Personally, I'll believe it as and when I see the logs. There are plenty of people out there with both the means and the inclination to launch a DoS attack against syscon. I very much doubt that any significant number of them take Groklaw seriously.
You can't be sued for using open-source software (except for patent issues, and that applies to closed-source software too). The GPL only kicks in as and when you try to give or sell the software to someone else.
One thing I've been pondering: copyright protections have values beyond the commercial. They make it illegal to, for example, steal someone's private diary and display it to the world, complete with embarrassing comments about who they're sweet on, who they're pissed off at etc. This is often cited as a reason to keep/extend long copyright. Problem is, it means we're trying to solve several problems at the same time.
I think that this form of copyright encodes a valuable privacy right, which is often overlooked (I hadn't really thought about it myself til Bill Thompson of BBC News mentioned it). However, the only systems that offer protection of this sort are the opt-in ones. This naturally leads to the problem of orphan works, which is frankly a pain in the ass.
What I'd suggest is that works be tagged with the status of either private (my diary) or public (my novel). All works default to private, which offers copyright protection for the lifetime of the author (or x years for corporations, where x is between 30 and 70).
If a work is redistributed commercially or in bulk, it instantly gains public status, which means that the lifetime of copy protection is shortened to, say, 30 years. If an artist is still surviving off the paychecks from a 30-year-old work, I'd say they have bigger problems than the copyright system.
The advantages of this are: -- privacy protection -- no orphan works problem (they'd drop into the public domain at a predictable time regardless of the lifetime of the author -- less evil copyright restrictions
The only disadvantage I can see (apart from the reaction of industry bodies like the RIA) is that the definition of what constitutes redistribution of a work is unclear. Say I make public (by the above definition) a binary program. Does this mean that anyone who gets their hands on the source code can redistribute that? (I'd say yes, although they might still be liable for trade secret issues, depending on the means of procurement of the code).
This is just a random idea that I've been kicking around with. It seems to me to be a fair separation of the two main purposes of copyright. I'd be interested to know what other people think.
I don't have kids at the moment, but if/when I do I want them to be educated rather than trained. More, I don't want their schools to be losing money to support your desire to have your kids fully indoctrinated.
You want your kids trained to use an expensive software package? Go buy it yourself. Anything else is a waste of resources for the rest of us.
Interestingly enough, only one of the first page of links could be considered to be even remotely slanderous if stated as fact. I'm british and thus pay no attention to either news source, so I can't comment on whether they regularly play silly buggers, but you might want to double-check your example.
And just an opinion -- I don't think Linux would have got so popular if it wasn't for its anti-microsoft/windows (replacement) approach.
If that were the case, Apple would be very very happy right now. There are many affirmative reasons for liking Linux (openness, quality, average ethics). The only reason people make this mistake is that a lot of those are also affirmative reasons to loathe Microsoft.
There have been numerous cases where teachers have be found teaching things like the Holocaust never happend, and other assorted tinfoil hat theories.
And they get slapped down appropriately. Why should this tinfoil hat theory be any different?
There is no such thing as truth, nothing is ever black and white it's all a matter of perception
I would strongly disagree. A lot of things are a matter of perception. One of the effects of science, however, is to strip away, or at least formalise, as much of that fuzziness as possible.
There is no double standard, because scientists aren't permitted to fudge their teachings to avoid upsetting people - if it was discovered that there was better evidence for a God at work than for no God then science would teach that and tell the atheists to take a running jump if they protested.
Science is cold and dispassionate. It doesn't care whether it's rubbishing someone's cherished beliefs. It is also, imo, the absolute best approach we have to determining the truth of a given hypothesis. If you can't stand the fact that your hypotheses might be wrong, you do not belong in the science classroom.
There *is* a right answer. There *is* a wrong answer. We're not 100% sure (and probably never will be) which is which, but I know I'm not willing to pretend to be less sure than I am to avoid hurting people's feelings, especially about something this important. That would be a betrayal of the scientific community and of my own ethics. The Bible says "thou shalt not bear false witness". On this point, at least, I agree completely.
Difference between SCO and IBM is that SCO is trying to make money in a way that screws over the community, whereas IBM is trying to make money in a way that builds up the community.
I agree that this would be more commendable if, as with google, we could be sure that it was an ongoing company philosophy rather than the best way to make a buck. Either way, though, I know who I'm cheering.
No RIAA didn't steal anything, watch your language. RIAA and amici suggest that copyright violation is the same as stealing goods, but it quite simply is not because the "good" isn't substracted from anyone physical avaiability.
However, extension of copyright, as distinct from copyright violation, does subtract good from everyone else. This is why I personally would consider it to be a significantly worse act than just making a dodgy copy of something.
(Also at 6a unless you can find some supporting evidence. And you might want to have a word with a few of the other Christians who seem less than certain about the omnipotence and omnipresence of God)
Satan postulated that angels and mankind do not need God to exist peacefully. God handed over the world to Satan to prove His point. Satan is now, according to the Bible, trying to institute utopia on the planet and bring in the 1000 years of peace that Christ promised that only He would do. Therefore, if the point of contention is the character of God described in the Bible, and if you agree with the parent, you should be complaining to Satan about his improper rule, not God.
I'm intrigued - I don't think I've ever heard that version before. Do you have any references?
On a side note, if you hand the keys of your car to a drunken teenager you kind of deserve to have it wrapped round a tree. What happens on Satan's watch is still God's responsibility.
God allows us to make that choice, and other choices, for ourselves.
Ephesians 1:4-5 - "He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."
2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 - "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned."
2 Timothy 1:9 - "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began."
You might want to double-check your understanding of your religion. If nothing else, the jury's still out on the whole Free Will thing.
A child that stubs its toe accidently, and is caused pain, is not the fault of the father.
That's true. As far as I know, the average father is neither omniscient, omnipresent nor omnipotent. If you claim that God is more than one of these things, Frymaster's argument holds. Unless you can spot a logical fallacy?
You, sir, have displayed a sense of arrogance at judging God for not intervening.
And you, sir, have displayed a sense of arrogance at judging God worthy of your worship. Whichever way you fall, a decision, a judgement, has to be made about whether it's worth following God or not. I choose "no" as I don't believe he both exists and is good/loving/just. You choose "yes" - presumably you do. But how dare you treat an attempt to use one's brain as a crime? And how dare you slander a supposedly just, merciful God who wants us to grow as people by suggesting that he'd do the same?
it seems impossible for him to do anything but "stick around".
True, my wording there was ever so slightly dumb... Cheers for calling me on it.
Why said entity would fiddle with any part of the universe (note, with infinite time, if you're going to fiddle with any of it, why not fiddle with all of it) is beyond me, but I suppose that's rather the point, isn't it?
My question was more how than why. How can a timeless being perform an action? The very concept implies that there is something in existence now (the action) that wasn't in existence then. And if he can't perform actions, if the only behaviours he can have are those that are intrinsic to his very nature, then how can he be said to be intelligent? Such a God would be blind - unable to detect stimuli, unable to react, unable to even realise that there was something apart from itself in existence.
All this would mean that God could only act in the way that was hardwired into him. Anthropomorphising such an entity is like anthropomorphising the cosmic background radiation, and such a God would be just as random - why should the hardwiring be set up in such a way that said God would interfere with any of its creations in such a way that it helped life evolve? The chances of that happening make the chances of, for example, a human eye jumping from nothing seem like falling off a log.
I'm getting sleepy now and am probably repeating myself so I'll stop. However, like I say, I'd be wary of accusing God of timelessness without thinking through the consequences.
But there is no third party to say "hey, don't flood that planet... oops, too late, bad God." There is only God and his creation, so either we assume that the elements of his creation have moral validity (in which case I'm sure they'd mostly disagree with God's "right" to wipe them out), or they don't, in which case only God can have moral validity and the question of whether he does right or wrong is meaningless. If we additionally accept the validity of any moral structure apart from God's, we must then accept that God was wrong to kill so many people. If we don't accept such a structure then the entire argument becomes a tautology.
However, that's kind of moot as it's a bad analogy. Artists generally don't want their sculptures to love them back. God, however, wants to not only have ultimate power of life or death over us but also to have us love him of our own free will. I'd say that these are more or less incompatible - if such a God exists, I'd recommend he visit a good shrink.
Thanks for your interesting contribution, it's always great to hear a view from the other side of the fence. A couple of points of interest:
First, intellegent design does not contradict evolution. Intellegent design does not support evolution. It simply states that there probably was some intellegence involved in this phenominon we call "life." It does not go so far as to state where the intellegence resides, whether it is in God or mice.
I'd disagree with this - the system of thought known as the theory of evolution is clear on the subject of intelligent (in the personal sense) action not being required. In fact this was one of the prime reasons that scientists of the time tended to support the argument - it meant you could cut out that big messy assumption that was God. Bacteria are not noticeably intelligent (sensitive, yes, but not intelligent), and yet the theory of evolution applies to them too.
Most fundimentalists consider God to be even outside time. Unchanging, simply existing.
This is something I've been giving some thought to lately. In particular, I can't see any way that an unchanging thing, whatever its nature, could behave in a way that we would consider to be intelligent. Without time there is no thought, no feeling, no gathering of information, no action. Time is an enabler, not a restriction; a timeless God would have to have every single one of his actions on this universe hardwired in advance. I find this far more improbable than evolution.
It's wrong to suppose that God created fossils to test men's faith.
How do you square this with the fact that the fossil record + radio carbon dating seems to imply evolution? Examples of this are the gradually increasing complexity of life (movement from diploblast to triploblast, from cartilage to bone, etc) and the existence, in some cases, of clear intermediate stages (e.g. feathered dinosaurs).
God tests men's hearts by providing every reason to believe.
Factually inaccurate - a big neon sign saying "I WOZ ERE" would be another (non-extant) reason to believe. Less sardonically, I'd note that, of those who study the world around them (who we call scientists), only 5% or so are creationist and, of the life sciences and other fields in which the participants would be expected to be especially well-read on evolution vs. creationism, only 1% are creationist. Figures taken from this summary. I wouldn't tend to label a concept rejected by the majority of professional thinkers on the subject as being obvious.
Thanks again for participating. I'd be interested to hear your views, but I will of course respect your wishes if you do prefer not to argue. Only by challenging our views can we confirm or disprove their validity.
He could move in a second set of time where his actions change our time but he can go back and forth at will. Think an animator who keeps fliping the pages after each change he makes to any of them.
True. Of course, then he'd have to have a beginning himself...
Anyway, your wasting time if your going to argue with somone who beleaves in something with out cause and feels the need to bring others to there POV.
You're sadly probably right. These days I mostly argue points like this a) to keep my debating skills up to scratch and b) in the hope that someone'll come up with an interesting point that I need to think through.
But if your hypothesis is accurate, we don't have the freedom to choose, only to live as God predestined us to. This pretty much kills any concept of sin. Even if my computer crashes from a bug, I blame the programmer not the machine. In my case that doesn't stop me hitting the damn thing upside the monitor, but I'd expect a perfect God to be more restrained than that. So why Hell?
Also, if I follow your hypothesis, why should I bother to try to believe? Whether I end up being redeemed or not is entirely up to God, so why make an effort, or try to convince other people (ref. intelligent design) that God exists? Your hypothesis suggests that life has no more meaning than a carpet's pattern has to the threads.
Naturally, it is harder to believe something that we have never physically experienced, so God introduced the idea of Grace to fill in the gaps.
I confess I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this. Any chance you could elaborate? Cheers.
or even (gasp) post regularly on Slashdot.
HERESY! Shame on you:)
the knowledge of good and evil, and the freedom to choose and be redeemed for the bad choices, is what makes humanity different from the rest of creation... His goal for us in this life is to recognize his affection for us and, in our own limited way, return it to him.
So variety is the spice of Godliness? That makes some sort of sense (would I be correct in comparing this to the themes of C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity?) and is a fairly internally consistent theory. However it still has major conflicts with religious practices. For example, apart from fear of Hell and desire for Heaven, what reason is there for us to accept God as our saviour? Certainly not love; what love does the pot have for the potter? What love does an ant farm have for the kid who keeps it, especially if he's a little too handy with the magnifying glass on sunny days?
Additionally, your argument still has the same issue of evidence as Lewis' book. For example, what evidence is there that any one faith is true (and incidentally, how does one decide between them)? If there's all this supernatural gunk floating about in the background, you'd expect some of it to show up in, for example, subatomic experiments. Why should it only show up on the large scale when, in our experience, large-scale actions ultimately have their roots in small-scale actions? If God is keeping away to avoid tainting the experiment, why send us one manual on how to live? And why make it internally inconsistent? (examples available on request or at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible)
As a side note, we're getting rather sidetracked... this has turned into a discussion of Christianity, not of Intelligent Design. Not that I have a problem with that.
If it's possible then, by definition of science, it's possible in terms of science (bear in mind that science is merely the most effective approach to generalising from extant data and, to a lesser extent, choosing what data to gather). Therefore, if there is a creator of the universe, science will be able to explain him/her/it given half a chance. So far, said creator, if he/she/it actually exists, has been unwilling to volunteer for medical experiments, hence we can only imply what things must be like for him/her/it. However, implications can still be made.
Nothing can exist outside of the universe, which is the sum of all matter.
Not technically accurate, but I won't go there.
He doesn't have to operate in time
If God doesn't vary in time then it (he) either varies in space or doesn't vary at all (I can't think of any other option; feel free to correct me). In the second case, it wouldn't be complex enough to affect the universe in meaningful ways. In the first case, it could be complex enough but, given that there is no known selection criterion to be applied to potential Gods, it would be unlikely to behave in a way that would be meaningful to us (imagine randomising a floppy disk's contents and then trying to boot off it).
In either case, the chances of meaningful behaviour (such as the tweaking of evolution) coming from such an entity are slim to none, for the exact same reason that the spontaneous development of the human eye is slim to none. Fortunately, we have a change-based explanation for how human eyes could come to exist; a similar explanation for an unchanging God is implausible.
In my opinion, this is why science so far suggests an absence of intelligent yet timeless God - cos the idea itself is implausible. Time is an enabler, not a restriction, and is a prerequisite to meaningful intelligence.
Firstly I would argue whether it's possible to be libertarian when you're omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. It makes it kinda hard to not actually be in control of events, or at least of the chain of causality leading up to those events, when you're equipped both with an ability to choose the initial conditions of the universe and a knowledge of where said conditions will take you.
Also, your gun scenario doesn't extend to the situation where I hand a child the gun and tell him/her it's a lollipop. This would appear to be what Creationists claim God does vis-a-vis fossils.
I am not saying that creationism and underdeveloped Christian education are exclusive, just that they are often found together.
Ah, my bad. I'd agree that simple stories are the best way to get facts into people - for example, early education in science includes such wonderful ideas as glass being solid (I had such a row with my primary school teacher over that one!), Newtonian physics being accurate and rainbows being caused by refraction (accurate but it's a hell of a lot more complex than that).
However, it would seem that your perception of the stories as being simple is in no way the consensus. In particular:
You can be a well educated Creationist, and if you are, you will recognize that the foundation of your faith in Creationism does not start and end at "because Genesis says so".
I believe that most of the Creationists I know would say that that's always going to be the best reason to believe in Creation. I can ask one if you'd like.
"If God wished to see into the future, he could have. However, that does not mean that he always does. Thats like saying that becouse I am the best opera singer in the world that every word that comes out of my mouth is sung as an opera."
I believe that the courts of law refer to that as wilful negligence. If you can be expected to know that, for example, chucking a brick off a motorway bridge can be dangerous to those below then failing to look is not an excuse.
In time, when all the issues have been settled
I'm interested by your explanation for the current sinful nature of humanity, and congratulate you on finding one that hangs together so well. I still don't accept it, but it's at least more internally consistent than the standard version. A couple of points:
The person responsible for all the suffering we have is Satan
And who created Satan? If your pet dog worries sheep, you get fined; what punishment is God willing to take upon Himself for one of his angels running amok?
In order to prove Satan a liar, time was needed.
Why was time needed? God is all-powerful, couldn't He just have said "Make It So"? Also, I'd note that this is more effort than I would have credited God with applying to prove his case. In general, He would seem to be fairly willing to let people come to the conclusion that He's a superstition without going out of His way to correct them.
That hypothesis makes the assumption that the Intelligent Designer is part of the creation and therefore had to be created Himself. That is not what creationists believe.
No, of course it isn't. They attempt to remove the whole "start of time" paradox by positing a timeless entity to start it off. This is actually fairly sensible, but it doesn't explain a) how a timeless entity can act to create something given that he has no time to move in, b) how we can assume that said entity is anything personal as opposed to some kind of automatic law of nature, and c) why said entity would stick around after creation to fiddle with the lives of some carbon-based fluff on one planet in a vast universe.
Moving back to evolution: Further, going one step lower, your argument could be used as a question to show that Legos don't have to be intelligently designed. They could just exist by themselves.
And if we had no evidence for the creation of lego (and particularly if we had some evidence for it being in some way self-generating) we'd have to accept that it was creating itself, without necessarily some supernatural being to kickstart the process. However, neither of these conditions holds.
I think is a big problem with many, many Christians! Your education as a Christian shouldn't start and end as a child! The creation story is great for children! It is instructive about the nature of God, and can be easily understood by small minds. If you stop your education at that level, don't be surprised if you have a child-like understanding of God and Christian faith!
A factual correction: I received Christian instruction on and off til the age of 17. I still discuss religious issues (in fact I'm mostly at least as keen to discuss stuff as the local Christians). I still regularly get told that Genesis is literal truth. In fact, there's a perfectly nice engineering student living three floors below me who would strongly disagree with your generalisation.
As such, I can't accept the statement that Creationism constitutes a child-like understanding of faith. Whether or not it's very dumb is a completely different argument but, unless you're defining child-like as "that which seems dumb to me", slapping that label on Creationism is inaccurate. Remember that not all Christians hold the same views as the ones you may have encountered.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'll believe it as and when I see the logs. There are plenty of people out there with both the means and the inclination to launch a DoS attack against syscon. I very much doubt that any significant number of them take Groklaw seriously.
You can't be sued for using open-source software (except for patent issues, and that applies to closed-source software too). The GPL only kicks in as and when you try to give or sell the software to someone else.
One thing I've been pondering: copyright protections have values beyond the commercial. They make it illegal to, for example, steal someone's private diary and display it to the world, complete with embarrassing comments about who they're sweet on, who they're pissed off at etc. This is often cited as a reason to keep/extend long copyright. Problem is, it means we're trying to solve several problems at the same time.
I think that this form of copyright encodes a valuable privacy right, which is often overlooked (I hadn't really thought about it myself til Bill Thompson of BBC News mentioned it). However, the only systems that offer protection of this sort are the opt-in ones. This naturally leads to the problem of orphan works, which is frankly a pain in the ass.
What I'd suggest is that works be tagged with the status of either private (my diary) or public (my novel). All works default to private, which offers copyright protection for the lifetime of the author (or x years for corporations, where x is between 30 and 70).
If a work is redistributed commercially or in bulk, it instantly gains public status, which means that the lifetime of copy protection is shortened to, say, 30 years. If an artist is still surviving off the paychecks from a 30-year-old work, I'd say they have bigger problems than the copyright system.
The advantages of this are:
-- privacy protection
-- no orphan works problem (they'd drop into the public domain at a predictable time regardless of the lifetime of the author
-- less evil copyright restrictions
The only disadvantage I can see (apart from the reaction of industry bodies like the RIA) is that the definition of what constitutes redistribution of a work is unclear. Say I make public (by the above definition) a binary program. Does this mean that anyone who gets their hands on the source code can redistribute that? (I'd say yes, although they might still be liable for trade secret issues, depending on the means of procurement of the code).
This is just a random idea that I've been kicking around with. It seems to me to be a fair separation of the two main purposes of copyright. I'd be interested to know what other people think.
I don't have kids at the moment, but if/when I do I want them to be educated rather than trained. More, I don't want their schools to be losing money to support your desire to have your kids fully indoctrinated.
You want your kids trained to use an expensive software package? Go buy it yourself. Anything else is a waste of resources for the rest of us.
Interestingly enough, only one of the first page of links could be considered to be even remotely slanderous if stated as fact. I'm british and thus pay no attention to either news source, so I can't comment on whether they regularly play silly buggers, but you might want to double-check your example.
And just an opinion -- I don't think Linux would have got so popular if it wasn't for its anti-microsoft/windows (replacement) approach.
If that were the case, Apple would be very very happy right now. There are many affirmative reasons for liking Linux (openness, quality, average ethics). The only reason people make this mistake is that a lot of those are also affirmative reasons to loathe Microsoft.
There have been numerous cases where teachers have be found teaching things like the Holocaust never happend, and other assorted tinfoil hat theories.
And they get slapped down appropriately. Why should this tinfoil hat theory be any different?
There is no such thing as truth, nothing is ever black and white it's all a matter of perception
I would strongly disagree. A lot of things are a matter of perception. One of the effects of science, however, is to strip away, or at least formalise, as much of that fuzziness as possible.
There is no double standard, because scientists aren't permitted to fudge their teachings to avoid upsetting people - if it was discovered that there was better evidence for a God at work than for no God then science would teach that and tell the atheists to take a running jump if they protested.
Science is cold and dispassionate. It doesn't care whether it's rubbishing someone's cherished beliefs. It is also, imo, the absolute best approach we have to determining the truth of a given hypothesis. If you can't stand the fact that your hypotheses might be wrong, you do not belong in the science classroom.
There *is* a right answer. There *is* a wrong answer. We're not 100% sure (and probably never will be) which is which, but I know I'm not willing to pretend to be less sure than I am to avoid hurting people's feelings, especially about something this important. That would be a betrayal of the scientific community and of my own ethics. The Bible says "thou shalt not bear false witness". On this point, at least, I agree completely.
Difference between SCO and IBM is that SCO is trying to make money in a way that screws over the community, whereas IBM is trying to make money in a way that builds up the community.
I agree that this would be more commendable if, as with google, we could be sure that it was an ongoing company philosophy rather than the best way to make a buck. Either way, though, I know who I'm cheering.
Good post. One point:
No RIAA didn't steal anything, watch your language. RIAA and amici suggest that copyright violation is the same as stealing goods, but it quite simply is not because the "good" isn't substracted from anyone physical avaiability.
However, extension of copyright, as distinct from copyright violation, does subtract good from everyone else. This is why I personally would consider it to be a significantly worse act than just making a dodgy copy of something.
(Also at 6a unless you can find some supporting evidence. And you might want to have a word with a few of the other Christians who seem less than certain about the omnipotence and omnipresence of God)
Satan postulated that angels and mankind do not need God to exist peacefully. God handed over the world to Satan to prove His point. Satan is now, according to the Bible, trying to institute utopia on the planet and bring in the 1000 years of peace that Christ promised that only He would do. Therefore, if the point of contention is the character of God described in the Bible, and if you agree with the parent, you should be complaining to Satan about his improper rule, not God.
I'm intrigued - I don't think I've ever heard that version before. Do you have any references?
On a side note, if you hand the keys of your car to a drunken teenager you kind of deserve to have it wrapped round a tree. What happens on Satan's watch is still God's responsibility.
God allows us to make that choice, and other choices, for ourselves.
Ephesians 1:4-5 - "He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."
2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 - "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned."
2 Timothy 1:9 - "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began."
You might want to double-check your understanding of your religion. If nothing else, the jury's still out on the whole Free Will thing.
A child that stubs its toe accidently, and is caused pain, is not the fault of the father.
That's true. As far as I know, the average father is neither omniscient, omnipresent nor omnipotent. If you claim that God is more than one of these things, Frymaster's argument holds. Unless you can spot a logical fallacy?
You, sir, have displayed a sense of arrogance at judging God for not intervening.
And you, sir, have displayed a sense of arrogance at judging God worthy of your worship. Whichever way you fall, a decision, a judgement, has to be made about whether it's worth following God or not. I choose "no" as I don't believe he both exists and is good/loving/just. You choose "yes" - presumably you do. But how dare you treat an attempt to use one's brain as a crime? And how dare you slander a supposedly just, merciful God who wants us to grow as people by suggesting that he'd do the same?
*Installs Debian on another 3 machines* that'll teach the buggers.
it seems impossible for him to do anything but "stick around".
True, my wording there was ever so slightly dumb... Cheers for calling me on it.
Why said entity would fiddle with any part of the universe (note, with infinite time, if you're going to fiddle with any of it, why not fiddle with all of it) is beyond me, but I suppose that's rather the point, isn't it?
My question was more how than why. How can a timeless being perform an action? The very concept implies that there is something in existence now (the action) that wasn't in existence then. And if he can't perform actions, if the only behaviours he can have are those that are intrinsic to his very nature, then how can he be said to be intelligent? Such a God would be blind - unable to detect stimuli, unable to react, unable to even realise that there was something apart from itself in existence.
All this would mean that God could only act in the way that was hardwired into him. Anthropomorphising such an entity is like anthropomorphising the cosmic background radiation, and such a God would be just as random - why should the hardwiring be set up in such a way that said God would interfere with any of its creations in such a way that it helped life evolve? The chances of that happening make the chances of, for example, a human eye jumping from nothing seem like falling off a log.
I'm getting sleepy now and am probably repeating myself so I'll stop. However, like I say, I'd be wary of accusing God of timelessness without thinking through the consequences.
But there is no third party to say "hey, don't flood that planet... oops, too late, bad God." There is only God and his creation, so either we assume that the elements of his creation have moral validity (in which case I'm sure they'd mostly disagree with God's "right" to wipe them out), or they don't, in which case only God can have moral validity and the question of whether he does right or wrong is meaningless. If we additionally accept the validity of any moral structure apart from God's, we must then accept that God was wrong to kill so many people. If we don't accept such a structure then the entire argument becomes a tautology.
However, that's kind of moot as it's a bad analogy. Artists generally don't want their sculptures to love them back. God, however, wants to not only have ultimate power of life or death over us but also to have us love him of our own free will. I'd say that these are more or less incompatible - if such a God exists, I'd recommend he visit a good shrink.
Thanks for your interesting contribution, it's always great to hear a view from the other side of the fence. A couple of points of interest:
First, intellegent design does not contradict evolution. Intellegent design does not support evolution. It simply states that there probably was some intellegence involved in this phenominon we call "life." It does not go so far as to state where the intellegence resides, whether it is in God or mice.
I'd disagree with this - the system of thought known as the theory of evolution is clear on the subject of intelligent (in the personal sense) action not being required. In fact this was one of the prime reasons that scientists of the time tended to support the argument - it meant you could cut out that big messy assumption that was God. Bacteria are not noticeably intelligent (sensitive, yes, but not intelligent), and yet the theory of evolution applies to them too.
Most fundimentalists consider God to be even outside time. Unchanging, simply existing.
This is something I've been giving some thought to lately. In particular, I can't see any way that an unchanging thing, whatever its nature, could behave in a way that we would consider to be intelligent. Without time there is no thought, no feeling, no gathering of information, no action. Time is an enabler, not a restriction; a timeless God would have to have every single one of his actions on this universe hardwired in advance. I find this far more improbable than evolution.
It's wrong to suppose that God created fossils to test men's faith.
How do you square this with the fact that the fossil record + radio carbon dating seems to imply evolution? Examples of this are the gradually increasing complexity of life (movement from diploblast to triploblast, from cartilage to bone, etc) and the existence, in some cases, of clear intermediate stages (e.g. feathered dinosaurs).
God tests men's hearts by providing every reason to believe.
Factually inaccurate - a big neon sign saying "I WOZ ERE" would be another (non-extant) reason to believe. Less sardonically, I'd note that, of those who study the world around them (who we call scientists), only 5% or so are creationist and, of the life sciences and other fields in which the participants would be expected to be especially well-read on evolution vs. creationism, only 1% are creationist. Figures taken from this summary. I wouldn't tend to label a concept rejected by the majority of professional thinkers on the subject as being obvious.
Thanks again for participating. I'd be interested to hear your views, but I will of course respect your wishes if you do prefer not to argue. Only by challenging our views can we confirm or disprove their validity.
He could move in a second set of time where his actions change our time but he can go back and forth at will. Think an animator who keeps fliping the pages after each change he makes to any of them.
True. Of course, then he'd have to have a beginning himself...
Anyway, your wasting time if your going to argue with somone who beleaves in something with out cause and feels the need to bring others to there POV.
You're sadly probably right. These days I mostly argue points like this a) to keep my debating skills up to scratch and b) in the hope that someone'll come up with an interesting point that I need to think through.
the freedom to choose
:)
But if your hypothesis is accurate, we don't have the freedom to choose, only to live as God predestined us to. This pretty much kills any concept of sin. Even if my computer crashes from a bug, I blame the programmer not the machine. In my case that doesn't stop me hitting the damn thing upside the monitor, but I'd expect a perfect God to be more restrained than that. So why Hell?
Also, if I follow your hypothesis, why should I bother to try to believe? Whether I end up being redeemed or not is entirely up to God, so why make an effort, or try to convince other people (ref. intelligent design) that God exists? Your hypothesis suggests that life has no more meaning than a carpet's pattern has to the threads.
Naturally, it is harder to believe something that we have never physically experienced, so God introduced the idea of Grace to fill in the gaps.
I confess I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this. Any chance you could elaborate? Cheers.
or even (gasp) post regularly on Slashdot.
HERESY! Shame on you
the knowledge of good and evil, and the freedom to choose and be redeemed for the bad choices, is what makes humanity different from the rest of creation... His goal for us in this life is to recognize his affection for us and, in our own limited way, return it to him.
So variety is the spice of Godliness? That makes some sort of sense (would I be correct in comparing this to the themes of C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity?) and is a fairly internally consistent theory. However it still has major conflicts with religious practices. For example, apart from fear of Hell and desire for Heaven, what reason is there for us to accept God as our saviour? Certainly not love; what love does the pot have for the potter? What love does an ant farm have for the kid who keeps it, especially if he's a little too handy with the magnifying glass on sunny days?
Additionally, your argument still has the same issue of evidence as Lewis' book. For example, what evidence is there that any one faith is true (and incidentally, how does one decide between them)? If there's all this supernatural gunk floating about in the background, you'd expect some of it to show up in, for example, subatomic experiments. Why should it only show up on the large scale when, in our experience, large-scale actions ultimately have their roots in small-scale actions? If God is keeping away to avoid tainting the experiment, why send us one manual on how to live? And why make it internally inconsistent? (examples available on request or at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible)
As a side note, we're getting rather sidetracked... this has turned into a discussion of Christianity, not of Intelligent Design. Not that I have a problem with that.
In terms of science, there can't.
If it's possible then, by definition of science, it's possible in terms of science (bear in mind that science is merely the most effective approach to generalising from extant data and, to a lesser extent, choosing what data to gather). Therefore, if there is a creator of the universe, science will be able to explain him/her/it given half a chance. So far, said creator, if he/she/it actually exists, has been unwilling to volunteer for medical experiments, hence we can only imply what things must be like for him/her/it. However, implications can still be made.
Nothing can exist outside of the universe, which is the sum of all matter.
Not technically accurate, but I won't go there.
He doesn't have to operate in time
If God doesn't vary in time then it (he) either varies in space or doesn't vary at all (I can't think of any other option; feel free to correct me). In the second case, it wouldn't be complex enough to affect the universe in meaningful ways. In the first case, it could be complex enough but, given that there is no known selection criterion to be applied to potential Gods, it would be unlikely to behave in a way that would be meaningful to us (imagine randomising a floppy disk's contents and then trying to boot off it).
In either case, the chances of meaningful behaviour (such as the tweaking of evolution) coming from such an entity are slim to none, for the exact same reason that the spontaneous development of the human eye is slim to none. Fortunately, we have a change-based explanation for how human eyes could come to exist; a similar explanation for an unchanging God is implausible.
In my opinion, this is why science so far suggests an absence of intelligent yet timeless God - cos the idea itself is implausible. Time is an enabler, not a restriction, and is a prerequisite to meaningful intelligence.
Firstly I would argue whether it's possible to be libertarian when you're omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. It makes it kinda hard to not actually be in control of events, or at least of the chain of causality leading up to those events, when you're equipped both with an ability to choose the initial conditions of the universe and a knowledge of where said conditions will take you.
Also, your gun scenario doesn't extend to the situation where I hand a child the gun and tell him/her it's a lollipop. This would appear to be what Creationists claim God does vis-a-vis fossils.
I am not saying that creationism and underdeveloped Christian education are exclusive, just that they are often found together.
Ah, my bad. I'd agree that simple stories are the best way to get facts into people - for example, early education in science includes such wonderful ideas as glass being solid (I had such a row with my primary school teacher over that one!), Newtonian physics being accurate and rainbows being caused by refraction (accurate but it's a hell of a lot more complex than that).
However, it would seem that your perception of the stories as being simple is in no way the consensus. In particular:
You can be a well educated Creationist, and if you are, you will recognize that the foundation of your faith in Creationism does not start and end at "because Genesis says so".
I believe that most of the Creationists I know would say that that's always going to be the best reason to believe in Creation. I can ask one if you'd like.
"If God wished to see into the future, he could have. However, that does not mean that he always does. Thats like saying that becouse I am the best opera singer in the world that every word that comes out of my mouth is sung as an opera."
I believe that the courts of law refer to that as wilful negligence. If you can be expected to know that, for example, chucking a brick off a motorway bridge can be dangerous to those below then failing to look is not an excuse.
In time, when all the issues have been settled
I'm interested by your explanation for the current sinful nature of humanity, and congratulate you on finding one that hangs together so well. I still don't accept it, but it's at least more internally consistent than the standard version. A couple of points:
The person responsible for all the suffering we have is Satan
And who created Satan? If your pet dog worries sheep, you get fined; what punishment is God willing to take upon Himself for one of his angels running amok?
In order to prove Satan a liar, time was needed.
Why was time needed? God is all-powerful, couldn't He just have said "Make It So"? Also, I'd note that this is more effort than I would have credited God with applying to prove his case. In general, He would seem to be fairly willing to let people come to the conclusion that He's a superstition without going out of His way to correct them.
That hypothesis makes the assumption that the Intelligent Designer is part of the creation and therefore had to be created Himself. That is not what creationists believe.
No, of course it isn't. They attempt to remove the whole "start of time" paradox by positing a timeless entity to start it off. This is actually fairly sensible, but it doesn't explain a) how a timeless entity can act to create something given that he has no time to move in, b) how we can assume that said entity is anything personal as opposed to some kind of automatic law of nature, and c) why said entity would stick around after creation to fiddle with the lives of some carbon-based fluff on one planet in a vast universe.
Moving back to evolution:
Further, going one step lower, your argument could be used as a question to show that Legos don't have to be intelligently designed. They could just exist by themselves.
And if we had no evidence for the creation of lego (and particularly if we had some evidence for it being in some way self-generating) we'd have to accept that it was creating itself, without necessarily some supernatural being to kickstart the process. However, neither of these conditions holds.
I think is a big problem with many, many Christians! Your education as a Christian shouldn't start and end as a child! The creation story is great for children! It is instructive about the nature of God, and can be easily understood by small minds. If you stop your education at that level, don't be surprised if you have a child-like understanding of God and Christian faith!
A factual correction: I received Christian instruction on and off til the age of 17. I still discuss religious issues (in fact I'm mostly at least as keen to discuss stuff as the local Christians). I still regularly get told that Genesis is literal truth. In fact, there's a perfectly nice engineering student living three floors below me who would strongly disagree with your generalisation.
As such, I can't accept the statement that Creationism constitutes a child-like understanding of faith. Whether or not it's very dumb is a completely different argument but, unless you're defining child-like as "that which seems dumb to me", slapping that label on Creationism is inaccurate. Remember that not all Christians hold the same views as the ones you may have encountered.