your own presuppositions, therefore you cannot reach a reasonable conclusion. You have been so heavily influenced by atheists and scientism (which is practically worshipped as a religion unto itself) that you have confined your own thinking to a box which you are unwilling to exit, and perhaps even unaware of.
1. You presuppose that if God acts on a prayer, it indicates that he was previously unaware of something. 2. You presuppose that if God is all-knowing and good that he must necessarily enforce what is best for people. 3. You presuppose that, as a finite, relatively insignificant human being, you could possibly know whether and when God intercedes in our world and to what ends. 4. You presuppose that you could even know what is "good" or "best" from the perspective of an all-knowing, all-powerful, universe-creating, life-breathing entity beyond our comprehension.
Your conclusion ("Therefore we find that an all-knowing and good god cannot be influenced by prayers...") is a non sequitur. It's not even a logical conclusion from your assertions. And your assertions are unsubstantiated, anyway.
The very nature of an omnipotent, omniscient entity who exists outside of our plane of existence means that we cannot completely comprehend him; we may only do so to the extent he chooses to reveal himself to us. What you have done is set forth arbitrary specifications for God, and if it seems to you that he does not meet your criteria, you conclude that he must not exist. This is nothing short of absurd. If God exists outside of or above our universe, if he created you and the universe and the very nature of our existence, how could you possibly define the means by which he may exist?
N.B. I am not even arguing that God does exist--I'm simply arguing that your logic is fundamentally flawed because of your presuppositions. Either God is an all-powerful, all-knowing entity--and therefore beyond our comprehension--or he is finite, like us, but with advanced technology--and therefore, presumably, ultimately understandable--or he does not exist at all. If you are arguing based on the presupposition that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, then you must argue that he is far beyond any of your reasoning or standards, and therefore you cannot logically define criteria for proving his existence.
The argument boils down to whether anything can exist beyond our understanding or comprehension: if we can comprehend God, then nothing is ultimately beyond our understanding, and--eventually, perhaps far beyond our lifetimes--we can "find" him, understand him, and even possess similar powers (note that this implies being able to create an entire universe of our own, from nothing). In this case, it's simply a matter of time until he is "discovered"--until then, he either does not exist or we have yet to find him (a conclusion which does not answer the questions, "How?", "Why?", and "From what?"). But on the other hand, if things may exist beyond our understanding, then we can never expect to meet God on our terms, and trying to do so is naive and futile.
I like the fishbowl analogy. (It's not perfect, of course.) The fish's entire universe is inside his fishbowl. He knows nothing outside of it (perhaps it would be useful to declare the fishbowl to be opaque, or at least barely translucent). Now and then something from outside his universe seems to interact with his world--perhaps a hand reaches in, but he cannot discern the source of the hand. The fish cannot comprehend existence outside of his bowl, or outside of water, the very fabric of his existence. Therefore, to him, nothing must exist outside of his world, and nothing must exist outside of water--which, to him, isn't even water, just reality as he knows it. But to the human, clearly the fish is limited
Oh, sure, mod down facts that don't comply with your own agenda. The truth speaks for itself.
How ironic--and hypocritical--for these atheists, who claim to only advocate factual, scientific knowledge, to suppress real, factual evidence.
But it's not surprising. Fundamentalism is dangerous no matter which "side" it's on, because it's about mindlessly submitting to others' agendas. It's not about truth, nor is it about rational thought. Whether it's fundamental Islam, fundamental Christianity, or fundamental atheism, they're all anti-truth and anti-reason. And I say this as a Christian, one who believes that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive--indeed, they are complementary.
Heh. That was one of the most annoying things to me. Societies at war tend to get better at it, not worse. Much better, and very quickly. The notion that a peacetime navy could have better strategists and tacticians than a wartime navy just makes no sense to me at all. I had a hard time suspending disbelief on that issue.
Not necessarily. If people are dying faster than they can be trained, the knowledgable ones will die out, and competency will decline. This happened in WWII, for example, when US Navy pilots, with less maneuverable aircraft, defeated Japanese Zero pilots who had had little training. For example, this page has a detailed essay: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/wwii-naval-pilot-training-426.html
The IJN training programs suffered from an insufficient number of qualified instructors, lack of fuel for extensive flying time, poor maintenance of training aircraft, and shortages of ordnance. There two most critically lacking areas were a continued adherence to traditional adversarial nature of their programs (for every one graduate, there were nine others who did not) and, of course, time. There was never enough time to develop the students’ skills, to practice attack tactics or defensive actions. Most of them arrived in combat squadrons with less than 200 hours in all, by the very end of the war, less than 100 hours. Most had to learn combat skills on the job once assigned to a combat squadron. By then, it is too late and few survived.
I can easily imagine that, after a century of constant war, there would be little to choose from, and little time to train before combat. Peacetime may not give combat experience, but it allows for a lot of training.
No rhythm? No pattern? Why are you only looking for radio signals, for indications of intelligence as defined by yourself?
By my standard, anyone who does not paint his face green and hop on one foot is an irrational fool. By my standard, I have never seen a rational person in my life (including myself), just background noise.
I would argue that the patterns seen in galaxies and stars themselves are quite meaningful, complex, and rhythmic.
And I would argue that that is the most significant message you can find among the stars. The irony is that it's staring you right in the face, you who are so desperate for a sign, yet you don't--or won't--see it.
Then, since you don't see what you want to see, you make up a story to explain why the evidence doesn't match your presuppositions, rather than evaluating the evidence itself.
If you'll allow me to anthropomorphize the universe: the universe is laughing at you, with sadness.
You're exaggerating. No, we can't go back in time and record video of the biblical writers penning with their own hands to conclusively prove who wrote what.
But it's simply not true that there's very little reason to believe that they were written by certain people, especially the books of the NT. Sure, there're lots of skeptics, and anyone who wants to make any theory look bad can focus on weaknesses and exaggerate them. But if you look at the whole picture, there are many reasons to support the authenticity of the books of the Bible.
Of course, many people do not want the Bible to be true, because then it would have authority to make claims on their lives, and they'd have to make changes in their lives. Humans are arrogant: we want to do what we want to do. We don't want anyone telling us what we should or shouldn't do. So if we destroy the credibility of the Bible, we are free to ignore it and do whatever we want without guilt.
The irony is that even the staunchest athiests live and work under systems of thought and morality and ethics--not to mention biological processes and principles--that come from God. They can deny it and claim that these concepts popped into existence out of nowhere, randomly, from goo, but they have a heavier burden of proof than those who claim that God did it.
Athiesm can give no answers, and science can not answer all questions. Without God, life is utterly meaningless, and there is no fundamental basis for any ethical or moral standards. That's why people want to destroy the Bible: because then they have no responsibilties and no guilt. But they are not looking at the other side of the coin: a life truly without meaning or purpose. The implications of that they do not want to face. Something about foxholes and athiests, you know.
No, of course not. God communicated through people, through human beings and human words. The inspiration-by-dictation idea is a red herring, a false dichotomy: that God either dictated Scripture word-for-word or that it's all a fiction, of purely human origin. And athiests say that Christians are narrow-minded! Who says that God couldn't have taken a middle way, using humans to communicate to humans? If God exists, who are we to say what he should or shouldn't do?
If you think about it, it may be that it was in his wisdom that he did this. For example, after the Exodus, when the Israelites were at Mount Sinai, all the people trembled and were afraid when they heard and saw God's presence up on the mountain. How would you feel if the creator of the universe--a being who knows both every star in every galaxy in the universe and every subatomic particle in every atom of every molecule of every hair on your head--approached you directly? I imagine it would indeed be terrifying!
We can't even comprehend the size of the parts of the universe we can see; we can write down estimates of numbers, but we can't truly comprehend it. So how could we expect to truly comprehend a being that is infinitely bigger than the universe?
The sad truth is that human arrogance knows no bounds. Just like in the story of Adam and Eve, we want godlike knowledge, and we actually think we can attain it. Then we look at something like this and realize, we're nowhere near even understanding what we can see. We can't even comprehend things we can see with the naked eye, such as the nature of personality or consciousness or gravity, much less the remotest galaxy billions of light-years away.
But in our arrogance, we say, "Surely we can know all these things soon, and can understand how the universe and ourselves were created--surely there is nothing beyond our understanding; therefore the existence of a being that is larger than what we can see or understand must be impossible. There cannot be an intelligent entity larger and more powerful than ourselves, or than what we can become."
It's like the tower of Babel all over again, just with science instead of bricks.
Time will tell, but we'll all be dust by then. In the meantime, Christ said that the time to repent is now, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Proceed at your own risk. Consider carefully how much you can really be certain of. Keep an open mind and seek the Truth before your time is up.
How ironic that the one who complains most loudly about irrational zealots sounds more like one than those whom he criticizes.
I don't treat Linux as a religion. I do prefer the Free Software ideology, but that's not the point for most people: the point for most people is that Linux works better than Windows for their needs. Even if I didn't care about FOSS, Linux just plain works better in most ways.
You talk about bugs being ignored for years and years? Windows is like the poster child for that problem. With Linux, I can actually file a bug report that the actual developers can see and can actually get fixes--rather than having to wait for the next 3-5 year OS update, which might not even fix it.
The "many eyes" theory is primarily about security flaws in FOSS vs. proprietary software--it's not so much about bugs in general, though it can apply to some extent. And you'd have to be a truly irrational person (like APK) to honestly claim that Windows has a better security record than Linux.
I don't know nor care who Robert Pogson is, and I don't read LinuxInsider. No one said that the Linux community nor its press is free of annoying people--this is planet Earth. Maybe you should read LWN instead, where you can find people who are knowledgable, involved, and just as interested in pragmatism as in ideology.
You're basically just being hyperbolic and making gross generalizations. Linux WORKS great for me. I've been using it full-time as my desktop OS on at least four different systems for nearly a decade, and I've had far less trouble than I ever have had with Windows--and I used at least five different versions of Windows for over a decade before switching. I've never had to reinstall from scratch, and I've never had the system become unusable because of things Windows users suffer, such as viruses, malware, and registry corruption. On the other hand, when I used Windows, I would have to reinstall the OS from scratch every 6-18 months, and worry about any software I downloaded being infected, and deal with registry corruption and IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL BSODs which made the system unbootable (happened so much I remember the exact error!) on a fairly regular basis--while Linux on the same system had no such issues.
No system is perfect, and that includes Linux, the kernel, and any Linux distro you choose. If you expected perfection, then you set yourself up for failure and disappointment--these are computers we're talking about! (Sounds to me like you should have used Debian Stable or an Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL--those don't change for many years at a time, so breakage and regressions are hardly issues.)
To me, Linux is fundamentally about freedom and practicality. I exercise my freedom to choose by choosing to not be subject to Microsoft's whims and incompetence, and choosing to use software which cannot be taken away from me by EULAs or forced upgrades. I also have no viruses or malware to worry about (I'm not saying none exist for Linux--I'm saying it's not an issue in practice). I also have the freedom to configure my environment, UI, and UX to my heart's desire, and keep them the way I set them. You may exercise your freedom by choosing to deal with the problems Windows users' suffer. More power to you: that's what freedom is all about.
But quit with the non sequiturs and falling-sky anecdotes: Linux DOES work, and in many ways it works better than Windows ever has. Perhaps your bad experiences speak more of your incompetence than flaws in Linux, or perhaps you just got an unlucky combination of hardware and immature drivers (which are likely fixed by now, while Windows users are at the mercy of Microsoft and proprietary OEMs). The REALITY is that Linux works wonderfully for many people, usually with far fewer hassles than Windows.
WFM is not a valid response for hardware/driver bugs. If the dev can't reproduce it, then mark it as Incomplete or NEEDSINFO and then leave it alone. Until a bug has been FIXED, it should remain OPEN.
This is the fundamental problem with Ubuntu's bug handling. Compare it to Debian, where bugs may remain open for years, but if they get closed, they are FIXED, and they aren't closed UNTIL they are fixed.
Settle down, cowboy, you're starting to sound like APK.
Your logic is...not. Your silly numbers and "math" show you know little about how the kernel is actually developed. Maybe you should spend more time on LWN than arguing with Slashdotters; they're rubbing off on you.
There is plenty of room to criticize Ubuntu and other distros, but you're the one acting like a lunatic. No Linux distro is perfect, but I'm happily enjoying my Software Freedom and freedom from Microsoft garbage, and have been for nearly a decade now. Now go enjoy your freedom to choose, as well.
Dude, just stop. I have reported many critical Ubuntu bugs to Launchpad--I'm talking about stupid bugs that should never have happened, should never have been released, could quickly be fixed or reverted--but no one at Ubuntu is responsible for fixing them, or for taking the lead on getting the right people to fix it, so nothing happens. That, or 6 months after you report it, a bot says, "Thank you for helping Ubuntu by reporting this bug. Please test the latest version of the software to see if the bug still exists." You confirm it, and 6 months later, same thing. Meanwhile, no actual effort has been expended to investigate or fix the bug. It's like a slap in the face to the bug reporter: it's saying that his time is worthless, when he's already spent time dealing with and reporting the bug.
So get off your high horse. There are plenty of people like me who do exactly that: we file bugs, we complain when they are ignored, we complain when they are not fixed, we complain when stupid regressions appear, we complain when boneheaded decisions are made to release buggy garbage that shouldn't have seen the light of packages.ubuntu.com--but Ubuntu does what it wants to do. New and shiny is more important than stable and reliable and consistent--even for a Long Term Support release, big fat ugly smelly bugs go ignored, and pleas to release the blatantly obvious fix fall on deaf ears.
If it wasn't for dpkg and apt, I'd gladly try another distro. One of these days I'll probably go back to Debian, where at least packages have maintainers who are supposed to be responsible for them, and bug reporters don't get told to test unchanged software over and over again.
I reason that it is much more likely that God exists and created the universe and human beings than it is that the universe spontaneously came into existence, and that life, leading to the inexplicable complexity that is humanity, happened as a result of random occurances.
Sound reasoning reaches the conclusion that one cannot conclusively disprove God's existence any more than one can conclusively prove it. The least faithful view that one could call even slightly reasonable is agnosticism.
The fundamental reason to advocate athiesm is that it allows one to justify any behavior, because without God there is fundamentally no basis for morality. Thus an athiest can do whatever he can get away with and not feel guilt, because, hey, we're fundamentally nothing more than masses of randomly-generated goo which will amount to nothing in the end--therefore human life has no value.
This is why, for example, communist nations heavily restrict religion: without religion, people are nothing more than resources to be used up by those in power and discarded or eliminated whenever they become inconvenient.
Without God, there is no hope for anyone on this planet, and life has no meaning whatsoever. If you truly advocate athiesm, you are promoting nihilism. Look yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning and admit to yourself that you believe there is no purpose or meaning or sense in life, that nothing means anything at all. Then ask yourself, "Now what?" You need to come face-to-face with your utter hopelessness.
You need to go to the very bottom and think about epistemology, about reason and knowledge themselves. If you truly are seeking the Truth, you need to start over with an open mind, one that is truly reasonable.
If you've already made up your mind, if you're sure you already know, then you are truly hopeless, because the only hope anyone has is to seek the Truth.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please. "It was never perfect, it never truly reached its potential, therefore it's a failure and it's all the Christians' fault." That's not only a logical fallacy (ironic coming from one who criticizes others for being "critical-thinking challenged"), but If it wasn't for the Christians, the USA would not exist.
Here is what happens when atheism (which opposes religion) creates a government: Communism, a government which sees its citizens not as human beings, but as bags of random organic goo, resources to be exploited--and why not, since their lives are ultimately meaningless and amount to nothing in the end? It's so trendy to complain about the aristocracy--well that's just what you get when the atheists are in charge: with no ultimate foundation for moral values, they will do whatever they want, and whatever they can, to maintain their power and elite status, no matter the cost to humanity.
There is no human who is not religious. One either worships God or worships his own god: himself. The sin of self-worship is the utter core of the evil in the world today: putting oneself above others is the fundamental problem facing humanity. Oh, and guess what? Christianity teaches that one should love others as oneself, and even to the point of giving one's life for others. Hmm, how about that. But, of course, since every Christian is still human, and still just as broken as any other human being, every Christian still messes up, and the rabid atheists pounce on them for not being perfect, and cite it as evidence to invalidate Christianity.
Of course, that's a generalization and a logical fallacy, but most people don't think critically enough to see through it. But the wolves on Slashdot are keen to pull the wool over the sheep's eyes, and the sheep are happy to mod them up for it.
Let me translate: "If you disagree with me, you should be prohibited from serving in public office. Further, you should be put under house arrest, so you won't be able to influence anyone else against my views."
Now for some truth: Communism, rooted deep in athiesm, resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century--but to those communists, nothing was lost, since without God, humans are nothing but bags of random organic goo, resources to be exploited, since they amount to nothing in the end. On the other hand, it's because of the intrinsic value of human life that is central to Christianity that resulted in the formation of the USA and all its associated values of individual liberty, which have had a strong positive impact on the rest of the world--which you would so grossly trample.
You're nothing but a hypocrite. But of course, "+5 Insightful" on Slashdot.
Some of the greatest intellectual leaders of all time had strong religious faith. It's only in the cult of scientism--in which science itself is practically worshipped as a religion--that religion and reason are said to be incompatible.
Ditto.
How do you know?
"The first child with two daddies -- literally".
Seems to me that outer space is outside the jurisdiction of any government or court. If it's not, then whose is it?
You're really going to play it like that? After what you said--which certainly does imply that you believe God doesn't exist--you expect me to believe that you do believe in God? What god do you believe in?
Or are you just using the "you can't even comprehend what I say" excuse to avoid having a discussion? (The condescension was a nice touch, by the way.)
This deserves to be modded up.
The reason people in the third world have so many children is because of infant mortality and the need for large families to work and make a living. Telling them to have fewer kids would be like telling them to commit suicide.
From where did you obtain your data?
Where did you obtain your data?
The point is that, to one who didn't understand the concept of binary, or even of counting, it would seem impossible. It makes perfect sense that a civilization so advanced that it could completely harness the power of a star would have technology so far advanced beyond our own that it would be beyond our current understanding.
It's good that people are thinking beyond what we can see--but this is surely not a good use of money. SETI is bad enough, but this is worse.
The emotional feeling is one thing. But what about this kind of love?
"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous personâ"though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to dieâ"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
That kind of love doesn't propagate any genes. It makes no sense from a Darwinian perspective.
You build a box and try to fit God inside it. When he doesn't fit, you conclude he doesn't exist. The irony is that God created the one who created the box in which God does not fit. I find that you are not even aware of your own presuppositions, therefore you cannot reach a reasonable conclusion. You have been so heavily influenced by atheists and scientism (which is practically worshipped as a religion unto itself) that you have confined your own thinking to a box which you are unwilling to exit, and perhaps even unaware of.
1. You presuppose that if God acts on a prayer, it indicates that he was previously unaware of something.
2. You presuppose that if God is all-knowing and good that he must necessarily enforce what is best for people.
3. You presuppose that, as a finite, relatively insignificant human being, you could possibly know whether and when God intercedes in our world and to what ends.
4. You presuppose that you could even know what is "good" or "best" from the perspective of an all-knowing, all-powerful, universe-creating, life-breathing entity beyond our comprehension.
Your conclusion ("Therefore we find that an all-knowing and good god cannot be influenced by prayers...") is a non sequitur. It's not even a logical conclusion from your assertions. And your assertions are unsubstantiated, anyway.
The very nature of an omnipotent, omniscient entity who exists outside of our plane of existence means that we cannot completely comprehend him; we may only do so to the extent he chooses to reveal himself to us. What you have done is set forth arbitrary specifications for God, and if it seems to you that he does not meet your criteria, you conclude that he must not exist. This is nothing short of absurd. If God exists outside of or above our universe, if he created you and the universe and the very nature of our existence, how could you possibly define the means by which he may exist?
N.B. I am not even arguing that God does exist--I'm simply arguing that your logic is fundamentally flawed because of your presuppositions. Either God is an all-powerful, all-knowing entity--and therefore beyond our comprehension--or he is finite, like us, but with advanced technology--and therefore, presumably, ultimately understandable--or he does not exist at all. If you are arguing based on the presupposition that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, then you must argue that he is far beyond any of your reasoning or standards, and therefore you cannot logically define criteria for proving his existence.
The argument boils down to whether anything can exist beyond our understanding or comprehension: if we can comprehend God, then nothing is ultimately beyond our understanding, and--eventually, perhaps far beyond our lifetimes--we can "find" him, understand him, and even possess similar powers (note that this implies being able to create an entire universe of our own, from nothing). In this case, it's simply a matter of time until he is "discovered"--until then, he either does not exist or we have yet to find him (a conclusion which does not answer the questions, "How?", "Why?", and "From what?"). But on the other hand, if things may exist beyond our understanding, then we can never expect to meet God on our terms, and trying to do so is naive and futile.
I like the fishbowl analogy. (It's not perfect, of course.) The fish's entire universe is inside his fishbowl. He knows nothing outside of it (perhaps it would be useful to declare the fishbowl to be opaque, or at least barely translucent). Now and then something from outside his universe seems to interact with his world--perhaps a hand reaches in, but he cannot discern the source of the hand. The fish cannot comprehend existence outside of his bowl, or outside of water, the very fabric of his existence. Therefore, to him, nothing must exist outside of his world, and nothing must exist outside of water--which, to him, isn't even water, just reality as he knows it. But to the human, clearly the fish is limited
Oh, sure, mod down facts that don't comply with your own agenda. The truth speaks for itself.
How ironic--and hypocritical--for these atheists, who claim to only advocate factual, scientific knowledge, to suppress real, factual evidence.
But it's not surprising. Fundamentalism is dangerous no matter which "side" it's on, because it's about mindlessly submitting to others' agendas. It's not about truth, nor is it about rational thought. Whether it's fundamental Islam, fundamental Christianity, or fundamental atheism, they're all anti-truth and anti-reason. And I say this as a Christian, one who believes that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive--indeed, they are complementary.
Yeah, and what about the Concordia?
Heh. That was one of the most annoying things to me. Societies at war tend to get better at it, not worse. Much better, and very quickly. The notion that a peacetime navy could have better strategists and tacticians than a wartime navy just makes no sense to me at all. I had a hard time suspending disbelief on that issue.
Not necessarily. If people are dying faster than they can be trained, the knowledgable ones will die out, and competency will decline. This happened in WWII, for example, when US Navy pilots, with less maneuverable aircraft, defeated Japanese Zero pilots who had had little training. For example, this page has a detailed essay: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/wwii-naval-pilot-training-426.html
The IJN training programs suffered from an insufficient number of qualified instructors, lack of fuel for extensive flying time, poor maintenance of training aircraft, and shortages of ordnance. There two most critically lacking areas were a continued adherence to traditional adversarial nature of their programs (for every one graduate, there were nine others who did not) and, of course, time. There was never enough time to develop the students’ skills, to practice attack tactics or defensive actions. Most of them arrived in combat squadrons with less than 200 hours in all, by the very end of the war, less than 100 hours. Most had to learn combat skills on the job once assigned to a combat squadron. By then, it is too late and few survived.
I can easily imagine that, after a century of constant war, there would be little to choose from, and little time to train before combat. Peacetime may not give combat experience, but it allows for a lot of training.
No rhythm? No pattern? Why are you only looking for radio signals, for indications of intelligence as defined by yourself?
By my standard, anyone who does not paint his face green and hop on one foot is an irrational fool. By my standard, I have never seen a rational person in my life (including myself), just background noise.
I would argue that the patterns seen in galaxies and stars themselves are quite meaningful, complex, and rhythmic.
And I would argue that that is the most significant message you can find among the stars. The irony is that it's staring you right in the face, you who are so desperate for a sign, yet you don't--or won't--see it.
Then, since you don't see what you want to see, you make up a story to explain why the evidence doesn't match your presuppositions, rather than evaluating the evidence itself.
If you'll allow me to anthropomorphize the universe: the universe is laughing at you, with sadness.
You're exaggerating. No, we can't go back in time and record video of the biblical writers penning with their own hands to conclusively prove who wrote what.
But it's simply not true that there's very little reason to believe that they were written by certain people, especially the books of the NT. Sure, there're lots of skeptics, and anyone who wants to make any theory look bad can focus on weaknesses and exaggerate them. But if you look at the whole picture, there are many reasons to support the authenticity of the books of the Bible.
Of course, many people do not want the Bible to be true, because then it would have authority to make claims on their lives, and they'd have to make changes in their lives. Humans are arrogant: we want to do what we want to do. We don't want anyone telling us what we should or shouldn't do. So if we destroy the credibility of the Bible, we are free to ignore it and do whatever we want without guilt.
The irony is that even the staunchest athiests live and work under systems of thought and morality and ethics--not to mention biological processes and principles--that come from God. They can deny it and claim that these concepts popped into existence out of nowhere, randomly, from goo, but they have a heavier burden of proof than those who claim that God did it.
Athiesm can give no answers, and science can not answer all questions. Without God, life is utterly meaningless, and there is no fundamental basis for any ethical or moral standards. That's why people want to destroy the Bible: because then they have no responsibilties and no guilt. But they are not looking at the other side of the coin: a life truly without meaning or purpose. The implications of that they do not want to face. Something about foxholes and athiests, you know.
No, of course not. God communicated through people, through human beings and human words. The inspiration-by-dictation idea is a red herring, a false dichotomy: that God either dictated Scripture word-for-word or that it's all a fiction, of purely human origin. And athiests say that Christians are narrow-minded! Who says that God couldn't have taken a middle way, using humans to communicate to humans? If God exists, who are we to say what he should or shouldn't do?
If you think about it, it may be that it was in his wisdom that he did this. For example, after the Exodus, when the Israelites were at Mount Sinai, all the people trembled and were afraid when they heard and saw God's presence up on the mountain. How would you feel if the creator of the universe--a being who knows both every star in every galaxy in the universe and every subatomic particle in every atom of every molecule of every hair on your head--approached you directly? I imagine it would indeed be terrifying!
We can't even comprehend the size of the parts of the universe we can see; we can write down estimates of numbers, but we can't truly comprehend it. So how could we expect to truly comprehend a being that is infinitely bigger than the universe?
The sad truth is that human arrogance knows no bounds. Just like in the story of Adam and Eve, we want godlike knowledge, and we actually think we can attain it. Then we look at something like this and realize, we're nowhere near even understanding what we can see. We can't even comprehend things we can see with the naked eye, such as the nature of personality or consciousness or gravity, much less the remotest galaxy billions of light-years away.
But in our arrogance, we say, "Surely we can know all these things soon, and can understand how the universe and ourselves were created--surely there is nothing beyond our understanding; therefore the existence of a being that is larger than what we can see or understand must be impossible. There cannot be an intelligent entity larger and more powerful than ourselves, or than what we can become."
It's like the tower of Babel all over again, just with science instead of bricks.
Time will tell, but we'll all be dust by then. In the meantime, Christ said that the time to repent is now, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Proceed at your own risk. Consider carefully how much you can really be certain of. Keep an open mind and seek the Truth before your time is up.
How ironic that the one who complains most loudly about irrational zealots sounds more like one than those whom he criticizes.
I don't treat Linux as a religion. I do prefer the Free Software ideology, but that's not the point for most people: the point for most people is that Linux works better than Windows for their needs. Even if I didn't care about FOSS, Linux just plain works better in most ways.
You talk about bugs being ignored for years and years? Windows is like the poster child for that problem. With Linux, I can actually file a bug report that the actual developers can see and can actually get fixes--rather than having to wait for the next 3-5 year OS update, which might not even fix it.
The "many eyes" theory is primarily about security flaws in FOSS vs. proprietary software--it's not so much about bugs in general, though it can apply to some extent. And you'd have to be a truly irrational person (like APK) to honestly claim that Windows has a better security record than Linux.
I don't know nor care who Robert Pogson is, and I don't read LinuxInsider. No one said that the Linux community nor its press is free of annoying people--this is planet Earth. Maybe you should read LWN instead, where you can find people who are knowledgable, involved, and just as interested in pragmatism as in ideology.
You're basically just being hyperbolic and making gross generalizations. Linux WORKS great for me. I've been using it full-time as my desktop OS on at least four different systems for nearly a decade, and I've had far less trouble than I ever have had with Windows--and I used at least five different versions of Windows for over a decade before switching. I've never had to reinstall from scratch, and I've never had the system become unusable because of things Windows users suffer, such as viruses, malware, and registry corruption. On the other hand, when I used Windows, I would have to reinstall the OS from scratch every 6-18 months, and worry about any software I downloaded being infected, and deal with registry corruption and IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL BSODs which made the system unbootable (happened so much I remember the exact error!) on a fairly regular basis--while Linux on the same system had no such issues.
No system is perfect, and that includes Linux, the kernel, and any Linux distro you choose. If you expected perfection, then you set yourself up for failure and disappointment--these are computers we're talking about! (Sounds to me like you should have used Debian Stable or an Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL--those don't change for many years at a time, so breakage and regressions are hardly issues.)
To me, Linux is fundamentally about freedom and practicality. I exercise my freedom to choose by choosing to not be subject to Microsoft's whims and incompetence, and choosing to use software which cannot be taken away from me by EULAs or forced upgrades. I also have no viruses or malware to worry about (I'm not saying none exist for Linux--I'm saying it's not an issue in practice). I also have the freedom to configure my environment, UI, and UX to my heart's desire, and keep them the way I set them. You may exercise your freedom by choosing to deal with the problems Windows users' suffer. More power to you: that's what freedom is all about.
But quit with the non sequiturs and falling-sky anecdotes: Linux DOES work, and in many ways it works better than Windows ever has. Perhaps your bad experiences speak more of your incompetence than flaws in Linux, or perhaps you just got an unlucky combination of hardware and immature drivers (which are likely fixed by now, while Windows users are at the mercy of Microsoft and proprietary OEMs). The REALITY is that Linux works wonderfully for many people, usually with far fewer hassles than Windows.
WFM is not a valid response for hardware/driver bugs. If the dev can't reproduce it, then mark it as Incomplete or NEEDSINFO and then leave it alone. Until a bug has been FIXED, it should remain OPEN.
This is the fundamental problem with Ubuntu's bug handling. Compare it to Debian, where bugs may remain open for years, but if they get closed, they are FIXED, and they aren't closed UNTIL they are fixed.
Settle down, cowboy, you're starting to sound like APK.
Your logic is...not. Your silly numbers and "math" show you know little about how the kernel is actually developed. Maybe you should spend more time on LWN than arguing with Slashdotters; they're rubbing off on you.
There is plenty of room to criticize Ubuntu and other distros, but you're the one acting like a lunatic. No Linux distro is perfect, but I'm happily enjoying my Software Freedom and freedom from Microsoft garbage, and have been for nearly a decade now. Now go enjoy your freedom to choose, as well.
Dude, just stop. I have reported many critical Ubuntu bugs to Launchpad--I'm talking about stupid bugs that should never have happened, should never have been released, could quickly be fixed or reverted--but no one at Ubuntu is responsible for fixing them, or for taking the lead on getting the right people to fix it, so nothing happens. That, or 6 months after you report it, a bot says, "Thank you for helping Ubuntu by reporting this bug. Please test the latest version of the software to see if the bug still exists." You confirm it, and 6 months later, same thing. Meanwhile, no actual effort has been expended to investigate or fix the bug. It's like a slap in the face to the bug reporter: it's saying that his time is worthless, when he's already spent time dealing with and reporting the bug.
So get off your high horse. There are plenty of people like me who do exactly that: we file bugs, we complain when they are ignored, we complain when they are not fixed, we complain when stupid regressions appear, we complain when boneheaded decisions are made to release buggy garbage that shouldn't have seen the light of packages.ubuntu.com--but Ubuntu does what it wants to do. New and shiny is more important than stable and reliable and consistent--even for a Long Term Support release, big fat ugly smelly bugs go ignored, and pleas to release the blatantly obvious fix fall on deaf ears.
If it wasn't for dpkg and apt, I'd gladly try another distro. One of these days I'll probably go back to Debian, where at least packages have maintainers who are supposed to be responsible for them, and bug reporters don't get told to test unchanged software over and over again.
I reason that it is much more likely that God exists and created the universe and human beings than it is that the universe spontaneously came into existence, and that life, leading to the inexplicable complexity that is humanity, happened as a result of random occurances.
Sound reasoning reaches the conclusion that one cannot conclusively disprove God's existence any more than one can conclusively prove it. The least faithful view that one could call even slightly reasonable is agnosticism.
The fundamental reason to advocate athiesm is that it allows one to justify any behavior, because without God there is fundamentally no basis for morality. Thus an athiest can do whatever he can get away with and not feel guilt, because, hey, we're fundamentally nothing more than masses of randomly-generated goo which will amount to nothing in the end--therefore human life has no value.
This is why, for example, communist nations heavily restrict religion: without religion, people are nothing more than resources to be used up by those in power and discarded or eliminated whenever they become inconvenient.
Without God, there is no hope for anyone on this planet, and life has no meaning whatsoever. If you truly advocate athiesm, you are promoting nihilism. Look yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning and admit to yourself that you believe there is no purpose or meaning or sense in life, that nothing means anything at all. Then ask yourself, "Now what?" You need to come face-to-face with your utter hopelessness.
You need to go to the very bottom and think about epistemology, about reason and knowledge themselves. If you truly are seeking the Truth, you need to start over with an open mind, one that is truly reasonable.
If you've already made up your mind, if you're sure you already know, then you are truly hopeless, because the only hope anyone has is to seek the Truth.