DNA and the human genome is pretty rock solid proof of [evolutionism].
Creationist make the same claim. Except they say it's proof of creation.
Before you embarrass yourself again by verbally masturbating in front of the whole/. audience, you may want to investigate the claims of your opposition. At least just a little.
Oh, but why bother. They're all "simpleminded illiterate tribesmen" anyway. Feh.
When Juliet says "Wherefore art thou Romeo," she's not asking "Where are you, Romeo?" It's a rhetorical question -- Why are you Romeo? She's agonizing over the fact that her true love is Romeo Montague, a member of the rival family to her own Capulets.
I live in Finland, a country whose entire population is about 5 million people. The US lost more votes than there are voters in my country. And noboy thinks there is anything wrong with that?
Maybe you receive an abridged version of the world news over there in Finland, but there are a whole helluva lot of people who think there's something wrong with it. And, frankly, comparing anything to its Finnish equivalent is unlikely to make much of an impression.:)
This is not a scientific survey. In fact, I think the findings are rather skewed toward the pro-music-sharing ideology. Napster folk are sophisticated enough to know that when they are asked if they buy CDs whose tracks they've downloaded for free, saying "yes" will improve the odds that they will continue to have access to free music.
Take this quote from the article:
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks
This statiistic is vague, but I think it means one of two things:
86% of Napster (or Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, etc.) users buy 100% of the CDs whose tracks they have downloaded. Or,
Downloading a track has never stopped these users from purchasing an album that they had already decided to purchase.
I think we can all agree that the first option is unlikely in the greatest degree. And the second option is only marginally relevant, since it leaves open the possibility that these users have hundreds of MP3s whose corresponding albums they never intended to buy in the first place. So basically this is either a meaningless statistic or a lie. I'm betting on the latter.
Bush: When asked who his idol/hero was, answered 'Jesus'. Is in discrepancy with the bible - has put 145 to death under his rule as Gov. of Texas, yet bible claims thou shalt not kill.
The Bible also says that the rulers do not wield the sword in vain. There is no "discrepancy" with the Bible when the government excecutes citizens who have committed wrongdoing. The Bible explicitly gives this authority to the government. Get your theology (or conventional wisdom or hearsay) straight, please.
Alan Turing is not in the Inventors Hall of Fame, and yes, the Hall of Fame houses international inventors of repute--not just Americans. The web page is at http://www.invent.org. The front page has a link that allows you to nominate people. Why don't you go nominate Alan Turing?:)
The entire list of inventors at Inventure Place is at http://www.invent.org/book/bo ok-text/indexbyname.html. If you ever happen to pass through Akron, Ohio, I suggest you stop in there. It's got a load of cool hands-on exhibits, mainly aimed at kids but still fun for geeks.
The academy has always been stupid. This year, it's overlooking nominations for Talented Mr. Ripley except in supporting actor, because-- uh, oh-- Matt Damon plays a gay character.
What?? Where did you get this idea? I must have missed the press release. I mean, this IS Matt Damon we're talking about. Don't jump into conspiracy-mode too quickly. I guess we all know how *conservative* Hollywood is concerning homosexuality. Sheesh.
Or blatantly ignoring things like Boys Don't Cry or All About My Mother for far inferior movies like Cider House Rules in the Best Picture category
Good grief, man, will nothing make you happy? Obviously, there were more than six films that could qualify for Best Film, but they can only nominate so many. And, Hillary Swank was nominated for her performance in Boys Don't Cry, so I don't think that's exactly what we consider "being ignored." And, for pete's sake, All About My Mother got nominated for Best Foreign Film! What crack are you smoking?
I like Jon's views on religion in politics, technology etc....
I would like to share an opinion of mine.
First off, i will not reveal which operating system, if any, i use for a simple reason: Operating systems are personal! It is a personal choice that a person makes for themselves. I don't see the need for people to:
a) preach their operating system preference on a forum that is not specifically designed for their technological beliefs (er, nevermind)
b) put down other people's operating systems...
c) use operating systems in an argument ie. closed source is morally wrong because *insert famouse open source leader here* says its wrong.
in conclusion, can we keep operating system preference the way it was meant to be--personal.
Calm down, AC. I have studied evolution, I know the difference between macro- and micro-. We simply disagree. No reason to turn this into a religious holy war.
I think it's the result of being presented with a choice: Believe X, or ignore it at your peril. That peril may defined as a life of misery, hell, unhappiness, or whatever. But it's enough to make many people think twice about the direction their lives are headed. And I believe that, to many people, the Bible is credible enough that it lends a lot of weight to the idea that someday, when they die, they will be in a Bad Way for not having believed.
Okay, I know this has gotten really off-topic. Still, it's interesting to me.
Well, this has been enjoyable... I regret I have to run off and do some real work, even though it's a Saturday.
The point is that if you wanted to falsify a theory of evolutionary common descent, having a world full of creatures that have "truly" perfect design and no structures in common with other creatures would pretty much do it.
True. Not only that, it would make the idea of a Creator with a consistent and flowing design much less palatable. We should both be thankful for our male nipples--at least it gives us something with which to fortify our respective beliefs.;)
I didn't mean to poke at the Catholic church so much...it was more a pre-emptive strike against someone bringing up something such as the Vatican I and II councils. I suppose I do agree with those councils on this: religion should question and challenge its own open-mindedness with regards to accepting what the Bible plainly and clearly says. This is an on-going challenge.:)
Are you asking, a)Why would anyone assume that this is the premise of the Bible, or b)Why would anyone accept it? The answer to a) is that the Bible does in fact claim this premise for itself (there are several passages, one being somewhere in I Timothy...sorry for the vagueness). The answer to b), therefore, is that many people accept what the Bible has to say as a matter of faith (although it is not devoid of reason).
Do I understand you correctly, or was your question merely rhetorical?
That's such a poor analogy, I don't even know where to begin. They are simply not the same process. White moths evolving into black moths over a few decades is not the same as fish evolving into men over millions of years. You have the burden of proof. Proceed.
You "call" bullshit, or you "can" bullshit? It looks like you did the latter.:)
If we looked at the DNA of two different but similar creatures and saw that there were very few similarities, then that would be very strong evidence against the sort of common descent that is currently postulated.
Actually, considering the current state of evolutionary theory, it probably wouldn't present a problem at all. Read on.
Creationists like to arrogantly claim that humans are "perfect."
They do?? That's news to me. Do you have any references? Or is this just 'conventional wisdom?
Then why do we have (for example) an appendix? At best, it's a useless organ. At worst, it can become infected and threaten your life. Why is it even there? If a god engineered it, he's a pretty lousy engineer.
It almost hurts me to respond to this. If you think that the appendix is a useless organ, I suggest you check up on current biological theory. The appendix contains any number of bacteria that aid in the digestion process. Ask any high school bio student.:) If you're looking for lousy engineers, I'd say humans are the answer, not the symptom.
And the examples go on and on.
I certainly hope they're stronger than the one you cited!:)
No, the problem for creationists is not that evolution isn't falsifiable.. it's that the things that could have falsified it have not.
Or, perhaps, the things that could have falsified it have been ignored or misrepresented. Tell me, for instance, what was the evolutionary process that brought about RNA, DNA, and proteins in a mutually interdependent fashion? They all evolved at the exact same time, separately, and yet all relied on each other to operate. How does this work?? How did the giraffe evolve a circulatory system that keeps it from bursting an artery when it bends down to drink water? And the examples go on and on.
Yes, I agree with you on the term "Creation-science." It's a poor choice by Christians to bring there beliefs into the academic world. "Creation-science," I've found, is more often a science of pointing out the flaws and misrepresentations of evolution than a "science" of proving that God created man with a single utterance. It's unfortunate that any group of people would try to bring God and creation into science text books--it simply doesn't belong there.
The problem, as I see it, is that "Creation-science" is not as easily disprovable as the "Flat Earth" theory; in fact, it's not provable OR disprovable, and therefore cannot even be proffered as a scientific theory. Evolution (macro), on the other hand, is not provable (perhaps someday it will be), and is certainly not disprovable (i.e. it does not even make allowances for being disproved). It's certainly not up there with sacred truths such as "We live on a round earth.":)
No existing religion is willing to continually challenge and dispute itself in this manner.
Now say that, maybe, just maybe, the premise of, say, Christianity is true--that being, that every word in the Bible is the inspired truth of God himself, the creator of all things. What you would have is a PERFECT system of information that did not need to be continually self-corrected (like an imperfect system such as science).
Still with me?
Then you say
If the bible and christianity (or similar for any religion) can continually question and challenge and dispute its own doctorines and continue to survive and maintain logical cohesion, I'll believe that the religion has merit.
I don't know about you, but any religion that disputes and changes its own doctrines year after year would seem, to me, to be a man-invented hoax not worthy of anyone's time. After all, isn't religion (or Christianity, at least) simply a way for man to get to know God? With your system, we would have a Board of Priests continually revising the Bible depending on what's in style for that decade or century, with arbitrary judgements on right vs. wrong. Come to think of it, you might consider joining the Roman Catholic church.;)
Remember, I'm not arguing with you on whether Christianity is true or not. I'm simply asking you to dig a little further in your criticism of religion as a whole.
As much as I hate to challenge one anecdotal story with another, I have to say that I don't think your experience is the norm. My entire testing department installed AOL 5 (and every other version from 3.0 up) as the non-default browser/internet connection, and not a single one of us ran into any problems with msmouse.vxd, freezes on start-up, etc.
Note, I'm not making any comments on the experience of those who chose to make it the default. Plus, I don't regularly jump to the defense of AOL. I just think one person having problems with msmouse.vxd is not the strongest evidence of malicious practice on AOL's part.
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I haven't heard any rumors about a Gamecube Megaman release...Capcom shipped Megaman for the Nintendo 64 back in January, however.
Creationist make the same claim. Except they say it's proof of creation.
Before you embarrass yourself again by verbally masturbating in front of the whole /. audience, you may want to investigate the claims of your opposition. At least just a little.
Oh, but why bother. They're all "simpleminded illiterate tribesmen" anyway. Feh.
And, no, the Bard is not wrong. You are.
Maybe you receive an abridged version of the world news over there in Finland, but there are a whole helluva lot of people who think there's something wrong with it. And, frankly, comparing anything to its Finnish equivalent is unlikely to make much of an impression. :)
Oh, and Napser getting shut down is W's fault as well.
No, you've seen EULAs that figuratively say they get your first born. Eschew hyperbole.
Take this quote from the article:
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks
This statiistic is vague, but I think it means one of two things:
86% of Napster (or Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, etc.) users buy 100% of the CDs whose tracks they have downloaded. Or,
Downloading a track has never stopped these users from purchasing an album that they had already decided to purchase.
I think we can all agree that the first option is unlikely in the greatest degree. And the second option is only marginally relevant, since it leaves open the possibility that these users have hundreds of MP3s whose corresponding albums they never intended to buy in the first place. So basically this is either a meaningless statistic or a lie. I'm betting on the latter.
The Bible also says that the rulers do not wield the sword in vain. There is no "discrepancy" with the Bible when the government excecutes citizens who have committed wrongdoing. The Bible explicitly gives this authority to the government. Get your theology (or conventional wisdom or hearsay) straight, please.
Are you sure Woz be sayin' this, or do you be tryin' to pull one over on us?
Alan Turing is not in the Inventors Hall of Fame, and yes, the Hall of Fame houses international inventors of repute--not just Americans. The web page is at http://www.invent.org. The front page has a link that allows you to nominate people. Why don't you go nominate Alan Turing? :)
The entire list of inventors at Inventure Place is at http://www.invent.org/book/bo ok-text/indexbyname.html. If you ever happen to pass through Akron, Ohio, I suggest you stop in there. It's got a load of cool hands-on exhibits, mainly aimed at kids but still fun for geeks.
What?? Where did you get this idea? I must have missed the press release. I mean, this IS Matt Damon we're talking about. Don't jump into conspiracy-mode too quickly. I guess we all know how *conservative* Hollywood is concerning homosexuality. Sheesh.
Or blatantly ignoring things like Boys Don't Cry or All About My Mother for far inferior movies like Cider House Rules in the Best Picture category
Good grief, man, will nothing make you happy? Obviously, there were more than six films that could qualify for Best Film, but they can only nominate so many. And, Hillary Swank was nominated for her performance in Boys Don't Cry, so I don't think that's exactly what we consider "being ignored." And, for pete's sake, All About My Mother got nominated for Best Foreign Film! What crack are you smoking?
I like Jon's views on religion in politics, technology etc....
I would like to share an opinion of mine.
First off, i will not reveal which operating system, if any, i use for a simple reason: Operating systems are personal! It is a personal choice that a person makes for themselves. I don't see the need for people to:
a) preach their operating system preference on a forum that is not specifically designed for their technological beliefs (er, nevermind)
b) put down other people's operating systems...
c) use operating systems in an argument ie. closed source is morally wrong because *insert famouse open source leader here* says its wrong.
in conclusion, can we keep operating system preference the way it was meant to be--personal.
Calm down, AC. I have studied evolution, I know the difference between macro- and micro-. We simply disagree. No reason to turn this into a religious holy war.
Okay, I know this has gotten really off-topic. Still, it's interesting to me.
The point is that if you wanted to falsify a theory of evolutionary common descent, having a world full of creatures that have "truly" perfect design and no structures in common with other creatures would pretty much do it.
True. Not only that, it would make the idea of a Creator with a consistent and flowing design much less palatable. We should both be thankful for our male nipples--at least it gives us something with which to fortify our respective beliefs. ;)
See you in the next interesting thread.
I didn't mean to poke at the Catholic church so much...it was more a pre-emptive strike against someone bringing up something such as the Vatican I and II councils. I suppose I do agree with those councils on this: religion should question and challenge its own open-mindedness with regards to accepting what the Bible plainly and clearly says. This is an on-going challenge. :)
Do I understand you correctly, or was your question merely rhetorical?
That's such a poor analogy, I don't even know where to begin. They are simply not the same process. White moths evolving into black moths over a few decades is not the same as fish evolving into men over millions of years. You have the burden of proof. Proceed.
You "call" bullshit, or you "can" bullshit? It looks like you did the latter. :)
If we looked at the DNA of two different but similar creatures and saw that there were very few similarities, then that would be very strong evidence against the sort of common descent that is currently postulated.
Actually, considering the current state of evolutionary theory, it probably wouldn't present a problem at all. Read on.
Creationists like to arrogantly claim that humans are "perfect."
They do?? That's news to me. Do you have any references? Or is this just 'conventional wisdom?
Then why do we have (for example) an appendix? At best, it's a useless organ. At worst, it can become infected and threaten your life. Why is it even there? If a god engineered it, he's a pretty lousy engineer.
It almost hurts me to respond to this. If you think that the appendix is a useless organ, I suggest you check up on current biological theory. The appendix contains any number of bacteria that aid in the digestion process. Ask any high school bio student. :) If you're looking for lousy engineers, I'd say humans are the answer, not the symptom.
And the examples go on and on.
I certainly hope they're stronger than the one you cited! :)
No, the problem for creationists is not that evolution isn't falsifiable .. it's that the things that could have falsified it have not.
Or, perhaps, the things that could have falsified it have been ignored or misrepresented. Tell me, for instance, what was the evolutionary process that brought about RNA, DNA, and proteins in a mutually interdependent fashion? They all evolved at the exact same time, separately, and yet all relied on each other to operate. How does this work?? How did the giraffe evolve a circulatory system that keeps it from bursting an artery when it bends down to drink water? And the examples go on and on.
The problem, as I see it, is that "Creation-science" is not as easily disprovable as the "Flat Earth" theory; in fact, it's not provable OR disprovable, and therefore cannot even be proffered as a scientific theory. Evolution (macro), on the other hand, is not provable (perhaps someday it will be), and is certainly not disprovable (i.e. it does not even make allowances for being disproved). It's certainly not up there with sacred truths such as "We live on a round earth." :)
No existing religion is willing to continually challenge and dispute itself in this manner.
Now say that, maybe, just maybe, the premise of, say, Christianity is true--that being, that every word in the Bible is the inspired truth of God himself, the creator of all things. What you would have is a PERFECT system of information that did not need to be continually self-corrected (like an imperfect system such as science).
Still with me?
Then you say
If the bible and christianity (or similar for any religion) can continually question and challenge and dispute its own doctorines and continue to survive and maintain logical cohesion, I'll believe that the religion has merit.
I don't know about you, but any religion that disputes and changes its own doctrines year after year would seem, to me, to be a man-invented hoax not worthy of anyone's time. After all, isn't religion (or Christianity, at least) simply a way for man to get to know God? With your system, we would have a Board of Priests continually revising the Bible depending on what's in style for that decade or century, with arbitrary judgements on right vs. wrong. Come to think of it, you might consider joining the Roman Catholic church. ;)
Remember, I'm not arguing with you on whether Christianity is true or not. I'm simply asking you to dig a little further in your criticism of religion as a whole.
- Using this mode of thought, I have now decided to declare the following debates as non-existent:
- Linux vs. Windows (obviously!)
- Good 'n Fruity vs. Good 'n Plenty
- Great Taste vs. Less Filling
- Paper vs. Plastic
- Jar Jar vs. Ewoks
- Am I missing anything?
Boy, life is going to be so much easier now that I can dismiss all those pesky folks who disagree with me! Irrational fools!Note, I'm not making any comments on the experience of those who chose to make it the default. Plus, I don't regularly jump to the defense of AOL. I just think one person having problems with msmouse.vxd is not the strongest evidence of malicious practice on AOL's part.
Sorry, mate. His was better. :)
God is an anonymous coward? Bummer. But at least he has a website!