One might say that, if one were equally willing to dismiss as unscientific all the other Interpretations of QM other than Copenhagen (e.g. Everett) because there are no observations that make them "necessary".
Or the other way around, based, I suppose, on which of the fully-equally-supported-by-all-of-physics Interpretations was more popular at the moment...
...but it turns out to be not strictly universally true.
Allow me to guess the causal nature of which exceptions you will find fully plausible, and which you will not, for the cases which Popper here says Natural Selection -does not apply-.
1. The assertion "evolution occurs", which is testable and extensively tested, which science overwhelmingly supports and very few theists have any issue with. It allows inclusion of all of the specifics of evolutionary theory regarding plausible mechanisms for biological change, specifically and appropriately to the degree valid science calls for.
2. The assertion "only evolution occurs", which is untestable and unscientific, and seems to have as its only apparent benefit that it's seen as a necessary premise for atheism. Need causal exclusivity to be true, therefore it is, need it to be scientific, therefore it is, though it factually fails on both counts.
The only real questions are what one specifically means by "evolution" in a given presentation, and whether that usage bears scientific scrutiny--and managing to stick with that usage in the face of an opportunity to make a non-sequitur argument for atheism.
If evolution posited that the only way biological organisms can change was through that process...
Great. Then for the purposes of discussion, enumerate specifically the means you are considering appropriate for discussion of the scope of applicability of "evolution".
However, it does not, and furthermore, it can be shown unequivocally than organisms which have been modified by other than standard evolutionary means still undergo evolutionary change afterwards.
See above for the request to move that beyond a hand-waving of nonspecific "it does not". Further, in no way have I suggested evolutionary change does not happen, that's your Straw Man, not mine, though, granted, very much the typical redirect. "Evolution occurs" is quite scientific, and quite accepted by me. "Only evolution occurs" is not scientific, and generally posited by people desperate for a non-sequitur to their position of atheism. Generally, the only difficulty is pinning down exactly what one means at any given moment by the term, and calling out the typical oscillations between the meanings as some try to give their views the patina of science, while actually not being so, but rather simply an inappropriate usage meant to imply or suggest, rather than demonstrate, validity to the worldview they wish to support.
As stated, if your notion of "evolution" is as a scientific theory explaining all physical characteristics of biology, a set which includes organisms after 1951, it is directly false as a theory.
And regarding fingerprints and such, no, that would be a test of a -limited subset- of biology, irrelevant to a statement about evolution that is intended to apply (as most scientific theories attempt) to -all- biology, and I already stated my position on that subset is that it is untestable. We are at a point much like the situation regarding the Copenhagen and Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics--which is "true" is indeterminate as the same observables support either interpretation, and there is no presently test by which to demonstrate one correct "versus" the other. There would be no overt difference in the fossil remains of an "engineered" versus "non-engineered" organism, just as the fossils of Dolly the Sheep (or any of the other thousands of available examples) would show no discernable evidence of engineering, even though that engineering, hence biological design, is a -fact-.
If we are talking about "evolution" meaning "applying to all biology", then, again, as a statement about biology ascribing all physical characteristics to evolutionary process is simply false, which you can verify for yourself by googling any part of the history of genetic engineering. Genetically engineered organisms are biology, their characteristics were designed, and their biology can not be explained by natural selection mechanisms. Hence, a statement that "biology" per se is fully explainable by evolution is simply a false statement. It's quite simple fact, and is just there being the fact it is, and will remain so, regardless of how incompatible it may be to your habitual thoughts on the question.
If, however, you're essentially confessing that you have no interest in making an accurate statement of a scientific theory apply to all biology, and rather actually could care less about scientific accuracy, and really just want to equivocate "evolution" to mean whatever it needs to mean to exclude views you personally don't like, then just say so and I'll leave your issue to you.
Depends on your definition of "evolution". If you mean "random mutation and natural selection", or a more-recent, nuanced version on that, there is not only extensive evidence against that as a sole causal factor, it is provably not the case.
How do we know design is a factor when speaking to the scope of biological organisms, and provably so? Because we did it ourselves, through genetic engineering.
I understand you likely don't accept that genetic engineering -also- happened previous to the 20'th century, but that conclusion would not based on science, as the question is not testable.
Point being, unless you are willing to render the theory in a somewhat awkward terminology such as "evolutionary processes explain all biological characteristics, up until around 1951", your notion of "evolution" is not merely of an indeterminate scientific status, it is provably false.
...and the other one generates money for itself by internally ebbing the money about as well as importing money from other countries through valuable exports.
I think you left out "and producing -actual goods and services- which is the only source of money's value"...
Along the lines of your division into two distinct economies, I now am careful to use the term "making money" only to refer to the activities of engineers, scientists, mechanics, assembly-line workers, and the like. The financial sector, lawyers, politicians, CEOs and similar do not actually "make money"--they "get their hands on money". If everyone, including the media, paused carefully and selected the appropriate term, consistently asking when speaking to engineers, say, "How much money are you expecting to make", versus when speaking to investment bankers, "How much money are you expecting to get your hands on"--we'd go along way not only toward using language accurately but significantly improving society.
This strikes me as largely a non-issue caused by poor login security design.
Why not simply code the authentication such that for every successive request that fails to a given account, an enforced delay of, say, the square of the number of sequential login failures to that account, in seconds, is applied before the next attempt?
This would allow for actual humans to make several errors at an slowly-increasing wait each time, whereas for a scripted attack, after 200 tries we're up to 11 hours per try and growing fast. It seems that a brute-force attack becomes entirely unlikely to succeed under these conditions.
Standard Linux distros interject a delay between login attempts, why isn't this considered basic and expected good design for all login authentication contexts?
The Catholics and Eastern Orthodox did not remove books from the King James Bible, the King James Bible removed books from what was previously accepted as "the bible", accepted as what the bible is/was by essentially the entirety of Christianity (the Catholics and Orthodox), other than the Protestants.
"They" didn't change what is in the bible, -you- did.
Some more background on the Protestant Reformation in general, or the table given here in particular...
Now, you could hold as your stance that King James had some particular dispensation from the Holy Spirit giving him the authority to do so (as I'm sure he wouldn't object, as it was basically the "Divine Right of Kings" on which the legitimacy of the whole Church of England hangs upon), and I would have a sympathetic ear to a line of argument like that. But changing the bible based on a stance of all authority being derived from "the Word of God", that is, the bible itself, is circular reasoning. Which bible is then the authoritative one, the 39-book-Old-Testament Protestant one, the 46-book Catholic one, or the 51-book Orthodox one? Whichever it is, it cannot simultaneously be the case that the Word of God was the version with different books, and being so was the sole justification for the "new" Word of God with a changed set of books.
The same dilemma occurs going back further in time. According to you, what was the "Word of God" before the King James Bible existed? What was it in the fifth century? There was no "Word of God" back then?
In short, Sola Scriptura (the bible as the only source of authority, the "Word of God") is not, alone, a workable stance, and requires much more nuance than that. But that's probably a topic for another day.
You missed my point. There is no "the bible". What books are considered canonical, therefore part of "the bible" is a question which does not have consensus in Christianity, and it has that been that way going back all the way to the beginning.
From your tone, it seems that you are apparently member of one of the new splinter denominations of the many that have come into existence since the Protestant Reformation, and as such accept (and probably by default, having never asked yourself why) the correct books of the bible are what Martin Luther said they should be, rather than what they had been historically per the Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church.
Since you likely also have formed your religious belief as simply whatever is in opposition to Catholicism (as being a "false church"), and the fact the exact same dilemma is posed to you by the history of the Orthodox Church has been evaded by those teaching you, allow me to ask...
Why is "the bible" the books Martin Luther said they are to be in the 1500's, in contradiction to Christian history?
I think, first of all, you should avoid the presumption of telling me what I must think in regard to the bible if I believe in God, given your alternative is hardly exhaustive, and secondly, gain both some historical knowledge and coherence to your stance on "the bible", as though it's the typical, say, Evangelical position--it is philosophically and historically incoherent as a theological position. And I say this as a (presumably fellow) Protestant, specifically a Lutheran, as it seems that we are actually realistically given the history that your denomination, though owing your existence entirely to us, are apparently kept in the dark about.
Should you choose, at some point, to make your perspective logically viable, I would suggest tempering your view with a perspective that could work as representing "the Word of God" throughout history, including the first centuries, as a simple factual matter of what the book could contain, and why. Your own appraisal that it should be the "minimum content agreed upon by all" works neither today, nor could it going back in time. Again, the Eastern Orthodox church would be a good resource for this on methodological appraisal of "the canon" is, and therefore what "the bible" is and how it relates to other documents. You may find it illustrative in terms of your Sola Scriptura viewpoint.
However, feel free not to accept Thomas' veracity, regardless of the fact you have provided no basis for any objection by reference to "the bible" you consider authoritative. It does not, ultimately, matter, as no human agency is ultimately the determinant of that, and your choice simply does not affect me, knowing what I do.
1. I have many times challenged anyone to provide any part of Thomas that I could not find multiple directly-equivalent verses for in the canonical scriptures. So far, nobody has succeeded.
2. The scope of the canon, therefore "the bible" does not have consensus even between the major branches of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Definitive inclusions we can fairly conclude by which books do have consensus, for those that don't, the criteria must be methodological rather than absolute. In that respect, I would consider the Eastern Orthodox church to have the most accurate conceptualization of what it means to be "canon", and Thomas would be a viable inclusion under their approach of going by praxis rather than historical fiat.
Of course, this being Slashdot, it's entirely possible your post was just a sarcastic quip. If so, disregard the foregoing.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the following extracanonical "saying" from the perspective of theology, evolution, and/or the sociopolitical conflict between the preceding two.
Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
Understood that there are alternate interpretations. Depending on one's worldview, it does, however, pose something of a argumentative dilemma to invoke the bible as giving factual data points as one's only option in the process of denying it has a factual projection. For all the -verifiable- data points (such is googling "oldest living human") the prediction is spot-on.
If we switch the context of discussion to a specifically theological context of the bible and the premise of accuracy, it is not difficult to argue that since the limitation is put in place in correspondence to God's wishes, as stated based on a general principle of humanity being problematic, it is not a consistency problem to suggest He Himself can have exceptions for his purposes in the context of what is stated as done for his purposes. Outside of such a context of figures mentioned in the bible, the prediction is clearly accurate over thousands of years and billions of people.
The 1960's was "a long time ago"? We have a much more accurate value than Asimov's in Genesis 6:3, applying to all the billions of human lives since, and verifiably correct to the two significant digits of precision indicated.
In terms of specific methodology to arrive at that figure, though, I cannot say beyond the obvious.;)
And the grandparent could care less about "religion" per se across all of history, he cares about the particular one(s) he is targeting, and for those it is a clear Straw Man and Genetic Fallacy. "Science" has been wrong about every single idea it has forwarded, going by the entirety of its history, a track record much worse than religion, if we want to apply that standard. Staying with meaningful points, though, suggests that we don't.
People have attempted to explain the world through a great many methodologies, and here's the point: We -aren't- limited to only one. Science helps us little to none in the domains of, say, politics, or the arts, yet people very much conclude their views have a measure of validity, and rightfully so. Epistemology is a category for which science is only one element--they are not synonymous.
And, most religions, numerically speaking, do agree on the fundamental truths. The "big three", Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share much of the same defining concepts as "people of the book". Where, however, you get the notion that truth is determined by the amount of contention about ideas, though, I have no idea. That has no validity in any domain of human inquiry. Equally, where you get the idea that "if something were true, there wouldn't be disagreement" I also have no idea, as there's no validity to that either, as should be obvious to you (and probably is obvious to you, but in other cases you aren't talking about religion, so the the opposite of what you conclude on absolutely every other like topic in reality becomes the opposite) considering politics, the arts, or for that matter, any of hundreds of contentious topics in science.
a) internal combustion in engines is observable in a lab b) internal combustion leads to humans moving from on geographical area to another c) we have anthropological evidence humans have moved from one geographical area to another, supporting b) has happened in the past
"Evolution occurs" is testable. "Only evolution has occurred" is not testable, it is an inference, and one supported by fossils existing as evidence for less than 1% of conjectured species. A plausible inference, true, but an inference nonetheless. That you really really want to draw a causal exclusivity conclusion for evolutionary processes, because you want to non-sequitur atheism, doesn't alter the fact that you either have to accept that untestable inference from knowns is science, or reject that your reasoning here is science.
a) internal combustion in engines is observable in a lab b) internal combustion leads to humans moving from on geographical area to another c) we have anthropological evidence humans have moved from one geographical area to another, supporting b) has happened in the past
"Evolution occurs" is testable. "Only evolution has occurred" is not testable, it is an inference, and one supported fossils existing as evidence for less that 1% of conjectured species. A plausible inference, true, but an inference nonetheless. That you really really want to to be to draw a causal exclusivity conclusion for evolutionary processes, because you want to non-sequitur atheism, doesn't alter the fact that you either have to accept that untestable inference from knowns is science, or reject that your reasoning here is science.
"Religion exists because lights in the sky go boom and it doesn't rain when you want it to and things happen you can't understand."
No, it doesn't. Actually reading the documents would make it clear that there was essentially no difference in the events people in the first century would call "miraculous" and what we would today. Lightning, not miraculous. Multiplying matter (e.g. bread, fish), miraculous. Though they may not have understood the causal mechanisms behind the natural order to the degree we do today, there was no confusion as to a natural/supernatural category. It requires no belief in the supernatural at all to recognize that the notion of "religion used to believe everything happened for magical reasons until science fixed that" is simply false, self-serving history.
Thank you. After this thread, I now understand the notion of complaints of managers about developers' tendency toward extensive and elaborate answers to issues not at hand.
After your analysis and algorithmic suggestions for optimizing the performance of tree searches (I assume you'd include an Alpha-Beta heuristic as well in your proposal), I have also concluded...
As when I first stated it, and representing the full scope of my assertions about the question--it remains the case that the rules of chess are such that a game can have infinite moves.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand, but...
No, not at all. The Interpretations are firmly and fully in the realm of science. Specifically physics.
Well then, enjoy the math(s)!
Me, I have more of the "engineer" mindset. I'm more interested on what can be done with the math.
However their counter is not a theory, since there is no way to test it, and hence has no place in science class.
When we can quantify maximum parsimony across all the phylogenetic trees, it will be testable, and tested.
One might say that, if one were equally willing to dismiss as unscientific all the other Interpretations of QM other than Copenhagen (e.g. Everett) because there are no observations that make them "necessary".
Or the other way around, based, I suppose, on which of the fully-equally-supported-by-all-of-physics Interpretations was more popular at the moment...
Especially given Lamarck is now making a comeback in the form of Epigenetics.
...but it turns out to be not strictly universally true.
Allow me to guess the causal nature of which exceptions you will find fully plausible, and which you will not, for the cases which Popper here says Natural Selection -does not apply-.
As I see it, the "two sides" are this:
1. The assertion "evolution occurs", which is testable and extensively tested, which science overwhelmingly supports and very few theists have any issue with. It allows inclusion of all of the specifics of evolutionary theory regarding plausible mechanisms for biological change, specifically and appropriately to the degree valid science calls for.
2. The assertion "only evolution occurs", which is untestable and unscientific, and seems to have as its only apparent benefit that it's seen as a necessary premise for atheism. Need causal exclusivity to be true, therefore it is, need it to be scientific, therefore it is, though it factually fails on both counts.
The only real questions are what one specifically means by "evolution" in a given presentation, and whether that usage bears scientific scrutiny--and managing to stick with that usage in the face of an opportunity to make a non-sequitur argument for atheism.
If evolution posited that the only way biological organisms can change was through that process...
Great. Then for the purposes of discussion, enumerate specifically the means you are considering appropriate for discussion of the scope of applicability of "evolution".
However, it does not, and furthermore, it can be shown unequivocally than organisms which have been modified by other than standard evolutionary means still undergo evolutionary change afterwards.
See above for the request to move that beyond a hand-waving of nonspecific "it does not". Further, in no way have I suggested evolutionary change does not happen, that's your Straw Man, not mine, though, granted, very much the typical redirect. "Evolution occurs" is quite scientific, and quite accepted by me. "Only evolution occurs" is not scientific, and generally posited by people desperate for a non-sequitur to their position of atheism. Generally, the only difficulty is pinning down exactly what one means at any given moment by the term, and calling out the typical oscillations between the meanings as some try to give their views the patina of science, while actually not being so, but rather simply an inappropriate usage meant to imply or suggest, rather than demonstrate, validity to the worldview they wish to support.
As stated, if your notion of "evolution" is as a scientific theory explaining all physical characteristics of biology, a set which includes organisms after 1951, it is directly false as a theory.
And regarding fingerprints and such, no, that would be a test of a -limited subset- of biology, irrelevant to a statement about evolution that is intended to apply (as most scientific theories attempt) to -all- biology, and I already stated my position on that subset is that it is untestable. We are at a point much like the situation regarding the Copenhagen and Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics--which is "true" is indeterminate as the same observables support either interpretation, and there is no presently test by which to demonstrate one correct "versus" the other. There would be no overt difference in the fossil remains of an "engineered" versus "non-engineered" organism, just as the fossils of Dolly the Sheep (or any of the other thousands of available examples) would show no discernable evidence of engineering, even though that engineering, hence biological design, is a -fact-.
If we are talking about "evolution" meaning "applying to all biology", then, again, as a statement about biology ascribing all physical characteristics to evolutionary process is simply false, which you can verify for yourself by googling any part of the history of genetic engineering. Genetically engineered organisms are biology, their characteristics were designed, and their biology can not be explained by natural selection mechanisms. Hence, a statement that "biology" per se is fully explainable by evolution is simply a false statement. It's quite simple fact, and is just there being the fact it is, and will remain so, regardless of how incompatible it may be to your habitual thoughts on the question.
If, however, you're essentially confessing that you have no interest in making an accurate statement of a scientific theory apply to all biology, and rather actually could care less about scientific accuracy, and really just want to equivocate "evolution" to mean whatever it needs to mean to exclude views you personally don't like, then just say so and I'll leave your issue to you.
Depends on your definition of "evolution". If you mean "random mutation and natural selection", or a more-recent, nuanced version on that, there is not only extensive evidence against that as a sole causal factor, it is provably not the case.
How do we know design is a factor when speaking to the scope of biological organisms, and provably so? Because we did it ourselves, through genetic engineering.
I understand you likely don't accept that genetic engineering -also- happened previous to the 20'th century, but that conclusion would not based on science, as the question is not testable.
Point being, unless you are willing to render the theory in a somewhat awkward terminology such as "evolutionary processes explain all biological characteristics, up until around 1951", your notion of "evolution" is not merely of an indeterminate scientific status, it is provably false.
...and the other one generates money for itself by internally ebbing the money about as well as importing money from other countries through valuable exports.
I think you left out "and producing -actual goods and services- which is the only source of money's value"...
Along the lines of your division into two distinct economies, I now am careful to use the term "making money" only to refer to the activities of engineers, scientists, mechanics, assembly-line workers, and the like. The financial sector, lawyers, politicians, CEOs and similar do not actually "make money"--they "get their hands on money". If everyone, including the media, paused carefully and selected the appropriate term, consistently asking when speaking to engineers, say, "How much money are you expecting to make", versus when speaking to investment bankers, "How much money are you expecting to get your hands on"--we'd go along way not only toward using language accurately but significantly improving society.
True. It comes with uncredited BSD Unix instead.
This strikes me as largely a non-issue caused by poor login security design.
Why not simply code the authentication such that for every successive request that fails to a given account, an enforced delay of, say, the square of the number of sequential login failures to that account, in seconds, is applied before the next attempt?
This would allow for actual humans to make several errors at an slowly-increasing wait each time, whereas for a scripted attack, after 200 tries we're up to 11 hours per try and growing fast. It seems that a brute-force attack becomes entirely unlikely to succeed under these conditions.
Standard Linux distros interject a delay between login attempts, why isn't this considered basic and expected good design for all login authentication contexts?
The Catholics and Eastern Orthodox did not remove books from the King James Bible, the King James Bible removed books from what was previously accepted as "the bible", accepted as what the bible is/was by essentially the entirety of Christianity (the Catholics and Orthodox), other than the Protestants.
"They" didn't change what is in the bible, -you- did.
Some more background on the Protestant Reformation in general, or the table given here in particular...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible ...you may find informative.
Now, you could hold as your stance that King James had some particular dispensation from the Holy Spirit giving him the authority to do so (as I'm sure he wouldn't object, as it was basically the "Divine Right of Kings" on which the legitimacy of the whole Church of England hangs upon), and I would have a sympathetic ear to a line of argument like that. But changing the bible based on a stance of all authority being derived from "the Word of God", that is, the bible itself, is circular reasoning. Which bible is then the authoritative one, the 39-book-Old-Testament Protestant one, the 46-book Catholic one, or the 51-book Orthodox one? Whichever it is, it cannot simultaneously be the case that the Word of God was the version with different books, and being so was the sole justification for the "new" Word of God with a changed set of books.
The same dilemma occurs going back further in time. According to you, what was the "Word of God" before the King James Bible existed? What was it in the fifth century? There was no "Word of God" back then?
In short, Sola Scriptura (the bible as the only source of authority, the "Word of God") is not, alone, a workable stance, and requires much more nuance than that. But that's probably a topic for another day.
You missed my point. There is no "the bible". What books are considered canonical, therefore part of "the bible" is a question which does not have consensus in Christianity, and it has that been that way going back all the way to the beginning.
From your tone, it seems that you are apparently member of one of the new splinter denominations of the many that have come into existence since the Protestant Reformation, and as such accept (and probably by default, having never asked yourself why) the correct books of the bible are what Martin Luther said they should be, rather than what they had been historically per the Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church.
Since you likely also have formed your religious belief as simply whatever is in opposition to Catholicism (as being a "false church"), and the fact the exact same dilemma is posed to you by the history of the Orthodox Church has been evaded by those teaching you, allow me to ask...
Why is "the bible" the books Martin Luther said they are to be in the 1500's, in contradiction to Christian history?
I think, first of all, you should avoid the presumption of telling me what I must think in regard to the bible if I believe in God, given your alternative is hardly exhaustive, and secondly, gain both some historical knowledge and coherence to your stance on "the bible", as though it's the typical, say, Evangelical position--it is philosophically and historically incoherent as a theological position. And I say this as a (presumably fellow) Protestant, specifically a Lutheran, as it seems that we are actually realistically given the history that your denomination, though owing your existence entirely to us, are apparently kept in the dark about.
Should you choose, at some point, to make your perspective logically viable, I would suggest tempering your view with a perspective that could work as representing "the Word of God" throughout history, including the first centuries, as a simple factual matter of what the book could contain, and why. Your own appraisal that it should be the "minimum content agreed upon by all" works neither today, nor could it going back in time. Again, the Eastern Orthodox church would be a good resource for this on methodological appraisal of "the canon" is, and therefore what "the bible" is and how it relates to other documents. You may find it illustrative in terms of your Sola Scriptura viewpoint.
However, feel free not to accept Thomas' veracity, regardless of the fact you have provided no basis for any objection by reference to "the bible" you consider authoritative. It does not, ultimately, matter, as no human agency is ultimately the determinant of that, and your choice simply does not affect me, knowing what I do.
A couple things on that:
1. I have many times challenged anyone to provide any part of Thomas that I could not find multiple directly-equivalent verses for in the canonical scriptures. So far, nobody has succeeded.
2. The scope of the canon, therefore "the bible" does not have consensus even between the major branches of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Definitive inclusions we can fairly conclude by which books do have consensus, for those that don't, the criteria must be methodological rather than absolute. In that respect, I would consider the Eastern Orthodox church to have the most accurate conceptualization of what it means to be "canon", and Thomas would be a viable inclusion under their approach of going by praxis rather than historical fiat.
Of course, this being Slashdot, it's entirely possible your post was just a sarcastic quip. If so, disregard the foregoing.
Dr. Bakker,
I would appreciate your thoughts on the following extracanonical "saying" from the perspective of theology, evolution, and/or the sociopolitical conflict between the preceding two.
Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
--Gospel of Thomas
Thank you.
To amplify your statement a bit by narrowing the scope of "supernatural" a bit...
It is the very definition of "divine intervention" that the event cannot be performed "at will" of the experiencer/beneficiary.
Understood that there are alternate interpretations. Depending on one's worldview, it does, however, pose something of a argumentative dilemma to invoke the bible as giving factual data points as one's only option in the process of denying it has a factual projection. For all the -verifiable- data points (such is googling "oldest living human") the prediction is spot-on.
If we switch the context of discussion to a specifically theological context of the bible and the premise of accuracy, it is not difficult to argue that since the limitation is put in place in correspondence to God's wishes, as stated based on a general principle of humanity being problematic, it is not a consistency problem to suggest He Himself can have exceptions for his purposes in the context of what is stated as done for his purposes. Outside of such a context of figures mentioned in the bible, the prediction is clearly accurate over thousands of years and billions of people.
The 1960's was "a long time ago"? We have a much more accurate value than Asimov's in Genesis 6:3, applying to all the billions of human lives since, and verifiably correct to the two significant digits of precision indicated.
In terms of specific methodology to arrive at that figure, though, I cannot say beyond the obvious. ;)
And the grandparent could care less about "religion" per se across all of history, he cares about the particular one(s) he is targeting, and for those it is a clear Straw Man and Genetic Fallacy. "Science" has been wrong about every single idea it has forwarded, going by the entirety of its history, a track record much worse than religion, if we want to apply that standard. Staying with meaningful points, though, suggests that we don't.
People have attempted to explain the world through a great many methodologies, and here's the point: We -aren't- limited to only one. Science helps us little to none in the domains of, say, politics, or the arts, yet people very much conclude their views have a measure of validity, and rightfully so. Epistemology is a category for which science is only one element--they are not synonymous.
And, most religions, numerically speaking, do agree on the fundamental truths. The "big three", Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share much of the same defining concepts as "people of the book". Where, however, you get the notion that truth is determined by the amount of contention about ideas, though, I have no idea. That has no validity in any domain of human inquiry. Equally, where you get the idea that "if something were true, there wouldn't be disagreement" I also have no idea, as there's no validity to that either, as should be obvious to you (and probably is obvious to you, but in other cases you aren't talking about religion, so the the opposite of what you conclude on absolutely every other like topic in reality becomes the opposite) considering politics, the arts, or for that matter, any of hundreds of contentious topics in science.
Post 1.01. Changelist: less typos
a) internal combustion in engines is observable in a lab
b) internal combustion leads to humans moving from on geographical area to another
c) we have anthropological evidence humans have moved from one geographical area to another, supporting b) has happened in the past
"Evolution occurs" is testable. "Only evolution has occurred" is not testable, it is an inference, and one supported by fossils existing as evidence for less than 1% of conjectured species. A plausible inference, true, but an inference nonetheless. That you really really want to draw a causal exclusivity conclusion for evolutionary processes, because you want to non-sequitur atheism, doesn't alter the fact that you either have to accept that untestable inference from knowns is science, or reject that your reasoning here is science.
a) internal combustion in engines is observable in a lab
b) internal combustion leads to humans moving from on geographical area to another
c) we have anthropological evidence humans have moved from one geographical area to another, supporting b) has happened in the past
"Evolution occurs" is testable. "Only evolution has occurred" is not testable, it is an inference, and one supported fossils existing as evidence for less that 1% of conjectured species. A plausible inference, true, but an inference nonetheless. That you really really want to to be to draw a causal exclusivity conclusion for evolutionary processes, because you want to non-sequitur atheism, doesn't alter the fact that you either have to accept that untestable inference from knowns is science, or reject that your reasoning here is science.
"Religion exists because lights in the sky go boom and it doesn't rain when you want it to and things happen you can't understand."
No, it doesn't. Actually reading the documents would make it clear that there was essentially no difference in the events people in the first century would call "miraculous" and what we would today. Lightning, not miraculous. Multiplying matter (e.g. bread, fish), miraculous. Though they may not have understood the causal mechanisms behind the natural order to the degree we do today, there was no confusion as to a natural/supernatural category. It requires no belief in the supernatural at all to recognize that the notion of "religion used to believe everything happened for magical reasons until science fixed that" is simply false, self-serving history.
Thank you. After this thread, I now understand the notion of complaints of managers about developers' tendency toward extensive and elaborate answers to issues not at hand.
After your analysis and algorithmic suggestions for optimizing the performance of tree searches (I assume you'd include an Alpha-Beta heuristic as well in your proposal), I have also concluded...
As when I first stated it, and representing the full scope of my assertions about the question--it remains the case that the rules of chess are such that a game can have infinite moves.