I wouldn't mind using an ad-supported version of Mac OSX; Windows, I doubt it, but that's not a reflection on advertising, only on Windows. I don't think it is very likely that I will be setting up a new Windows machine, or upgrading the ones I have now.
My Eudora causes me no problems, and twice I've actually clicked an ad, once buying the product at the target site. The ads take a very small proportion of the display (at 1280x1024.) In the meantime, Eudora does an excellent job of handling my email.
I know it's politically correct in the geek community to hoist up their skirts, jump on a chair, and scream MOUSE at the top of their lungs whenever an ad enters the room, but it's all just a matter of reasonable use of screen real estate and attention getting devices to me. Text ads a'la Google are entirely friendly, from my point of view; images almost as much so; one-shot animations are less; continuously looping animations are scuzzy; flashing approaches are utterly unacceptable; pop ups and other uncontrollable and unplanned UI intrusions like window resizing and plug-in installations are scum mechanisms invoked by scum merchants who (among other things) I would never buy from. That's how I'd look at an ad-supported OS; it's not a question of advertising; it's a question of what degree of advertising intrusiveness.
Finally, Eudora offers a choice: You can go ad-supported, or buy and see no ads. If the OS did this, then it's just an additional choice, and where is any legitimate objection at that point? If you don't want ads, then just use the old model and buy. <shrug>
I too come for the comments. There are some real gems. Quite often, they've been modded into oblivion by some idiot who ( inexplicably) has mod points. That's why I don't read slashdot at +4; slashdot's moderation, to be blunt, doesn't work. Because it is so often punitive and/or ideologically driven, it makes no sense to trust it to limit what you read; and because it is anonymous, there is no ability for the community to rein in such abuses. Add to this the fact that meta-moderation simply doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact that slashdot's primary moderation is just as broken today as it was years back.
Step it up a level: It'd sure be nice if everyone who "edits" the stories had decent English skills. For instance, yesterday, in a story entitled "Smart hotels in New York City", the following nugget creeps, steaming and raw, into the reader's eye: "People will use computing as natural as they use writing instruments." Errors like that appear almost every day, putting the lie to the very idea that there are "editors" at work. People are approving stories, certainly, but at least one of them is not "editing" them. I find it a little sad that a site which claims to serve a technically inclined audience can't be bothered with the technical details of writing, even to the point of the truly minor and/or obvious. Naval, indeed.
Yeah, that's Chromehounds — they say spring 2006, and I'm certainly hoping they pull it off, but you know how game companies and promises go.
The one thing about Mechassault that you can count on is excellent re-playability and game-play in general. I have Steel Battalion (you know, the one with the massive controller) and that game, in a word, sucks rocks. It is snail-slow and the graphics... well, they even billboard the trees, if that gives you any indication. It's crap. It could have been fabulous, but they just missed every critical point past starting the mechs up, which I admit is a hoot.
I'd probably buy a 360 to play Chromehounds, given the way it looks (this is a rural area... I'd never get to see it if I waited for someone else to buy it); but I'd be livid if it turned out to be another Steel Battalion!
MS has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of emulation in getting Xbox games to run.
Yes, they did, and they say that (sometime) they will have everything running.
However, notably missing from the 200 titles they allow to run (that's right, allow, if it's not on the list of 200, it will not be permitted to run) are huge hits like Project Gotham and Mechassault. The lack of Project Gotham is somewhat addressed by the XBox 360 version (though it also means it costs you $50 to play) but no Mechassault... me, I'll wait until they get that straightened out before I buy a 360, unless a 360 version of Mechassault appears, of course. Can't live without Mechassault.
You're quite welcome. I guess I burned some karma, there. You gotta love the slashdot moderation system. Ask a direct question (meta, in this case), get a direct answer — and here come the down-mods.
Oh well. As my dear departed mother used to say, "joke 'em if they can't take a fuck.":-)
I am curious to know what you understand about the content of the Bible itself.
I am very familiar with the King James version; I have read (and did not enjoy anywhere near as much as the KJV) several modern attempts at translations; I've read quite a few volumes that look at it from various viewpoints, and I have several types of works that do things like enumerate the characters in the stories and so forth. All in all, aside from the KJV, I've probably read fifty or so books dealing with the bible, Christianity, and textual criticism. I'm not counting books on atheism and secular humanism. I think it is fair to say that I'm more familiar with the content of the KJV than your average Christian is. It's an interest of mine and has been for some decades.
Why is the content important, you might ask, when you have so thoroughly convinced yourself that the Bible must be false in so many respects due to the times of writing?
That's kind of a silly thing to say. I have not at any point denied that the stories in the book make moral and/or ethical points. They don't have to be true stories to do that, of course. My interest is in the underlying principle: is there a God, or not? If there is, the bible is something special. If there is not, then it's just fables with morals. Which would be fine, if it didn't attempt to subvert the reader into a delusion, something I consider to be slimy under the best of circumstances.
As for "consistently, reliably, and repeatedly produces positive results"...what about the nuclear weapons? Sarin gas? Weaponization of biological toxins and pathogens? Those are positive?
Certainly they are. Weapons are required when you need to defend yourself. Thinking one killing weapon (hand vs. gun vs. knife vs. grenade vs bomb) is worse than another is a conceit. Some are more efficient than others, some do a better job of inspiring the enemy to go the other way, but all do the job they were designed for. Unlike, for instance, prayer. When some muslim is coming at you with a razor, you pray, I'll shoot him. We'll see what works better in very short order.
That's not to say that you can't use a weapon in an evil manner; but as scientific creations, weapons technologies are almost always neutral. They don't have to be used, either. But if they are, it doesn't have to be in a bad way. One for instance, nuclear bombs can be used to launch a spaceship (Orion nuclear pulse technology) or to deflect a comet or asteroid, or dig holes very efficiently. They can be (and have been) used to ensure that major powers don't have a go at one another: The cold war. Sarin, as far as I know, has only weapons uses, but again, weapons are a good thing when the barbarian comes over the wall. Other toxic gasses and various engineered poisons have been used for various peacetime endeavors; killing bacteria, for instance, or putting a living being out of its misery when there is no hope of recovery. It always comes down to what the invention is used for. And you can't blame science for that. That's a social issue.
Truth is what is true, regardless of whether you can perceive it or not.
Yes, that's what I said.
If humans cannot detect something does that mean that it does not exist? If humans cannot use science to prove something does that mean that it cannot be true?
No, of course not. But if it is undetectable and has no effect upon us, it is not material to our existence. If there is no evidence for a proposition, and no prospect for getting evidence for that proposition, then there is less (at least) reason to pursue that proposition. The world is full of wonderful, interesting, and complex things we can productively spend our time on. The only way that religion affects my life is to interfere with it. Hence my avid interest.
The purpose was not to validate the existence of anyone.
If you'll look back in the thread, it was you who made the original claim that there was "alot(sic) of proof" for Jesus's existance; so I think that my assumption that you are oriented this way, and that this is the meat of what launched my response, which dealt primarily with that issue, is reasonable.
I just mentioned Mohammed (again) to encourage some diversity in the conversation. You seemed a bit fixated on just Christian mythos, ignoring the Islam and Bhudda reference.
Islam and Buddhism are not major problems in my society (America); Christianity is. There are a million superstitions that take hold in major ways in one society or another — from astrology to elves and fairies to Hinduism to cargo cults — the one that I perceive as primarily infecting and damaging my society is Christianity, hence I am primarily interested in this particular religion. I am not interested in some politically correct levelheadedness that misdirects my energy away from the society I have to deal with every day.
Regardless of any of the points that you are arguing I wouly hope that you would see the obvious circumstancial evidence for the existence of these people to be somewhat more valid than a pink genius marsupial. You seem to be arguing that it is not, which, again, makes me curious in a clinical way.
The fact is, we have almost exactly the same amount of evidence for the existence of Jesus that we do for Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan. That is to say, none outside of a book that mentions some historical items for context. I've already explained this, but I can elaborate on it if you like. We do have way after the fact hearsay reports, but these are the very poorest standard of evidence (approximately on the level of someone who reports not seeing, but hearing about magic pink elephants which someone else purportedly saw a century earlier.) I would be very interested to learn that actual contemporaneous, first-party evidence has been found to validate the existence of Jesus. Until I do, it's a story in a book with historical trimmings. No more. If we find such evidence, it will become a story where the historical trimmings include the person Jesus, as opposed to the character Jesus. To validate any of the miracles, we'll need some new ones. Without that, there is no reason to think the book is anything more than a historical fiction. It is one thing to accept a report of a human being's acts at face value; it is entirely another to accept magical acts of a person who claims to be the son of God at face value. Carl Sagen said it best: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And these are the most extraordinary of all. Yet the evidence, to be kind, is entirely lacking.
Of course this is in direct contradiction to the almost universal basis of religion, namely that mankind has free will and that even the gods do not ursurp that power from individuals. Christianity is especially clear on this subject. God, as described in the Bible, would not use his omnipotence and omniscience to force people to believe.
Of course. No myth — let's be blunt, no lie — can survive under the light of rational inquiry when all the information is on the table, so the crafters of every significant god-myth carefully rule that possibility out. I don't accept that as a precondition for anything that purports to describe reality. Either show me the magic beans you claim to have, or, knowing that no magic beans have ever previously been shown by anyone, I will quite reasonably and rationally assume you have no magic beans. To do otherwise is insane; specifically because nothing, literally no objective fact or real thing or real concept in the world as we know it, fails that test. If religion fails tha
What about him? He came along centuries later (ca. 570 A.D. to 632 A.D.), claimed he had a visit from the angel Gabriel while praying alone in a cave. He claimed (or at least, Islam the religion claims) that Gabriel told him that God had chosen him as the last of the prophets to mankind, thereby co-opting the Christian mythos, and he subsequently set himself up as a prophet. Mind you, we don't have much better documentation of this than we do of Jesus; most of this is oral tradition, "authoritative" biographies date from a century later, and so on.
How would this in any way validate the existence of Jesus, or the underlying stories?
Certainly he wasn't the last to do this — the Mormons would take great exception to the idea that Mohammed was the last prophet, and would trot Joseph Smith (ca. 1805 to 1844) out for you with great pleasure.
Spend a little time reading up on what the records and stories and sources for the various "holy books" are. Not so much what they contain, but when and where they come from. I am not, by any means, saying I would definitively lay out a case for Jesus (or Mohammed) not existing, partially because it is impossible or extremely difficult to prove a negative; what I am saying is that the case for him actually existing is weak. I posted because the grandparent made an (unwise and ill-informed) claim that there was "alot(sic) of proof" of his existence.
Even assuming we get over the hump of his existence — let's say that we find Roman records of the purchase of the cross materials to hang one Jesus Christus in 33 A.D., and the bills for a crown of thorns, four iron nails, and one spear-cleaning attached thereto — we're still completely free of records of miraculous acts. Remember, the Romans used crucifixion on a regular basis — you didn't have to be the annoying-as-heck-to-them putative son of god to get nailed up there.
When I say "records", I'm not talking about the NT, which was created from codexes written (or copied) over a century later, I'm talking about an independent, contemporaneous record of him performing a miracle such as feeding 5000 people (Josephus the crust-grabber records buying 5000 crusts from the aftermath, or whatever.)
Coming back to Mohammed, he was not the first, nor the last, to attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Christianity. Today, we see people arrested all the time for scamming along these lines. "Healings" and such are debunked right and left, because we now know how. Do real healings exist? Good question. If healing could be demonstrated under controlled (meaning only, instrumented and recorded) conditions, we'd have some real evidence that something is going on beyond the natural. Alas, no such thing has been brought to light. Ever.
Yes, my definition of SF is pretty clear-cut; it comes from being part of a family that writes, translates and illustrates F&SF, and from the fact that I own a literary agency that specializes in F&SF. The oldest one around, in fact.:-)
I appreciate your reply. One of the things that makes all this so enjoyable is that your opinion is worth every bit as much as mine is in this area. Any totally made-up genre will mutate, no matter how old-timers like myself try to pin it down.
A subtitle, score or a voice-over are not in-scene effects; these exist outside of the movie's reality or frame of reference. Between the drama and you, rather than in the drama. Usually. Though I remember laughing my head off at the contemporary "we will rock you" tune done by the cast in some recent (but quite forgettable, obviously) dead-knights-page-fakes-self-as-knight-and-wins-la dy movie.
A sound effect, in sharp contrast, is designed to enhance the reality of the visual by direct association with the scene at hand. As such, we expect to hear a gunshot when a gun is "fired." We do not expect to hear a model-T horn at that juncture, nor should we expect silence. If there is air. We're supposed to be observing... if we can hear voices, we should hear gunshots. The position of the observer is as the "invisible dude(tte.)"
Similarly, when a spaceship passes in vacuum, we do not (well, we should not) expect to hear a "whoosh", and that, my friend, is one of the things that would make it science fiction... that is, if the events and visuals and sounds corresponded to the reasonable. That is the beauty of the technical side of science fiction — in really good SF, you don't have to suspend your critical faculties. Instead, you are encouraged to engage them. Read some James P. Hogan (try "The Two Faces of Tomorrow"), there's a fellow who can so slickly paint you into an imaginary scene that you won't even know what hit you and soon, you're with the story in a world you only wish existed, a feeling made all the more poignant by the fact that you can't find any reason why such a world would not exist.
As a side note, this problem isn't limited to SF. I can't count the number of times I've heard the "tires squealing on pavement" sound when a car spins out on gravel or dirt. Those wacky TV folks.:-)
For a concrete example of how space walks and space ships can be filmed, let me call your attention to 2001's space station / clipper docking scene and the HAL locks Dave out of the Jupiter vessel scene. The only time you hear sound effects in space is when the POV is inside a spacesuit, a space station, etc — in other words, where there is air which can be reasonably expected to bring such an effect to you. I'm not quite sure, but I think Alien stuck to the reasonable in this area too; I don't remember any such effects for the exterior views of the Nostromo... anyone? Alien also dumped the whole warp drive thing in favor of cold sleep, something we know can work. It managed to get a few socio-temporal displacement issues too, though I think the time spans may have been a bit too short.
I remember discussions late into the night at Milford between various combinations of Asimov, Clarke, Del Rey, Ellison, Kidd, Blish, Knight, Pohl and Merril where the entire focus of the discussion was how to hew closer to the line of science in such a way as to make the characters a lot more notable than the technology. Those were heady days.:-)
I'm not saying Trek and Star Wars and the like aren't fun for all of the strict classing into Fantasy they duly receive as a result of the distinct disregard for science; I enjoyed them both (in fact, I dragged my father in front of the tube to see Star Trek, which he knew nothing of, and as a direct result the public got the first 13 or so Star Trek novelizations.) I'm just saying that great SF won't rely on the ridiculous; the world is already sublime, and a great SF film (or book) can use that instead.
Technically, Star Trek was fantasy. This is because the plot line contains multiple elements of plot-critical fantasy, on purpose — viewers spent years pointing out that the Enterprise would not "whoosh" as it went by a viewpoint in space, that there is no science behind warp drive, that there are no nerve pathways in the neck that would allow Spock to drop humans (not to mention aliens) right and left, and so on.
Frankly, I can think of very few honest SF efforts on either video or film. It seems that as soon as Hollywood gets involved, the whole concept of SF flies right out the window. On fairy wings, no less.
It's that whole science thing. Of course, this is a nation that apparently wants to put "Intelligent Design" into our schools and is led by an extremely superstitious man, so the surprise level is pretty low here. As a nation, we're not very aware of what science is, much less being able to discern what extrapolation from current science might be reasonably considered legitimate.
In addition there is alot of proof of the existence of people like Abraham, Buddah, Jesus, Mohammed, the apostles and disciples, etc.
Well, let's look at that claim. All of the codexes that comprise today's NT come from AD 100 or later. 70 years or more after the crucifixion. So what we know is that the writings about Jesus existed at that time. Since the writings existed, it is obvious that Christians would, also; for who else would write about this story?
Now, references that we know of include:
Josephus' Antiquities Book 18, chapter 3, part 3, from the 2nd century, later than the codexes, and all this Jewish historian does is mention very briefly mention Jesus — given the time, it is probable that he was simply parroting the already existing codexes and the (by that time) well-established Christian verbal tradition. It is important to note that Jospehus was not around when Jesus was; this is not in any way an eyewitness report.
The Roman historian Tacitus (A.D. 55 to A.D.117, so he wasn't born before Jesus would have been crucified.) Tacitus also reported that Christians were around, called Christianity a "disease" and a "superstition", and stated that "Christus" had been put to death. Keeping in mind that this is a report by a person who wasn't around at the time of the reported events, this is probably still the best and closest report of a person who may have been Jesus.
Pliny the Younger wrote around 112 AD, so we know he also wasn't a contemporary of Jesus. He mentions Christians (mainly what a pain in the neck they are) and described the whole movement as "excessive and contagious superstition."
Lastly, we have the NT itself, which is a book comprised of writings that in no case do we have an original copy of; only copies of copies — so we cannot in any way use a component of the bible as validation that Jesus existed. The Roman accounts I quote above are actually more authoritative than anything in the bible because the bible's content is from even later in time.
Now, what is interesting, and consistent, about these references, both Roman and NT, is that they are not in any way contemporaneous reports of Jesus's existence. What they comprise are reports beginning about A.D 100, Christians were annoying a lot of people, and some well after the putative fact reports of how Christians were supposed to have started, in other words, as of A.D. 100, the presumption was that some guy named Jesus started Christianity a a bunch of decades before any of these people lived. Then several hundred years later on, the codexes that make up the bible appear.
Now, the main religion that is related to all of this is Judaism. These people were around at the time, and they, at the time and continuously until today, reject the idea that the story of Jesus represents the son of God. They mostly seem to have been oblivious at the time he was supposed to have been around (which is fairly amazing, if he was actually there, he would have been very annoying to them!) and when the Christians confronted them with the Christian beliefs, they looked at their religious documents, and generally pooh-poohed the whole idea.
So what do we have? In the end, we have a very few reports that some guy named Christus started a cult, was killed for his efforts, and that the cult continues to be annoying — all reports outside the bible describe Christians as superstitious and annoying. These reports don't come from the time when Jesus was supposed to have lived. When speaking of the cults genesis, they report what the cult says. Since we're a century (or more) down the road when these reports are written, we have no way to determine if the reports are coming from separate records — for instance, Roman records — or if they are coming from the cultists themselves as they propagate the stories they have been told.
So, until the day that we make a device that can test for the presence of pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids, and are able to use it at every point in the entire universe and beyond, anyone who places faith in science cannot comment on the existence of pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids other than to shrug their shoulders. To do otherwise makes you look silly and biased. Furthermore, people that insult, disparrage, or malign those who believe in pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids look desperate. Maybe they are afraid of what lies in those deep dark cracks?
...if you'll go back and read the post again, I think you'll find that I said almost exactly what you said. Read the whole paragraph this time. Look for "blame."
Also pay attention to where I talk about doing science, as opposed to understanding science. These are not the same thing at all.
There's this whole field called "philosophy" dedicated to questions that often go beyond testable hypotheses.
I am well aware of it. I would simply point out that philosophy is also a common dumping ground for ideas that aren't just unanswerable, they are simply nonsensical. Regardless of where such philosophical ideas land, they may still be interesting ideas. This in no way makes them more likely to be a representation of objective reality,
Do you understand me when I tell you that it doesn't bother me in the least that I don't know what our origin was, yet I am content to remain curious?
Now, if our educational system taught us more about logic, argument, and philosophy, this would be self-evident to most Americans. But I guess memorizing the quadratic equation and phases of mitosis is more relevant to our everyday life
Sheesh. Quadratics and mitosis don't teach science. They are very specific data, information, methods of specialized subfields that use science. Science is a method. It can (and should) be taught in a few hours. Add the study of critical thinking skills (which would blow a good deal of philosophical naval-gazing right out the window)... then you'd have something. There is no reason to think that everyone should have to do science... but there is very good reason to think that as many people as possible should understand what science is.
I read your post; further discussion appears to me to be fruitless, so your comments above, or further should you so elect, shall close our conversation.
Neither the big bang or evolution disprove god in any way, and they couldn't.
When someone makes an assertion that has no objective fact behind it to back it up, cannot be tested, cannot be repeated, and cannot be falsified, such as "God made the world", then they are not venturing anywhere near science. They are indulging in religion. When you understand that, you'll understand why ID is not science, it is religion.
The most common reason I've seen for a religious person to be anti-science is when a militant atheist uses evolution as part of an attack on their religion
Religion, according to almost every religious person I have ever spoken with, is about having faith in (some set of supernatural propositions) as being factual. Given that, why should you care if I question your faith? My curiosity, my doubts, have zero bearing on the facts. If there is a God, there is. If there isn't, there isn't. Period. If I doubt or inquire about your position, regardless of my conviction, it does not change the facts.
Therefore, any significant concerns you have should be with your own position. Not with mine. If your faith describes reality, then you're doing fine. If not, you've made a fairly significant error. That's worth figuring out, in my estimation.
Having said that, I am also bound to point out that no matter what level of faith one has, if the situation you are applying your faith to is not reality, then your faith, and all conviction that derives from it, cannot change that simple fact.
Not only that... but, come on. 'Superstitions as to the formation of the universe'? As opposed to the fundamentally clear and simple understanding of the beginning of time that physics presents us?
No. As opposed to admitting that we don't know, we may never know, but we'll try and figure it out anyway, and all of that is OK. What is not OK is asserting that " this (insert favorite objective-fact-free assertion here) is the way it happened" when in fact, we don't know.
I expect to see anti-science prejudice on their side of the fence. I really, really wish I didn't see anti-religious prejudice on ours
Why? Is it fundamentally different from anti-astrology or anti-phrenology prejudice? Are we not entitled to not respect a position which is, by its very nature, doubtful at best and deceitful at worst? Or is being politically correct more important to you than anything else? It isn't to me, as I am sure you can tell. If you tell me that you believe, with all your heart, that earthquakes are caused by pink unicorns running along fault lines upside down because we failed to leave milk out for the pixies, I'm just going to man right up and characterize your position as completely without merit until you produce said unicorn. No religionist has yet produced a god or gods (or even a low-level, 10th circle demon-in-training or an angel who specializes in carving the virgin Mary on trees) and so why exactly is it again that I am supposed to not exhibit prejudice against these systems of beliefs?
What? No it would still be only 50% under the average. Assuming an even distribution (not the same as a constant distribution, bell curve is an even distribution) (which, in theory an IQ should be evenly distributed, though I don't know if this is the case) there will be 50% below, and 50% over. Period
No. Example: We have one person of 50. We have one person of 150. We have five people of 100. This group describes a very crude and abbreviated center-peaked "curve":
.|.
For this curve and this group of people, the average is 100. The median is 100. There are 6 people at or below 100. There you have it — that's what I said and that's what I meant.:-) The fact that the IQ curve peaks in the middle is what cues you to the fact that there are more folks at the middle than anywhere else; in that case, we have to consider any remark about the middle of the curve going to the end in either direction as containing a majority rather than 1/2 the group. Your argument only works of (a) there is no one at the center (100), but in that case, the curve is broken, or if (b) two numbers (eg 99 and 100) have the same peak value at the center. But that's not how IQ is calculated. It peaks at 100, and 100 is the center. There are fewer folks at 99 or 101 than there are at 100.
The problem with democracy is that it involves rule by the moronic masses.
Tonight I had the singular pleasure of witnessing Mississippi's foremost statesman say, while speaking about the Meirs nomination fiasco: "...pick a man, a woman, or a minority."
IAWTP.
The Inquisition
The inquisitions, you mean. The Spanish inquisition and the Papal inquisition. Everyone should get the credit due them.
Your opinion of the denizens of upper-IQ land borders on making them infallible, almost (dare I say it) "Godlike".
No, my opinion is that they are more qualified to do science, by natural gift. No more, no less. I don't know where you got the rest. Perhaps you will take a moment to enlighten me.
I'm afraid you just can't count on them to save the world for you.
And exactly why do you think I'm counting on them for any such thing?
a person's beliefs and education -and therefore areas of interest or study- are shaped much more by environment than by biology
And what did I say in my post? I said that the system bore the blame, not the individual. You really should read for content instead of "typing points".:-)
Also, if you want to argue for the domination of environment over biology in terms of educational potential, you should be aware that not everyone agrees with you. Let me know when you can show me an IQ/40 individual that can work as a researcher in a quantum physics lab because their environment was "all that." At some point, you have to come down from the tower of psycho-babble and admit that a certain minimum of intelligence is required to function in an environment that requires great mental agility — IQ very effectively segments the population by a metric that very, very closely tracks just that characteristic; arguments that it is useless or meaningless because it is normalized are politically correct nonsense, no more, no less.
The only insult I levied was towards American education. I talked about American education because I am an American who deals with hiring of technical Americans (and one brilliant Australian, as it turned out), both programmers and engineers, and I know a fair bit about how education factors into an employee's potential. If I cannot speak for other regions, I don't attempt to. Make what you will of that.
You appear to be saying that IQ scores mean nothing because they are normalized to the population. I disagree, and I was specific about why; They segment the population effectively by intelligence of the specific type that we find in scientists. You've not provided any rebuttal to that, other than mischaracterizing what I said. If you want to pick another number than 100, fine, go ahead. I maintain that 100 is approximately where we stop doing science; I gleaned that impression because I know from experience that 100 is where we stop doing other types of technical work. However, the specific point isn't all that critical to my position. The idea that there is a point is what is important. Or would you attempt to argue than someone with an IQ of 40 would make an effective microbiologist... because the tests are normalized? Surely you see that such a position is absurd, and that it is not materially different from picking another point where an argument can be made for a general lack of scientific aptitude, such as 100.
Frankly, that point should probably be set higher, as we do see some fairly high IQ people making the same errors about superstition and science. 80% plus in the US claim to believe in various gods. It's a sorry situation, and that's a fact. Aside from being sorry, we can also observe that 80% of the population won't fit in the 100-and-under region because of the way IQ is determined. If you want to claim that superstition is evenly distributed around 100, I'd be interested to read your argument for that, though I can't say I hold much hope for a convincing one.
As for the rest, you are certainly entitled to post your opinion of me. I am equally entitled to not worry about it, though. Sorry.;-)
just like the ID supporter cannot say what was before God, and the Big bang supporter cannot tell you what was before the proton.
Don't conflate evolution, which is a known-to-be-objective-fact process with rock-solid theoretical underpinnings, with the idea of the big bang, which is a trembly-kneed cosmological supposition that (a) cannot be reproduced, (b) cannot be falsified, and (c) suffers from many shortcomings even as a proposal such that it is fairly easy to shoot full of holes in just a half-hour conversation.
Intelligent design presupposes the idea of an intelligent designer. Like the big bang, this is a conclusion without intellectual quality. Evolution, in sharp contrast, is replicable in the laboratory, or even in a python script on your computer, as well as being fairly easily observed in nature. Evolution is objective fact; it works; it's just a process, though an interesting one.
Now, when someone says something of the nature "we evolved from pond scum" they are making an assertion of moderate quality. We know the process (evolution) works; we know that the process exists in nature; so the first question is, can we replicate that specific process? So far, no. But we just started working on it. Yet, we may find that we can replicate it. If so, it is important to note that this does not put us in the position of saying that life did evolve from pond scum; only that this is a possibility. An interesting one, but one we can only validate if we can go back and look. Since that is something we can't do at this time, one can conclude that we will not learn where we came from even if science coaxes life from pond scum.
Now, compare this to ID. We do not know that our putative designer was or is out there. We do not know that even if there is a (or more than one) designer out there, entirely aside from the question of whether it, or they, designed us. It's purest supposition. We don't see the process in nature, except as we implement it ourselves as you imply, but due to causal limitations, we're highly unlikely to have been our own designers and that pretty well wipes the floor with the whole idea. Could we have been intelligently designed? Sure. Could a pink unicorn have spawned us all? Sure. Anything to back up either of those two ideas?
No.
Returning to evolution: it takes me about an evening to write a program that will evolve really interesting behaviors. I wrote my first evolutionary application in the 90's; it was called "crits" and I wrote it for the Amiga. Sold well, too. So the process itself is quite accessible. Likewise, it only takes a few minutes study to learn that evolution in the form of major adaptation — size, eyes coming and going, color, etc. — has been observed in response to environmental pressure multiple times in the last couple hundred years. Butterflies, deer, fish, plants, bugs... the examples are numerous and clear-cut.
Yet we see no examples of intelligent design in nature, only what we do ourselves in the lab and in industry.
IMHO, ID as first cause is an intellectual scam aimed at those without a solid scientific foundation. Like our president.
No need for hysteria. Of course that's what it means. Now — sit back and think — when is the last time you tried to discuss actual science with one of these middle-and-below folk? Are you trying to say that because the tests divide the population into a high and low group balanced on a (more or less) bell curve that this makes the left half of the curve not indicate relatively low functioning? Because that is obviously false. IQ tests do a very good job of classing us as far as the very type of thinking that science would have us do. Granted that they don't do well discriminating for artistic or athletic skill aptitudes, but that's not the issue here.
The median (and average) IQ position is in fact very low functioning from the standpoint of scientific thinking. They're not in the ball game; also, they're not particularly interested in the ball game because they can't understand the rules. They can't understand the rules because our educational system has no enlightening mechanism tuned to the midpoint. Either you're smart, and you "get it", or you're not, and you just slide by.
Science is not a venue for your average Jane or Joe. Period. The sad addendum to this is that although it is unreasonable to expect a 100-ish-or-lower person to do science, it is not unreasonable to expect that they could be taught how it works. That's where the schools fail, and that's where religion captures these people before the educational system does.
Add to that the entirely inappropriate support given by the government to religion, and you've got a recipe for programmed ignorance.
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I wouldn't mind using an ad-supported version of Mac OSX; Windows, I doubt it, but that's not a reflection on advertising, only on Windows. I don't think it is very likely that I will be setting up a new Windows machine, or upgrading the ones I have now.
My Eudora causes me no problems, and twice I've actually clicked an ad, once buying the product at the target site. The ads take a very small proportion of the display (at 1280x1024.) In the meantime, Eudora does an excellent job of handling my email.
I know it's politically correct in the geek community to hoist up their skirts, jump on a chair, and scream MOUSE at the top of their lungs whenever an ad enters the room, but it's all just a matter of reasonable use of screen real estate and attention getting devices to me. Text ads a'la Google are entirely friendly, from my point of view; images almost as much so; one-shot animations are less; continuously looping animations are scuzzy; flashing approaches are utterly unacceptable; pop ups and other uncontrollable and unplanned UI intrusions like window resizing and plug-in installations are scum mechanisms invoked by scum merchants who (among other things) I would never buy from. That's how I'd look at an ad-supported OS; it's not a question of advertising; it's a question of what degree of advertising intrusiveness.
Finally, Eudora offers a choice: You can go ad-supported, or buy and see no ads. If the OS did this, then it's just an additional choice, and where is any legitimate objection at that point? If you don't want ads, then just use the old model and buy. <shrug>
I too come for the comments. There are some real gems. Quite often, they've been modded into oblivion by some idiot who ( inexplicably) has mod points. That's why I don't read slashdot at +4; slashdot's moderation, to be blunt, doesn't work. Because it is so often punitive and/or ideologically driven, it makes no sense to trust it to limit what you read; and because it is anonymous, there is no ability for the community to rein in such abuses. Add to this the fact that meta-moderation simply doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact that slashdot's primary moderation is just as broken today as it was years back.
Step it up a level: It'd sure be nice if everyone who "edits" the stories had decent English skills. For instance, yesterday, in a story entitled "Smart hotels in New York City", the following nugget creeps, steaming and raw, into the reader's eye: "People will use computing as natural as they use writing instruments." Errors like that appear almost every day, putting the lie to the very idea that there are "editors" at work. People are approving stories, certainly, but at least one of them is not "editing" them. I find it a little sad that a site which claims to serve a technically inclined audience can't be bothered with the technical details of writing, even to the point of the truly minor and/or obvious. Naval, indeed.
The one thing about Mechassault that you can count on is excellent re-playability and game-play in general. I have Steel Battalion (you know, the one with the massive controller) and that game, in a word, sucks rocks. It is snail-slow and the graphics... well, they even billboard the trees, if that gives you any indication. It's crap. It could have been fabulous, but they just missed every critical point past starting the mechs up, which I admit is a hoot.
I'd probably buy a 360 to play Chromehounds, given the way it looks (this is a rural area... I'd never get to see it if I waited for someone else to buy it); but I'd be livid if it turned out to be another Steel Battalion!
Yes, they did, and they say that (sometime) they will have everything running.
However, notably missing from the 200 titles they allow to run (that's right, allow, if it's not on the list of 200, it will not be permitted to run) are huge hits like Project Gotham and Mechassault. The lack of Project Gotham is somewhat addressed by the XBox 360 version (though it also means it costs you $50 to play) but no Mechassault... me, I'll wait until they get that straightened out before I buy a 360, unless a 360 version of Mechassault appears, of course. Can't live without Mechassault.
Oh well. As my dear departed mother used to say, "joke 'em if they can't take a fuck.":-)
greater than (>): >
m-dash (—): —
Look up "HTML entities" to learn more.
I am very familiar with the King James version; I have read (and did not enjoy anywhere near as much as the KJV) several modern attempts at translations; I've read quite a few volumes that look at it from various viewpoints, and I have several types of works that do things like enumerate the characters in the stories and so forth. All in all, aside from the KJV, I've probably read fifty or so books dealing with the bible, Christianity, and textual criticism. I'm not counting books on atheism and secular humanism. I think it is fair to say that I'm more familiar with the content of the KJV than your average Christian is. It's an interest of mine and has been for some decades.
That's kind of a silly thing to say. I have not at any point denied that the stories in the book make moral and/or ethical points. They don't have to be true stories to do that, of course. My interest is in the underlying principle: is there a God, or not? If there is, the bible is something special. If there is not, then it's just fables with morals. Which would be fine, if it didn't attempt to subvert the reader into a delusion, something I consider to be slimy under the best of circumstances.
Certainly they are. Weapons are required when you need to defend yourself. Thinking one killing weapon (hand vs. gun vs. knife vs. grenade vs bomb) is worse than another is a conceit. Some are more efficient than others, some do a better job of inspiring the enemy to go the other way, but all do the job they were designed for. Unlike, for instance, prayer. When some muslim is coming at you with a razor, you pray, I'll shoot him. We'll see what works better in very short order.
That's not to say that you can't use a weapon in an evil manner; but as scientific creations, weapons technologies are almost always neutral. They don't have to be used, either. But if they are, it doesn't have to be in a bad way. One for instance, nuclear bombs can be used to launch a spaceship (Orion nuclear pulse technology) or to deflect a comet or asteroid, or dig holes very efficiently. They can be (and have been) used to ensure that major powers don't have a go at one another: The cold war. Sarin, as far as I know, has only weapons uses, but again, weapons are a good thing when the barbarian comes over the wall. Other toxic gasses and various engineered poisons have been used for various peacetime endeavors; killing bacteria, for instance, or putting a living being out of its misery when there is no hope of recovery. It always comes down to what the invention is used for. And you can't blame science for that. That's a social issue.
Yes, that's what I said.
No, of course not. But if it is undetectable and has no effect upon us, it is not material to our existence. If there is no evidence for a proposition, and no prospect for getting evidence for that proposition, then there is less (at least) reason to pursue that proposition. The world is full of wonderful, interesting, and complex things we can productively spend our time on. The only way that religion affects my life is to interfere with it. Hence my avid interest.
If you'll look back in the thread, it was you who made the original claim that there was "alot(sic) of proof" for Jesus's existance; so I think that my assumption that you are oriented this way, and that this is the meat of what launched my response, which dealt primarily with that issue, is reasonable.
Islam and Buddhism are not major problems in my society (America); Christianity is. There are a million superstitions that take hold in major ways in one society or another — from astrology to elves and fairies to Hinduism to cargo cults — the one that I perceive as primarily infecting and damaging my society is Christianity, hence I am primarily interested in this particular religion. I am not interested in some politically correct levelheadedness that misdirects my energy away from the society I have to deal with every day.
The fact is, we have almost exactly the same amount of evidence for the existence of Jesus that we do for Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan. That is to say, none outside of a book that mentions some historical items for context. I've already explained this, but I can elaborate on it if you like. We do have way after the fact hearsay reports, but these are the very poorest standard of evidence (approximately on the level of someone who reports not seeing, but hearing about magic pink elephants which someone else purportedly saw a century earlier.) I would be very interested to learn that actual contemporaneous, first-party evidence has been found to validate the existence of Jesus. Until I do, it's a story in a book with historical trimmings. No more. If we find such evidence, it will become a story where the historical trimmings include the person Jesus, as opposed to the character Jesus. To validate any of the miracles, we'll need some new ones. Without that, there is no reason to think the book is anything more than a historical fiction. It is one thing to accept a report of a human being's acts at face value; it is entirely another to accept magical acts of a person who claims to be the son of God at face value. Carl Sagen said it best: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And these are the most extraordinary of all. Yet the evidence, to be kind, is entirely lacking.
Of course. No myth — let's be blunt, no lie — can survive under the light of rational inquiry when all the information is on the table, so the crafters of every significant god-myth carefully rule that possibility out. I don't accept that as a precondition for anything that purports to describe reality. Either show me the magic beans you claim to have, or, knowing that no magic beans have ever previously been shown by anyone, I will quite reasonably and rationally assume you have no magic beans. To do otherwise is insane; specifically because nothing, literally no objective fact or real thing or real concept in the world as we know it, fails that test. If religion fails tha
What about him? He came along centuries later (ca. 570 A.D. to 632 A.D.), claimed he had a visit from the angel Gabriel while praying alone in a cave. He claimed (or at least, Islam the religion claims) that Gabriel told him that God had chosen him as the last of the prophets to mankind, thereby co-opting the Christian mythos, and he subsequently set himself up as a prophet. Mind you, we don't have much better documentation of this than we do of Jesus; most of this is oral tradition, "authoritative" biographies date from a century later, and so on.
How would this in any way validate the existence of Jesus, or the underlying stories?
Certainly he wasn't the last to do this — the Mormons would take great exception to the idea that Mohammed was the last prophet, and would trot Joseph Smith (ca. 1805 to 1844) out for you with great pleasure.
Spend a little time reading up on what the records and stories and sources for the various "holy books" are. Not so much what they contain, but when and where they come from. I am not, by any means, saying I would definitively lay out a case for Jesus (or Mohammed) not existing, partially because it is impossible or extremely difficult to prove a negative; what I am saying is that the case for him actually existing is weak. I posted because the grandparent made an (unwise and ill-informed) claim that there was "alot(sic) of proof" of his existence.
Even assuming we get over the hump of his existence — let's say that we find Roman records of the purchase of the cross materials to hang one Jesus Christus in 33 A.D., and the bills for a crown of thorns, four iron nails, and one spear-cleaning attached thereto — we're still completely free of records of miraculous acts. Remember, the Romans used crucifixion on a regular basis — you didn't have to be the annoying-as-heck-to-them putative son of god to get nailed up there.
When I say "records", I'm not talking about the NT, which was created from codexes written (or copied) over a century later, I'm talking about an independent, contemporaneous record of him performing a miracle such as feeding 5000 people (Josephus the crust-grabber records buying 5000 crusts from the aftermath, or whatever.)
Coming back to Mohammed, he was not the first, nor the last, to attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Christianity. Today, we see people arrested all the time for scamming along these lines. "Healings" and such are debunked right and left, because we now know how. Do real healings exist? Good question. If healing could be demonstrated under controlled (meaning only, instrumented and recorded) conditions, we'd have some real evidence that something is going on beyond the natural. Alas, no such thing has been brought to light. Ever.
Yes, that's it. Thank you!
I appreciate your reply. One of the things that makes all this so enjoyable is that your opinion is worth every bit as much as mine is in this area. Any totally made-up genre will mutate, no matter how old-timers like myself try to pin it down.
A sound effect, in sharp contrast, is designed to enhance the reality of the visual by direct association with the scene at hand. As such, we expect to hear a gunshot when a gun is "fired." We do not expect to hear a model-T horn at that juncture, nor should we expect silence. If there is air. We're supposed to be observing... if we can hear voices, we should hear gunshots. The position of the observer is as the "invisible dude(tte.)"
Similarly, when a spaceship passes in vacuum, we do not (well, we should not) expect to hear a "whoosh", and that, my friend, is one of the things that would make it science fiction... that is, if the events and visuals and sounds corresponded to the reasonable. That is the beauty of the technical side of science fiction — in really good SF, you don't have to suspend your critical faculties. Instead, you are encouraged to engage them. Read some James P. Hogan (try "The Two Faces of Tomorrow"), there's a fellow who can so slickly paint you into an imaginary scene that you won't even know what hit you and soon, you're with the story in a world you only wish existed, a feeling made all the more poignant by the fact that you can't find any reason why such a world would not exist.
As a side note, this problem isn't limited to SF. I can't count the number of times I've heard the "tires squealing on pavement" sound when a car spins out on gravel or dirt. Those wacky TV folks. :-)
For a concrete example of how space walks and space ships can be filmed, let me call your attention to 2001's space station / clipper docking scene and the HAL locks Dave out of the Jupiter vessel scene. The only time you hear sound effects in space is when the POV is inside a spacesuit, a space station, etc — in other words, where there is air which can be reasonably expected to bring such an effect to you. I'm not quite sure, but I think Alien stuck to the reasonable in this area too; I don't remember any such effects for the exterior views of the Nostromo... anyone? Alien also dumped the whole warp drive thing in favor of cold sleep, something we know can work. It managed to get a few socio-temporal displacement issues too, though I think the time spans may have been a bit too short.
I remember discussions late into the night at Milford between various combinations of Asimov, Clarke, Del Rey, Ellison, Kidd, Blish, Knight, Pohl and Merril where the entire focus of the discussion was how to hew closer to the line of science in such a way as to make the characters a lot more notable than the technology. Those were heady days. :-)
I'm not saying Trek and Star Wars and the like aren't fun for all of the strict classing into Fantasy they duly receive as a result of the distinct disregard for science; I enjoyed them both (in fact, I dragged my father in front of the tube to see Star Trek, which he knew nothing of, and as a direct result the public got the first 13 or so Star Trek novelizations.) I'm just saying that great SF won't rely on the ridiculous; the world is already sublime, and a great SF film (or book) can use that instead.
Technically, Star Trek was fantasy. This is because the plot line contains multiple elements of plot-critical fantasy, on purpose — viewers spent years pointing out that the Enterprise would not "whoosh" as it went by a viewpoint in space, that there is no science behind warp drive, that there are no nerve pathways in the neck that would allow Spock to drop humans (not to mention aliens) right and left, and so on.
Frankly, I can think of very few honest SF efforts on either video or film. It seems that as soon as Hollywood gets involved, the whole concept of SF flies right out the window. On fairy wings, no less.
It's that whole science thing. Of course, this is a nation that apparently wants to put "Intelligent Design" into our schools and is led by an extremely superstitious man, so the surprise level is pretty low here. As a nation, we're not very aware of what science is, much less being able to discern what extrapolation from current science might be reasonably considered legitimate.
Well, let's look at that claim. All of the codexes that comprise today's NT come from AD 100 or later. 70 years or more after the crucifixion. So what we know is that the writings about Jesus existed at that time. Since the writings existed, it is obvious that Christians would, also; for who else would write about this story?
Now, references that we know of include:
Now, what is interesting, and consistent, about these references, both Roman and NT, is that they are not in any way contemporaneous reports of Jesus's existence. What they comprise are reports beginning about A.D 100, Christians were annoying a lot of people, and some well after the putative fact reports of how Christians were supposed to have started, in other words, as of A.D. 100, the presumption was that some guy named Jesus started Christianity a a bunch of decades before any of these people lived. Then several hundred years later on, the codexes that make up the bible appear.
Now, the main religion that is related to all of this is Judaism. These people were around at the time, and they, at the time and continuously until today, reject the idea that the story of Jesus represents the son of God. They mostly seem to have been oblivious at the time he was supposed to have been around (which is fairly amazing, if he was actually there, he would have been very annoying to them!) and when the Christians confronted them with the Christian beliefs, they looked at their religious documents, and generally pooh-poohed the whole idea.
So what do we have? In the end, we have a very few reports that some guy named Christus started a cult, was killed for his efforts, and that the cult continues to be annoying — all reports outside the bible describe Christians as superstitious and annoying. These reports don't come from the time when Jesus was supposed to have lived. When speaking of the cults genesis, they report what the cult says. Since we're a century (or more) down the road when these reports are written, we have no way to determine if the reports are coming from separate records — for instance, Roman records — or if they are coming from the cultists themselves as they propagate the stories they have been told.
So, until the day that we make a device that can test for the presence of pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids, and are able to use it at every point in the entire universe and beyond, anyone who places faith in science cannot comment on the existence of pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids other than to shrug their shoulders. To do otherwise makes you look silly and biased. Furthermore, people that insult, disparrage, or malign those who believe in pink, uber-intelligent unicorn/kangaroo hybrids look desperate. Maybe they are afraid of what lies in those deep dark cracks?
Also pay attention to where I talk about doing science, as opposed to understanding science. These are not the same thing at all.
I am well aware of it. I would simply point out that philosophy is also a common dumping ground for ideas that aren't just unanswerable, they are simply nonsensical. Regardless of where such philosophical ideas land, they may still be interesting ideas. This in no way makes them more likely to be a representation of objective reality,
Do you understand me when I tell you that it doesn't bother me in the least that I don't know what our origin was, yet I am content to remain curious?
Sheesh. Quadratics and mitosis don't teach science. They are very specific data, information, methods of specialized subfields that use science. Science is a method. It can (and should) be taught in a few hours. Add the study of critical thinking skills (which would blow a good deal of philosophical naval-gazing right out the window)... then you'd have something. There is no reason to think that everyone should have to do science... but there is very good reason to think that as many people as possible should understand what science is.
When someone makes an assertion that has no objective fact behind it to back it up, cannot be tested, cannot be repeated, and cannot be falsified, such as "God made the world", then they are not venturing anywhere near science. They are indulging in religion. When you understand that, you'll understand why ID is not science, it is religion.
Religion, according to almost every religious person I have ever spoken with, is about having faith in (some set of supernatural propositions) as being factual. Given that, why should you care if I question your faith? My curiosity, my doubts, have zero bearing on the facts. If there is a God, there is. If there isn't, there isn't. Period. If I doubt or inquire about your position, regardless of my conviction, it does not change the facts.
Therefore, any significant concerns you have should be with your own position. Not with mine. If your faith describes reality, then you're doing fine. If not, you've made a fairly significant error. That's worth figuring out, in my estimation.
Having said that, I am also bound to point out that no matter what level of faith one has, if the situation you are applying your faith to is not reality, then your faith, and all conviction that derives from it, cannot change that simple fact.
No. As opposed to admitting that we don't know, we may never know, but we'll try and figure it out anyway, and all of that is OK. What is not OK is asserting that " this (insert favorite objective-fact-free assertion here) is the way it happened" when in fact, we don't know.
Why? Is it fundamentally different from anti-astrology or anti-phrenology prejudice? Are we not entitled to not respect a position which is, by its very nature, doubtful at best and deceitful at worst? Or is being politically correct more important to you than anything else? It isn't to me, as I am sure you can tell. If you tell me that you believe, with all your heart, that earthquakes are caused by pink unicorns running along fault lines upside down because we failed to leave milk out for the pixies, I'm just going to man right up and characterize your position as completely without merit until you produce said unicorn. No religionist has yet produced a god or gods (or even a low-level, 10th circle demon-in-training or an angel who specializes in carving the virgin Mary on trees) and so why exactly is it again that I am supposed to not exhibit prejudice against these systems of beliefs?
Your ball. :-)
No. Example: We have one person of 50. We have one person of 150. We have five people of 100. This group describes a very crude and abbreviated center-peaked "curve":
For this curve and this group of people, the average is 100. The median is 100. There are 6 people at or below 100. There you have it — that's what I said and that's what I meant. :-) The fact that the IQ curve peaks in the middle is what cues you to the fact that there are more folks at the middle than anywhere else; in that case, we have to consider any remark about the middle of the curve going to the end in either direction as containing a majority rather than 1/2 the group. Your argument only works of (a) there is no one at the center (100), but in that case, the curve is broken, or if (b) two numbers (eg 99 and 100) have the same peak value at the center. But that's not how IQ is calculated. It peaks at 100, and 100 is the center. There are fewer folks at 99 or 101 than there are at 100.
Tonight I had the singular pleasure of witnessing Mississippi's foremost statesman say, while speaking about the Meirs nomination fiasco: "...pick a man, a woman, or a minority." IAWTP.
The inquisitions , you mean. The Spanish inquisition and the Papal inquisition. Everyone should get the credit due them.
No, my opinion is that they are more qualified to do science, by natural gift. No more, no less. I don't know where you got the rest. Perhaps you will take a moment to enlighten me.
And exactly why do you think I'm counting on them for any such thing?
And what did I say in my post? I said that the system bore the blame, not the individual. You really should read for content instead of "typing points". :-)
Also, if you want to argue for the domination of environment over biology in terms of educational potential, you should be aware that not everyone agrees with you. Let me know when you can show me an IQ/40 individual that can work as a researcher in a quantum physics lab because their environment was "all that." At some point, you have to come down from the tower of psycho-babble and admit that a certain minimum of intelligence is required to function in an environment that requires great mental agility — IQ very effectively segments the population by a metric that very, very closely tracks just that characteristic; arguments that it is useless or meaningless because it is normalized are politically correct nonsense, no more, no less.
You appear to be saying that IQ scores mean nothing because they are normalized to the population. I disagree, and I was specific about why; They segment the population effectively by intelligence of the specific type that we find in scientists. You've not provided any rebuttal to that, other than mischaracterizing what I said. If you want to pick another number than 100, fine, go ahead. I maintain that 100 is approximately where we stop doing science; I gleaned that impression because I know from experience that 100 is where we stop doing other types of technical work. However, the specific point isn't all that critical to my position. The idea that there is a point is what is important. Or would you attempt to argue than someone with an IQ of 40 would make an effective microbiologist... because the tests are normalized? Surely you see that such a position is absurd, and that it is not materially different from picking another point where an argument can be made for a general lack of scientific aptitude, such as 100.
Frankly, that point should probably be set higher, as we do see some fairly high IQ people making the same errors about superstition and science. 80% plus in the US claim to believe in various gods. It's a sorry situation, and that's a fact. Aside from being sorry, we can also observe that 80% of the population won't fit in the 100-and-under region because of the way IQ is determined. If you want to claim that superstition is evenly distributed around 100, I'd be interested to read your argument for that, though I can't say I hold much hope for a convincing one.
As for the rest, you are certainly entitled to post your opinion of me. I am equally entitled to not worry about it, though. Sorry. ;-)
Don't conflate evolution, which is a known-to-be-objective-fact process with rock-solid theoretical underpinnings, with the idea of the big bang, which is a trembly-kneed cosmological supposition that (a) cannot be reproduced, (b) cannot be falsified, and (c) suffers from many shortcomings even as a proposal such that it is fairly easy to shoot full of holes in just a half-hour conversation.
Intelligent design presupposes the idea of an intelligent designer. Like the big bang, this is a conclusion without intellectual quality. Evolution, in sharp contrast, is replicable in the laboratory, or even in a python script on your computer, as well as being fairly easily observed in nature. Evolution is objective fact; it works; it's just a process, though an interesting one.
Now, when someone says something of the nature "we evolved from pond scum" they are making an assertion of moderate quality. We know the process (evolution) works; we know that the process exists in nature; so the first question is, can we replicate that specific process? So far, no. But we just started working on it. Yet, we may find that we can replicate it. If so, it is important to note that this does not put us in the position of saying that life did evolve from pond scum; only that this is a possibility. An interesting one, but one we can only validate if we can go back and look. Since that is something we can't do at this time, one can conclude that we will not learn where we came from even if science coaxes life from pond scum.
Now, compare this to ID. We do not know that our putative designer was or is out there. We do not know that even if there is a (or more than one) designer out there, entirely aside from the question of whether it, or they, designed us. It's purest supposition. We don't see the process in nature, except as we implement it ourselves as you imply, but due to causal limitations, we're highly unlikely to have been our own designers and that pretty well wipes the floor with the whole idea. Could we have been intelligently designed? Sure. Could a pink unicorn have spawned us all? Sure. Anything to back up either of those two ideas? No.
Returning to evolution: it takes me about an evening to write a program that will evolve really interesting behaviors. I wrote my first evolutionary application in the 90's; it was called "crits" and I wrote it for the Amiga. Sold well, too. So the process itself is quite accessible. Likewise, it only takes a few minutes study to learn that evolution in the form of major adaptation — size, eyes coming and going, color, etc. — has been observed in response to environmental pressure multiple times in the last couple hundred years. Butterflies, deer, fish, plants, bugs... the examples are numerous and clear-cut.
Yet we see no examples of intelligent design in nature, only what we do ourselves in the lab and in industry.
IMHO, ID as first cause is an intellectual scam aimed at those without a solid scientific foundation. Like our president.
No need for hysteria. Of course that's what it means. Now — sit back and think — when is the last time you tried to discuss actual science with one of these middle-and-below folk? Are you trying to say that because the tests divide the population into a high and low group balanced on a (more or less) bell curve that this makes the left half of the curve not indicate relatively low functioning? Because that is obviously false. IQ tests do a very good job of classing us as far as the very type of thinking that science would have us do. Granted that they don't do well discriminating for artistic or athletic skill aptitudes, but that's not the issue here.
The median (and average) IQ position is in fact very low functioning from the standpoint of scientific thinking. They're not in the ball game; also, they're not particularly interested in the ball game because they can't understand the rules. They can't understand the rules because our educational system has no enlightening mechanism tuned to the midpoint. Either you're smart, and you "get it", or you're not, and you just slide by.
Science is not a venue for your average Jane or Joe. Period. The sad addendum to this is that although it is unreasonable to expect a 100-ish-or-lower person to do science, it is not unreasonable to expect that they could be taught how it works. That's where the schools fail, and that's where religion captures these people before the educational system does.
Add to that the entirely inappropriate support given by the government to religion, and you've got a recipe for programmed ignorance.