The overwhelming majority of theists believe in certain acts and attributes of god which CAN be disproven.
Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don't. Irrelevant either way, because in order to demonstrate the worth of their beliefs, atheists need to disprove the existence of ANY Divine Being, regardless of whether any theist believes in that God or not. So the particular beliefs of various theists are orthagonal to a proof of atheism.
So when engaging atheists in conversation theists may validly demonstrate a disproof of atheism by generalising the concept of the Divine as much as they wish.
And I'm reminded of the quotation: religion disguised as a coat won't keep you warm in the evening.
Or in other words, all you've done is merely restate some presumptive belief as if it were really true by drawing an analogy - an analogy that illustrates the belief does not make the belief true. The presumptive belief in this case is the belief that when considering the question of the existence of a Deity the default position is to conclude that the Deity does not exist. But in actual fact, the (only) rational answer to the question is to conclude "I don't know". To make a positive conclusion either way is to accept one or the other presumptive belief.
If you must "protest vote", lodge an invalid ballot - don't give people/parties (particularly crazy ones like the Greens) the idea you actually support them.
Yes they sure have some mad ideas don't they, those Greens. Like:
Maybe , given that we are a nation of boatpeople, it's a bit silly to lock people up (or kill them) for coming here in a boat?
maybe, being a signatory to the UN Convention on Human rights obligates us in some way to uphold it, not sure how.
Given that the ancients used to salt the land of their conquered enemies so that they (the enemy) could not plant crops, it's not real smart of us to be salting OUR OWN LAND and also expecting to grow crops
Possibly, we can find a better use for 800 year old trees, rather than giving them (for free) to the japanese to make paper? OR
Maybe inviting criminals and enemies of democracy into the heart of our democracy and then lauding them like emperors is a little hyprocritical and embarassing
Do you understand the difference between traveling, and looking at travel books?
Well, yes. Yes I do. I also understand that I'm not going to travel in space - therefore, regardless of whether or not a (different) human goes or a robot, all I'm going to see is photos. And so are the vast, vast majority of other humans. It makes no difference to me whether a human takes those photos or a robot. What matters is what they take pictures of, the rest is irrelevant.
The reason to explore space is to find a place to go, not to collect photographs.
What rubbish. "Finding a place to go" is a valueless, meaningless exercise without a goal. Exploration is not goalless. All explorers have a goal - to find an inland sea, to map a coastline, make money for their financier, observe the transit of venus, etc. And in space, robots make better explorers (on our behalf) then fragile humans. It's absurd to scale back real exploration for meaningless ego driven exercises.
Um, it should be pretty clear to you based on a few thousand years of human history that we will find a way. Yes - a small grasp of previous environmental challenges demonstrates we historically found two ways: Exploit or adapt. Exploit - the former residents of Easter Island, who drove themselves to extinction. Adapt - the indigenous people of Australia, who after an initial (painful) experience managed to adapt to their environment fast enough to survive. Who survives these encounters with the environment - the exploiters, who try to adapt the earth to their requirements, or the adapters, who make the changes required in themselves? Last century, we thought it was the former - more exploitation means more money, which maens we are better equipped to survive. Now, we know differently. This time , WE need to change, if we don't something more adaptive will take our place. Remember the basic rule - the species that adapts, survives. As for artificially reducing oil demand, considering the econimic productivity that's derived from oil use, it's obvious that it would indeed cause great harm to the economy (and the world's economies).
Sounds like a crap system - to hang our survival on something so unrelated to meeting our basic human needs ("the economy") - very 1950s.
Anyway, global warming would be nice, I could stand to see a few more bikinis in Canada in the winter, and increasing the livable and productive land area would no doubt be beneficial for millions of people.
Yes, I'm sure that when ocean currents disrupt the marine food chain and there aren't any fish, our currently well drained and productive farmlands become arid deserts, and we find that defrosted tundra does NOT, in fact magically contain nutrients to feed our thristy and disease ridden hordes, but there'll still be plenty of food. Magic fairies will deliver it.
You seem to be getting confused - what has sending humans to Mars got to with 'exploring space?' We don't need primates there to explore the place - it can be done much more thoroughly and reliably by using robots. In fact, any humans who travel there will barely even touch the surface (maybe stagger around over a few square kms) whilst all the important stuff will be left to robots and satellites. Mammals aren't at all suited to Mars. There is as much reason to send humans as cows, cats, or statues of Buddha. We could spend the money and send any of them, but we should never pretend that we are doing so for reasons of science.
More of the same! It's refreshing to see a reviewer so excited about sameness. It's good to see they've taken the next step in the evolution of the user interface, and combine two functions into a single button - now you too, can accidently click the 'stop loading' button twice to reload the page you didn't want. Revolutionary stuff.
Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)
on
Real Wood iPod
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We are, however, in the danger of losing our disposable lifestyle. A landfill filled with old milk jugs will become a virtual paradise for oil production companies, and recycling (hopefully) will become a more viable option.
Indeed - if managed correctly, it could be a good thing. I was considering the other whilst brushing my teeth - imagine a toothbrush which costs $100, but lasts a lifetime. Or buying a shirt, incredibly expensive (synthetic clothes are made from oil) , but so well designed it lasts for 5 years.
This is, of course, if we don't get nuked to death because of our invading all of the OPEC nations, taking their oils and running. But, hopefully, non-Americans will realize this is a problem with the person in Office and not with the country as a whole, and try to spare us when they come to kill.
Believe me, we know who is to blame. I get enough exposure to the opinions of real Americans to know that the rot is really at the top. I'm kind of hoping that Blairs favours in Iraq come home to roost at the G8, and consequently some real progress is made, despite Bushes reported attempts to block progress on climate change and poverty.
Any carbon source can be used for plastic. If you're using algae or reformulated turkey guts to provide portable energy storage, then they can be used to make plastic, too.
Sure. But it takes a lot more than a quart of turkey guts to make the same amount of energy and plastic that you get from a quart of oil. Or I should say, it takes a lot more than a quart of grain, since this is how the energy is collected from the sun, given to the turjey, who converts it - inefficiently - into potential energy. Result: plastic and energy prohibitively expensive.
Because "Peak Oil" is only terribly serious if you fail to realize that energy is perhaps the most fungible commodity there is. As the suplies run down the cost will run up, and this will eventually make one or more of the (presently marginal) alternatives cost effective.
Except of course, oil as energy is only half of the problem - the other half is that we use it extensively in manufacturing as well - and by that I mean PLASTIC comes from oil. Once oil gets prohibitively expensive for energy generation, it's also too expensive to use in manufacturing. Result: We can't build alternatives to oil once the oil runs low.
Or we could simply build the base by robot remote control and send people there when it is done. Or, NOT send humans at all and let the robots do all the mining. Fistly, however, the true purpose of a moon base would be to mine materials from the Moon itself that could be used in the construction of spacecraft which can neither be built nor launched from the surface of the earth, due to the High Gravity Well, and the manner of propulsion. What will these spacecraft be made of? If they are like most complex things we make on earth, they will be made from a variety of metals and plastics. Metal There is some metal on the moon, but in what variety? Is there lot's of aluminium/titanium in a form that can be mined? Plastic Plastic - as you are no doubt aware is made from long complex hydrocarbons - oil. The stuff we get from the ground. No oil on the moon. No oil anywhere but earth. The average PC takes 4 times its volume in oil to construct. I daresay the average spaceship will consume the same amount (in construction, let alone propellant).
I forgot to mention: It isn't running out of space on earth that concerns me. It is the fact that Earth just isn't going to be around forever.
No, it won't. But then, Mars won't either. If previous asteroid strikes on the earth are anything to go by then an asteroid striking the earth will still leave it more livable than Mars will ever be. When the Sun expands, Earth and Mars will become unlivable at pretty much the same time - an expanding star must give of heaps of solar wind, without a magnetosphere,folk on Mars but just as vulnerable as folk on Earth.
At some point after that, the universe will simply cool, or collapse, or otherwise die, and whoever remains will die also. But so what? Unique and beautiful species go extinct every day right here on earth, and we don't give a damn.
Unless your family is remarkably long lived, your great great great granchildren will be dead a long time before Mars is terraformed to a suitable state for human habitation.
In any case, if we lack the discipline/maturity/technology to give others living room on the earth, we certainly lack the discipline required to live sustainably on Mars...
Well of course, any planet that could be colonised would be so far away that:
(a) any communications with earth would be impossible, ie of the form: I send a message, my great grandson recieves the answer, by which time, the point of the communication is lost.
(b) The time taken to get there would be longer than the human life - the people who lived there would never have seen earth.
This means that colonial culture would quickly diverge from earth-culture. There would be no way to share advances in technology, earth would quickly lag the colony in technology (or vice versa, depending on who had the most wars/resource limitations). After about 1000 years the colonists would be as alien as, well aliens.
Even in a close orbit like that, you'd still be ok in a subterranian base, somewhere deep inside. It might be painfully hot at first, but then, everything is good for you, if it doesn't kill you.
Oh you mean peak oil nuts like the International Energy agency, US Vice president Dick 'Halliburton' Cheney, the Oil industry, the scientific community and anyone with a elementary graps of mathematics? Loons one and all, I suppose - an anonymous Slashbot clearly has a better grasp of oil reserves than the oil industry. What a relief.
And also the manufacturing problems we have today aren't the same ones we will have in 20 years time. After all, right now we are entering (or maybe just past ) Peak Oil. Which means that in 20 years time Basic Material (long chain hydrocarbons) will be much, much more expensive - it will be the shortage of oil (for plastics and energy) not the method of manufacture that will drive the economics of fabrication.
like, creating 'gun laws' (ie taking away the 2nd amendment) is causing more people to 'stock-up' just incase the pigs (feds, army, etc) come to the door?
What precisely do you expect to do, should the feds come to the door, and you have a weapon? If you observe the outcome of any siege situation you like to name, you'll discover it never ends well for the guy inside with the gun and the hostages.
Why is that?
Because the police and (if worst comes to it) the military are better trained and better armed and they call the shots. Get over it. The government isn't cowed by the notion of an armed civilian population - that's politics afghan or papua new guinean style, and it simply doesn't work. The government is cowed by free elections and free press that actually expose their mistakes/corruption and by a judicial system free from political pressure.
What are the part time pot shooters going to do if the goverment DOES call up the military against them? Fire their rifles at the stealth bombers overhead? Gun down the Navy Seals? Lay down cover fire that stops the cluster bombs in their tracks? The idea is childish and ridiculous.
Ironically, this exact same thing happens to me if I plug my mp3 player into my FreeBSD system - the last time I tried it, I lost my/usr partition. So I just blamed the problem on dodgy hardware (although it works fine under Windows... hmmm). If dodgy hardware ios no excuse, I guess I'll have to blame the operating system now. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don't. Irrelevant either way, because in order to demonstrate the worth of their beliefs, atheists need to disprove the existence of ANY Divine Being, regardless of whether any theist believes in that God or not. So the particular beliefs of various theists are orthagonal to a proof of atheism.
So when engaging atheists in conversation theists may validly demonstrate a disproof of atheism by generalising the concept of the Divine as much as they wish.
And I'm reminded of the quotation: religion disguised as a coat won't keep you warm in the evening.
Or in other words, all you've done is merely restate some presumptive belief as if it were really true by drawing an analogy - an analogy that illustrates the belief does not make the belief true. The presumptive belief in this case is the belief that when considering the question of the existence of a Deity the default position is to conclude that the Deity does not exist. But in actual fact, the (only) rational answer to the question is to conclude "I don't know". To make a positive conclusion either way is to accept one or the other presumptive belief.
Yes they sure have some mad ideas don't they, those Greens. Like
OR
Such crazy ideas
Well, yes. Yes I do. I also understand that I'm not going to travel in space - therefore, regardless of whether or not a (different) human goes or a robot, all I'm going to see is photos. And so are the vast, vast majority of other humans. It makes no difference to me whether a human takes those photos or a robot. What matters is what they take pictures of, the rest is irrelevant.
The reason to explore space is to find a place to go, not to collect photographs.
What rubbish. "Finding a place to go" is a valueless, meaningless exercise without a goal. Exploration is not goalless. All explorers have a goal - to find an inland sea, to map a coastline, make money for their financier, observe the transit of venus, etc. And in space, robots make better explorers (on our behalf) then fragile humans. It's absurd to scale back real exploration for meaningless ego driven exercises.
You mean like democracy?
Iraquis? Helicopters generally don't have a sense of humour...
With cyanide! yum!
Yes - a small grasp of previous environmental challenges demonstrates we historically found two ways: Exploit or adapt. Exploit - the former residents of Easter Island, who drove themselves to extinction. Adapt - the indigenous people of Australia, who after an initial (painful) experience managed to adapt to their environment fast enough to survive. Who survives these encounters with the environment - the exploiters, who try to adapt the earth to their requirements, or the adapters, who make the changes required in themselves? Last century, we thought it was the former - more exploitation means more money, which maens we are better equipped to survive. Now, we know differently. This time , WE need to change, if we don't something more adaptive will take our place.
Remember the basic rule - the species that adapts, survives.
As for artificially reducing oil demand, considering the econimic productivity that's derived from oil use, it's obvious that it would indeed cause great harm to the economy (and the world's economies).
Sounds like a crap system - to hang our survival on something so unrelated to meeting our basic human needs ("the economy") - very 1950s.
Anyway, global warming would be nice, I could stand to see a few more bikinis in Canada in the winter, and increasing the livable and productive land area would no doubt be beneficial for millions of people.
Yes, I'm sure that when ocean currents disrupt the marine food chain and there aren't any fish, our currently well drained and productive farmlands become arid deserts, and we find that defrosted tundra does NOT, in fact magically contain nutrients to feed our thristy and disease ridden hordes, but there'll still be plenty of food. Magic fairies will deliver it.
Who modded this flamebait? Is there some sort of ban on speaking sense in this place?
You seem to be getting confused - what has sending humans to Mars got to with 'exploring space?' We don't need primates there to explore the place - it can be done much more thoroughly and reliably by using robots. In fact, any humans who travel there will barely even touch the surface (maybe stagger around over a few square kms) whilst all the important stuff will be left to robots and satellites.
Mammals aren't at all suited to Mars. There is as much reason to send humans as cows, cats, or statues of Buddha. We could spend the money and send any of them, but we should never pretend that we are doing so for reasons of science.
More of the same! It's refreshing to see a reviewer so excited about sameness.
It's good to see they've taken the next step in the evolution of the user interface, and combine two functions into a single button - now you too, can accidently click the 'stop loading' button twice to reload the page you didn't want. Revolutionary stuff.
Because it's made from oil?
Indeed - if managed correctly, it could be a good thing. I was considering the other whilst brushing my teeth - imagine a toothbrush which costs $100, but lasts a lifetime. Or buying a shirt, incredibly expensive (synthetic clothes are made from oil) , but so well designed it lasts for 5 years. This is, of course, if we don't get nuked to death because of our invading all of the OPEC nations, taking their oils and running. But, hopefully, non-Americans will realize this is a problem with the person in Office and not with the country as a whole, and try to spare us when they come to kill. Believe me, we know who is to blame. I get enough exposure to the opinions of real Americans to know that the rot is really at the top. I'm kind of hoping that Blairs favours in Iraq come home to roost at the G8, and consequently some real progress is made, despite Bushes reported attempts to block progress on climate change and poverty.
Any carbon source can be used for plastic. If you're using algae or reformulated turkey guts to provide portable energy storage, then they can be used to make plastic, too. Sure. But it takes a lot more than a quart of turkey guts to make the same amount of energy and plastic that you get from a quart of oil. Or I should say, it takes a lot more than a quart of grain, since this is how the energy is collected from the sun, given to the turjey, who converts it - inefficiently - into potential energy. Result: plastic and energy prohibitively expensive.
Except of course, oil as energy is only half of the problem - the other half is that we use it extensively in manufacturing as well - and by that I mean PLASTIC comes from oil. Once oil gets prohibitively expensive for energy generation, it's also too expensive to use in manufacturing. Result: We can't build alternatives to oil once the oil runs low.
Or we could simply build the base by robot remote control and send people there when it is done.
Or, NOT send humans at all and let the robots do all the mining.
Fistly, however, the true purpose of a moon base would be to mine materials from the Moon itself that could be used in the construction of spacecraft which can neither be built nor launched from the surface of the earth, due to the High Gravity Well, and the manner of propulsion.
What will these spacecraft be made of? If they are like most complex things we make on earth, they will be made from a variety of metals and plastics.
Metal
There is some metal on the moon, but in what variety? Is there lot's of aluminium/titanium in a form that can be mined?
Plastic
Plastic - as you are no doubt aware is made from long complex hydrocarbons - oil. The stuff we get from the ground. No oil on the moon. No oil anywhere but earth. The average PC takes 4 times its volume in oil to construct. I daresay the average spaceship will consume the same amount (in construction, let alone propellant).
No, it won't. But then, Mars won't either. If previous asteroid strikes on the earth are anything to go by then an asteroid striking the earth will still leave it more livable than Mars will ever be. When the Sun expands, Earth and Mars will become unlivable at pretty much the same time - an expanding star must give of heaps of solar wind, without a magnetosphere,folk on Mars but just as vulnerable as folk on Earth.
At some point after that, the universe will simply cool, or collapse, or otherwise die, and whoever remains will die also. But so what? Unique and beautiful species go extinct every day right here on earth, and we don't give a damn.
In any case, if we lack the discipline/maturity/technology to give others living room on the earth, we certainly lack the discipline required to live sustainably on Mars...
(a) any communications with earth would be impossible, ie of the form: I send a message, my great grandson recieves the answer, by which time, the point of the communication is lost.
(b) The time taken to get there would be longer than the human life - the people who lived there would never have seen earth.
This means that colonial culture would quickly diverge from earth-culture. There would be no way to share advances in technology, earth would quickly lag the colony in technology (or vice versa, depending on who had the most wars/resource limitations). After about 1000 years the colonists would be as alien as, well aliens.
Even in a close orbit like that, you'd still be ok in a subterranian base, somewhere deep inside. It might be painfully hot at first, but then, everything is good for you, if it doesn't kill you.
Oh you mean peak oil nuts like the International Energy agency, US Vice president Dick 'Halliburton' Cheney, the Oil industry, the scientific community and anyone with a elementary graps of mathematics? Loons one and all, I suppose - an anonymous Slashbot clearly has a better grasp of oil reserves than the oil industry. What a relief.
And also the manufacturing problems we have today aren't the same ones we will have in 20 years time. After all, right now we are entering (or maybe just past ) Peak Oil. Which means that in 20 years time Basic Material (long chain hydrocarbons) will be much, much more expensive - it will be the shortage of oil (for plastics and energy) not the method of manufacture that will drive the economics of fabrication.
Black Mountainm l
('strue! I swear!)
http://www.ento.csiro.au/quarantine/quarantine.ht
like, creating 'gun laws' (ie taking away the 2nd amendment) is causing more people to 'stock-up' just incase the pigs (feds, army, etc) come to the door?
What precisely do you expect to do, should the feds come to the door, and you have a weapon? If you observe the outcome of any siege situation you like to name, you'll discover it never ends well for the guy inside with the gun and the hostages.
Why is that?
Because the police and (if worst comes to it) the military are better trained and better armed and they call the shots. Get over it. The government isn't cowed by the notion of an armed civilian population - that's politics afghan or papua new guinean style, and it simply doesn't work. The government is cowed by free elections and free press that actually expose their mistakes/corruption and by a judicial system free from political pressure.
What are the part time pot shooters going to do if the goverment DOES call up the military against them? Fire their rifles at the stealth bombers overhead? Gun down the Navy Seals? Lay down cover fire that stops the cluster bombs in their tracks? The idea is childish and ridiculous.
Ironically, this exact same thing happens to me if I plug my mp3 player into my FreeBSD system - the last time I tried it, I lost my /usr partition. So I just blamed the problem on dodgy hardware (although it works fine under Windows... hmmm). If dodgy hardware ios no excuse, I guess I'll have to blame the operating system now. Oh well.