Quite the opposite. I am not saying that weak atheists have a belief system, only that strong atheists do (ie, strong atheists believe in the non-existance of god(s), while weak atheists lack a belief in god(s)). I am saying that the word "atheism" encompasses both weak atheism and strong atheism, and as such is too broad.
The reason, as I said, that atheism appears as the lack of a belief system is because atheists lack belief in a god or gods. Period. That's all you can say about them as an entire group.
That is exactly the problem. Since they don't distinguish themselves, they really shouldn't be surprised when someone thinks they have a belief that they don't.
Not to belittle the significance of the raw numbers, but a per-capita count is also important. Consider these figures, pulled straight from my ass: Howaii has 1000 pounds of food per person, and 1 billion pounds of food overall. Meanwhile, Imdia has 500 pounds of food per person, and 5 trillion pounds overall. Which country, then, has more food? Now, I don't know how much this applies to engineers, but I suspect that having more engineers per capita means more of them are free to do interesting stuff, or work on exporting.
Indeed. I just did `kill -9 1` as root and init didn't blink. OK, maybe I shouldn't run whatever script/command someone says, but I was curious. I have also done `rm -rf/` as root, and `rm -rf *` as root, without doing any damage to my computer. (Actually, 'cd/; rm -rf/` and `mkdir empty; cd empty; rm -rf *`. Don't do this unless you have recently made a backup, or are sure your system behaves like this:-). )
Neurons have several thousand connections, not "about 10". Furthermore, these connections are analog (have a range of strengths), say 1 byte to address the strenghts. Given about 100,000,000 brain cells, you would need almost 30 bits per connection as well, but call it 3 bytes. At 1000 connections, you need 4 kb per neuron, or 400 Gb of memory for 1 rat brain. Barely doable, but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...
This particular attempt at secure messaging will be circumvented in 5...4....3...2...1...
This particular attempt at secure messaging will be circumvented in... 0. It is alread stored for law enforcement. Methinks encryption is in order. Presumably the reciever cannot prevent this from being deleted, though, which I think is a bad idea.
From stealthtext.net:SECURITY: While the message is deleted off the recipient's phone, like any phone call or text, the 'paper trail' and log stays on a protected, secure server, for a limited amount of time before completely deleted, to comply with the law
Step 4: people combine this with encryption, so that everything is safe and secure. I do agree that this is likely to be used more for questionable/criminal activity than not. Though I still am an advocate for strong, private, and possibly anonymous communications to be possible.
If I feel God exists, including him is not against occams razor. It add's no complexity; it simply allows him to coexist with our understanding of the world.
First, adding anything adds complexity. Second, there are plenty of materialistic reasons that can account for your feeling that God exists. Thus, adding God for this reason is unnecessary complexity.
Why do non-believers always feel that they have to bash the beliefs of others?
Non-believers are simply believers in something else. People generally want others to believe what they believe.
If I feel God exists, why do you try to convince me otherwise on the shaky basis that YOU feel that is in contridiction to the idea of Occam's razor (which is not a law. It is like Murphy's law. It is ussaly true, but does not have to be).
What you say is true: science does not give a rat's ass about reality. Science is all about explaining reality in the simplest way possible. Now, I did not say that Occam's Razor proves God doesn't exist. I said that if evolution is true, then you can't say "God created man" while still using Occam's Razor. Now I'll agree that Occam's Razor is not a law. It is a meta-law. It's above the law. Occam's Razor will still be there when we are replacing quantum mechanics and relativity.
A bit off topic, but this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder. Some time ago I had a dream. The setting was a street that I might have been on, though I had certainly not been there for several years, if ever. Also, I was in the company of my two brothers and a schoolmate's little sister. In my dream, I said, "This is a mightly long block." She answered, "Don't worry, I didn't bring you here to kill you." Then the dream ended.
Later on, my schoolmate invited me to a birthday party at his house. I went to his house, and his mom said he went to his dad's office, a block down the street, and that his little sister would take us there. The place seemed somehow familiar. After walking two blocks, I commented, "This is a mighty long block", and immediately remembered my dream, including what she would say. Sure enough, she answered as I had dreamed, word for word. I should mention that I was never before on that street with both my brothers, and never afterwards. Also, I was never in that same company (both brothers and my schoolmate's little sister). Also, that I dream very infrequently. Anyhow, I think I need only one more dream of this sort to convince me that something seriously needs explaining, and that maybe science might not be the way to do it.
Previously, I had a dream, a single flash of a place in John Hopkins University, where I later went, but do not trust my visual memory. Also I have a "pending" dream that I would rather not happen. I occasionally have nightmares and lucid dreams, but I can identify them as such, and their cause.
I think the point is that MS would rather a very big noise about pulling this from ebay, than for ebay to become the standard place to sell MS vulnerabilities. I don't see why, though, as I'm pretty sure it would be much easier to track the person down if the vulnerability was exploited than if they did it in some obscure corner of the internet.
Hey, I'll be the first to cheer them on and wish them luck. But what's with having 3 flywheels fail? That's the sort of thing that would cause the mission to fail unless they had an assload of fuel and their communications can survive being a little unaligned.
No. If we don't need god to explain our existance, then we don't need god to explain our existance. Since god is not needed, we introduce Him to Occam's Razor. Regardless of whether god actually exists or not, if he makes no observable difference in the universe, Occam's Razor says he has to go.
Because China has a huge army of footsoldiers. If they didn't have the problem of transporting them, they could (and I dare say would) begin kicking our asses. Also, if they advance to the point where we are buying our weapons from them, we're screwed.
It's also fair to judge a people by its dictatorship. Even dictators can't piss off *everyone* in their country without getting promptly assasinated. In a republic, you actually need less people (the electoral college) to like you than in a dictatorship (your army of bodyguards & the millitary).
Don't forget that having a minimum wage can result in less jobs in some areas. It can also cause some jobs to disappear entirely, as the cost would be too high. The obvious solution is to allow illegal immigrants to work at illegal wages:-). On the other hand, higher wages (and less jobs) tend to motivate people to learn more (so they can compete, but also because the pay is better), and to replace dull jobs with robots whenever possible (robots are only as valuable as the equivalent human labor).
Most coders aren't good businessmen: they don't like the nuances of business and are likely too introverted to be any good. However, working at a big company that decides you are one of the best programmers in [demography] probably means you can earn piles of cash doing what you love. Some coders might just do it for the fame, and to put on their resume.
Well, why won't they let me put up a sign on the courthouse lawn that says "God does not exist", or "The Bible is a fairy tale"? I pay taxes! I vote!
Because of lack of historical context? A lot more of our society is based on the Bible than you might want to believe, and a short, concise listing of laws (even if they are ancient) does fit well with a courtroom. What did you think the constitiution was based on?
Another question. When people testify in court, they usually swear on the Bible. What if we return to the old ways, when people would hold their balls when testifying? Much more appropriate for evolutionists, and I daresay most of our self-professed christians would rather lose their soul than thair balls.
That's a sneaky statement. "Christians can't do bad things, therefore they must evil atheists". You know, they believe in Christ, the God, and the Bible. That makes them Christian. They may not have full understanding of the concept but it's the believe they faith in, so that's what they are. They're Christian, albeit errant Christians.
If I believe that I am president, that does not make me president. There are specific criteria for being a christian (though they vary according to denomination). "A tree is known by its fruit" or something like that, though some think that belief is enough.
If God is omnipotent (and you define omnipotent the way you did) then God can break the rules of logic. If you think this is a contradiction, you are stupid: why define something that is a contradiction, but if the way you define it isn't a contradiction, then you have no point.
PS: in case you were wondering, the non-existance of contradictions is an axiom of logic (ie, we believe...).
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Quite the opposite. I am not saying that weak atheists have a belief system, only that strong atheists do (ie, strong atheists believe in the non-existance of god(s), while weak atheists lack a belief in god(s)). I am saying that the word "atheism" encompasses both weak atheism and strong atheism, and as such is too broad.
The reason, as I said, that atheism appears as the lack of a belief system is because atheists lack belief in a god or gods. Period. That's all you can say about them as an entire group.
That is exactly the problem. Since they don't distinguish themselves, they really shouldn't be surprised when someone thinks they have a belief that they don't.
The reason that [atheism] doesn't appear to be a belief system is because it isn't a belief system.
Like I said, strong atheism is the belief that there are no god(s). Methinks you should look up a dictionary before criticizing my definitions.
So, provided that your son is doing Chem Eng, Mechanical or Petroleum, he should be fine.
... specific? What sort of job security does a Petroleum Engineer have?
Petroleum Engineering? Does that exist? And isn't that too
Not to belittle the significance of the raw numbers, but a per-capita count is also important. Consider these figures, pulled straight from my ass: Howaii has 1000 pounds of food per person, and 1 billion pounds of food overall. Meanwhile, Imdia has 500 pounds of food per person, and 5 trillion pounds overall. Which country, then, has more food? Now, I don't know how much this applies to engineers, but I suspect that having more engineers per capita means more of them are free to do interesting stuff, or work on exporting.
Indeed. I just did `kill -9 1` as root and init didn't blink. OK, maybe I shouldn't run whatever script/command someone says, but I was curious. I have also done `rm -rf /` as root, and `rm -rf *` as root, without doing any damage to my computer. (Actually, 'cd /; rm -rf /` and `mkdir empty; cd empty; rm -rf *`. Don't do this unless you have recently made a backup, or are sure your system behaves like this :-). )
Neurons have several thousand connections, not "about 10". Furthermore, these connections are analog (have a range of strengths), say 1 byte to address the strenghts. Given about 100,000,000 brain cells, you would need almost 30 bits per connection as well, but call it 3 bytes. At 1000 connections, you need 4 kb per neuron, or 400 Gb of memory for 1 rat brain. Barely doable, but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...
The problem is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster might give the mice a soul if we give them too many human brain cells.
This particular attempt at secure messaging will be circumvented in 5...4....3...2...1...
... 0. It is alread stored for law enforcement. Methinks encryption is in order. Presumably the reciever cannot prevent this from being deleted, though, which I think is a bad idea.
This particular attempt at secure messaging will be circumvented in
From stealthtext.net:SECURITY: While the message is deleted off the recipient's phone, like any phone call or text, the 'paper trail' and log stays on a protected, secure server, for a limited amount of time before completely deleted, to comply with the law
Step 4: people combine this with encryption, so that everything is safe and secure. I do agree that this is likely to be used more for questionable/criminal activity than not. Though I still am an advocate for strong, private, and possibly anonymous communications to be possible.
I got a first post, but it self-deleted after 40 seconds...
If I feel God exists, including him is not against occams razor. It add's no complexity; it simply allows him to coexist with our understanding of the world.
First, adding anything adds complexity. Second, there are plenty of materialistic reasons that can account for your feeling that God exists. Thus, adding God for this reason is unnecessary complexity.
Why do non-believers always feel that they have to bash the beliefs of others?
Non-believers are simply believers in something else. People generally want others to believe what they believe.
If I feel God exists, why do you try to convince me otherwise on the shaky basis that YOU feel that is in contridiction to the idea of Occam's razor (which is not a law. It is like Murphy's law. It is ussaly true, but does not have to be).
What you say is true: science does not give a rat's ass about reality. Science is all about explaining reality in the simplest way possible. Now, I did not say that Occam's Razor proves God doesn't exist. I said that if evolution is true, then you can't say "God created man" while still using Occam's Razor. Now I'll agree that Occam's Razor is not a law. It is a meta-law. It's above the law. Occam's Razor will still be there when we are replacing quantum mechanics and relativity.
A bit off topic, but this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder. Some time ago I had a dream. The setting was a street that I might have been on, though I had certainly not been there for several years, if ever. Also, I was in the company of my two brothers and a schoolmate's little sister. In my dream, I said, "This is a mightly long block." She answered, "Don't worry, I didn't bring you here to kill you." Then the dream ended.
Later on, my schoolmate invited me to a birthday party at his house. I went to his house, and his mom said he went to his dad's office, a block down the street, and that his little sister would take us there. The place seemed somehow familiar. After walking two blocks, I commented, "This is a mighty long block", and immediately remembered my dream, including what she would say. Sure enough, she answered as I had dreamed, word for word. I should mention that I was never before on that street with both my brothers, and never afterwards. Also, I was never in that same company (both brothers and my schoolmate's little sister). Also, that I dream very infrequently. Anyhow, I think I need only one more dream of this sort to convince me that something seriously needs explaining, and that maybe science might not be the way to do it.
Previously, I had a dream, a single flash of a place in John Hopkins University, where I later went, but do not trust my visual memory. Also I have a "pending" dream that I would rather not happen. I occasionally have nightmares and lucid dreams, but I can identify them as such, and their cause.
I think the point is that MS would rather a very big noise about pulling this from ebay, than for ebay to become the standard place to sell MS vulnerabilities. I don't see why, though, as I'm pretty sure it would be much easier to track the person down if the vulnerability was exploited than if they did it in some obscure corner of the internet.
Hey, I'll be the first to cheer them on and wish them luck. But what's with having 3 flywheels fail? That's the sort of thing that would cause the mission to fail unless they had an assload of fuel and their communications can survive being a little unaligned.
No. If we don't need god to explain our existance, then we don't need god to explain our existance. Since god is not needed, we introduce Him to Occam's Razor. Regardless of whether god actually exists or not, if he makes no observable difference in the universe, Occam's Razor says he has to go.
Because China has a huge army of footsoldiers. If they didn't have the problem of transporting them, they could (and I dare say would) begin kicking our asses. Also, if they advance to the point where we are buying our weapons from them, we're screwed.
It's also fair to judge a people by its dictatorship. Even dictators can't piss off *everyone* in their country without getting promptly assasinated. In a republic, you actually need less people (the electoral college) to like you than in a dictatorship (your army of bodyguards & the millitary).
Both. You want to be able to run emacs in Mac OS X running on emacs running on cygwin.
Don't forget that having a minimum wage can result in less jobs in some areas. It can also cause some jobs to disappear entirely, as the cost would be too high. The obvious solution is to allow illegal immigrants to work at illegal wages :-). On the other hand, higher wages (and less jobs) tend to motivate people to learn more (so they can compete, but also because the pay is better), and to replace dull jobs with robots whenever possible (robots are only as valuable as the equivalent human labor).
Schuckers' biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
They misspelled "suckers". After all, it can be fooled by play-doh.
Most coders aren't good businessmen: they don't like the nuances of business and are likely too introverted to be any good. However, working at a big company that decides you are one of the best programmers in [demography] probably means you can earn piles of cash doing what you love. Some coders might just do it for the fame, and to put on their resume.
Well, why won't they let me put up a sign on the courthouse lawn that says "God does not exist", or "The Bible is a fairy tale"? I pay taxes! I vote!
Because of lack of historical context? A lot more of our society is based on the Bible than you might want to believe, and a short, concise listing of laws (even if they are ancient) does fit well with a courtroom. What did you think the constitiution was based on?
Another question. When people testify in court, they usually swear on the Bible. What if we return to the old ways, when people would hold their balls when testifying? Much more appropriate for evolutionists, and I daresay most of our self-professed christians would rather lose their soul than thair balls.
That's a sneaky statement. "Christians can't do bad things, therefore they must evil atheists". You know, they believe in Christ, the God, and the Bible. That makes them Christian. They may not have full understanding of the concept but it's the believe they faith in, so that's what they are. They're Christian, albeit errant Christians.
If I believe that I am president, that does not make me president. There are specific criteria for being a christian (though they vary according to denomination). "A tree is known by its fruit" or something like that, though some think that belief is enough.
If God is omnipotent (and you define omnipotent the way you did) then God can break the rules of logic. If you think this is a contradiction, you are stupid: why define something that is a contradiction, but if the way you define it isn't a contradiction, then you have no point.
PS: in case you were wondering, the non-existance of contradictions is an axiom of logic (ie, we believe...).
Don't forget about piloting millitary airplanes. Screw better mousetraps -- I need a anti-rat missiles.
I, for one, hope that they can use this to great effect to feed us cow-eating folk. Mmm, ultra-large spare ribs.