...It has some interesting properties and a great deal of promise....
Based on certain underlying assumptions (faith) upon which some elegant mathematics is based. Science is about observations and experiments, not about assumptions. The word "assumption" is generally the code word in science which is equivalent to faith or belief in religion or philosophy. When I look into a telescope or microscope and then describe what I see there, that is called science. When I stick my finger into an energized light socket, I am doing an experiment on the effect of electricity on a human being. That is called science.
(...the difference is that no string theorist (or his book) will tell you he is in possession of the Truth...)
Now contrast that with Jesus Christ who not just TOLD us truth, but claimed to be God, the very incarnation of THE TRUTH. Those are very audacious claims for anyone to make. Jesus was able to back these claims up with very powerful evidence. He demonstrated the truth he was saying by controlling the forces of nature. His giving evidence of deity culminated by him overcoming death. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be and those who wrote the record of his life were not telling the truth, then the Gospels are the most audacious and bold faced lies ever foisted on humanity.
There is however, no experiment or observation of science that can be applied here. Like all history, we are forced to believe or not to believe the historical record. String theory is like that also. We are forced to believe the underlying assumptions of some admittedly rather elegant mathematics.
....Bible does not explain where God came from.....
The Bible tells us that God is uncaused and eternal. The first cause has to, by definition be it self uncaused. Other religious writings place their god as part of or within this physical time-space-matter-energy universe.
Back in the Old Testament, when Moses met God on the mountain, at the burning bush, he specifically asked about the identity and name of this One that was speaking to him out of that bush. The answer he got was that the "I am", eternally self existent one was speaking. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked them who they were looking for. They said "Jesus of Nazareth". At this Jesus said the same word, the same "I am" that was spoken to Moses at the burning bush. The record tells us that those who came to arrest Jesus fell down backwards at the sound of the name of God. The Bible tells us that God just is.
First off, the reader Khomer has already posted a very excellent reply with which I cannot disagree.
To me, a God worth worshiping must exist independent of outside of our time space universe. The universe and how we think it works is after all the topic of this thread. If such a God wanted to communicate with mankind, how could he authenticate such a message so we could reasonably know it was not some human fictional invention? As the Creator, He should be able to accurately predict the future. He is the eternal uncaused one.
The God of the Bible is described to be an eternal person, outside of time. We are told only in the Bible he created the time-space matter-energy universe. One of the most majestic sentences in all of human writings is the first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Here we have the three divisions of the universe all of science tries to study. First, there is the beginning -- time -- then there are the heavens -- space -- and finally the earth -- matter-energy. For most of human history, scientists and scientific philosophers were of the opinion that the universe is eternal, that has always existed. Einstein and others showed that time-space and matter-energy came into existence together. Time itself has not always existed and will not always be. The threefold God of the Bible reflects himself and the many threes found in his creation.
The Bible contains many accurate predictions that have come true throughout history, some are happening right now before our eyes, and some are about to happen in the not too distant future. These predictions are not vague generalities, but very narrow and specific. Other writings, such as those for example Nostradamus allow for quite a wide latitude of interpretation.
Only in the Bible are we given an accurate account of Jesus Christ who claimed to be God and gave powerful evidence that this is true. He showed understanding of and mastery over the forces of nature and overcame our greatest enemy -- death.
I cannot see how anyone can study any field of science and not be amazed and stand in awe of the incredible order and harmony of the world we find ourselves in. I cannot imagine how this order could have arisen by any process NOT involving careful thought and planning -- the mind of God.
....now I just need to work out which religion to sign up for!....
A god worth worshiping would have to be transcendent, outside and beyond our universe, not Limited to the dimensions of time or space. Such a God would also be capable of accurately predicting the future, never missing even once. He should also be capable of entering time and space and showing that he had power over nature and even death itself.
There is a collection of books claimed to be the Word of God which we call the Bible. The word "universe" means one poem. In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we read that this transcendent God SPOKE the verse to bring the universe into existence out of nothing. Anyone can read exactly the verses that God spoke. The echo of these words still reverberates in the universe today. We call it the cosmic background radiation.
Also recorded in this library of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of over 1500 years, are accurate predictions that have already taken place, some that are happening right now before our eyes and some that are yet to come in the not too distant future.
Described therein is the life of a person whose name was Jesus Christ. He did have power over nature and overcame death. All this this cannot be proved as a scientific experiment but then neither can the string theory be proved scientifically. However, both of these can be believed or not believed. Just because one belief has mathematical underpinnings and the other one does not, doesn't make either one science. They are both based on faith.
....That's how you know you have a really powerful theory: when it lets you meaningfully ask more questions....
BS. You know you have a really powerful theory if you can observe its operation in this universe. If you can't, then it becomes a philosophy or religion you have to believe or not believe.
After Newton figured out how gravity works, his mathematics could be applied and verified by actual observation how bodies move under the influence of gravity. We could use Newton's theory of gravity to land men on the moon. Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism can be checked out by experiments and observation. We use their principles every day we use anything at all electrical. Many electronic devices and lasers rely on the science of quantum mechanics in their operation. The quantum world seems strange and bizarre and quite alien to our everyday experience, but can nevertheless be verified to be so, not by fancy mathematics only, but also by observation and experiment.
String theory and other ideas may be beautiful mathematically, but do not belong into the realm of science because it cannot be observed and measured. Just because faith is based mathematics, does not make it science.
I BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was who he said he was and is, namely God. He demonstrated this by the unique powers over the forces of nature and more importantly over death. However, science cannot observe or demonstrate this and therefore it belongs into the realm of faith, in this case religious faith. Of course, everyone who has faith, believes it to be the truth. Faith can turn out to be true in the end, but it is still faith and will always remain faith, never science.
String theory is also based on faith, faith in mathematical equations, that may in themselves be very elegant for mathematicians and theoretical physicists. These physicists believe in their theory the same way that Christians believe in the Bible. String theory cannot be categorized as science even if in the end string theory may turn out to be true.
You make all sorts of unfounded assumptions. Then based on these assumptions you invent numbers, constants and formulas. These are then incorporated into a program running on a supercomputer and voila, the computer comes up with multiple universes! What's this thing about garbage in garbage out? The computer doesn't know that these guys put garbage into it, so of course he dutifully it grinds out finely ground garbage, wasting a lot of electricity in the process. Finally the garbage gets printed and then more paper gets wasted as well. After that people read the garbage and waste time also. All this, started by some assumptions (beliefs, faith) that have no basis in observation. It gives what is called science a bad name.
...how do you know its in the bible and not another religious book....
That is a good question and here is my answer:
If the Creator God, or any god, wanted to communicate with mankind and writing, how COULD he authenticate his message that it is really from him and not some made-up fictional story? One way, would be to accurately predict the future, and this is precisely what he has done in the Bible. He is the only one who can do this because he is the only one that exists outside of time and space and therefore has an external reference point.
In the Bible, he makes accurate predictions of things that did take place in history, are taking place today before our very eyes, and will take place in the future yet to come.
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? As you mentioned, there are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
This special book is not a science textbook, but whenever it touches on the real world it has never been proven wrong. In the very first sentence of this book, we are essentially told what Einstein discovered thousands of years after it was written. No actual statement of facts, but sometimes their interpretation, have ever been proven to be erroneous by either scientists or historians.
In the final chapters of the book of Job, God shows up and gives him a science quiz. We can today give answers to most of the questions, but there are still some to which science yet cannot give a sensible answer.
In in these brief paragraphs, I have given you the reasons why I believe the Bible is God's written message to mankind.
Other than revelation from the owner of the fishbowl, the fishbowl itself is rather opaque to us right now.
....And we should care about the superstitions of a guy who lived two millenia ago.....
Because if he was right, if he is who he says he is, God come to earth, you will one day face Him as your judge.
Here is what the apostle Paul wrote:
Philippians 2:9 Therefore God has highly exalted Him, and has given Him a name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly ones, and of earthly ones, and of ones under the earth; 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Romans 14:10....For all shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 11 For it is written, " As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God."
You may not believe this to be true right now, but you too will be one of the ones to fall down before Him when it becomes impossible to stand up. At that time you will learn, too late unfortunately, that the holy Scriptures were right and you were wrong.
.....If I feed a certain set of inputs into the machine that is your brain and can trace the paths of your decision making with completely deterministic rules....
That would only work if your assumption is correct that the rules are deterministic. You may believe this but you do not know it for sure.
If you are in a balloon drifting in the clouds, with no external reference point, can you tell how fast the wind is and where it's going? Only if an outside observer provides you with this information can you tell where you will end up. You have to believe, you have to trust, that this outside observer is telling you the truth.
We are all drifting in a time space universe, like a fishbowl, with no external reference point of time. That is why are all human predictions of the future are statistical, probabilistic and most often wrong. Even predicting the weather, especially long-term weather is an exercise of futility.
That is why only someone with an outside reference point, someone who exists outside of our space-time fishbowl universe is able to accurately predict the future. If such a One wanted to communicate with humanity, he could use this 100% accurate ability to predict the future as an authentication mechanism for whatever message he wanted to get across to us. This is exactly what the God who exists outside of and independent of this time space universe has done. This communication is written down in a library we call the Bible. Like the person in the drifting balloon, may or may not trust the outside observer, so we too be trust and believe God or not.
...Humans are deterministic, we make decisions based on available data...
Really? The evidence is that most people make decisions on what they believe, their worldview, not what they know for sure. Because of this all of our decisions are statistical, probabilistic. Applied to the game of poker, it is safe to predict what a majority of poker players would do with a certain set of cards. However it is not a certainty but only a probability.
You do not get on an airplane because you know for sure that it will get to where you wish to go. You get on the airplane because you believe there is a high probability that it will take you to your destination. Almost all of life is based on faith, not what we actually know for sure. Many, if not most decisions in ordinary life are not based on information, but trust. You trust that all the people involved in the maintenance and operation of that airplane have done and are doing their job. You trust that the cook and the restaurant has not put arsenic in YOUR dish of soup.
...an observer with enough information could calculate with certainty what your choice will be.....
Only an observer outside of time and space could have or be able to obtain that information. We are all like somebody in a free, drifting balloon trying to determine the velocity and direction of the wind. Only if an outside observer tells you which way and how fast the wind is blowing, would you be able to calculate your destination and when you would arrive there. Because you have no outside reference point you would have to trust and believe the information this outside observer provides to you.
This is basically the position we are all in, drifting in the winds of time. Jesus Christ, claiming to be God, the Creator outside of and who made time and space, did give us enough information how to navigate to a safe harbor. The problem is, that many do not believe Him.
....The deterministic/nondeterministic debate can go on forever, no matter how precise the experiments are....
Indeed they can, and likely will, because we live inside this fishbowl called the universe, the dimensions of space-matter-energy-time. We are all carried along like a balloon by the "wind" of time. We have no outside non-time reference points that we could use to decide this issue one way or the other.
Only someone who is outside of this fishbowl, in fact is the owner of the fishbowl can resolve this issue. Only if He truly communicates with humanity and tells us the solution can we ever know. He has given us the solution to this in writing. It is called the Bible and many people believe that it is THE communication from God. However, because we live in this fishbowl, this universe, we cannot independently verify this by experiment right now. We are left either to BELIEVE or not to believe what He tells us is true.
Only once we leave this fishbowl, this life, this time space continuum, will we actually KNOW for sure.
...your choice is predetermined, and an observer with enough information could calculate with certainty what your choice will be....
That is exactly the problem, insufficient information. In this case however, the problem is that we are inside time, carried along by it. We live in the space-time aquarium and because of that there is no way to tell what will happen or when it will happen. Only someone independent of and outside of our space-time could gather the information or actually have that information.
We call such a "Someone" God. This God has chosen to communicate with us humans while we are still trapped in time and space. To authenticate this communication as to really coming from Him, someone outside of time, He has made a large number of accurate predictions, many of which already have happened, some are happening before our eyes, while some are still future. You can read these predictions in this strange collection of writings we call the Bible.
Because we are trapped in this space-time aquarium, our universe, we cannot independently KNOW anything outside of it. This is why we are asked, for now at least, to simply believe what He, the keeper of the aquarium has communicated to us. He also tells us, that once we are no longer so limited, but are able to access the reality beyond our own aquarium, we will no longer have to believe, because we will know. Jesus said to "doubting" Thomas:
John 20:29 Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen Me you have believed. Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.
....it's infeasible to predict the evolution of the universe faster than real-time.....
To make any predictions, one would first have to understand what "real time" actually is. Science can divide and measure time more accurately than any other physical quantity, but no scientist has even the faintest clue what time really is. We glibly talk about the past to present and the future, but in reality have only access to the instantaneous "now".
We are all like fish in an aquarium, our time space universe. Only the builder and keeper of the aquarium can know what will happen when inside the aquarium. This is because He is not inside of or part of the aquarium, but exists eternally and independently.
A good illustration of this is the astronaut inside of a closed (noiseless) rocket accelerating exactly at 32 f/s per second. There is no experiment whatsoever that such an person could make, whereby he could tell whether the rocket was standing on earth or not. Another analogy might be a person floating in a balloon not experiencing any wind because the balloon is traveling at the same rate. We are all immersed as it were in a stream of time and are all carried along with it.
Jesus evidently believed in this thing we call the "soul". He had a number of important things to say about it:
Mark 8:36 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?
The whole science or maybe art of psychiatry is the study of the "psyche", which is the root Greek word translated as "soul". According to Jesus, whatever this thing called soul is, it can be lost or bartered away.
Furthermore, Jesus said that this thing called "soul" must somehow appear before God for accountability to him:
Lune 12:16 The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room in which to store my fruits? 18 And he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and I will store all my fruits and my goods there. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat drink and be merry. 20 But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul shall be required of you, then whose shall be those things which you have prepared? 21 So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
According to Jesus, God considers anyone who is only interested in amassing wealth in this material world a fool. It appears that especially in the materialistic Western world, there are a lot of people whom God considers to be fools.
Jesus also said that this soul is a component of each person that is capable of and required to love God.
Matthew 22:37 Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
The question is: Who is right, Jesus who made some very specific references to the reality of the soul and what will happen to it, or those who simply assert there is no such thing as a soul.
...If there are an infinite number of universes...
The problem is that infinity and zero are mathematical constructs that have nothing to do with reality. It used to be thought that the universe we are in is infinitely old and infinitely big. We now know that this is not in accord what really is and what we observe. Science now tells us that the universe had a definite beginning and it will also have a definite end.
Unless someone comes who exists outside of and independently of this universe, someone who knows, there is no way for us to tell anything outside of the bounds of the beginning and the end. We are stuck with either believing or disbelieving such a person.
I happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal one who did tell us truths about what lies outside of the physical space-time dimension our senses tell us about. You do not believe Him. After both of us die, we will find out who's beliefs were right.
I thought this discussion was about this universe, the one we are in. The probability of the existence of another planet with life, that is physical life based on chemistry, is essentially zero. If of course you would believe as I do, that this universe, including this earth is not the product of a random statistical process, but a specific design by a transcendent Creator who exists outside of space-time, then there could be any number of planets or other suitable habitations even in this aquarium we call the universe.
We read in this extraordinary book we call the Bible, that the transcendent Creator who exists eternally beyond space and time, did come here to communicate what life is REALLY all about. His human name was Jesus, whose life affected and still affects all of humanity as no other ever has. He did not give us a specific number, but simply stated that there are many places of habitation and what he termed his "father's house".
Jesus gave compelling evidence to substantiate his claim of divinity, by 1)living a perfect sinless life, by 2)demonstrating complete control over our physical world and by 3)conquering our worst enemy, death itself. If you ever meet or hear of somebody who claims to be divine, these three evidences could make such a claim believable.
Some people think that those who wrote the record of the Gospels as found in the Bible, had certain goals, ideology and agenda. What could the goals of a bunch of fishermen, a tax collector and other uneducated men have been? What possible goal or agenda could a bunch of scared, trembling followers of Jesus have had, in order to fabricate such an improbable tale? They claimed that they were eyewitnesses to what they themselves had seen, heard and experienced. There were no copyrights or movie contracts in those days that they might have profited from.
Unless it can be shown that the writers of any historical document had a plausible agenda for deception, most scholars will take such historical accounts at face value. If these particular historical records cannot be trusted to be true, can ANY historical writings be trusted to be true?
According to Jesus, there are at least two other places, besides our own Earth, of conscious existence of living beings. One of them is called Heaven and the other one is called Hell. We are in the middle, at the crossroads between the two. Jesus came to give us enough information in order to intelligently choose which way to go, up or down. The big question really is, do we believe him?
....I have no doubt that his deeds and teachings were twisted, exaggerated and added to as necessary to support the goals and ideology of those who wrote the New Testament.....
It would be interesting to me to know what YOU think of the goals, ideology and agenda of a bunch of fishermen, a tax collector and other uneducated men might have been. What possible goal or agenda could a bunch of scared, trembling followers of Jesus have had, in order to fabricate such an improbable tale? They claimed that they were eyewitnesses to what they themselves had seen, heard and experienced. There were no copyrights or movie contracts in those days that they might have profited from.
There are other, non-biblical historical sources that corroborate some of the accounts of these men.
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
I am not trying to make religious propaganda, but simply pointing out that even science hints at a realm beyond time and space. This remarkable book is not a science textbook, but whenever it touches on the real world it has never been proven wrong. In the very first sentence of this book, we are essentially told what Einstein discovered thousands of years after it was written. No actual statement of fact, but sometimes its interpretation, has ever been proven to be erroneous by either science or history.
In the final chapters of the book of Job, God shows up and gives him a science quiz. We can today give answers to most of the questions, but there are still some to which science yet cannot give a sensible answer.
Have you ever read this a remarkable book in its entirety? Maybe not as the Word of God, but simply as history and literature. I'd highly recommend that you do so sometime soon. Do you really think it is fair to criticize this book as baseless fantasy and fiction if you yourself have never read it? After you HAVE read it in it entirety, you may want to tell me about it.
I don't have all the consumer report information on computers in general any longer, but only for laptops. In the category for which Apple makes such laptops, they definitely have the highest quality scores by a signifiant margin over the runners up. The Dell Inspiron line is next with 5-7 points below Apple. Gateway and HP are on the bottom of the heap.
This is according to the Consumer Reports 2008 buying guide. Get yourself a copy. It is very useful to have for stuff other than computers that you might want to buy.
.... The spectrum might be different, but there's light that can be used for photosynthesis....
They are actually quite a few stars whose spectrum is too red or too blue for efficient photosynthesis. Why do you think they make special spectrum grow lights for plants, such as for the indoor marijuana garden in your garage? Ordinary lights just don't work too well for this. I guess I'm being just a little facetious here, ha ha.
...No. I think you need to stop treating your Bible as gospel when it comes to science...
If you were really honest, if you really wanted to know, you could calculate the probabilities yourself or read about someone who did in this regard. This has nothing to do with the Bible as such, but is simple math, at least for someone who knows anything about statistics and probabilities. it seems to me that you are a person who doesn't WANT know.
No, OSX it is not attacked because it is so secure in absolute terms, but considerably more secure than Windows. Windows was a very easy target compared to a Mac. The fact that XP it is still the dominant platform and is significantly easier to compromise that any Mac, it is still the main reason why by far the main body of malware on the Internet today is targeted to Windows.
It has not been unequivocally and clearly established whether OSX and VISTA have a similar security disparity. Right now indications are that VISTA malware and attacks are a lot more numerous than for OSX. This may have to do with the simple fact that most hackers and script kiddies are more familiar with and use Windows more than OSX.
....With that in mind, you break the one you can fastest...
Maybe instead you break the one you really want to do real work on rather than a second rate Windows machine. After that part of the $10,000 could be used to buy a fancy Windows box and a pile of games for it.
.... a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up...
Exactly, the whole thing was a setup! How much spyware, viruses, Trojans or other digital vermin are out there in the wilds of the Internet right now? That is what really counts, is not some artificial setup at some hacker conference. The security of your house is not nearly as dependent on the absolute strength of your locks, doors and windows, but on the fact that real burglars prefer to break into the less secure Windows houses of your neighbors. Until that changes in practice, Macs are much safer on the Internet than Windows computers.
....They just shouldn't be able to legally tie down there OS to their hardware through DRM....
What are you talking about? They don't do that. They happen to be the only company that makes a computer and also writes their own operating system specifically for those computers they themselves make. Since they sell boxed copies of the operating system to anybody, a buyer does have the right to install that on any hardware they choose. They may have a hard time enforcing their EULA in a court of law.
Since Pystar there's really only a small annoyance, Apple should not waste one cent in legal costs. If a big company such as Dell or HP tried this maneuver, Apple would be forced to stop selling OSX on the open market to all comers. That would make it a little less convenient for legal Mac users, but not nearly as intrusive as what Microsoft is doing with their phone home every five minutes computers. Requiring proof of Mac ownership should not be such a big problem. Trying to legally enforce a EULA it is much more fraught with uncertainty.
Slashdot Mirror
...It has some interesting properties and a great deal of promise....
Based on certain underlying assumptions (faith) upon which some elegant mathematics is based. Science is about observations and experiments, not about assumptions. The word "assumption" is generally the code word in science which is equivalent to faith or belief in religion or philosophy. When I look into a telescope or microscope and then describe what I see there, that is called science. When I stick my finger into an energized light socket, I am doing an experiment on the effect of electricity on a human being. That is called science.
(...the difference is that no string theorist (or his book) will tell you he is in possession of the Truth...)
Now contrast that with Jesus Christ who not just TOLD us truth, but claimed to be God, the very incarnation of THE TRUTH. Those are very audacious claims for anyone to make. Jesus was able to back these claims up with very powerful evidence. He demonstrated the truth he was saying by controlling the forces of nature. His giving evidence of deity culminated by him overcoming death. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be and those who wrote the record of his life were not telling the truth, then the Gospels are the most audacious and bold faced lies ever foisted on humanity.
There is however, no experiment or observation of science that can be applied here. Like all history, we are forced to believe or not to believe the historical record. String theory is like that also. We are forced to believe the underlying assumptions of some admittedly rather elegant mathematics.
....Bible does not explain where God came from.....
The Bible tells us that God is uncaused and eternal. The first cause has to, by definition be it self uncaused. Other religious writings place their god as part of or within this physical time-space-matter-energy universe.
Back in the Old Testament, when Moses met God on the mountain, at the burning bush, he specifically asked about the identity and name of this One that was speaking to him out of that bush. The answer he got was that the "I am", eternally self existent one was speaking. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked them who they were looking for. They said "Jesus of Nazareth". At this Jesus said the same word, the same "I am" that was spoken to Moses at the burning bush. The record tells us that those who came to arrest Jesus fell down backwards at the sound of the name of God. The Bible tells us that God just is.
....Just wondering why you chose Christianity....
First off, the reader Khomer has already posted a very excellent reply with which I cannot disagree.
To me, a God worth worshiping must exist independent of outside of our time space universe. The universe and how we think it works is after all the topic of this thread. If such a God wanted to communicate with mankind, how could he authenticate such a message so we could reasonably know it was not some human fictional invention? As the Creator, He should be able to accurately predict the future. He is the eternal uncaused one.
The God of the Bible is described to be an eternal person, outside of time. We are told only in the Bible he created the time-space matter-energy universe. One of the most majestic sentences in all of human writings is the first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Here we have the three divisions of the universe all of science tries to study. First, there is the beginning -- time -- then there are the heavens -- space -- and finally the earth -- matter-energy. For most of human history, scientists and scientific philosophers were of the opinion that the universe is eternal, that has always existed. Einstein and others showed that time-space and matter-energy came into existence together. Time itself has not always existed and will not always be. The threefold God of the Bible reflects himself and the many threes found in his creation.
The Bible contains many accurate predictions that have come true throughout history, some are happening right now before our eyes, and some are about to happen in the not too distant future. These predictions are not vague generalities, but very narrow and specific. Other writings, such as those for example Nostradamus allow for quite a wide latitude of interpretation.
Only in the Bible are we given an accurate account of Jesus Christ who claimed to be God and gave powerful evidence that this is true. He showed understanding of and mastery over the forces of nature and overcame our greatest enemy -- death.
I cannot see how anyone can study any field of science and not be amazed and stand in awe of the incredible order and harmony of the world we find ourselves in. I cannot imagine how this order could have arisen by any process NOT involving careful thought and planning -- the mind of God.
....now I just need to work out which religion to sign up for!....
A god worth worshiping would have to be transcendent, outside and beyond our universe, not Limited to the dimensions of time or space. Such a God would also be capable of accurately predicting the future, never missing even once. He should also be capable of entering time and space and showing that he had power over nature and even death itself.
There is a collection of books claimed to be the Word of God which we call the Bible. The word "universe" means one poem. In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we read that this transcendent God SPOKE the verse to bring the universe into existence out of nothing. Anyone can read exactly the verses that God spoke. The echo of these words still reverberates in the universe today. We call it the cosmic background radiation.
Also recorded in this library of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of over 1500 years, are accurate predictions that have already taken place, some that are happening right now before our eyes and some that are yet to come in the not too distant future.
Described therein is the life of a person whose name was Jesus Christ. He did have power over nature and overcame death. All this this cannot be proved as a scientific experiment but then neither can the string theory be proved scientifically. However, both of these can be believed or not believed. Just because one belief has mathematical underpinnings and the other one does not, doesn't make either one science. They are both based on faith.
....That's how you know you have a really powerful theory: when it lets you meaningfully ask more questions....
BS. You know you have a really powerful theory if you can observe its operation in this universe. If you can't, then it becomes a philosophy or religion you have to believe or not believe.
After Newton figured out how gravity works, his mathematics could be applied and verified by actual observation how bodies move under the influence of gravity. We could use Newton's theory of gravity to land men on the moon. Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism can be checked out by experiments and observation. We use their principles every day we use anything at all electrical. Many electronic devices and lasers rely on the science of quantum mechanics in their operation. The quantum world seems strange and bizarre and quite alien to our everyday experience, but can nevertheless be verified to be so, not by fancy mathematics only, but also by observation and experiment.
String theory and other ideas may be beautiful mathematically, but do not belong into the realm of science because it cannot be observed and measured. Just because faith is based mathematics, does not make it science.
I BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was who he said he was and is, namely God. He demonstrated this by the unique powers over the forces of nature and more importantly over death. However, science cannot observe or demonstrate this and therefore it belongs into the realm of faith, in this case religious faith. Of course, everyone who has faith, believes it to be the truth. Faith can turn out to be true in the end, but it is still faith and will always remain faith, never science.
String theory is also based on faith, faith in mathematical equations, that may in themselves be very elegant for mathematicians and theoretical physicists. These physicists believe in their theory the same way that Christians believe in the Bible. String theory cannot be categorized as science even if in the end string theory may turn out to be true.
....So to make the math work....
You make all sorts of unfounded assumptions. Then based on these assumptions you invent numbers, constants and formulas. These are then incorporated into a program running on a supercomputer and voila, the computer comes up with multiple universes! What's this thing about garbage in garbage out? The computer doesn't know that these guys put garbage into it, so of course he dutifully it grinds out finely ground garbage, wasting a lot of electricity in the process. Finally the garbage gets printed and then more paper gets wasted as well. After that people read the garbage and waste time also. All this, started by some assumptions (beliefs, faith) that have no basis in observation. It gives what is called science a bad name.
...how do you know its in the bible and not another religious book....
That is a good question and here is my answer:
If the Creator God, or any god, wanted to communicate with mankind and writing, how COULD he authenticate his message that it is really from him and not some made-up fictional story? One way, would be to accurately predict the future, and this is precisely what he has done in the Bible. He is the only one who can do this because he is the only one that exists outside of time and space and therefore has an external reference point.
In the Bible, he makes accurate predictions of things that did take place in history, are taking place today before our very eyes, and will take place in the future yet to come.
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? As you mentioned, there are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
This special book is not a science textbook, but whenever it touches on the real world it has never been proven wrong. In the very first sentence of this book, we are essentially told what Einstein discovered thousands of years after it was written. No actual statement of facts, but sometimes their interpretation, have ever been proven to be erroneous by either scientists or historians.
In the final chapters of the book of Job, God shows up and gives him a science quiz. We can today give answers to most of the questions, but there are still some to which science yet cannot give a sensible answer.
In in these brief paragraphs, I have given you the reasons why I believe the Bible is God's written message to mankind.
Other than revelation from the owner of the fishbowl, the fishbowl itself is rather opaque to us right now.
....And we should care about the superstitions of a guy who lived two millenia ago.....
Because if he was right, if he is who he says he is, God come to earth, you will one day face Him as your judge.
Here is what the apostle Paul wrote:
Philippians 2:9 Therefore God has highly exalted Him, and has given Him a name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly ones, and of earthly ones, and of ones under the earth; 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Romans 14:10....For all shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 11 For it is written, " As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God."
You may not believe this to be true right now, but you too will be one of the ones to fall down before Him when it becomes impossible to stand up. At that time you will learn, too late unfortunately, that the holy Scriptures were right and you were wrong.
.....If I feed a certain set of inputs into the machine that is your brain and can trace the paths of your decision making with completely deterministic rules....
That would only work if your assumption is correct that the rules are deterministic. You may believe this but you do not know it for sure.
If you are in a balloon drifting in the clouds, with no external reference point, can you tell how fast the wind is and where it's going? Only if an outside observer provides you with this information can you tell where you will end up. You have to believe, you have to trust, that this outside observer is telling you the truth.
We are all drifting in a time space universe, like a fishbowl, with no external reference point of time. That is why are all human predictions of the future are statistical, probabilistic and most often wrong. Even predicting the weather, especially long-term weather is an exercise of futility.
That is why only someone with an outside reference point, someone who exists outside of our space-time fishbowl universe is able to accurately predict the future. If such a One wanted to communicate with humanity, he could use this 100% accurate ability to predict the future as an authentication mechanism for whatever message he wanted to get across to us. This is exactly what the God who exists outside of and independent of this time space universe has done. This communication is written down in a library we call the Bible. Like the person in the drifting balloon, may or may not trust the outside observer, so we too be trust and believe God or not.
...Humans are deterministic, we make decisions based on available data ...
Really? The evidence is that most people make decisions on what they believe, their worldview, not what they know for sure. Because of this all of our decisions are statistical, probabilistic. Applied to the game of poker, it is safe to predict what a majority of poker players would do with a certain set of cards. However it is not a certainty but only a probability.
You do not get on an airplane because you know for sure that it will get to where you wish to go. You get on the airplane because you believe there is a high probability that it will take you to your destination. Almost all of life is based on faith, not what we actually know for sure. Many, if not most decisions in ordinary life are not based on information, but trust. You trust that all the people involved in the maintenance and operation of that airplane have done and are doing their job. You trust that the cook and the restaurant has not put arsenic in YOUR dish of soup.
...an observer with enough information could calculate with certainty what your choice will be.....
Only an observer outside of time and space could have or be able to obtain that information. We are all like somebody in a free, drifting balloon trying to determine the velocity and direction of the wind. Only if an outside observer tells you which way and how fast the wind is blowing, would you be able to calculate your destination and when you would arrive there. Because you have no outside reference point you would have to trust and believe the information this outside observer provides to you.
This is basically the position we are all in, drifting in the winds of time. Jesus Christ, claiming to be God, the Creator outside of and who made time and space, did give us enough information how to navigate to a safe harbor. The problem is, that many do not believe Him.
....The deterministic/nondeterministic debate can go on forever, no matter how precise the experiments are....
Indeed they can, and likely will, because we live inside this fishbowl called the universe, the dimensions of space-matter-energy-time. We are all carried along like a balloon by the "wind" of time. We have no outside non-time reference points that we could use to decide this issue one way or the other.
Only someone who is outside of this fishbowl, in fact is the owner of the fishbowl can resolve this issue. Only if He truly communicates with humanity and tells us the solution can we ever know. He has given us the solution to this in writing. It is called the Bible and many people believe that it is THE communication from God. However, because we live in this fishbowl, this universe, we cannot independently verify this by experiment right now. We are left either to BELIEVE or not to believe what He tells us is true.
Only once we leave this fishbowl, this life, this time space continuum, will we actually KNOW for sure.
...your choice is predetermined, and an observer with enough information could calculate with certainty what your choice will be....
That is exactly the problem, insufficient information. In this case however, the problem is that we are inside time, carried along by it. We live in the space-time aquarium and because of that there is no way to tell what will happen or when it will happen. Only someone independent of and outside of our space-time could gather the information or actually have that information.
We call such a "Someone" God. This God has chosen to communicate with us humans while we are still trapped in time and space. To authenticate this communication as to really coming from Him, someone outside of time, He has made a large number of accurate predictions, many of which already have happened, some are happening before our eyes, while some are still future. You can read these predictions in this strange collection of writings we call the Bible.
Because we are trapped in this space-time aquarium, our universe, we cannot independently KNOW anything outside of it. This is why we are asked, for now at least, to simply believe what He, the keeper of the aquarium has communicated to us. He also tells us, that once we are no longer so limited, but are able to access the reality beyond our own aquarium, we will no longer have to believe, because we will know. Jesus said to "doubting" Thomas:
John 20:29 Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen Me you have believed. Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.
....it's infeasible to predict the evolution of the universe faster than real-time.....
To make any predictions, one would first have to understand what "real time" actually is. Science can divide and measure time more accurately than any other physical quantity, but no scientist has even the faintest clue what time really is. We glibly talk about the past to present and the future, but in reality have only access to the instantaneous "now".
We are all like fish in an aquarium, our time space universe. Only the builder and keeper of the aquarium can know what will happen when inside the aquarium. This is because He is not inside of or part of the aquarium, but exists eternally and independently.
A good illustration of this is the astronaut inside of a closed (noiseless) rocket accelerating exactly at 32 f/s per second. There is no experiment whatsoever that such an person could make, whereby he could tell whether the rocket was standing on earth or not. Another analogy might be a person floating in a balloon not experiencing any wind because the balloon is traveling at the same rate. We are all immersed as it were in a stream of time and are all carried along with it.
...And then, there's the concept of "soul" ....
Jesus evidently believed in this thing we call the "soul". He had a number of important things to say about it:
Mark 8:36 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?
The whole science or maybe art of psychiatry is the study of the "psyche", which is the root Greek word translated as "soul". According to Jesus, whatever this thing called soul is, it can be lost or bartered away.
Furthermore, Jesus said that this thing called "soul" must somehow appear before God for accountability to him:
Lune 12:16 The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room in which to store my fruits? 18 And he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and I will store all my fruits and my goods there. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat drink and be merry. 20 But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul shall be required of you, then whose shall be those things which you have prepared? 21 So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
According to Jesus, God considers anyone who is only interested in amassing wealth in this material world a fool. It appears that especially in the materialistic Western world, there are a lot of people whom God considers to be fools.
Jesus also said that this soul is a component of each person that is capable of and required to love God.
Matthew 22:37 Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
The question is: Who is right, Jesus who made some very specific references to the reality of the soul and what will happen to it, or those who simply assert there is no such thing as a soul.
...If there are an infinite number of universes...
The problem is that infinity and zero are mathematical constructs that have nothing to do with reality. It used to be thought that the universe we are in is infinitely old and infinitely big. We now know that this is not in accord what really is and what we observe. Science now tells us that the universe had a definite beginning and it will also have a definite end.
Unless someone comes who exists outside of and independently of this universe, someone who knows, there is no way for us to tell anything outside of the bounds of the beginning and the end. We are stuck with either believing or disbelieving such a person.
I happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal one who did tell us truths about what lies outside of the physical space-time dimension our senses tell us about. You do not believe Him. After both of us die, we will find out who's beliefs were right.
....How many universes are there?...
I thought this discussion was about this universe, the one we are in. The probability of the existence of another planet with life, that is physical life based on chemistry, is essentially zero. If of course you would believe as I do, that this universe, including this earth is not the product of a random statistical process, but a specific design by a transcendent Creator who exists outside of space-time, then there could be any number of planets or other suitable habitations even in this aquarium we call the universe.
We read in this extraordinary book we call the Bible, that the transcendent Creator who exists eternally beyond space and time, did come here to communicate what life is REALLY all about. His human name was Jesus, whose life affected and still affects all of humanity as no other ever has. He did not give us a specific number, but simply stated that there are many places of habitation and what he termed his "father's house".
Jesus gave compelling evidence to substantiate his claim of divinity, by 1)living a perfect sinless life, by 2)demonstrating complete control over our physical world and by 3)conquering our worst enemy, death itself. If you ever meet or hear of somebody who claims to be divine, these three evidences could make such a claim believable.
Some people think that those who wrote the record of the Gospels as found in the Bible, had certain goals, ideology and agenda. What could the goals of a bunch of fishermen, a tax collector and other uneducated men have been? What possible goal or agenda could a bunch of scared, trembling followers of Jesus have had, in order to fabricate such an improbable tale? They claimed that they were eyewitnesses to what they themselves had seen, heard and experienced. There were no copyrights or movie contracts in those days that they might have profited from.
Unless it can be shown that the writers of any historical document had a plausible agenda for deception, most scholars will take such historical accounts at face value. If these particular historical records cannot be trusted to be true, can ANY historical writings be trusted to be true?
According to Jesus, there are at least two other places, besides our own Earth, of conscious existence of living beings. One of them is called Heaven and the other one is called Hell. We are in the middle, at the crossroads between the two. Jesus came to give us enough information in order to intelligently choose which way to go, up or down. The big question really is, do we believe him?
....I have no doubt that his deeds and teachings were twisted, exaggerated and added to as necessary to support the goals and ideology of those who wrote the New Testament.....
It would be interesting to me to know what YOU think of the goals, ideology and agenda of a bunch of fishermen, a tax collector and other uneducated men might have been. What possible goal or agenda could a bunch of scared, trembling followers of Jesus have had, in order to fabricate such an improbable tale? They claimed that they were eyewitnesses to what they themselves had seen, heard and experienced. There were no copyrights or movie contracts in those days that they might have profited from.
There are other, non-biblical historical sources that corroborate some of the accounts of these men.
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
I am not trying to make religious propaganda, but simply pointing out that even science hints at a realm beyond time and space. This remarkable book is not a science textbook, but whenever it touches on the real world it has never been proven wrong. In the very first sentence of this book, we are essentially told what Einstein discovered thousands of years after it was written. No actual statement of fact, but sometimes its interpretation, has ever been proven to be erroneous by either science or history.
In the final chapters of the book of Job, God shows up and gives him a science quiz. We can today give answers to most of the questions, but there are still some to which science yet cannot give a sensible answer.
Have you ever read this a remarkable book in its entirety? Maybe not as the Word of God, but simply as history and literature. I'd highly recommend that you do so sometime soon. Do you really think it is fair to criticize this book as baseless fantasy and fiction if you yourself have never read it? After you HAVE read it in it entirety, you may want to tell me about it.
...This is untrue...
I don't have all the consumer report information on computers in general any longer, but only for laptops. In the category for which Apple makes such laptops, they definitely have the highest quality scores by a signifiant margin over the runners up. The Dell Inspiron line is next with 5-7 points below Apple. Gateway and HP are on the bottom of the heap.
This is according to the Consumer Reports 2008 buying guide. Get yourself a copy. It is very useful to have for stuff other than computers that you might want to buy.
.... The spectrum might be different, but there's light that can be used for photosynthesis....
They are actually quite a few stars whose spectrum is too red or too blue for efficient photosynthesis. Why do you think they make special spectrum grow lights for plants, such as for the indoor marijuana garden in your garage? Ordinary lights just don't work too well for this. I guess I'm being just a little facetious here, ha ha.
...No. I think you need to stop treating your Bible as gospel when it comes to science...
If you were really honest, if you really wanted to know, you could calculate the probabilities yourself or read about someone who did in this regard. This has nothing to do with the Bible as such, but is simple math, at least for someone who knows anything about statistics and probabilities. it seems to me that you are a person who doesn't WANT know.
..."OSX is secure cause nobody attacks it....
No, OSX it is not attacked because it is so secure in absolute terms, but considerably more secure than Windows. Windows was a very easy target compared to a Mac. The fact that XP it is still the dominant platform and is significantly easier to compromise that any Mac, it is still the main reason why by far the main body of malware on the Internet today is targeted to Windows.
It has not been unequivocally and clearly established whether OSX and VISTA have a similar security disparity. Right now indications are that VISTA malware and attacks are a lot more numerous than for OSX. This may have to do with the simple fact that most hackers and script kiddies are more familiar with and use Windows more than OSX.
....With that in mind, you break the one you can fastest...
Maybe instead you break the one you really want to do real work on rather than a second rate Windows machine. After that part of the $10,000 could be used to buy a fancy Windows box and a pile of games for it.
.... a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up...
Exactly, the whole thing was a setup! How much spyware, viruses, Trojans or other digital vermin are out there in the wilds of the Internet right now? That is what really counts, is not some artificial setup at some hacker conference. The security of your house is not nearly as dependent on the absolute strength of your locks, doors and windows, but on the fact that real burglars prefer to break into the less secure Windows houses of your neighbors. Until that changes in practice, Macs are much safer on the Internet than Windows computers.
....They just shouldn't be able to legally tie down there OS to their hardware through DRM....
What are you talking about? They don't do that. They happen to be the only company that makes a computer and also writes their own operating system specifically for those computers they themselves make. Since they sell boxed copies of the operating system to anybody, a buyer does have the right to install that on any hardware they choose. They may have a hard time enforcing their EULA in a court of law.
Since Pystar there's really only a small annoyance, Apple should not waste one cent in legal costs. If a big company such as Dell or HP tried this maneuver, Apple would be forced to stop selling OSX on the open market to all comers. That would make it a little less convenient for legal Mac users, but not nearly as intrusive as what Microsoft is doing with their phone home every five minutes computers. Requiring proof of Mac ownership should not be such a big problem. Trying to legally enforce a EULA it is much more fraught with uncertainty.