It requires faith to believe that what you have observed is precisely (or even moderately) similar to the truth of the matter.
Now you are starting a philisophical argument. Indeed you can argue, philisophically, that what you observe is not actually reality but as has been discussed by philosphers in the past this does not get you very far. In fact there is every reason to believe in observation, as it has shown to lead to solving problems and furthering understanding of the world around us. Religion on the other hand tends to raise more problems than it solves and in fact has been discarded as a way to explain the unknown in many instances. Science has not always been correct but theories are revised and corrected as opposed to completely thrown out the door (in most cases).
I don't believe in complete objectivity in science or anything but I do know that it has explained more and has taken us further than religion ever has. In a philisophical and spiritual sense I do believe in a higher being (not a traditional god) but I don't let that interfere with science. To me it is naive to throw out an imperfect but very good system (science) for another system (religion) that is even less perfect.
My real point is that this has been discussed ad nauseaum in philosophy and in the end it doesn't really matter how objective science is (in the metaphysical sense) because the scientific method has worked and continues to work. Religion, on the other hand continues to fall apart at worst and at best it is integrated with more recent scientific discoveries. There is something to be said for that.
P.S. Scepticism is a good thing but too much will get you nowhere and the fact that you can be sceptical about science and not religion is a little unnerving.
If evolution were only a theory about reproduction, there would have been a bit of a difficulty in getting from ape to man.
That's not what I said. You make a common mistake when you try to explain evolution in terms of "improving". When mutations allow for better survival, and thus the ability to reproduce, those changes become more common by natural selection. Evolution has nothing to do with mutating into superior beings for the sake of survival. Mutations are an accident. If they are helpful and allow for reproduction then they become more common. Considering the fact that not many humans have anything blocking them from reproduction how can you expect genetic mutation to only improve (whatever that means) the human species. Even humans without highly adaptive qualities can still reproduce at an amazing rate around the world.
Why believe in God? What advantage does that serve? Well it might certainly help people to be happier and feel more satisfied with life if they believe that there is a purpose to things.
Exactly. This is the same conclusion that I have come to.
At the end, it takes faith either way to believe one way -- faith that evolution is true -- yes, true -- and faith that an intelligent design requires an intelligent being.
No it does not take faith to believe in evolution. It takes science. Science is based on observation not faith. Theories arive from some of these observations because they are consistent with our observations. It does take a belief in science but there is a big difference between faith and belief. Faith is a belief without evidence, even with evidence to the contrary. Science requires observed evidence.
The adaptive aspects of evolution suggest that species improve.
No it does not. It is more about the ability to reproduce, which is not a very hard thing to do in this day and age, at least in this country. Have you seen the teen pregnancy statistics?
The idea was something like, high-order abstract thinking and reasoning about a deity aren't particularly adaptive, so if you believe in evolution with no deity guiding it, you have to admit that your brain probably isn't very well suited to think about that sort of thing, i.e. you're probably wrong. This doesn't show that evolution and atheism are necessarily false, just that it's unreasonable to believe them together.
The problem with that argument is that it totally fails to explain why high-order abstract thinking is not adaptive and at the same time fails to consider the possibility that high-order thinking may eventually cease to exist because of adaptation. The real question is if high-order abstract thinking is really adaptive then why is it adaptive? Why have people believed in god? Those questions are perfectly compatible with evolution. We just haven't quite figured out the answers yet although some people have really interesting things to say.
In other words, you think I'm wrong but you don't have any facts to back it up. You could have just said so.
In 1999 alone 7 acts of terrorism were prevented by the FBI. Do some actual research before you post. You look like a fool when you do otherwise.
Well, itterrorist arrests fbi would be what you call a "democratic republic". Perhaps you've heard of another? The idea is Iraq would't have all decisions made at the federal level, but by province or locally. That's how you can get disparate populations like, say, New York and Utah to live in the same country without killing each other
If you even think that is a reasonable comapirson I will kindly ask you to lay of the meds. The differences between New Yorkers and people from Utah are not even in the same realm of the differences between the Shiite Muslims, the Sunni Muslims, and the Kurds. Maybe you should take a history lesson.
Obviously you haven't bothered to learn anything about how the new constitution is shaping up. But then, you don't know anything about your own country, so I'm not surprised.
The same constitution that attempts to implement religious morality as law? The same constitution that saw two of its framers, who happen to be Sunni, killed? Are we talking about the same constitution?
Obviously you haven't bothered to learn anything about how the new constitution is shaping up. But then, you don't know anything about your own country, so I'm not surprised.
That's an odd opinion coming from someone who wants to disregard the constitution in favor of martial law to obtain a means to an artificial end.
What the hell are you talking about? You just contradicted yourself. You admit that they exist and then say that is bogus? Well here, there are many many examples that you obviously have no clue about, however I'll show one of the ones from Oregon - here
What are you talking about? I never mentioned terror cells existing in the US. In fact the article you refernce deals with Americans that went to Afghanistan, not terror cells hiding within the US. So what was your point, that you fear the most rediculous stories your government tells you?
As far as I'm aware the FBI only stopped one group in New York after the first WTC bombing.
You're just not very aware then are you.
We're at war - these aren't ordinary crimes. In previous wars enemy spies and saboteurs were tried by the military. Civilian trials simply aren't set up to take national security into consideration.
I've heard it all before. We had a name for people with your ideas. They were called fascists.
Iraq will end up a stable democracy, the only question is what the cost is in terms of blood and money. The idea the country will descend into civil war is patently ridiculous, as there's no indication that's in the cards despite the hopes of the French media.
Wow you are uninformed. The Kurds have had their own government already. Sunni Muslims have been targeted since Saddam was toppled. Do you not think this is at least a possible precursor to a civil war? The Kurds and the Sunni Muslims had more autonomy under Saddam's regime, do you think they will settle for being governed by a the Shiite majority? It's obvious that the Sunni Muslims are already not happy, and it's not likely the Kurds will be satisfied when their laws are disregarded.
Point taken. I do think that Cisco should listen to their shareholders though and enact a policy that explicity states opposition to human rights violations. The article does link to this policy but it doesn't seem to explain too much in the way of human rights, in fact it does mention the UN Global Compact but I fail to see a one to one correlation with their existing stated policies. The shareholders are not asking for Cisco to refuse to sell to China, only to enact a specific policy against human rights violations. I think that's a fair request.
The article states:
Cisco recently came under fire when author Ethan Gutman revealed the company was aggressively marketing mobile police-networking equipment to Chinese law enforcement agencies.
Export constraints passed in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre block U.S. companies from selling "any crime control or detection instruments or equipment" to China
I think this may have something to do with the recent request by shareholders.
Conversely, large groups with very basic needs (the Aunt Tillies of the world) are routinely ignored by the open source grognards. "What do you mean you don't know how to recompile your kernel? RTFM, n00b."
That's an easy fix. Just include help files like the major OSS applications do already. The "Aunt Tillies" of the world don't look for help on online forums anyway.
So, you would put all of your faith in a method, and say, "well, they're scientists, what ever they say HAS to be true! They use the scientific method!" Sorry, but I'm simply not buying it.
So what exactly do you put your faith in? Religion? I'll take science any day of the week. Scientists findings are peer reviewed, scrutinized, and sometimes even found flawed. That's ok though because that is how the process works. Science gives us the best possible picture of the world that we have at our disposal. Anything else is just guessing.
What makes no sense to me is that global warming is accepted by the majority of scientists in the world. Only a few crack pot scientists debate it, well, a few crack pot scientists and and few crack pot politicians.
"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate."
That's the shortest and most direct, but there are many more if you care to look instead of blindly accepting that "Religion of Peace" garbage.
Like I said, you know nothing about Islam. I suppose I could just take quotes from the Bible that tell followers to stone someone to death and then we'd all beleive that Christianity is evil. Other than that I don't "blindly accept" Islam as a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of peace. You are blindly accepting right-wing propoganda about Islam. All the major monotheistic religions have some whacko beliefs but at least the Koran was never supposed to be a literal book of God, unlike the Bible. If you actaully want to learn something about Islam I would suggest reading the book "The History of God" by Karen Armstrong.
Oh, sure, we'd all love to go back to 9/10/2001 and just have the cops deal with this. But that's not how these kinds of wars are fought.
You are so naive. That is how we dealt with this before (FBI not regular cops) and we actually stopped a lot of potentially bad things from happening. How can you possibley ignore this fact. I don't see how you can support the present actions here and abroad when they have accomplished nothing.
I'm all for using the court system whenever we can, but open trials and "charge 'em or set 'em loose" rules can be very damaging to successful intelligence gathering.
You are missing the point again. Not charging suspected terrorists is even worse. It's worse for our society. It's worse for our civil liberties. I guess our repsonse to fascism is more fascism.
As far as the war is concerned, it's an attempt by the President to tilt the playing field in our favor. We won't know if it worked for another generation, but it seems like a more reasonable play than sending tomahawks here and there every time we have an attack.
Let me save you the time of waiting this out. It was a terrible mistake to go to Iraq. Do you know how many suicide bombers there are in Iraq? Do you know how many there were before the war? Our presence has actually killed more people during our time there than Saddam's regime. Oh I wonder why they hate us. It doesn't matter though, we'll pull out once the place disintegrates into civil war.
The government has disclosed a number of incidents on how the Patriot act has stopped terrorist plots. Perhaps you forget about those?
Oh really? Please name them. You'll be surprised when you actually do the research and find out that they have apprehended and convicted exactly 0 terrorists using the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act has been used to bring charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half have been convicted
Did you notice how it says 400 suspects and not 400 terrorists. There is a reason for that.
He also said it has been used to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia and Florida
That's clearly bogus since it has never even been shown that terrorist cells existed in anything more than a temporary capacity within the US. This is tin foil hat stuff.
As for the existing infrastructure you talked about, it wasn't there
So I guess we can give the entire government a free pass even though the CIA, NSA, FBI, and White House all knew about terrorist attacks in advance. We should blame Clinton for every single one of those agencies not doing their job. That's horseshit and you know it.
I realize he makes the comment in the context of "liberation", but this is reference to a Muslim's duty to convert or destroy all infidels everywhere.
Where do you get that idea from? It is not and never was a Muslim's duty to convert or destroy all infidels everywhere. Do you even know anything about Islam?
In the tapes and letters to his followers he doesn't make any mention of ending the jihad.
I don't see any evidence showing that bin Laden expects to take over the world either. You surely haven't given any.
If we were to withdraw completely from the Middle East today it would simply focus their attack on regaining all the land of the original Caliphate, which would include Spain and Southern Europe up to Vienna
This will never happen and you must be the one wearing a tin foil hat if you beleive it. Even if there was a significant amount of Muslims that wanted to do this (and there isn't) they still wouldn't have a chance.
I'm not defending bin Laden, he's a scumbag, but he's certainly not capable of more than a few organized attacks against strategic targets. The simplest answer to all this is to apprehend the terrorists before they strike with good intelligence. Blowing up thousands of innocent people and taking away Americans civil liberties isn't going to get us anywhere. In fact we seemed to be doing a better job when that's where our heads were at. Several attempted attacks were thwarted with good intel and good police work.
The point was that we could have caught the terrorists without the Patiot Act, and that since then we have not used it to catch terrorists, although it was used for other things, like investigating a night club. So, again, why do we need the Patriot Act?
Both the CIA and FBI had some information but they were not able to collaborate with each other
You completely ignore the fact that both the CIA and FBI were not prevented from investigating the evidence they had on their own. Their cooperation would not have changed anything considering the fact that neither of them did a damn thing.
I doubt that anyone considered that an attack of that scale would happen
They did know it was going to be a large scale attack. All the warnings, including from several other countries, warned of a large scale attack.
However, I personally believe that terrorists don't deserve trials and that they can rot in a box until their death. Would a terrorist give you a trial?
Yes I would give a terrorist a trial. That is what this country is all about. If the accused is guilty then the trial will prove this. Otherwise I can just claim that you are a terrorist and the excutive branch of our government can then detain you without a trial until you "rot in a box".
Do you have a better solution? How would you catch terrorists? Please also tell me how 9/11 could have been prevented with the security measures used at that time.
Three of the terrorists had expired visas. Three of the pilots had visas that were NOT for pilot training, yet they trained in the US. There was a CIA report warning about Al Qaeda using planes as weapons. The FBI reported that a large number of Muslim males were taking flight lessons and again warned about possible terrorism. All the warnings were there. The government had every right to investigate these warnings yet they did nothing about it.
Now can you please tell me which part of the Patriot Act would have stopped the terrorists from boarding the planes and crashing them into buildings?
They're goal is to destroy our civilization and replace it with a Taliban-style Islamic theocracy. They're way less subtle than you think they are. Bin Laden himself has spelled this all out on tape.
Where do you people get this nonsense? Bin Laden never said that. Bin Laden's goal is to eliminate any Western Influence in the Arab world. He has not planned (at least exlpicitly) to take over the world and I think he is smart enough to realize that that is not possible.
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Now you are starting a philisophical argument. Indeed you can argue, philisophically, that what you observe is not actually reality but as has been discussed by philosphers in the past this does not get you very far. In fact there is every reason to believe in observation, as it has shown to lead to solving problems and furthering understanding of the world around us. Religion on the other hand tends to raise more problems than it solves and in fact has been discarded as a way to explain the unknown in many instances. Science has not always been correct but theories are revised and corrected as opposed to completely thrown out the door (in most cases).
I don't believe in complete objectivity in science or anything but I do know that it has explained more and has taken us further than religion ever has. In a philisophical and spiritual sense I do believe in a higher being (not a traditional god) but I don't let that interfere with science. To me it is naive to throw out an imperfect but very good system (science) for another system (religion) that is even less perfect.
My real point is that this has been discussed ad nauseaum in philosophy and in the end it doesn't really matter how objective science is (in the metaphysical sense) because the scientific method has worked and continues to work. Religion, on the other hand continues to fall apart at worst and at best it is integrated with more recent scientific discoveries. There is something to be said for that.
P.S. Scepticism is a good thing but too much will get you nowhere and the fact that you can be sceptical about science and not religion is a little unnerving.
That's not what I said. You make a common mistake when you try to explain evolution in terms of "improving". When mutations allow for better survival, and thus the ability to reproduce, those changes become more common by natural selection. Evolution has nothing to do with mutating into superior beings for the sake of survival. Mutations are an accident. If they are helpful and allow for reproduction then they become more common. Considering the fact that not many humans have anything blocking them from reproduction how can you expect genetic mutation to only improve (whatever that means) the human species. Even humans without highly adaptive qualities can still reproduce at an amazing rate around the world.
Exactly. This is the same conclusion that I have come to.
Well, considering Buddhism is not a religion...and the fact that Buddhists do not believe in god...I'll let you figure it out.
No it does not take faith to believe in evolution. It takes science. Science is based on observation not faith. Theories arive from some of these observations because they are consistent with our observations. It does take a belief in science but there is a big difference between faith and belief. Faith is a belief without evidence, even with evidence to the contrary. Science requires observed evidence.
No it does not. It is more about the ability to reproduce, which is not a very hard thing to do in this day and age, at least in this country. Have you seen the teen pregnancy statistics?
The problem with that argument is that it totally fails to explain why high-order abstract thinking is not adaptive and at the same time fails to consider the possibility that high-order thinking may eventually cease to exist because of adaptation. The real question is if high-order abstract thinking is really adaptive then why is it adaptive? Why have people believed in god? Those questions are perfectly compatible with evolution. We just haven't quite figured out the answers yet although some people have really interesting things to say.
In 1999 alone 7 acts of terrorism were prevented by the FBI. Do some actual research before you post. You look like a fool when you do otherwise.
Well, itterrorist arrests fbi would be what you call a "democratic republic". Perhaps you've heard of another? The idea is Iraq would't have all decisions made at the federal level, but by province or locally. That's how you can get disparate populations like, say, New York and Utah to live in the same country without killing each other
If you even think that is a reasonable comapirson I will kindly ask you to lay of the meds. The differences between New Yorkers and people from Utah are not even in the same realm of the differences between the Shiite Muslims, the Sunni Muslims, and the Kurds. Maybe you should take a history lesson.
Obviously you haven't bothered to learn anything about how the new constitution is shaping up. But then, you don't know anything about your own country, so I'm not surprised.
The same constitution that attempts to implement religious morality as law? The same constitution that saw two of its framers, who happen to be Sunni, killed? Are we talking about the same constitution?
Obviously you haven't bothered to learn anything about how the new constitution is shaping up. But then, you don't know anything about your own country, so I'm not surprised.
That's an odd opinion coming from someone who wants to disregard the constitution in favor of martial law to obtain a means to an artificial end.
What are you talking about? I never mentioned terror cells existing in the US. In fact the article you refernce deals with Americans that went to Afghanistan, not terror cells hiding within the US. So what was your point, that you fear the most rediculous stories your government tells you?
I agree. Even worse though is basing your moral views on religion. It will make you even crazier.
Better yet, lets use those embryos for stem cell research!
You're just not very aware then are you.
We're at war - these aren't ordinary crimes. In previous wars enemy spies and saboteurs were tried by the military. Civilian trials simply aren't set up to take national security into consideration.
I've heard it all before. We had a name for people with your ideas. They were called fascists.
Iraq will end up a stable democracy, the only question is what the cost is in terms of blood and money. The idea the country will descend into civil war is patently ridiculous, as there's no indication that's in the cards despite the hopes of the French media.
Wow you are uninformed. The Kurds have had their own government already. Sunni Muslims have been targeted since Saddam was toppled. Do you not think this is at least a possible precursor to a civil war? The Kurds and the Sunni Muslims had more autonomy under Saddam's regime, do you think they will settle for being governed by a the Shiite majority? It's obvious that the Sunni Muslims are already not happy, and it's not likely the Kurds will be satisfied when their laws are disregarded.
That's exactly why Aunt Tillie doesn't know how to use Windows XP either, so what do you propose to do about that?
The article states:
Cisco recently came under fire when author Ethan Gutman revealed the company was aggressively marketing mobile police-networking equipment to Chinese law enforcement agencies.
Export constraints passed in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre block U.S. companies from selling "any crime control or detection instruments or equipment" to China
I think this may have something to do with the recent request by shareholders.
That's an easy fix. Just include help files like the major OSS applications do already. The "Aunt Tillies" of the world don't look for help on online forums anyway.
So what exactly do you put your faith in? Religion? I'll take science any day of the week. Scientists findings are peer reviewed, scrutinized, and sometimes even found flawed. That's ok though because that is how the process works. Science gives us the best possible picture of the world that we have at our disposal. Anything else is just guessing.
What makes no sense to me is that global warming is accepted by the majority of scientists in the world. Only a few crack pot scientists debate it, well, a few crack pot scientists and and few crack pot politicians.
You don't think that is generic? So now I can't make a png file that is 19x19 and use it as an emoticon?
That's the shortest and most direct, but there are many more if you care to look instead of blindly accepting that "Religion of Peace" garbage.
Like I said, you know nothing about Islam. I suppose I could just take quotes from the Bible that tell followers to stone someone to death and then we'd all beleive that Christianity is evil. Other than that I don't "blindly accept" Islam as a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of peace. You are blindly accepting right-wing propoganda about Islam. All the major monotheistic religions have some whacko beliefs but at least the Koran was never supposed to be a literal book of God, unlike the Bible. If you actaully want to learn something about Islam I would suggest reading the book "The History of God" by Karen Armstrong.
Oh, sure, we'd all love to go back to 9/10/2001 and just have the cops deal with this. But that's not how these kinds of wars are fought.
You are so naive. That is how we dealt with this before (FBI not regular cops) and we actually stopped a lot of potentially bad things from happening. How can you possibley ignore this fact. I don't see how you can support the present actions here and abroad when they have accomplished nothing.
I'm all for using the court system whenever we can, but open trials and "charge 'em or set 'em loose" rules can be very damaging to successful intelligence gathering.
You are missing the point again. Not charging suspected terrorists is even worse. It's worse for our society. It's worse for our civil liberties. I guess our repsonse to fascism is more fascism.
As far as the war is concerned, it's an attempt by the President to tilt the playing field in our favor. We won't know if it worked for another generation, but it seems like a more reasonable play than sending tomahawks here and there every time we have an attack.
Let me save you the time of waiting this out. It was a terrible mistake to go to Iraq. Do you know how many suicide bombers there are in Iraq? Do you know how many there were before the war? Our presence has actually killed more people during our time there than Saddam's regime. Oh I wonder why they hate us. It doesn't matter though, we'll pull out once the place disintegrates into civil war.
Oh really? Please name them. You'll be surprised when you actually do the research and find out that they have apprehended and convicted exactly 0 terrorists using the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act has been used to bring charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half have been convicted
Did you notice how it says 400 suspects and not 400 terrorists. There is a reason for that.
He also said it has been used to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia and Florida
That's clearly bogus since it has never even been shown that terrorist cells existed in anything more than a temporary capacity within the US. This is tin foil hat stuff.
As for the existing infrastructure you talked about, it wasn't there
So I guess we can give the entire government a free pass even though the CIA, NSA, FBI, and White House all knew about terrorist attacks in advance. We should blame Clinton for every single one of those agencies not doing their job. That's horseshit and you know it.
Where do you get that idea from? It is not and never was a Muslim's duty to convert or destroy all infidels everywhere. Do you even know anything about Islam?
In the tapes and letters to his followers he doesn't make any mention of ending the jihad.
I don't see any evidence showing that bin Laden expects to take over the world either. You surely haven't given any.
If we were to withdraw completely from the Middle East today it would simply focus their attack on regaining all the land of the original Caliphate, which would include Spain and Southern Europe up to Vienna
This will never happen and you must be the one wearing a tin foil hat if you beleive it. Even if there was a significant amount of Muslims that wanted to do this (and there isn't) they still wouldn't have a chance.
I'm not defending bin Laden, he's a scumbag, but he's certainly not capable of more than a few organized attacks against strategic targets. The simplest answer to all this is to apprehend the terrorists before they strike with good intelligence. Blowing up thousands of innocent people and taking away Americans civil liberties isn't going to get us anywhere. In fact we seemed to be doing a better job when that's where our heads were at. Several attempted attacks were thwarted with good intel and good police work.
Not really. They are a digital imaging company. Their profits from PCs are nothing compared to the rest of their company.
The point was that we could have caught the terrorists without the Patiot Act, and that since then we have not used it to catch terrorists, although it was used for other things, like investigating a night club. So, again, why do we need the Patriot Act?
You completely ignore the fact that both the CIA and FBI were not prevented from investigating the evidence they had on their own. Their cooperation would not have changed anything considering the fact that neither of them did a damn thing.
I doubt that anyone considered that an attack of that scale would happen
They did know it was going to be a large scale attack. All the warnings, including from several other countries, warned of a large scale attack.
However, I personally believe that terrorists don't deserve trials and that they can rot in a box until their death. Would a terrorist give you a trial?
Yes I would give a terrorist a trial. That is what this country is all about. If the accused is guilty then the trial will prove this. Otherwise I can just claim that you are a terrorist and the excutive branch of our government can then detain you without a trial until you "rot in a box".
Three of the terrorists had expired visas. Three of the pilots had visas that were NOT for pilot training, yet they trained in the US. There was a CIA report warning about Al Qaeda using planes as weapons. The FBI reported that a large number of Muslim males were taking flight lessons and again warned about possible terrorism. All the warnings were there. The government had every right to investigate these warnings yet they did nothing about it.
Now can you please tell me which part of the Patriot Act would have stopped the terrorists from boarding the planes and crashing them into buildings?
Where do you people get this nonsense? Bin Laden never said that. Bin Laden's goal is to eliminate any Western Influence in the Arab world. He has not planned (at least exlpicitly) to take over the world and I think he is smart enough to realize that that is not possible.