......that no cracker would waste their time on writing a worm for your system.........
Is that not just great?! It's not just that there are fewer Macs, but also that the vast majority of hackers have lot of experience in how to break into Windows boxes. There are lots of tools around to help them break into those. Hackers are lazy bastards, otherwise they would get honest jobs. Learning all about how Macs work and building hacking tools, in order to break into them is a lot of work. So even if there were an equal number of Macs and Windows systems, the learning hurdle would still have to be overcome.
Windows, because of backward compatibility, is STILL at heart a single user system. *NIX based systems were and are conceived from the ground up as multiuser systems, inherently more secure from day one. Multi-user capability was added piecemeal to Windows over time. The continued existence of the registry is a weak point that *NIX based systems don't have. This means that the incentive for present and future hackers to surmount these hurdles has to be more than 50% of installed base. If you were a hacker, which half of all computers would you rather attack? The half you know and have hacking tools for, or the other half for which you have nothing and are inherently harder to crack? There is no reason to assume that a hacked Mac would be more valuable to a criminal wanting to steal your private data than a hacked Windows system.
.....The consensus outside of Redmond is that Vista is the epitome of bloated resource hungry software.......
Indeed true. I Installed VISTA in Parallels on my Mac and it is dog slow compared to XP. I got VISTA not so much to use it, but just to learn about it first hand. I actually USE a few Windows programs only in Win2K and XP. Win2K runs the same software MUCH faster than XP. VISTA's activation scheme is a lot more fragile than XP. It has already asked to be activated twice. It did do it though.
You are right. VISTA will get widely used only after MS stops XP sales and support. There is no reason now. to get a new computer with VISTA installed. For many purposes even Win2K is plenty good enough.
......Similarly, Mac OS X is used by far fewer people than XP.......
Always that old security by obscurity mantra. Who cares WHY I don't get my Mac house burgled as often as my neighbors Windows house. Maybe my house doesn't have bars on the windows and bank safe doors and locks either. What is nice is that burglars bypass my house and go to the ones down the street. I also don't have to waste money on added security and guard services. The bottom line is that there are NO Mac botnets, whereas there are thousands if not millions of Windows machines in the service of criminals today. Theoretical vulnerabilities mean nothing in the end, but the number of compromised computers is what counts.
.....Or, accept the fact that living off the grid is going to cause you much, much bigger headaches than this in the future....
That much bigger headache was predicted long ago. It is the emergence of a world, wherein it will no longer be possible to buy or sell without each person having some sort of numerical identifier affixed to the body. There is already talk about a cashless society. We may be much closer to that then most of us realize. That little piece of plastic in your pocket is a precursor to things to come. Individual anonymity, financial or otherwise, will be as extinct as the dinosaurs. The prediction is in connection with a single one world government which will institute that system.
....Last I checked, light travels a lot slower in denser materials.....
You are right of course. We have a tendency to think of space as an empty or true vacuum. As it turns out, however, that is not the case. Even 'empty' space is filled with all types of radiation, virtual particles, Planck particles, and perhaps even more energy or particles than we are aware of at the present time. This is one reason you will hear the phrase 'fabric of space' being used by some. Space - out there - is simply not an 'empty' thing. With this in mind, it might be a little easier to understand the idea that when space itself was stretched out, there was a tremendous amount of potential energy locked up in the stretching. Through time, this stretching has gradually relaxed (which is different from 'going down'), thus releasing steady amounts of energy into space itself. Is there any evidence of this? Yes, there is.
It has been known for some time that electrons, and all atomic particles, 'jiggle,' or vibrate rapidly, even at absolute zero temperature. This vibration can be measured. The measurement does not take place directly, but takes place the same way we can measure Brownian motion, when a drop of color is gently placed in a glass of cold water. Gradually the colour will disperse although every effort to keep the water still has been made. Motion exists down to the smallest levels and can be measured by its effects on other things. The measure of the motion of electrons is referred to as Planck's Constant, even though it has been shown not to be constant. It has been measured as systematically increasing over the last century, thus indicating that there has been an increase in energy affecting the electron. This energy is not coming from any 'known' source, but seems intrinsic to space itself. This energy, because it can be seen to be effective at absolute zero, is thus logically called 'zero point energy,' or ZPE. This is the energy being slowly but steadily released from the fabric of stretched space itself and is causing the slowing of light speed. Light speed and Planck's "constant" are in an inverse relationship.
....there really is no reason to expect the technology of 100 years from now or a 1000 years from now to be that much different.......
Evidently Jesus Christ possessed a technology by which He was able to conquer death and be resurrected. Of course many these days do not believe that. His disciples also witnessed a technology by which Jesus was able to ascend into the sky in what appeared to them like a cloud. Many today don't believe that either. He also walked on water, multiplied matter and did all sorts of "miracles". He also promised to return to earth some day. Maybe He will share this knowledge He has. He also claimed to be God. What if He was right in all He said and did?
.....c is still a constant as far as we can tell....
Actually since the speed of light has been measured for the first time t has declined by about 4%. The speed of light is determined by the medium it traverses. Space is not empty, but has certain electromagnetic properties. As space has expanded from the time of the big bang, its properties have changed dramatically. By a factor of at least 300 million or more. Light used to travel MUCH faster through the denser space of long ago.
Therefore any equation that has a "constant" in it that relates to "c" will be different accordingly.
....(Sometimes they are, but that's the exception and not the rule.).....
More often, especially in major breakthroughs, it is the lone voice in the wilderness that turns out to be right. The majority almost always wants to preserve the status quo and not make waves.
My point is that nobody has ever DEMONSTRATED otherwise by breeding a dog from a cat or any other creature besides a dog. Wolves can interbreed with some dogs and produce further offspring. Evolution makes assumption (faith) and is therefore a religion. Science works by experiments and observation. Anytime someone takes two entirely different animals and makes a new one, I'll believe the assumptions of evolution.
Anyone can believe any religion they want, but don't call belief science, that's all.
.......Either you obey them all to the letter or you are damned........
Right, either you depend on the law, in which case you DO have to obey them ALL, or you depend on grace offered by God through Jesus. He alone was the ONLY human who could ever challenge anyone to show where He had sinned even one time. Because Jesus was fully human, yet totally innocent He was eligible to take the punishment you and I deserve. That punishment is death, not only death of the body, but death of the soul, that is separation from a perfect God and father forever.
We are all like prisoners on death row. The Governor has issued a pardon for every prisoner who will admit their guilt and sign the acceptance form so stating. Anyone who admits their sin guilt and repents before God and asks for forgiveness in the name of and on the account of Jesus WILL receive a full pardon. With it also comes the ability to keep the basic law to love God and your neighbor. God then gives such a person the DESIRE and the power to live according to the law of love. That doesn't mean sudden sinless perfection for a Christian. It is like a child learning to walk. It may trip and fall, but in time the falls will decrease because falls are painful and there now is an innate desire to please God that did not exist before. This newness of life is what is called being born again.
So if you can keep ALL the rules, God will accept you in your own perfection. However if you have ever told a lie, for example, you are ineligible. All that is left for you and me is grace. It is offered, but unlike some religions, including some christian sects, God doesn't shove it down anybody's throat.
No, you don't have to know or believe everything in the Bible. All you have to know is that God loves you and offers forgiveness. Once that has taken place for you personally, your connection to God is restored by God actually coming to live within you. He will then change you, as He has changed and is still changing me. That is lifelong process and includes gaining an understanding of the Bible that seems foolish to you now.
Let me warn you however to not make this decision lightly, for will cost you everything. If you take this step with God through Jesus, your present friends may turn against you. In some countries it brings physical death to anyone who becomes a true disciple of Jesus. Jesus put it this way in Mark 8:35-38
And calling near the crowd with His disciples, He said to them, Whoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. 35 For whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, he shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Therefore whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man shall also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
....A vast majority of humans on this planet never directly participate in war........
War is nothing more than conflict carried out by a larger group of people in a more or less organized fashion. It basically is the attempt by one or a few individuals to get what they want. In a war they will enlist as many others as they can, persuasively or forcibly, to help them in that getting what they want. The warfare may not always involve tanks and guns. In our society the weapons are often lawyers and courts in a war called litigation. On a school ground or in the streets it may be a gang fight with fists. A two year old attempting to get his/her way through a tantrum is a war against parents or other adults. War then, arises out of selfishness and there is NO human that doesn't exhibit selfishness. Animals also exhibit warlike behavior, but it is tied much more closely to survival than human selfishness. Human selfishness has an element of greed which has not been observed in animals.
....You have simply picked the one religion that your parents and/or people around you believe.......
I cannot believe the complexity of our universe and life came by any other means besides originating in a mind. The religion of evolution denies that a mind is behind the universe. The universe either created itself, which absurd or it was brought into being by something outside and apart of itself. I worked at a world class university's science department for over 30 years and learned a little about the intricate workings of this creation we have been placed into.
The Bible depicts a transcendent God, outside of our time-space-matter-energy universe fishbowl. ALL other religions are upward directed and have a dead founder. You've got to jump through all sorts of hoops in order to please whatever god they worship. In secular humanism, the tax supported religion in the USA, man denies the existence of God and exalts himself to the position of God. Evolution is the reason given by humanists for denial of any God other than man.
Only the Gospels of the Bible are downward directed, God reaching in love down towards man. Jesus conquered death and has promised to those that believe in and trust Him to also transcend death. To be a Christian, all you need to do is to BELIEVE. No faith can be proven, that's why it is faith. Most people speak of what they DON'T believe.
.... approximating a mileage tax, retardless of what kind of fuel you use.......
The solution then might be to read each car's odometer periodically and compute a tax based on the miles driven adjusted for the weight of the vehicle. A heavier SUV wears the roads more than a Honda Insight. This would also be a good solution for all electric cars since it would be hard to tell taxed electricity from the untaxed.
....old Hebrew religious fables. The creation story being one of them.....
If Jesus is who He said He is, claiming to be God, He should have known whether the "old Hebrew fable of Adam and Eve" was actual history. He quoted it as being really true.
(.....since observable radioactive decay in recorded history has never even deviated once from predictions.....)
So science has known about radioactivity for what, about a hundred years now? So then the assumptions is made that it is OK to extrapolate 100 years to the millions or even billions is scientific? We don't KNOW if that is the case. There is evidence that some of the so called "constants" upon which the rate of radioactivity is dependent HAVE changed over the vast periods of time in question. Formulas for radioactivity include a little factor called Planck's constant which is inversely related to the velocity of light in free space. There is observational evidence that the speed of light has NOT been constant since the beginning of the universe.
(.....Neither of us will be swayed by the other's values and beliefs, as interesting as we might find them........)
I think that we are probably not as far apart as it seems. My prayer for you is that you may get to know this "Jesus who exists now in Heaven as God" in a personal way. This is possible and when you do, I pray that I will meet you there with Him, unless we might run into each other yet here on earth.
..... Maybe God's word is in those instead? Maybe God's word is in the Hebrew books?......
Maybe. God, as the creator is perfectly capable of communicating truth He wants us to know. Once He has communicated through whatever human channels he chose, He also has the capability to keep that communication from getting garbled in all essentials He wants us to know.
The Universe COULD be cyclic, but nobody has done an experiment to scientifically determine that. There are lots of theories, but all of them are sadly lacking in observational data. The Bible tells us there are other dimensions besides the physical one we are in presently. Scripture tells us that God is transcendent and immaterial, dwelling in eternity. We are told that all things that are visible consist of things that cannot be seen. Whether that applies to subatomic particles or goes even deeper into unseen dimension where God exists is unknown. It could well be that our physical world in enfolded in a higher order spirit realm. Who knows? We have some tantalizing indications from physics that there is something deeper going on. There are really only two ways of knowing. One is by experiment, experience and observation. Science is limited this method. The other is by revelation. You can examine a person or even a computer physically and only learn a limited amount. To understand the functioning of either you have to allow the person to interact with you through his/her mind or a computer through its software. God has revealed certain things about Himself through interaction with us.
In our human ways, we say, show me and I'll believe. God says, trust and believe me and then I'll show you. Read the book of John and then the other 3 gospels. Ask yourself whether what is written there is true, really true and applies to you personally. Is Jesus really who He claims to be, God come to earth, God with us? Did He really bodily rise from death? Can and will He make good on His promise that those who believe in Him will also transcend death and receive a new kind of immortal body,like the one He had, that can exist both in this dimension and others as well?
All religions, except the message of the gospel exhort man to reach out to whatever their idea of God may be. In the Gospel, it is God reaching out to man, directed downward to us, rather than upward. That's why it is called Gospel, "Good News". However it is only good news to those who choose to believe.
Indeed "could be". In religion we can speculate about what could be, but in science we try to determine what is true through repeatable experiments and observations. The measurements of the cosmic background microwave radiation clearly show what scientists have labeled "The Big Bang". I prefer to call it the "creation Event" given in the first verse of the Bible.
(....Or since time began......)
Einstein showed that time and space are linked. Accelerator experiments and cosmic observations have confirmed his math describing his theories. Space-time and matter-energy came into being at once. There is no way we can KNOW or learn anything about what existed before the creation event. It is all belief and conjecture, regardless whether you call it religion or science.
The Bible claims to be revelation from and about God. Any time somebody tells you stuff that cannot be observed or otherwise verified, you either have to believe or not. I have chosen to believe the Bible as the word of God and you apparently have not. That is our choice. Someday we will both learn who was right. If the Bible contains errors and truth, on what basis does anyone select or determine which parts are true and which not, ie. what to believe and what not? Do we use our intellect? Did Jesus rise from the dead, as claimed? I have never seen someone come back from death and likely neither have you. I believe He did because I believe God is truthful and has communicated truth to mankind in written form.
.....Exactly what would you consider valid scientific knowledge?.....
That's easy! Anything at all that can be demonstrated by repeatable experiments and observations at the PRESENT time is science. Any assumptions (beliefs) about the past is religious, whether found in book with a science label or in a book classified as religious.
Bacteria and most other organisms adapt to their environment. That can be shown by repeatable experiment. You can even call that process evolution. However, apes do not become humans and reptiles don't become birds. Those are conjectured big jumps that have never been demonstrated or observed and therefore are NOT science but belief. The conjectured little jumps in between have never been observed either. Dogs have ALWAYS been dogs. It can be shown that ALL of the worlds dogs can be bred from a pair of dogs, but not from any cat or other non-dog creature. The same goes for other kinds of living things. Notice I said kinds, not species.
Any time anyone resorts to personal attacks, it is because they have run out of a reasoned response. It appears that you have run out of logical reasoning gas.
....until someone proves he definitely exists.....
That cannot be done because it is impossible. You can only choose to BELIEVE He exists in the same way you believe in evolution. Neither can be proven and therefore both are religious beliefs.
As for gravity, it has nothing to do with spin. As far as we can tell it depends only on mass and distance. Mass is a property of matter-energy.
We generally say: "Show me, and I'll believe". The God of the Bible does it the other way round. He says; "Believe me and I'll show you". Read the book of John and then the other 3 gospels. If you really believe what is written there, then God will show you the truth of it and change your life in ways you have not yet dreamed of.
....Why couldn't the same happen with the universe then.......
For the longest time humans thought that indeed the Universe is eternal, it has always been. Modern science has shown by OBSERVATION that there was a beginning of time-space and matter-energy. Scientists conjecture about the how and when of that beginning. The existence of the cosmic background radiation is but one experimental evidence that there was a beginning.
(....that the moon and the sun are circles......
In the original Hebrew it is the same word that was used for sphere. In the Greek, the word translated 'CORNER' is a navigational term also used for quadrant, like the four quadrants of the earth. Some claim that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate when it speaks about the "4 corners of the earth".
(.....The re-birth of a nation is just silly.....)
Israel has not existed as a sovereign nation since centuries before Christ. In 70AD the Jewish people were scattered all over the globe. It was predicted that before the return of the Messiah there would again be a nation. Also, the city of Jerusalem has always been under foreign ruler-ship since Babylon took the Jews captive. In 1967, for the first time since then, Jerusalem came once again, as predicted, under Israeli sovereignty.
..... Nowhere does evolution imply the Earth was Billions of years old.......
Every textbook has statements to that effect.
(....observations of the known world that a process called Evolution made sense to him.......
There is no doubt that the evolution he observed exist. It is also called adaptation. Organisms adapt to their environment, that is a fact. However the kind of "evolution" than has single cells eventually become complex creatures an apes become human is pure belief and is therefore religious. Such an extension of the word "evolution" is NOT science.
(.....but from observation of radioactive elements over 100 years or so.......)
So you think it is science to extrapolate the nanosecond of a 100 years to the billions of years that evolutionists claim for their measurements? We KNOW that most things in nature are non-linear and constantly change. Assuming that *anything* has remained absolutely constant over these immense periods of time is pure faith, religious faith clothes in science.
(......How much of this stuff should not be taught in science class......)
All of it, provided it is backed up by real time experiments and observations. It is even proper to teach the assumptions (beliefs) made, such as the belief that radioactivity has always been constant. It should be made clear that there is no way to prove such assumptions and therefore other theories that make different underlying assumptions may just as valid. THAT is never done.
(....It requires a lot of time.....)
Of course it does because atheistic evolution denies the possibility that the information recorded on the DNA came from a mind. Atheistic evolutionary theory cannot work in a short span of time, whereas a mind of sufficient greatness could come up with the incredible complexity we see in all life forms.
(....And this, would again piss of creationists as not giving equal time to both theories......)
There is no need to give equal time, only to stop teaching one theory as fact and scientific and the other as religious myths. All adherents of Intelligent Design are not necessarily Christians. Evolution and ID are two BELIEFS. It should be made clear that they are beliefs and not science. Science is experimental and observational, not conjecturing about origins which nobody can go back to and find observe what really happened.
We can experiment and measure how gravity works, but there is no experiment anyone has ever done to determine how gravity first came to be. Any statements of conjecture to the latter is faith, not science.
(...current creationist theory was BORROWED from the Jews....)
Of course. Jesus was a Jew, a human and also God. All Christians, including Catholics, are followers of that Jewish carpenter named Jesus. He proved He is divine by conquering death. But He was also very much a human, Emmanuel, God with us!
The God of the Bible simply IS. When Moses asked for God's name, he told Moses that ""I AM" is sending him on his mission. Read the account in John 18 of the arrest of Jesus. There He claimed to be God by using the "I AM" and when He uttered that majestic claim, those that came to arrest Him fell backward on the ground.
(.....You can do nothing like that with religious assumptions....)
You can test, but the tests are different. The God of the Bible exists outside of time and He knows all time from the beginning thereof to its end. If the Bible is from God, then any predictions made therein MUST come true. There are hundreds of predictions in the Bible which have been fulfilled. Some are yet to come. Many of these are concerning Israel. Some of these, such as the very re-birth of that nation have come true in our time.
Another test is accuracy in regard to history and scientific knowledge. For example, not a single erroneous idea the ancients had about the heavens and earth is found in scripture. Many places and histories found in scripture have be verified by archeological research. Never has any discovery been made that contradicts scripture as it was written in it original texts.
It's not so much that God is inscrutable as such, just to us and our very limited knowledge of everything. We humans get so incredible arrogant because we gathered a few grains of insight into His creation in the last 200 or so years. How much progress do you suppose someone like Einstein would make if he tried to explain and teach the minute details of relativity to a one year old child?
The gulf of understanding and knowledge between God and someone like Einstein is orders of magnitude greater than the gap between Einstein and an infant. God has told us all that he knows is needed at this stage of our existence. He tells us that "now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face". Jesus said: "then you shall ask me no more questions". Right now we are like the larva stage of a butterfly. The caterpillar crawling on a leaf or in the dark, underground, knows yet nothing of its destiny as a beautiful iridescent creature in flight on a gentle spring breeze.
We are told by our creator God of a glorious destiny and purpose. Right now we can only BELIEVE, not yet understand. Many these day, refuse to believe even in the existence of God let alone of His promise of an unimaginably wonderful future. This future immortality with God is reserved only for those who believe and trust Him now.
Good luck afterwards to figure out how to get pictures and movies into the Linux computer afterwards. After that find some free software or edit and catalog them.
.....then you have to believe that ALL OF SCIENCE is state sanctioned religion.......
That is not a logical follow on of what I wrote at all. As long as science confines itself to what can be measured and observed, it is NOT religious. Only when certain underlying assumptions (beliefs) made by evolutionists are presented as facts and painted with the brush of science, does it become religion. A basic undercurrent of many, if not most, evolutionists is that there is no intelligence behind the complexity of the universe and specifically, living things.
If evolution were always presented as one of several theories on how things began, then such teaching might be fair for everybody. However, in most, if not all school textbooks, evolution is presented as scientific fact and truth. Biblical revelation from the One who WAS there and did it, is ALWAYS relegated into the realm of fiction and myth. It is NEVER presented as fact and truth, the way evolution is. That is a patently religious bias in favor of the religion of evolution. Such bias and funding by the state is forbidden by the US constitution.
Every textbook I have ever seen has within its text something along the lines of "Millions of years or billions of years ago...." as if that were known rather than just imagined. Nobody was there at the time to see what really happened. Even in our courts of law, more than shaky circumstantial, imaginative evidence is needed to establish facts in dispute. Many Christian believe that the billions of years theory is wrong and adhere to the biblical time frame counted in thousands. Both of these doctrines should be presented as a theory, not one as fact and the other as myth.
I agree that not only must scientists minimize their assumptions, but they should also check them out against experimental and observational evidence. If the assumptions are NOT based on experiment or observations then the whole house built on those assumptions is on shaky ground and may collapse.
You mention the assumptions of the unchanging laws of physics. That is NOT an off the wall assumption. We have never observed an change in the laws of physics. A deeper question is: Where did the laws of physics originate? We know that in our human observations and experience, laws and rules all arise in human minds. Is it then so illogical to assume that the laws of physics also arose in a mind, the mind of God? Is the reason that the laws of physics don't change because they were put in place by an unchanging God, just as holy Scripture clearly states about Himself? All information ONLY originates in a mind. Information and laws are not physical, but govern and interact with the physical realm.
The Christian religion starts with the assumption that God exists and communicates with mankind. As do scientists for their assumptions (beliefs) ascribe truth, so to Christians claim for their beliefs.
Slashdot Mirror
......that no cracker would waste their time on writing a worm for your system.........
Is that not just great?! It's not just that there are fewer Macs, but also that the vast majority of hackers have lot of experience in how to break into Windows boxes. There are lots of tools around to help them break into those. Hackers are lazy bastards, otherwise they would get honest jobs. Learning all about how Macs work and building hacking tools, in order to break into them is a lot of work. So even if there were an equal number of Macs and Windows systems, the learning hurdle would still have to be overcome.
Windows, because of backward compatibility, is STILL at heart a single user system. *NIX based systems were and are conceived from the ground up as multiuser systems, inherently more secure from day one. Multi-user capability was added piecemeal to Windows over time. The continued existence of the registry is a weak point that *NIX based systems don't have. This means that the incentive for present and future hackers to surmount these hurdles has to be more than 50% of installed base. If you were a hacker, which half of all computers would you rather attack? The half you know and have hacking tools for, or the other half for which you have nothing and are inherently harder to crack? There is no reason to assume that a hacked Mac would be more valuable to a criminal wanting to steal your private data than a hacked Windows system.
.....The consensus outside of Redmond is that Vista is the epitome of bloated resource hungry software.......
Indeed true. I Installed VISTA in Parallels on my Mac and it is dog slow compared to XP. I got VISTA not so much to use it, but just to learn about it first hand. I actually USE a few Windows programs only in Win2K and XP. Win2K runs the same software MUCH faster than XP. VISTA's activation scheme is a lot more fragile than XP. It has already asked to be activated twice. It did do it though.
You are right. VISTA will get widely used only after MS stops XP sales and support. There is no reason now. to get a new computer with VISTA installed. For many purposes even Win2K is plenty good enough.
......Similarly, Mac OS X is used by far fewer people than XP.......
Always that old security by obscurity mantra. Who cares WHY I don't get my Mac house burgled as often as my neighbors Windows house. Maybe my house doesn't have bars on the windows and bank safe doors and locks either. What is nice is that burglars bypass my house and go to the ones down the street. I also don't have to waste money on added security and guard services. The bottom line is that there are NO Mac botnets, whereas there are thousands if not millions of Windows machines in the service of criminals today. Theoretical vulnerabilities mean nothing in the end, but the number of compromised computers is what counts.
.....Or, accept the fact that living off the grid is going to cause you much, much bigger headaches than this in the future....
That much bigger headache was predicted long ago. It is the emergence of a world, wherein it will no longer be possible to buy or sell without each person having some sort of numerical identifier affixed to the body. There is already talk about a cashless society. We may be much closer to that then most of us realize. That little piece of plastic in your pocket is a precursor to things to come. Individual anonymity, financial or otherwise, will be as extinct as the dinosaurs. The prediction is in connection with a single one world government which will institute that system.
....Last I checked, light travels a lot slower in denser materials.....
You are right of course. We have a tendency to think of space as an empty or true vacuum. As it turns out, however, that is not the case. Even 'empty' space is filled with all types of radiation, virtual particles, Planck particles, and perhaps even more energy or particles than we are aware of at the present time. This is one reason you will hear the phrase 'fabric of space' being used by some. Space - out there - is simply not an 'empty' thing. With this in mind, it might be a little easier to understand the idea that when space itself was stretched out, there was a tremendous amount of potential energy locked up in the stretching. Through time, this stretching has gradually relaxed (which is different from 'going down'), thus releasing steady amounts of energy into space itself. Is there any evidence of this? Yes, there is.
It has been known for some time that electrons, and all atomic particles, 'jiggle,' or vibrate rapidly, even at absolute zero temperature. This vibration can be measured. The measurement does not take place directly, but takes place the same way we can measure Brownian motion, when a drop of color is gently placed in a glass of cold water. Gradually the colour will disperse although every effort to keep the water still has been made. Motion exists down to the smallest levels and can be measured by its effects on other things. The measure of the motion of electrons is referred to as Planck's Constant, even though it has been shown not to be constant. It has been measured as systematically increasing over the last century, thus indicating that there has been an increase in energy affecting the electron. This energy is not coming from any 'known' source, but seems intrinsic to space itself. This energy, because it can be seen to be effective at absolute zero, is thus logically called 'zero point energy,' or ZPE. This is the energy being slowly but steadily released from the fabric of stretched space itself and is causing the slowing of light speed. Light speed and Planck's "constant" are in an inverse relationship.
....there really is no reason to expect the technology of 100 years from now or a 1000 years from now to be that much different.......
Evidently Jesus Christ possessed a technology by which He was able to conquer death and be resurrected. Of course many these days do not believe that. His disciples also witnessed a technology by which Jesus was able to ascend into the sky in what appeared to them like a cloud. Many today don't believe that either. He also walked on water, multiplied matter and did all sorts of "miracles". He also promised to return to earth some day. Maybe He will share this knowledge He has. He also claimed to be God. What if He was right in all He said and did?
.....c is still a constant as far as we can tell....
Actually since the speed of light has been measured for the first time t has declined by about 4%. The speed of light is determined by the medium it traverses. Space is not empty, but has certain electromagnetic properties. As space has expanded from the time of the big bang, its properties have changed dramatically. By a factor of at least 300 million or more. Light used to travel MUCH faster through the denser space of long ago.
Therefore any equation that has a "constant" in it that relates to "c" will be different accordingly.
....(Sometimes they are, but that's the exception and not the rule.).....
More often, especially in major breakthroughs, it is the lone voice in the wilderness that turns out to be right. The majority almost always wants to preserve the status quo and not make waves.
.......Dogs have ALWAYS been dogs.......
My point is that nobody has ever DEMONSTRATED otherwise by breeding a dog from a cat or any other creature besides a dog. Wolves can interbreed with some dogs and produce further offspring. Evolution makes assumption (faith) and is therefore a religion. Science works by experiments and observation. Anytime someone takes two entirely different animals and makes a new one, I'll believe the assumptions of evolution.
Anyone can believe any religion they want, but don't call belief science, that's all.
.......Either you obey them all to the letter or you are damned........
Right, either you depend on the law, in which case you DO have to obey them ALL, or you depend on grace offered by God through Jesus. He alone was the ONLY human who could ever challenge anyone to show where He had sinned even one time. Because Jesus was fully human, yet totally innocent He was eligible to take the punishment you and I deserve. That punishment is death, not only death of the body, but death of the soul, that is separation from a perfect God and father forever.
We are all like prisoners on death row. The Governor has issued a pardon for every prisoner who will admit their guilt and sign the acceptance form so stating. Anyone who admits their sin guilt and repents before God and asks for forgiveness in the name of and on the account of Jesus WILL receive a full pardon. With it also comes the ability to keep the basic law to love God and your neighbor. God then gives such a person the DESIRE and the power to live according to the law of love. That doesn't mean sudden sinless perfection for a Christian. It is like a child learning to walk. It may trip and fall, but in time the falls will decrease because falls are painful and there now is an innate desire to please God that did not exist before. This newness of life is what is called being born again.
So if you can keep ALL the rules, God will accept you in your own perfection. However if you have ever told a lie, for example, you are ineligible. All that is left for you and me is grace. It is offered, but unlike some religions, including some christian sects, God doesn't shove it down anybody's throat.
No, you don't have to know or believe everything in the Bible. All you have to know is that God loves you and offers forgiveness. Once that has taken place for you personally, your connection to God is restored by God actually coming to live within you. He will then change you, as He has changed and is still changing me. That is lifelong process and includes gaining an understanding of the Bible that seems foolish to you now.
Let me warn you however to not make this decision lightly, for will cost you everything. If you take this step with God through Jesus, your present friends may turn against you. In some countries it brings physical death to anyone who becomes a true disciple of Jesus. Jesus put it this way in Mark 8:35-38
And calling near the crowd with His disciples, He said to them, Whoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. 35 For whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, he shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Therefore whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man shall also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
....A vast majority of humans on this planet never directly participate in war........
War is nothing more than conflict carried out by a larger group of people in a more or less organized fashion. It basically is the attempt by one or a few individuals to get what they want. In a war they will enlist as many others as they can, persuasively or forcibly, to help them in that getting what they want. The warfare may not always involve tanks and guns. In our society the weapons are often lawyers and courts in a war called litigation. On a school ground or in the streets it may be a gang fight with fists. A two year old attempting to get his/her way through a tantrum is a war against parents or other adults. War then, arises out of selfishness and there is NO human that doesn't exhibit selfishness. Animals also exhibit warlike behavior, but it is tied much more closely to survival than human selfishness. Human selfishness has an element of greed which has not been observed in animals.
....You have simply picked the one religion that your parents and/or people around you believe.......
I cannot believe the complexity of our universe and life came by any other means besides originating in a mind. The religion of evolution denies that a mind is behind the universe. The universe either created itself, which absurd or it was brought into being by something outside and apart of itself. I worked at a world class university's science department for over 30 years and learned a little about the intricate workings of this creation we have been placed into.
The Bible depicts a transcendent God, outside of our time-space-matter-energy universe fishbowl. ALL other religions are upward directed and have a dead founder. You've got to jump through all sorts of hoops in order to please whatever god they worship. In secular humanism, the tax supported religion in the USA, man denies the existence of God and exalts himself to the position of God. Evolution is the reason given by humanists for denial of any God other than man.
Only the Gospels of the Bible are downward directed, God reaching in love down towards man. Jesus conquered death and has promised to those that believe in and trust Him to also transcend death. To be a Christian, all you need to do is to BELIEVE. No faith can be proven, that's why it is faith. Most people speak of what they DON'T believe.
.... approximating a mileage tax, retardless of what kind of fuel you use.......
The solution then might be to read each car's odometer periodically and compute a tax based on the miles driven adjusted for the weight of the vehicle. A heavier SUV wears the roads more than a Honda Insight. This would also be a good solution for all electric cars since it would be hard to tell taxed electricity from the untaxed.
....old Hebrew religious fables. The creation story being one of them.....
If Jesus is who He said He is, claiming to be God, He should have known whether the "old Hebrew fable of Adam and Eve" was actual history. He quoted it as being really true.
(.....since observable radioactive decay in recorded history has never even deviated once from predictions.....)
So science has known about radioactivity for what, about a hundred years now? So then the assumptions is made that it is OK to extrapolate 100 years to the millions or even billions is scientific? We don't KNOW if that is the case. There is evidence that some of the so called "constants" upon which the rate of radioactivity is dependent HAVE changed over the vast periods of time in question. Formulas for radioactivity include a little factor called Planck's constant which is inversely related to the velocity of light in free space. There is observational evidence that the speed of light has NOT been constant since the beginning of the universe.
(.....Neither of us will be swayed by the other's values and beliefs, as interesting as we might find them........)
I think that we are probably not as far apart as it seems. My prayer for you is that you may get to know this "Jesus who exists now in Heaven as God" in a personal way. This is possible and when you do, I pray that I will meet you there with Him, unless we might run into each other yet here on earth.
..... Maybe God's word is in those instead? Maybe God's word is in the Hebrew books?......
Maybe. God, as the creator is perfectly capable of communicating truth He wants us to know. Once He has communicated through whatever human channels he chose, He also has the capability to keep that communication from getting garbled in all essentials He wants us to know.
The Universe COULD be cyclic, but nobody has done an experiment to scientifically determine that. There are lots of theories, but all of them are sadly lacking in observational data. The Bible tells us there are other dimensions besides the physical one we are in presently. Scripture tells us that God is transcendent and immaterial, dwelling in eternity. We are told that all things that are visible consist of things that cannot be seen. Whether that applies to subatomic particles or goes even deeper into unseen dimension where God exists is unknown. It could well be that our physical world in enfolded in a higher order spirit realm. Who knows? We have some tantalizing indications from physics that there is something deeper going on. There are really only two ways of knowing. One is by experiment, experience and observation. Science is limited this method. The other is by revelation. You can examine a person or even a computer physically and only learn a limited amount. To understand the functioning of either you have to allow the person to interact with you through his/her mind or a computer through its software. God has revealed certain things about Himself through interaction with us.
In our human ways, we say, show me and I'll believe. God says, trust and believe me and then I'll show you. Read the book of John and then the other 3 gospels. Ask yourself whether what is written there is true, really true and applies to you personally. Is Jesus really who He claims to be, God come to earth, God with us? Did He really bodily rise from death? Can and will He make good on His promise that those who believe in Him will also transcend death and receive a new kind of immortal body,like the one He had, that can exist both in this dimension and others as well?
All religions, except the message of the gospel exhort man to reach out to whatever their idea of God may be. In the Gospel, it is God reaching out to man, directed downward to us, rather than upward. That's why it is called Gospel, "Good News". However it is only good news to those who choose to believe.
.....The universe could be cyclic.......
Indeed "could be". In religion we can speculate about what could be, but in science we try to determine what is true through repeatable experiments and observations. The measurements of the cosmic background microwave radiation clearly show what scientists have labeled "The Big Bang". I prefer to call it the "creation Event" given in the first verse of the Bible.
(....Or since time began......)
Einstein showed that time and space are linked. Accelerator experiments and cosmic observations have confirmed his math describing his theories. Space-time and matter-energy came into being at once. There is no way we can KNOW or learn anything about what existed before the creation event. It is all belief and conjecture, regardless whether you call it religion or science.
The Bible claims to be revelation from and about God. Any time somebody tells you stuff that cannot be observed or otherwise verified, you either have to believe or not. I have chosen to believe the Bible as the word of God and you apparently have not. That is our choice. Someday we will both learn who was right. If the Bible contains errors and truth, on what basis does anyone select or determine which parts are true and which not, ie. what to believe and what not? Do we use our intellect? Did Jesus rise from the dead, as claimed? I have never seen someone come back from death and likely neither have you. I believe He did because I believe God is truthful and has communicated truth to mankind in written form.
.....Exactly what would you consider valid scientific knowledge?.....
That's easy! Anything at all that can be demonstrated by repeatable experiments and observations at the PRESENT time is science. Any assumptions (beliefs) about the past is religious, whether found in book with a science label or in a book classified as religious.
Bacteria and most other organisms adapt to their environment. That can be shown by repeatable experiment. You can even call that process evolution. However, apes do not become humans and reptiles don't become birds. Those are conjectured big jumps that have never been demonstrated or observed and therefore are NOT science but belief. The conjectured little jumps in between have never been observed either. Dogs have ALWAYS been dogs. It can be shown that ALL of the worlds dogs can be bred from a pair of dogs, but not from any cat or other non-dog creature. The same goes for other kinds of living things. Notice I said kinds, not species.
Any time anyone resorts to personal attacks, it is because they have run out of a reasoned response. It appears that you have run out of logical reasoning gas.
....until someone proves he definitely exists.....
That cannot be done because it is impossible. You can only choose to BELIEVE He exists in the same way you believe in evolution. Neither can be proven and therefore both are religious beliefs.
As for gravity, it has nothing to do with spin. As far as we can tell it depends only on mass and distance. Mass is a property of matter-energy.
We generally say: "Show me, and I'll believe". The God of the Bible does it the other way round. He says; "Believe me and I'll show you". Read the book of John and then the other 3 gospels. If you really believe what is written there, then God will show you the truth of it and change your life in ways you have not yet dreamed of.
....Why couldn't the same happen with the universe then.......
For the longest time humans thought that indeed the Universe is eternal, it has always been. Modern science has shown by OBSERVATION that there was a beginning of time-space and matter-energy. Scientists conjecture about the how and when of that beginning. The existence of the cosmic background radiation is but one experimental evidence that there was a beginning.
(....that the moon and the sun are circles......
In the original Hebrew it is the same word that was used for sphere. In the Greek, the word translated 'CORNER' is a navigational term also used for quadrant, like the four quadrants of the earth. Some claim that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate when it speaks about the "4 corners of the earth".
(.....The re-birth of a nation is just silly.....)
Israel has not existed as a sovereign nation since centuries before Christ. In 70AD the Jewish people were scattered all over the globe. It was predicted that before the return of the Messiah there would again be a nation. Also, the city of Jerusalem has always been under foreign ruler-ship since Babylon took the Jews captive. In 1967, for the first time since then, Jerusalem came once again, as predicted, under Israeli sovereignty.
..... Nowhere does evolution imply the Earth was Billions of years old.......
Every textbook has statements to that effect.
(....observations of the known world that a process called Evolution made sense to him.......
There is no doubt that the evolution he observed exist. It is also called adaptation. Organisms adapt to their environment, that is a fact. However the kind of "evolution" than has single cells eventually become complex creatures an apes become human is pure belief and is therefore religious. Such an extension of the word "evolution" is NOT science.
(.....but from observation of radioactive elements over 100 years or so.......)
So you think it is science to extrapolate the nanosecond of a 100 years to the billions of years that evolutionists claim for their measurements? We KNOW that most things in nature are non-linear and constantly change. Assuming that *anything* has remained absolutely constant over these immense periods of time is pure faith, religious faith clothes in science.
(......How much of this stuff should not be taught in science class......)
All of it, provided it is backed up by real time experiments and observations. It is even proper to teach the assumptions (beliefs) made, such as the belief that radioactivity has always been constant. It should be made clear that there is no way to prove such assumptions and therefore other theories that make different underlying assumptions may just as valid. THAT is never done.
(....It requires a lot of time.....)
Of course it does because atheistic evolution denies the possibility that the information recorded on the DNA came from a mind. Atheistic evolutionary theory cannot work in a short span of time, whereas a mind of sufficient greatness could come up with the incredible complexity we see in all life forms.
(....And this, would again piss of creationists as not giving equal time to both theories......)
There is no need to give equal time, only to stop teaching one theory as fact and scientific and the other as religious myths. All adherents of Intelligent Design are not necessarily Christians. Evolution and ID are two BELIEFS. It should be made clear that they are beliefs and not science. Science is experimental and observational, not conjecturing about origins which nobody can go back to and find observe what really happened.
We can experiment and measure how gravity works, but there is no experiment anyone has ever done to determine how gravity first came to be. Any statements of conjecture to the latter is faith, not science.
(...current creationist theory was BORROWED from the Jews....)
Of course. Jesus was a Jew, a human and also God. All Christians, including Catholics, are followers of that Jewish carpenter named Jesus. He proved He is divine by conquering death. But He was also very much a human, Emmanuel, God with us!
....Then who created God?......
The God of the Bible simply IS. When Moses asked for God's name, he told Moses that ""I AM" is sending him on his mission. Read the account in John 18 of the arrest of Jesus. There He claimed to be God by using the "I AM" and when He uttered that majestic claim, those that came to arrest Him fell backward on the ground.
(.....You can do nothing like that with religious assumptions....)
You can test, but the tests are different. The God of the Bible exists outside of time and He knows all time from the beginning thereof to its end. If the Bible is from God, then any predictions made therein MUST come true. There are hundreds of predictions in the Bible which have been fulfilled. Some are yet to come. Many of these are concerning Israel. Some of these, such as the very re-birth of that nation have come true in our time.
Another test is accuracy in regard to history and scientific knowledge. For example, not a single erroneous idea the ancients had about the heavens and earth is found in scripture. Many places and histories found in scripture have be verified by archeological research. Never has any discovery been made that contradicts scripture as it was written in it original texts.
......if God is truly this inscrutable......
It's not so much that God is inscrutable as such, just to us and our very limited knowledge of everything. We humans get so incredible arrogant because we gathered a few grains of insight into His creation in the last 200 or so years. How much progress do you suppose someone like Einstein would make if he tried to explain and teach the minute details of relativity to a one year old child?
The gulf of understanding and knowledge between God and someone like Einstein is orders of magnitude greater than the gap between Einstein and an infant. God has told us all that he knows is needed at this stage of our existence. He tells us that "now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face". Jesus said: "then you shall ask me no more questions". Right now we are like the larva stage of a butterfly. The caterpillar crawling on a leaf or in the dark, underground, knows yet nothing of its destiny as a beautiful iridescent creature in flight on a gentle spring breeze.
We are told by our creator God of a glorious destiny and purpose. Right now we can only BELIEVE, not yet understand. Many these day, refuse to believe even in the existence of God let alone of His promise of an unimaginably wonderful future. This future immortality with God is reserved only for those who believe and trust Him now.
...installs linux....
Good luck afterwards to figure out how to get pictures and movies into the Linux computer afterwards. After that find some free software or edit and catalog them.
.....then you have to believe that ALL OF SCIENCE is state sanctioned religion.......
That is not a logical follow on of what I wrote at all. As long as science confines itself to what can be measured and observed, it is NOT religious. Only when certain underlying assumptions (beliefs) made by evolutionists are presented as facts and painted with the brush of science, does it become religion. A basic undercurrent of many, if not most, evolutionists is that there is no intelligence behind the complexity of the universe and specifically, living things.
If evolution were always presented as one of several theories on how things began, then such teaching might be fair for everybody. However, in most, if not all school textbooks, evolution is presented as scientific fact and truth. Biblical revelation from the One who WAS there and did it, is ALWAYS relegated into the realm of fiction and myth. It is NEVER presented as fact and truth, the way evolution is. That is a patently religious bias in favor of the religion of evolution. Such bias and funding by the state is forbidden by the US constitution.
Every textbook I have ever seen has within its text something along the lines of "Millions of years or billions of years ago...." as if that were known rather than just imagined. Nobody was there at the time to see what really happened. Even in our courts of law, more than shaky circumstantial, imaginative evidence is needed to establish facts in dispute. Many Christian believe that the billions of years theory is wrong and adhere to the biblical time frame counted in thousands. Both of these doctrines should be presented as a theory, not one as fact and the other as myth.
....and minimising those assumptions......
I agree that not only must scientists minimize their assumptions, but they should also check them out against experimental and observational evidence. If the assumptions are NOT based on experiment or observations then the whole house built on those assumptions is on shaky ground and may collapse.
You mention the assumptions of the unchanging laws of physics. That is NOT an off the wall assumption. We have never observed an change in the laws of physics. A deeper question is: Where did the laws of physics originate? We know that in our human observations and experience, laws and rules all arise in human minds. Is it then so illogical to assume that the laws of physics also arose in a mind, the mind of God? Is the reason that the laws of physics don't change because they were put in place by an unchanging God, just as holy Scripture clearly states about Himself? All information ONLY originates in a mind. Information and laws are not physical, but govern and interact with the physical realm.
The Christian religion starts with the assumption that God exists and communicates with mankind. As do scientists for their assumptions (beliefs) ascribe truth, so to Christians claim for their beliefs.