Chance? Chance has nothing to do with it. Perfectly reasonable scientific laws. Given the average ingredients in the universe, some energy and enough time (I mean a little more than the biblical 6000 years or whatever, something like 1 billion years before the process gets going) life will most likely happen. Life does not happen by chance, anymore than saying that an apple thrown to the air falls "by chance". Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxigen and Nitrogen (ok, a bit of Phosphorous and other smaller components) readily form the building blocks of life, add to that energy and wait enough, soon enough you hear the patter of little feet.
To argue against the existance of God, (or a God) even through logic first requires that the nature of God is known. If you talk to most Athiests, they will confirm that if "God" or "A God" was to turn up on Earth tomorrow, they would certainly believe (provided of course that reasonable proof was given to them).
Except for the fact that under most rules of discourse, the burden of proof lies in the person making extraordinary claims. By your same logic, it would make sense to suspend disbelief in the existance of unicorns, superman, and super intelligent shades of the color blue. It is not reasonable to believe in the existance of any of these, and sure, I'll change my belief when I see some evidence, but meanwhile AFAIK they don't exist.
Now, having said that, there ARE some arguments against the existance of God that to me sound perfectly reasonble, for that I take a more objectivist tack, starting from a metaphysics that my senses (in general) don't deceive me, that my senses and brain are the only means I have of observing reality, and thus mystic insight is mere allucination. Reality is real. There's no reason at all to believe in God, we don't need it to explain anything, and the mere God of the voids (the God that fills in the gaps of what we currently don't know) is just silly.
Good luck finding the book, I discovered it in my University's library, but I did find a used copy through Amazon a few years back.
Sure, there are dumb people on both sides of the God argument. There's also intelligent and educated people on both sides of the argument. I've had great discussions with very intelligent and educated theists (including Jesuits at University)
Where the difference lies is that there are few "atheists by faith", it is religion that requires faith, which almost by definition, is the abscence of verifiable proof or reason. It requires a measure of self-delusion, an otherwise consistently intelligent and rational person (e.g. Einstein) can still compartamentalize to the point of deluding himself that some supernatural (a loaded word on its own right) being exists. A good book to read on this subject is Wallace Matson's "The Existance of God", in which after very careful consideration of all arguments pro and con, concludes that one cannot reasonably believe in a deity, and that all discussions on the subject end up in the discussion of blind faith. One of my favorite phrases (and one I live by) is: "You cannot checkmate a man who refuses to play chess", if you refuse to follow the rules of logic and reason I cannot win a logical and reasonable argument with you.
Nice one, argument by authority: Einstein believed in God, therefore God exists. May I suggest a course in simple logic? The vast majority of those who claim not to believe, and in particular those who pretend to have difficulty comprehending Creationism , are generally the less intelligent and less well educated members of our species.
Huh? do you have some source reference to back this up? I would probably imagine the opposite to be true, just thinking of the masses of extremely fanatically religous, uneducated people around the world disproves your argument.
I tried it, and while I was impressed with its workings, I was less that impressed with its suggestion that I move. I live in a new subdivision, so my street isn't on the map, so it suggested another street with a different (though similar) name in another zip code.
It was on the gossip column on the last page of eweek 3 weeks ago or so. Bush announced his candidate for the job the next day, I also heard similar things about other cabinet possitions.
Sure, it takes a long time to design a replacement from scratch, but I suggest we replace it with another copy of the same (and start working on a replacement for that one 5 years before it is due to come down), economies of scale and all. Shuttle trips are so expensive (among other things) because the shuttle is a limited resource (becoming more limited as they burn themeselves), if we had continued building more shuttles their price would have come down. Same thing with the HST.
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but most options I've seen ask to replace Hubble with something newly designed. Why this seems good, and if we had the money I could see it, I haven't heard the alternative:
Why not replace it with a brand new hubble, using the design of the original? I.e. reduce the costs of design, research and development by reusing what we already know works, of course use some obvious improvements (including avoiding the optics errors), but only replace something in the design if a better, proven, easy-to-upgrade or off-the-shelf alternative has been developed since Hubble was first designed/deployed.
Seriously. Everybody conveniently ignores these two ammendments, which IMHO are the most important ones.
But the press, staunch defenders of the 1st ignore them; the right, staunch defenders of the 2nd ignore them; the left, staunch defenders of the 4th ignore them.
I shiver at the state of the nation, but what is a man to do? Vote Libertarian? Hell yes!
Except for the fact that this is his best researched book yet, and unlike the others, which have a lot more fantasy than science fiction this one has tons of footnotes supporting its assumptions.
The book is also a good read (if a bit preachy), but it's conclusion is the most important thing about the book: the message that one must be skeptical, and that well meaning people can be knowing or unknowingly biased to support a scientific theory without much regard to its validity.
Theoretically...If you have one single processor and one single hard drive and one single memory bus... parallel is SLOWER, because it'll take the time it will take PLUS the time it takes multitasking everything. Parallel processing in modern operating systems is good because it a) simplifies designs (tasks can be made to do one thing and do it well), b) makes ui more responsive which is important to those using it and c) gives different apps that all require cpu a chance at it.
However, if I have a complete process, made up of many tasks, and I need ALL of them to be done as soon as possible, serial is much faster.
Even with multiple processors, if your tasks are I/O bound, you still have the same problem, a processor may be totally idle while the other one is busy.
For any field: having a degree in it, from a well respected university is probably helpful (but not necessary) to land the first jobs, think of it as a shortcut to experience. After a few years on the market your job experience is much more important.
I remember in early job interviews (10 years ago) all they asked was about my schooling. In the past few years it is rarely (if ever) mentioned.
So, if you already have some experience, don't attend school just to get the extra line on your resume. Though there are other reasons to get a "formal" education.
Here's one for ya'! I'm an atheist with strong belief in conservative policies when it comes to public policy and fairly liberal policies when it comes to person freedom. What do they call me? (Seriously.. I've wondered this myself..) Independent?
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Chance? Chance has nothing to do with it. Perfectly reasonable scientific laws. Given the average ingredients in the universe, some energy and enough time (I mean a little more than the biblical 6000 years or whatever, something like 1 billion years before the process gets going) life will most likely happen. Life does not happen by chance, anymore than saying that an apple thrown to the air falls "by chance". Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxigen and Nitrogen (ok, a bit of Phosphorous and other smaller components) readily form the building blocks of life, add to that energy and wait enough, soon enough you hear the patter of little feet.
To argue against the existance of God, (or a God) even through logic first requires that the nature of God is known. If you talk to most Athiests, they will confirm that if "God" or "A God" was to turn up on Earth tomorrow, they would certainly believe (provided of course that reasonable proof was given to them).
Except for the fact that under most rules of discourse, the burden of proof lies in the person making extraordinary claims. By your same logic, it would make sense to suspend disbelief in the existance of unicorns, superman, and super intelligent shades of the color blue. It is not reasonable to believe in the existance of any of these, and sure, I'll change my belief when I see some evidence, but meanwhile AFAIK they don't exist.
Now, having said that, there ARE some arguments against the existance of God that to me sound perfectly reasonble, for that I take a more objectivist tack, starting from a metaphysics that my senses (in general) don't deceive me, that my senses and brain are the only means I have of observing reality, and thus mystic insight is mere allucination. Reality is real. There's no reason at all to believe in God, we don't need it to explain anything, and the mere God of the voids (the God that fills in the gaps of what we currently don't know) is just silly.
Good luck finding the book, I discovered it in my University's library, but I did find a used copy through Amazon a few years back.
Sure, there are dumb people on both sides of the God argument. There's also intelligent and educated people on both sides of the argument. I've had great discussions with very intelligent and educated theists (including Jesuits at University)
Where the difference lies is that there are few "atheists by faith", it is religion that requires faith, which almost by definition, is the abscence of verifiable proof or reason. It requires a measure of self-delusion, an otherwise consistently intelligent and rational person (e.g. Einstein) can still compartamentalize to the point of deluding himself that some supernatural (a loaded word on its own right) being exists. A good book to read on this subject is Wallace Matson's "The Existance of God", in which after very careful consideration of all arguments pro and con, concludes that one cannot reasonably believe in a deity, and that all discussions on the subject end up in the discussion of blind faith. One of my favorite phrases (and one I live by) is: "You cannot checkmate a man who refuses to play chess", if you refuse to follow the rules of logic and reason I cannot win a logical and reasonable argument with you.
Nice one, argument by authority: Einstein believed in God, therefore God exists. May I suggest a course in simple logic?
The vast majority of those who claim not to believe, and in particular those who pretend to have difficulty comprehending Creationism , are generally the less intelligent and less well educated members of our species.
Huh? do you have some source reference to back this up? I would probably imagine the opposite to be true, just thinking of the masses of extremely fanatically religous, uneducated people around the world disproves your argument.
I tried it, and while I was impressed with its workings, I was less that impressed with its suggestion that I move. I live in a new subdivision, so my street isn't on the map, so it suggested another street with a different (though similar) name in another zip code.
It was on the gossip column on the last page of eweek 3 weeks ago or so. Bush announced his candidate for the job the next day, I also heard similar things about other cabinet possitions.
Sure, it takes a long time to design a replacement from scratch, but I suggest we replace it with another copy of the same (and start working on a replacement for that one 5 years before it is due to come down), economies of scale and all. Shuttle trips are so expensive (among other things) because the shuttle is a limited resource (becoming more limited as they burn themeselves), if we had continued building more shuttles their price would have come down. Same thing with the HST.
Don't compare apples and oranges.
Why not?
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but most options I've seen ask to replace Hubble with something newly designed. Why this seems good, and if we had the money I could see it, I haven't heard the alternative:
Why not replace it with a brand new hubble, using the design of the original? I.e. reduce the costs of design, research and development by reusing what we already know works, of course use some obvious improvements (including avoiding the optics errors), but only replace something in the design if a better, proven, easy-to-upgrade or off-the-shelf alternative has been developed since Hubble was first designed/deployed.
That, plus the fact that many state constitutions reference the federal constitution (and the bill of rights).
Sure it does, if not implied by the 1st, then by the 9th and 10th. Read them.
Seriously. Everybody conveniently ignores these two ammendments, which IMHO are the most important ones.
But the press, staunch defenders of the 1st ignore them; the right, staunch defenders of the 2nd ignore them; the left, staunch defenders of the 4th ignore them.
I shiver at the state of the nation, but what is a man to do? Vote Libertarian? Hell yes!
I was waiting for someone to bring it up, thanks.
Except for the fact that this is his best researched book yet, and unlike the others, which have a lot more fantasy than science fiction this one has tons of footnotes supporting its assumptions.
The book is also a good read (if a bit preachy), but it's conclusion is the most important thing about the book: the message that one must be skeptical, and that well meaning people can be knowing or unknowingly biased to support a scientific theory without much regard to its validity.
Wrong, everyone knows California has 4 distinctly marked seasons:
Fire
Earthquaque
Flooding
Riot
I'll hate it when the internet crashes.
Parallel?
Theoretically...If you have one single processor and one single hard drive and one single memory bus... parallel is SLOWER, because it'll take the time it will take PLUS the time it takes multitasking everything. Parallel processing in modern operating systems is good because it a) simplifies designs (tasks can be made to do one thing and do it well), b) makes ui more responsive which is important to those using it and c) gives different apps that all require cpu a chance at it.
However, if I have a complete process, made up of many tasks, and I need ALL of them to be done as soon as possible, serial is much faster.
Even with multiple processors, if your tasks are I/O bound, you still have the same problem, a processor may be totally idle while the other one is busy.
vi tute pravas
That's a good one, reminds me of a signature I once saw: pass me the dolphin burger, right, the one in the styrofoam container.
Difference between democrats and republicans?
one is "Tax and spend"
the other is "Tax and spend"... with interest
For any field: having a degree in it, from a well respected university is probably helpful (but not necessary) to land the first jobs, think of it as a shortcut to experience. After a few years on the market your job experience is much more important.
I remember in early job interviews (10 years ago) all they asked was about my schooling. In the past few years it is rarely (if ever) mentioned.
So, if you already have some experience, don't attend school just to get the extra line on your resume. Though there are other reasons to get a "formal" education.
What makes you think we still have such archaic things as privacy laws anymore? Dont you know that if you have a private life the terrorists win?
The ninth: the forgotten ammendment.
While I freely and unconditionally grant the right to free speech, I'm curious to know how you arrived at a universal human right of anonymity...
I plead the ninth. Read the constitution sometime, wonderful document.
There's already a humongous Kennedy. He senates for Massachussets.
Here's one for ya'! I'm an atheist with strong belief in conservative policies when it comes to public policy and fairly liberal policies when it comes to person freedom. What do they call me? (Seriously.. I've wondered this myself..) Independent?
Around here we call ourselves Libertarians.