Um, about 4% of the human population are sociopaths. It would be hard to imagine a sociopath being anything other than an athiest; if they believe in any god, it's themself. The people you listed did what they did because they were sociopaths, not because they were athiests. Religion was a threat to their power. They weren't trying to spread athiesm because it was the "truth".
And if you have no problem claiming athiests have no respect for the dignity of humanity, you have no cause to complain when they say you have no capacity for rational thought.
The guys you know aren't too bright. Maxim is much better for that, unless they are interested in the "How To Please Your Man" article in the latest issue of Cosmo, in which case I don't think you know these guys as well as you think you do.
The only reason I've ever heard a guy give for reading something like that is so they can better understand the enemy:)
They already have a gas tax. People who drive more or drive heavier vehicles pay more. So maybe you need to ask why they're not happy with an inexpensive, easy way to collect that revenue and want to go with something like this.
So, do you lock your gun up every time you leave the house? I've only had my house broken into once, when neither I or my roommate were home, and the only thing they stole was my roommate's revolver. They found his long guns, but left them. Didn't find his 9mm. Seriously, if you were going to break into a house, would you choose one that's occupied or one that's unoccupied? If you want to shoot a burglar, you pretty much have to make them think you're not home.
He's talking about Microsoft's cash on hand (about 35 billion last I read), not stock market valuation. Microsoft can't really use that stock to hire programmers because, well, they're kind of owned by other people.
If that bothers you, I'd strongly suggest you never buy a house. I guess you've never been screwed over by someone not paying back money you loaned them.
You borrow money, you agree to the terms. You can't carry your end of the deal, too bad for you. You don't like the terms, don't borrow the money.
Quoting Churchill is "Godwin's Law Bait"? Sweeeet. He made that statement in 1947. He was likely commenting on communism instead of Nazism, which by then had been generally accepted as a Really Bad Thing.
SO, what paradigm should I go with if the scientific one isn't adequate? I'm kind of leaning towards Islam; the 72 virgins would be very, very nice. Much better than playing harps for the rest of eternity. Though there are some aspects of Scientology or Mormonism that are appealling. How do you establish which religious belief is correct? Looks to me like it's going to be a race between which one outbreeds the others vs. the one that kills all the others.
To live in a pleasant society, all you need is to have people believe that following the Golden Rule is a good idea. What universal truths has any religion revealed that improve upon that?
I never said that I was copacetic with the US government doing what they're doing at Guantanamo. I merely pointed out that they're not violating the Geneva Conventions.
We defeated Germany and Japan in WWII without resorting to torture (at least as foreign policy). But, they at least wore uniforms that distinguished themselves from civilians. The Taliban amd the Iraqi insurgents don't, so, yeah, tough shit for them. Kind of hard to seperate the wheat from the chaff when they all look like wheat.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about how the US is treating people at Gitmo and in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violating the Geneva Conventions isn't one of them. The conventions exist, in part, to protect civilians; one of the ways it does that is by saying that when you get a hold of a fighter who is dressed like a civilian instead of a uniformed soldier you get to hang his ass. That tends to make the real soldiers less likely to shoot civilians.
Corporations limit the liability of their *owners*. Stockholders can only lose the money they invested. Employees are fair game, though. Problem is, though, since corporations have gotten themselves the same rights as humans, it makes it a lot harder to prosecute them. Good book on this is "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights".
Really? What nation's uniform were they wearing when they were picked up? Normally, when you're in a war and someone not wearing a uniform shoots at you, and you capture them, you hang them.
Not to rain on your parade, but laser guided bombs weren't developed because the Air Force wanted to reduce non-combatant deaths. They didn't like sending multiple missions into well-defended airspace to knock out targets in Vietnam. Reducing collateral damage is just good PR tacked on afterward.
Penalizing shareholders is a remarkably effective way of getting things done. Why do you think Sarbanes-Oxley got passed? Big institutional stockholders lit a fire under Congress' ass. Sure as hell wasn't done at Our Fearless Leader's request. Insurance companies don't like losing a lot of money investing in companies run by asshats like Ken Lay.
Seriously, if you own a pit bull and you carelessly let it bite the face off a five year old girl, you're held responsible. Why should the owners of a corporation be treated differently? Corporations were created to limit the owner's liability to the amount they invested, not to eliminate their liability altogether.
WTF? It's a metaphor. The pyramids were built by *something*. Humans or aliens. Humans are, by far, the most credible explanation. Humans themselves were created in some manner; either via evolution or created by a god. There's abundant evidence for evolution. There's more evidence for aliens than there is for god.
As opposed to, say, believing in a book written back when people were still figuring out pointy sticks? To paraphrase Churchill, science is the worst way we have of explaining reality, except for all the others.
Religion's been around for 10,000 years. Give me a call when y'all finally agree about what "truth" is. If you and I are still around in 10,000 years, it'll be because of science, not religion, and we can talk about what 10,000 years of science has achieved.
This is, of course, assuming some religious nutjob doesn't use science to kill everybody.
I would imagine they would use Occam's Razor and decide that the best explanation, by far, for the machine is that it was made by man. As opposed to by aliens (unless it's a thousand year old spaceship, then he'd go with the alien theory).
So, in short, evolution is comparable to saying Egyptians built the pyramids. ID is like saying aliens *had* to have built them because you can't, for the life of you, imagine Egyptians being able to build them.
Well, how about if a bird flu virus evolves so it can pass human-to-human, and kills a couple hundred million people? Would that work for you? BTW, what is the timeframe involved for "swift" evolution? Thirty thousand years? Forty thousand years? They've practically created new species of fruit fly through "forced" evolution in the lab, but I see you're being clever with the phrase "no intervention from intelligent beings", so basically you're requiring science to do experiments without, uh, experimenting. Here's a way around it, though, have the experiments performed by ID believers:/
I don't know about that; western Europe has gotten to be almost completely secular. Too bad they'll go extinct and be replaced by Muslims in the next fifty years.
Currently there's only one *scientific* theory that explains the origin of man, and that's evolution. Or did you not notice that the Kansas Board of Education actually had to REDEFINE what the word SCIENCE means in order to get away with teaching ID in a science class? Are they now going to redefine the word MEDICINE so faith healers can get paid by Medicair?
Um, what else could it be? Culture? You *do* know humans aren't the only animals on this planet that engage in homosexual behaviour? Man's closest relative is the bonobo chimp, and you'd have to look really, really hard to find a bonobo, of either gender, that doesn't swing both ways. Every chance they get. About the only "taboo" that's hardwired in their brain is that mothers won't do it with their sons.
Of course, it could be Satan making them doing it. That's probably what's taught in KSU's primatology class.
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Um, about 4% of the human population are sociopaths. It would be hard to imagine a sociopath being anything other than an athiest; if they believe in any god, it's themself. The people you listed did what they did because they were sociopaths, not because they were athiests. Religion was a threat to their power. They weren't trying to spread athiesm because it was the "truth".
And if you have no problem claiming athiests have no respect for the dignity of humanity, you have no cause to complain when they say you have no capacity for rational thought.
Besides, no designer worth a crap would run a sewage line right through a recreational area.
WTF did NASA have to do with it? The X-Prize came from a wealthy couple living in the Dallas area, not from NASA.
The guys you know aren't too bright. Maxim is much better for that, unless they are interested in the "How To Please Your Man" article in the latest issue of Cosmo, in which case I don't think you know these guys as well as you think you do.
:)
The only reason I've ever heard a guy give for reading something like that is so they can better understand the enemy
As I recall, the original magazine article never claimed he'd built a working reactor. But evidently, his house is now a Superfund site:
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q3501.html
They already have a gas tax. People who drive more or drive heavier vehicles pay more. So maybe you need to ask why they're not happy with an inexpensive, easy way to collect that revenue and want to go with something like this.
Uh, go to Amazon and look up "Radioactive Boy Scout". If the story's a fake, it's good enough to get a non-fiction hardback book published.
So, do you lock your gun up every time you leave the house? I've only had my house broken into once, when neither I or my roommate were home, and the only thing they stole was my roommate's revolver. They found his long guns, but left them. Didn't find his 9mm. Seriously, if you were going to break into a house, would you choose one that's occupied or one that's unoccupied? If you want to shoot a burglar, you pretty much have to make them think you're not home.
He's talking about Microsoft's cash on hand (about 35 billion last I read), not stock market valuation. Microsoft can't really use that stock to hire programmers because, well, they're kind of owned by other people.
If that bothers you, I'd strongly suggest you never buy a house. I guess you've never been screwed over by someone not paying back money you loaned them.
You borrow money, you agree to the terms. You can't carry your end of the deal, too bad for you. You don't like the terms, don't borrow the money.
Quoting Churchill is "Godwin's Law Bait"? Sweeeet. He made that statement in 1947. He was likely commenting on communism instead of Nazism, which by then had been generally accepted as a Really Bad Thing.
SO, what paradigm should I go with if the scientific one isn't adequate? I'm kind of leaning towards Islam; the 72 virgins would be very, very nice. Much better than playing harps for the rest of eternity. Though there are some aspects of Scientology or Mormonism that are appealling. How do you establish which religious belief is correct? Looks to me like it's going to be a race between which one outbreeds the others vs. the one that kills all the others.
To live in a pleasant society, all you need is to have people believe that following the Golden Rule is a good idea. What universal truths has any religion revealed that improve upon that?
I never said that I was copacetic with the US government doing what they're doing at Guantanamo. I merely pointed out that they're not violating the Geneva Conventions. We defeated Germany and Japan in WWII without resorting to torture (at least as foreign policy). But, they at least wore uniforms that distinguished themselves from civilians. The Taliban amd the Iraqi insurgents don't, so, yeah, tough shit for them. Kind of hard to seperate the wheat from the chaff when they all look like wheat.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about how the US is treating people at Gitmo and in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violating the Geneva Conventions isn't one of them. The conventions exist, in part, to protect civilians; one of the ways it does that is by saying that when you get a hold of a fighter who is dressed like a civilian instead of a uniformed soldier you get to hang his ass. That tends to make the real soldiers less likely to shoot civilians.
Corporations limit the liability of their *owners*. Stockholders can only lose the money they invested. Employees are fair game, though. Problem is, though, since corporations have gotten themselves the same rights as humans, it makes it a lot harder to prosecute them. Good book on this is "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights".
Really? What nation's uniform were they wearing when they were picked up? Normally, when you're in a war and someone not wearing a uniform shoots at you, and you capture them, you hang them.
Not to rain on your parade, but laser guided bombs weren't developed because the Air Force wanted to reduce non-combatant deaths. They didn't like sending multiple missions into well-defended airspace to knock out targets in Vietnam. Reducing collateral damage is just good PR tacked on afterward.
Penalizing shareholders is a remarkably effective way of getting things done. Why do you think Sarbanes-Oxley got passed? Big institutional stockholders lit a fire under Congress' ass. Sure as hell wasn't done at Our Fearless Leader's request. Insurance companies don't like losing a lot of money investing in companies run by asshats like Ken Lay.
Seriously, if you own a pit bull and you carelessly let it bite the face off a five year old girl, you're held responsible. Why should the owners of a corporation be treated differently? Corporations were created to limit the owner's liability to the amount they invested, not to eliminate their liability altogether.
WTF? It's a metaphor. The pyramids were built by *something*. Humans or aliens. Humans are, by far, the most credible explanation. Humans themselves were created in some manner; either via evolution or created by a god. There's abundant evidence for evolution. There's more evidence for aliens than there is for god.
"As soon as you stop coughing and feel better, you don't need to take the antibiotics anymore." - Kansas educated doctor, 2020 AD
As opposed to, say, believing in a book written back when people were still figuring out pointy sticks? To paraphrase Churchill, science is the worst way we have of explaining reality, except for all the others.
Religion's been around for 10,000 years. Give me a call when y'all finally agree about what "truth" is. If you and I are still around in 10,000 years, it'll be because of science, not religion, and we can talk about what 10,000 years of science has achieved.
This is, of course, assuming some religious nutjob doesn't use science to kill everybody.
I would imagine they would use Occam's Razor and decide that the best explanation, by far, for the machine is that it was made by man. As opposed to by aliens (unless it's a thousand year old spaceship, then he'd go with the alien theory).
So, in short, evolution is comparable to saying Egyptians built the pyramids. ID is like saying aliens *had* to have built them because you can't, for the life of you, imagine Egyptians being able to build them.
So. Who do you think built the pyramids?
Well, how about if a bird flu virus evolves so it can pass human-to-human, and kills a couple hundred million people? Would that work for you? BTW, what is the timeframe involved for "swift" evolution? Thirty thousand years? Forty thousand years? They've practically created new species of fruit fly through "forced" evolution in the lab, but I see you're being clever with the phrase "no intervention from intelligent beings", so basically you're requiring science to do experiments without, uh, experimenting. Here's a way around it, though, have the experiments performed by ID believers :/
I don't know about that; western Europe has gotten to be almost completely secular. Too bad they'll go extinct and be replaced by Muslims in the next fifty years.
Currently there's only one *scientific* theory that explains the origin of man, and that's evolution. Or did you not notice that the Kansas Board of Education actually had to REDEFINE what the word SCIENCE means in order to get away with teaching ID in a science class? Are they now going to redefine the word MEDICINE so faith healers can get paid by Medicair?
Um, what else could it be? Culture? You *do* know humans aren't the only animals on this planet that engage in homosexual behaviour? Man's closest relative is the bonobo chimp, and you'd have to look really, really hard to find a bonobo, of either gender, that doesn't swing both ways. Every chance they get. About the only "taboo" that's hardwired in their brain is that mothers won't do it with their sons.
Of course, it could be Satan making them doing it. That's probably what's taught in KSU's primatology class.