The reason some christians oppose evolution is that it relegates god's role in the development of life and in the development of man to the further reaches of biochemistry, to the presumed primordial soup in which the first self-replicating molecule complexes arose.
They are rightly concerned that this is the thin edge of the wedge: already god's role in cosmology is very distant, so much so that his involvement in it appears as implausible as humankind's presence in the cosmos is insignificant.
If they were to grant the truth of evolution, god is displaced of most his role in Life too, and suffers another large demotion in the scope of things he can reasonably be seen to be in charge of.
Furthermore, the ascent of science is a problem for all religions that require one to go on faith (which is nothing be belief in the incredible, in the absence of any substantiating evidence). This is because the advancing armies of science, with its seemingly pig-headed insistence on evidence, have beat the cr*p out of other belief systems that don't rest on evidence (astrology, faith healing, soothsaying etc. etc.), and they fear that religion, the granddaddy of unsubstantiated belief systems, will suffer the same fate.
The sad (from their perspective) truth is that they are right. The best they can do at the moment, as many on slashdot seem to do, is to tacitly concede the demotion in god's role that Darwin ushered in, issuing platitudes like "religion and science can learn from each other, and indeed, support each other." Which, of course, is rubbish -- science, in the main, has nothing to learn from religion.
For those of us who do believe in evolution, we know that we have a far stronger force than an imagined and imaginary god on our side: evidence. The only way we can win this one is if we keep insisting that only way to resolve conflicting belief systems is by evidence, and by educating the other side on the evidence well enough that they come to the same conclusions the rest of us have.
And as for the implication that this has on god's role in the scheme of thing, well, god help them.
This is really quite an eye-opening survey of the broad and already-demonstrated applicability of "open source" principles beyond the domain of software. There's something very stirring and promising about the potential of things like Ohmynews , PledgeBank and TheyWorkForYou.
This is about us and what *we* can do.
Interesting analysis, but I fear something much simpler is at the heart of it. As always, the place to start is with the controlling shareholders of the public company in questions (SCOX) and its stock price.
Notice how it has gone through the roof, even relative to a fantastically performing market! What's happened is that the privaty equity firm that is the controlling shareholder of SCO (I forget its name) managed to persuade another investor of the likelihood of a multimillior dollar settlement from big names. They've not paid a premium to the stock price as it has gone up by more than a 100%, and they doubtless successfully made the point that much of the upside has already been priced in, so for funding their ongoing legal costs, they should go at market and pick up whatever upside shows up.
You may disagree with the fine points of the logic, but there's no way we can interpret a $50M infusion of cash in a flat round for litigation purposes as weakening SCO's case. It's fifty million, folks.
The/. crowd may not like that idea, but the market seems to think SCOX will get paid off handsomely, and, if you set the indignation aside, you'll have to grant it may not be unlikely: SCO's job is to keep the pall of uncertainty hanging over linux and big blue long enough that at some point they may well say f--- it, let's pay up and settle this.
(We of)The/. crowd is generally unable to affect stock prices, but if we (a) start a campaign to hurt SCO sales and, even better (b) isolate the leading shareholders of SCO, figure out what other business interests they have, and boycott the whole lot of them, we're likely to have justice prevail.
McBride hasn't stopped -- that's gotta indicate that SCOX thinks of the OSF community as generally irrelevant to their legal extortion strategy. Going after their business interests might be the tactically better thing to do now.
I store a "password" list online. Instead of writing the password down, however, I put down something like "college addr##" against an entry and use some version of one of my many college addresses.
Memorization is about tricks, and mnemonics are a common answer. I can't be bothered to remember the mnemonics so I write those down!
Its odd, but so am I!
Slashdot Mirror
They are rightly concerned that this is the thin edge of the wedge: already god's role in cosmology is very distant, so much so that his involvement in it appears as implausible as humankind's presence in the cosmos is insignificant.
If they were to grant the truth of evolution, god is displaced of most his role in Life too, and suffers another large demotion in the scope of things he can reasonably be seen to be in charge of.
Furthermore, the ascent of science is a problem for all religions that require one to go on faith (which is nothing be belief in the incredible, in the absence of any substantiating evidence). This is because the advancing armies of science, with its seemingly pig-headed insistence on evidence, have beat the cr*p out of other belief systems that don't rest on evidence (astrology, faith healing, soothsaying etc. etc.), and they fear that religion, the granddaddy of unsubstantiated belief systems, will suffer the same fate.
The sad (from their perspective) truth is that they are right. The best they can do at the moment, as many on slashdot seem to do, is to tacitly concede the demotion in god's role that Darwin ushered in, issuing platitudes like "religion and science can learn from each other, and indeed, support each other." Which, of course, is rubbish -- science, in the main, has nothing to learn from religion.
For those of us who do believe in evolution, we know that we have a far stronger force than an imagined and imaginary god on our side: evidence. The only way we can win this one is if we keep insisting that only way to resolve conflicting belief systems is by evidence, and by educating the other side on the evidence well enough that they come to the same conclusions the rest of us have.
And as for the implication that this has on god's role in the scheme of thing, well, god help them.
This is really quite an eye-opening survey of the broad and already-demonstrated applicability of "open source" principles beyond the domain of software. There's something very stirring and promising about the potential of things like Ohmynews , PledgeBank and TheyWorkForYou. This is about us and what *we* can do.
You may disagree with the fine points of the logic, but there's no way we can interpret a $50M infusion of cash in a flat round for litigation purposes as weakening SCO's case. It's fifty million, folks.
The /. crowd may not like that idea, but the market seems to think SCOX will get paid off handsomely, and, if you set the indignation aside, you'll have to grant it may not be unlikely: SCO's job is to keep the pall of uncertainty hanging over linux and big blue long enough that at some point they may well say f--- it, let's pay up and settle this.
(We of)The /. crowd is generally unable to affect stock prices, but if we (a) start a campaign to hurt SCO sales and, even better (b) isolate the leading shareholders of SCO, figure out what other business interests they have, and boycott the whole lot of them, we're likely to have justice prevail.
McBride hasn't stopped -- that's gotta indicate that SCOX thinks of the OSF community as generally irrelevant to their legal extortion strategy. Going after their business interests might be the tactically better thing to do now.
I store a "password" list online. Instead of writing the password down, however, I put down something like "college addr##" against an entry and use some version of one of my many college addresses. Memorization is about tricks, and mnemonics are a common answer. I can't be bothered to remember the mnemonics so I write those down! Its odd, but so am I!