Compare this with my story of satellite. Ordered up a PVR hooked it up... now 3 years later (never a hitch) seriously debating upgrading because of all the cool new equipment that exists. I have cable internet and it sucks, but my DISH seems to be going strong. Also, my sister had TiVo for a while and didn't like it as much as the built in PVR.
Clearly, this means that theology needs to fold the soul somewhere else. If brains make choices on their own. Souls/spirits get tossed anywhere left. Is there anywhere left? I mean people should have dropped this nonsense years ago. But, perhaps... time will tell where they try to put the soul next.
Oddly enough, the reason it's good these fancy huge hard drives come out is not just to use them, but rather to drive the price of the reasonable drives down. $60 250 gigs here I come.
I honestly have to agree with the poster. You want to feel special and find it "more satisfying" to believe something. This has no bearing on the truth of any issue.
Also, the invocation of QM seems a little weak. As if the absurdity of claiming I want X to be true, X is true is on par with Quantum Mechanics. If God were as predictable as QM, we would have shrunk him and put him in a digital watch.
I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form. In reality, going all the way back to our earliest ancestors you won't find a parent which was a different species than its offspring (some very special cases exist though, but typically never). Everything is a transitional form, from what its ancestors were to what its progeny will become.
The organism 1.39390 isn't really making the transition from 1.39389 to 1.39391. It's just there.
If anything is, I am a transitional form between apes and super-humans.
Typically the idea is to have divinely driven evolution. Where the evolution goes is guided by some kind of higher-power or God as a tool to make creation.
In short, it's a load of crap. Giving God credit for evolution is about as effective as giving fish credit for plate tectonics. In fact, it's worse. The utter mind-blowing jaw-dropping bodypartnoun-verbing power of evolution is that it requires no intelligence at all to create something fantastic. Caltech has a program called Avida which shows exactly this, evolution is extremely effective when simulated by a computer. A number of programs have been written to use evolution to do the designing.
Make a number of random models. Test model based on some goal. Allow better model to reproduce more. Introduce random mutation to reproduction.
If you can test for a property in a model, you can implement evolution in a computer program.
You mean to say that if God came down and gave a press conference in central park and made the sun vanish and showed and demonstrated what he said that that wouldn't determine that God actually existed? The only reason to suggest that it's impossible to determine God exists or not is because God doesn't exist (or never interacts with the universe).
If a massive intellect actually started the universe, that's pretty important to science.
How dare you!!! You are equating our Creator with a The King of the Potato People. How dare you. The Flying Spaghetti Monster shall remember your name! He shall deny you his noodly appendage!
ech tee tee pee colon slash org dot slash dot dot org - Not as cool to say.
There is a reason for the double slash. The double slash says it's the traditional format. The single slash signifies the domain name extension should go first. In the new-Berners-Lee format...
For example.
http://slashdot.org http:/org.slashdot
Should both be allowed addresses. They aren't. But, because he did a double slash in the beginning we could actually flip the extention order and drop the slash and it wouldn't be confused with the original format. See, Sir Tim is such a foward thinker he added a worthless slash to save the day years later!
Yeah, it's a major problem with vigilante bugs. All too often people are stupid and make them active. If you have to actively search for a worm, it's not worth it. It's also a recipe for disaster. I figure a passive infection would work wonders for counteracting these things. Basicly detect the damned thing attacking you on a specific port. That should be the cue that that machine is able to be attacked on that same port. Return the favor, infect, fix the problem, stand guard a week before deleting yourself. This program would never even look at a non-infected machine.
I would be completely astounded if evolution wasn't working in hyperdrive right now. Beyond the sudden (as far as evolution is concerned) exposure to disease and toxins humans have managed to reintroduce gene flow after almost 15,000 years of genetic drift. I bet over a period of two generations you could observe massive changes to gene frequency. In fact, in the last fifty years the average height increases have been rather astounding, except for in France where Napoleon thought tall people were scary and put them in the front lines and almost wiped the genes out. Also, the population increases have been rather astounding so even genes for traits like hemophilia should increase (though not in frequency). I would be hard pressed to think of anything which could make evolution occur faster without unnatural selection for specific genes or genetic engineering.
Clearly the aliens which created life on Earth were created by other aliens.
Now, the question becomes, where did THOSE aliens come from... obviously, those alien-creating-aliens evolved over millions of years via natural selection.
Intelligent design does have the obvious problem of making it "turtles all the way down."
Yes, Dark Matter is invisible and undetectable in every way except by its uncanny ability to make our equations wrong. It's impossible that our equations don't really apply to galaxies. Although, the fact that they don't apply to super small particles should have been a clue that they aren't perfect.
I personally, have a complete dislike for the idea of dark matter. It seems like a stab in the dark, that missed, and was declared right anyway. "Wow, galaxies spin way faster than we think they should. It's almost like there are invisible halos of super heavy matter surrounding all galaxies." Oh, yeah, beyond being completely invisible Dark Matter exists in halos around galaxies. They are really really heavy but the stars don't fall into the halos or the halos into the stars. It's all magically perfect.
I tend to agree. If a theory doesn't seem any more plausible than "goddidit" it really shouldn't be accepted. I honestly don't think invisible halos of exotic matter, whose only purpose is to make Newtonian physics apply to something it doesn't, explain much of anything. There was a time that people wondered if there was some extra magic planet to explain why Mercury didn't quite fit into Newtonian physics. When we applied Einsteinian physics the problem was solved. But, it does seem like a common MO. Gravity equations don't fit, invent more matter.
You might as well argue that Goddidit. God, proves his existence by contradicting the known laws of physics in miracles. Rather than mess with people's lives, he chooses to speed up the spin of all galaxies in the universe. Truly a powerful deity indeed! You dare doubt his existence in light of these constant miracles? If you want God could just let go, and this galaxy would fling apart. Repent!
Well, clearly, spiral arms of galaxies do look very much like the noodles of the FSM. This is clearly what we would expect from an egocentric deity such as FSM.
Just because something is the "best model we have now" doesn't suggest that it's right or even on the right path. Centuries ago, the best model to answer many scientific questions were theological. They were the only models. The lack of better answers didn't stop them from being bad answers. And although you are correct that the Cooperstock-Tieu model does have detractors they note problems with the model which would require revision rather than constituting debunking.
Vogt and Letelier even note:
Although the proposed galactic model does not really resolves galactic rotation without the presense of exotic matter, we believe that the idea of treating the non-linear galactic dynamical problem in the context of General Relativity is quite interesting and should be further investigated, specially the rotating models where we have the non-Newtonian effect of dragging of inertial frames; a modest step in this direction is presented in 9.
Sure, seeing as there's no evidence for string theory and no evidence for Dark Matter we are currently 0 to 0. Now, string theory is an attempt to tie quantum mechanics together with relativity and kind of does that. But, Dark Matter is just an attempt to fix what we speed we think galaxies should rotate at according to Newton and what speed they do rotate at.
String theory at least has meshing two obviously true theories together, whereas Dark Matter has the job fixing bad math. And if this article's suggestion of galaxies riding an invisible stream of dark matter is any suggestion, it might as well be the great cosmic boogie-man of physics. Oh, your calculations don't add up... there must be dark matter. Halos of invisible matter that can't be detected by any way other than having our calculations wrong. I'm sorry, Newton's equations were just a stab at it. They work for our solar system. You don't make up new matter to fix wrong theories which honestly shouldn't work at the galactic level.
No, I don't have a better model for it. The suggestion that "Dark Matter is the best model we have," doesn't change anything. It's a bad model. How about back in the 1700s when all that vital element crap was the rage of Biology. There was no better theory. Having a sort of God molecule dividing the organic and inorganic was a crap answer, but it was the best we had at the time. It doesn't negate the fact that that too was a bad answer. Last I checked, nobody has really worked out a perfectly reasonable cosmology to explain why we had the Big Bang, although there's the answer that "God did it." This is, the only answer we have, should we accept that too.
Just because I don't have a better answer, doesn't make invisible halos of undetectable superheavy matter correct. I would need some actually solid evidence to suggest that that is the case before I accept it. Ockam's Razor would tend to suggest that bad math is a better explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
Compare this with my story of satellite. Ordered up a PVR hooked it up... now 3 years later (never a hitch) seriously debating upgrading because of all the cool new equipment that exists. I have cable internet and it sucks, but my DISH seems to be going strong. Also, my sister had TiVo for a while and didn't like it as much as the built in PVR.
Clearly, this means that theology needs to fold the soul somewhere else. If brains make choices on their own. Souls/spirits get tossed anywhere left. Is there anywhere left? I mean people should have dropped this nonsense years ago. But, perhaps... time will tell where they try to put the soul next.
Oddly enough, the reason it's good these fancy huge hard drives come out is not just to use them, but rather to drive the price of the reasonable drives down. $60 250 gigs here I come.
Apparently teenaged boys don't need to practice drawing their nudes when they can just download them off the web.
You can download nudes from the web!?!?!?!?!
I honestly have to agree with the poster. You want to feel special and find it "more satisfying" to believe something. This has no bearing on the truth of any issue.
Also, the invocation of QM seems a little weak. As if the absurdity of claiming I want X to be true, X is true is on par with Quantum Mechanics. If God were as predictable as QM, we would have shrunk him and put him in a digital watch.
I must admit. Under the light of punctuated equalibrium it the term seems much more reasonable.
I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form. In reality, going all the way back to our earliest ancestors you won't find a parent which was a different species than its offspring (some very special cases exist though, but typically never). Everything is a transitional form, from what its ancestors were to what its progeny will become.
The organism 1.39390 isn't really making the transition from 1.39389 to 1.39391. It's just there.
If anything is, I am a transitional form between apes and super-humans.
Typically the idea is to have divinely driven evolution. Where the evolution goes is guided by some kind of higher-power or God as a tool to make creation.
In short, it's a load of crap. Giving God credit for evolution is about as effective as giving fish credit for plate tectonics. In fact, it's worse. The utter mind-blowing jaw-dropping bodypartnoun-verbing power of evolution is that it requires no intelligence at all to create something fantastic. Caltech has a program called Avida which shows exactly this, evolution is extremely effective when simulated by a computer. A number of programs have been written to use evolution to do the designing.
Make a number of random models.
Test model based on some goal.
Allow better model to reproduce more.
Introduce random mutation to reproduction.
If you can test for a property in a model, you can implement evolution in a computer program.
Just the things hashed out by science...
You mean to say that if God came down and gave a press conference in central park and made the sun vanish and showed and demonstrated what he said that that wouldn't determine that God actually existed? The only reason to suggest that it's impossible to determine God exists or not is because God doesn't exist (or never interacts with the universe).
If a massive intellect actually started the universe, that's pretty important to science.
Neutrinos exist. God doesn't.
Science is hashing these things out pretty well. What's next?
How dare you!!! You are equating our Creator with a The King of the Potato People. How dare you. The Flying Spaghetti Monster shall remember your name! He shall deny you his noodly appendage!
You're right! It's gravity down. Gravity spends all of it's time trying to keep the religious people down (literally)!
The point is well made though, it doesn't count as a conspiracy if everybody is just advancing science.
ess oh ar ar why !
ech tee tee pee colon slash org dot slash dot dot org - Not as cool to say.
There is a reason for the double slash. The double slash says it's the traditional format. The single slash signifies the domain name extension should go first. In the new-Berners-Lee format...
For example.
http://slashdot.org
http:/org.slashdot
Should both be allowed addresses. They aren't. But, because he did a double slash in the beginning we could actually flip the extention order and drop the slash and it wouldn't be confused with the original format. See, Sir Tim is such a foward thinker he added a worthless slash to save the day years later!
They made Spirit and Opportunity do some battlebot stuff. And well, Spirit is a puss.
>>We play this awesome game called Domesticity.
Sounds like a total rip off of the Sims.
Yeah, it's a major problem with vigilante bugs. All too often people are stupid and make them active. If you have to actively search for a worm, it's not worth it. It's also a recipe for disaster. I figure a passive infection would work wonders for counteracting these things. Basicly detect the damned thing attacking you on a specific port. That should be the cue that that machine is able to be attacked on that same port. Return the favor, infect, fix the problem, stand guard a week before deleting yourself. This program would never even look at a non-infected machine.
I'd do it, but I'd rather obey the laws.
Well the room was declared *full* of strangers. Certainly a date would at least be partially known to you. Clearly we'd only pay 13 bucks.
I would be completely astounded if evolution wasn't working in hyperdrive right now. Beyond the sudden (as far as evolution is concerned) exposure to disease and toxins humans have managed to reintroduce gene flow after almost 15,000 years of genetic drift. I bet over a period of two generations you could observe massive changes to gene frequency. In fact, in the last fifty years the average height increases have been rather astounding, except for in France where Napoleon thought tall people were scary and put them in the front lines and almost wiped the genes out. Also, the population increases have been rather astounding so even genes for traits like hemophilia should increase (though not in frequency). I would be hard pressed to think of anything which could make evolution occur faster without unnatural selection for specific genes or genetic engineering.
Clearly the aliens which created life on Earth were created by other aliens.
Now, the question becomes, where did THOSE aliens come from... obviously, those alien-creating-aliens evolved over millions of years via natural selection.
Intelligent design does have the obvious problem of making it "turtles all the way down."
Yes, Dark Matter is invisible and undetectable in every way except by its uncanny ability to make our equations wrong. It's impossible that our equations don't really apply to galaxies. Although, the fact that they don't apply to super small particles should have been a clue that they aren't perfect.
I personally, have a complete dislike for the idea of dark matter. It seems like a stab in the dark, that missed, and was declared right anyway. "Wow, galaxies spin way faster than we think they should. It's almost like there are invisible halos of super heavy matter surrounding all galaxies." Oh, yeah, beyond being completely invisible Dark Matter exists in halos around galaxies. They are really really heavy but the stars don't fall into the halos or the halos into the stars. It's all magically perfect.
I tend to agree. If a theory doesn't seem any more plausible than "goddidit" it really shouldn't be accepted. I honestly don't think invisible halos of exotic matter, whose only purpose is to make Newtonian physics apply to something it doesn't, explain much of anything. There was a time that people wondered if there was some extra magic planet to explain why Mercury didn't quite fit into Newtonian physics. When we applied Einsteinian physics the problem was solved. But, it does seem like a common MO. Gravity equations don't fit, invent more matter.
You might as well argue that Goddidit. God, proves his existence by contradicting the known laws of physics in miracles. Rather than mess with people's lives, he chooses to speed up the spin of all galaxies in the universe. Truly a powerful deity indeed! You dare doubt his existence in light of these constant miracles? If you want God could just let go, and this galaxy would fling apart. Repent!
Well, clearly, spiral arms of galaxies do look very much like the noodles of the FSM. This is clearly what we would expect from an egocentric deity such as FSM.
Vogt and Letelier even note:
Sure, seeing as there's no evidence for string theory and no evidence for Dark Matter we are currently 0 to 0. Now, string theory is an attempt to tie quantum mechanics together with relativity and kind of does that. But, Dark Matter is just an attempt to fix what we speed we think galaxies should rotate at according to Newton and what speed they do rotate at.
String theory at least has meshing two obviously true theories together, whereas Dark Matter has the job fixing bad math. And if this article's suggestion of galaxies riding an invisible stream of dark matter is any suggestion, it might as well be the great cosmic boogie-man of physics. Oh, your calculations don't add up... there must be dark matter. Halos of invisible matter that can't be detected by any way other than having our calculations wrong. I'm sorry, Newton's equations were just a stab at it. They work for our solar system. You don't make up new matter to fix wrong theories which honestly shouldn't work at the galactic level.
No, I don't have a better model for it. The suggestion that "Dark Matter is the best model we have," doesn't change anything. It's a bad model. How about back in the 1700s when all that vital element crap was the rage of Biology. There was no better theory. Having a sort of God molecule dividing the organic and inorganic was a crap answer, but it was the best we had at the time. It doesn't negate the fact that that too was a bad answer. Last I checked, nobody has really worked out a perfectly reasonable cosmology to explain why we had the Big Bang, although there's the answer that "God did it." This is, the only answer we have, should we accept that too.
Just because I don't have a better answer, doesn't make invisible halos of undetectable superheavy matter correct. I would need some actually solid evidence to suggest that that is the case before I accept it. Ockam's Razor would tend to suggest that bad math is a better explanation.