Only if you buy into the belief that religion is what is written down in the holy books, as opposed to what is believed by the practitioners of that religion. Sure, the Bible preaches one thing, but the preachers preach something else.
If you're trying to say that the Bible is the real mccoy word of God, and that Christians who don't follow it to the letter are not Christians, then I think you must be mistaken. The problem is that there's a great deal of stuff that is completely irrelevant - was it the word of God? Probably not. Was it sound advice at the time? Definitely.
As for children-stoning, I can't really say. In my opinion, religion is mostly personifications of natural phenomena and elements of the human psyche. As such, the loving God of Christianity is more important than the hating "God" that "wrote" the words telling us to stone our children.
Please go to an actual church before saying that Christianity espouses violence. What's in the Bible and what's preached is often quite different, because much of what is in there is no longer relevant, such as not eating shellfish (good idea in the desert, but with fridges not much of a concern)
It's a great idea, unfortunately the phrase, "you and what army" springs to mind. To force Microsoft out of the picture, we'd need masses of people. With however much of the market they have, a boycott simply wouldn't be powerful enough to even make a dent.
Faith is not evidence. Faith is believing that something is so without evidence. If you can only support a theory with faith, then that theory does not belong in the realms of science. As has already been said, the burden of proof is on the claimant. I have provided evidence for evolution, you have provided nothing for ID. May I reiterate: faith is not evidence.
As for grammar, capital letters are not for highlighting important words. It is also clear that you are not using them for this purpose: "One can't argue Opinions, or faiths. By the Way..." Firstly, "way" is not a very important word at all. Secondly, shouldn't faiths be capitalised, since it is equally as important as opinions? It is inconsistent both for you and with the english language, and makes your posts harder to read, not easier.
OK, there are different degrees of proof, here. No theory can be proven. We can only provide substantial evidence for what we see and detect. In this case, there is no uninterpretable evidence for intelligent design, indeed ID is very scanty on any evidence whatsoever. Evolution has plenty of evidence to back it.
If it's possible to prove that evolution takes place in the world around us, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make that this is what formed life. It cannot be proven, but the method for it to take place has been demonstrated, whereas ID has no such backup.
By the way, I find your excessive use of capital letters extremely tiresome on the eyes. You only need them at the start of sentences and for proper nouns.
If the ground tilts beneath you, adjusting your centre of gravity outwards from your feet, you'd reflexively adjust your stance.
More subtly, as you are standing up, you're constantly adjusting your weight on either foot, as you sway around. This is detected, I assume, by the ear, therefore going limp probably wouldn't work. It would likely be possible to override it, however.
Hint 1 when posting on/.: Obey thermodynamics, IT'S THE LAW! (Same goes for gravity) If something allows you to get more energy out than in, then it must be BAD. Unless it's nuclear and you're losing e/(c) mass.
Windmills on top of high rises get lots of wind, and in between them they do to, due to the heating effect of the city, and tunneling of the buildings. Perhaps not for the back garden, but still viable in cities, nonetheless.
Increasingly, the "Oxford Comma" is being taught as well, especially in places where it would add clarity. What is amusing is that we were always taught that it was a big bad to put a comma before 'and.' The more perceptive among us realised this was bollocks, and then it was changed by the time we got out.
Except that evolution can be proved. Look through the fossil record and you not only find similarities in virtually anything (e.g pentadactyl limb - the exact same configuration is found in everything from flippers to hands to wings) but also slightly changing creatures, such as shellfish.
We have proved that evolution takes place, by looking at the population of peppered moths around industrial cities in Britain. All we haven't proved is that it is the origin of all life. This is difficult to prove, but not impossible.
I challenge you to find similar evidence for ID.
If I know she's going to flip for certain, there is no possibility of her not flipping, then she has no choice, as it is a predetermined action. She has no option of not flipping.
Likewise, the understanding portion of it is utter bull as far as proof goes. Mainly because it is NOT proof, nor indeed any kind of reasonable point. I could say "In reality, the Universe is run by miniature, flying rubber cod, but they have chosen to confuse the subject so you wouldn't know," or, "In reality the Universe was started yesterday by a piece of hyper-sentient navel-fluff, who chose to create an apparent past in all our minds." It's not evidence.
They say a Butterfly flapping its wings in China could cause a hurricane in America. I don't see how a God could know how things are going to turn out without knowing every single minutiae. Remember this God is supposed to be omniscient.
Not only that, but there are multiple scales of macro/microscopic. Microscopic would be the precise details of what happens in your brain, whilst macroscopic would be the decision you make.
Nonetheless, you've presented the best counter-argument I've seen to the "free-will spiel," so congrats:)
One thing I should've put somewhere more obvious is that here in England, ID and Darwinism are taught side by side. (Plus ID is taught in RS classes) I'm not sure whether the syllabus is taught so as to present Darwinism as right, but that was the impression I got. I later found that my biology teacher was Catholic.
From a scientific point of view, I think the presence of ID in the syllabus is not actually a bad thing (while I do believe it to be flawed) as it is important to teach the other views surrounding the topic.
A point that comes up time-and-again: If God set everything into motion eons ago, and knew how everything would end up, we have no free will and cannot choose whether or not we would believe in him.
It is said that God did not force us to believe in him. If it was his action that caused every single action, we have a contradiction right there.
That particular incarnation of ID simply doesn't work with one of the fundamentals of Christianity: that we are free to choose whether we believe in God, as does any other bit that states that the entire course of the Universe was dictated by God.
When my gran's husband died, leaving her with three teenagers, she retrained at the university as a computer programmer, trashing the idea that all grandparents cannot work computers. As she got older, she did prefer dad to help her with stuff - he installed a new monitor, fixed her A/V software and so on.
That said, if this feature allows Microsoft to sell more copies of a version of MSN that is paid for, then it could actually get them profit. The idea, most likely, is to prevent other protocols from using custom emoticons and get more users on MSN. Then perhaps they'll release them as part of a zombie army.
No, they are actually patenting the IMG tag - whereby the pixels are sent from client a to client b and reassembled at b. Now, I know virtually nothing about patents, but someone down there said that you only need infringe one claim to be liable. Therefore, any application implementing img tags for.pngs is infringing, although it might require the image to be an emoticon.
Possibly irrelevant, but I find that having a piece of paper is what I really need in these situations. For an algorithmic situation, you can have a series of starting values, and what you want to end up with, then on paper you can work out ways of doing it.
For logic paths, likewise. It often helps to have things down so that by the time I've got to the end, I can look back and remember how I started.
Apparently you're mixed up about your rights. You have no right to drive if you're endangering other road users, in which case, suspending your license is a paralell punishment to imprisonment. Not only is it some kind of punishment, but a murderer cannot kill, a thief cannot steal.
Not only do you not have any right to drive whatsoever, but you are infringing others' rights to safety. We're not talking about a single offence for a suspension, we're talking repeated. I believe in some cases, a first offence will result in a verbal warning only, anyway. If you prove to the authorities that you are unable to drive safely, then it's just as if you proved to your driving instructor that you are unable.
If you fail your test, then you cannot drive. If you subsequently drive unsafely, in a fashion similar to that which would fail a driving test, of course you will be prevented from driving.
If you were to RTFA (Yeah, I know, must be new here) then you'd see that it's pretty damn credible. Some time is wasted on the internet, but a lot of the time employees spend surfing around is in lunch breaks and at points where they have nothing to do.
Added to that, the article states that the statistics came from the mouths of the immediate decision makers, not the workers themselves, and the specific word used was "believe." That's not a statistic, that's a postulation.
When people become an adult, grow up and leave home, they don't have to stay in the same country, or same area. It's quite possible to move to somewhere within walking distance of shops, work and entertainment, although it may not be ideal. If you choose to live somewhere where you are unable to walk or cycle or bus or train or whatever to work, then it's simply your responsibility to obey the rules.
Hell, there's an attitude the police are going to enjoy while hauling you to jail, and being locked up generally stops people from driving.
The fact is, you can't live wherever you "damn well please," nor can you drive wherever you, "damn well please." If you drive onto someone's private property, for a start, it's illegal without permission. If you repeatedly violate traffic laws, then you can expect to get points on your license and have it revoked.
Just because you got away with it doesn't mean it's still your right to drive, and I think the discrepancy in the speeding tickets is irrelevant. If you indeed didn't start speeding in the newer, faster, flashier car, then it was more likely that you hadn't been booked for offences before, rather than being booked unfairly this time. You know, if you speed, you get speeding tickets - it's fairly easy to work out, and then you go complain when you're stopped from driving?
Excuse me, but that just sounds childishly stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're trying to say that the Bible is the real mccoy word of God, and that Christians who don't follow it to the letter are not Christians, then I think you must be mistaken. The problem is that there's a great deal of stuff that is completely irrelevant - was it the word of God? Probably not. Was it sound advice at the time? Definitely.
As for children-stoning, I can't really say. In my opinion, religion is mostly personifications of natural phenomena and elements of the human psyche. As such, the loving God of Christianity is more important than the hating "God" that "wrote" the words telling us to stone our children.
Please go to an actual church before saying that Christianity espouses violence. What's in the Bible and what's preached is often quite different, because much of what is in there is no longer relevant, such as not eating shellfish (good idea in the desert, but with fridges not much of a concern)
It's a great idea, unfortunately the phrase, "you and what army" springs to mind. To force Microsoft out of the picture, we'd need masses of people. With however much of the market they have, a boycott simply wouldn't be powerful enough to even make a dent.
As for grammar, capital letters are not for highlighting important words. It is also clear that you are not using them for this purpose: "One can't argue Opinions, or faiths. By the Way..." Firstly, "way" is not a very important word at all. Secondly, shouldn't faiths be capitalised, since it is equally as important as opinions? It is inconsistent both for you and with the english language, and makes your posts harder to read, not easier.
You call yourself a geek? It's obviously a 'vwummm' noise!
If it's possible to prove that evolution takes place in the world around us, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make that this is what formed life. It cannot be proven, but the method for it to take place has been demonstrated, whereas ID has no such backup.
By the way, I find your excessive use of capital letters extremely tiresome on the eyes. You only need them at the start of sentences and for proper nouns.
More subtly, as you are standing up, you're constantly adjusting your weight on either foot, as you sway around. This is detected, I assume, by the ear, therefore going limp probably wouldn't work. It would likely be possible to override it, however.
Hint 1 when posting on /.: Obey thermodynamics, IT'S THE LAW! (Same goes for gravity) If something allows you to get more energy out than in, then it must be BAD. Unless it's nuclear and you're losing e/(c) mass.
Windmills on top of high rises get lots of wind, and in between them they do to, due to the heating effect of the city, and tunneling of the buildings. Perhaps not for the back garden, but still viable in cities, nonetheless.
Or people that have no grasp of humour... On SLASHDOT?! Whatever next, good god?
Increasingly, the "Oxford Comma" is being taught as well, especially in places where it would add clarity. What is amusing is that we were always taught that it was a big bad to put a comma before 'and.' The more perceptive among us realised this was bollocks, and then it was changed by the time we got out.
We have proved that evolution takes place, by looking at the population of peppered moths around industrial cities in Britain. All we haven't proved is that it is the origin of all life. This is difficult to prove, but not impossible.
I challenge you to find similar evidence for ID.
Not to mention the extraordinary accent...
Likewise, the understanding portion of it is utter bull as far as proof goes. Mainly because it is NOT proof, nor indeed any kind of reasonable point. I could say "In reality, the Universe is run by miniature, flying rubber cod, but they have chosen to confuse the subject so you wouldn't know," or, "In reality the Universe was started yesterday by a piece of hyper-sentient navel-fluff, who chose to create an apparent past in all our minds." It's not evidence.
Not only that, but there are multiple scales of macro/microscopic. Microscopic would be the precise details of what happens in your brain, whilst macroscopic would be the decision you make.
Nonetheless, you've presented the best counter-argument I've seen to the "free-will spiel," so congrats :)
One thing I should've put somewhere more obvious is that here in England, ID and Darwinism are taught side by side. (Plus ID is taught in RS classes) I'm not sure whether the syllabus is taught so as to present Darwinism as right, but that was the impression I got. I later found that my biology teacher was Catholic.
From a scientific point of view, I think the presence of ID in the syllabus is not actually a bad thing (while I do believe it to be flawed) as it is important to teach the other views surrounding the topic.
It is said that God did not force us to believe in him. If it was his action that caused every single action, we have a contradiction right there.
That particular incarnation of ID simply doesn't work with one of the fundamentals of Christianity: that we are free to choose whether we believe in God, as does any other bit that states that the entire course of the Universe was dictated by God.
When my gran's husband died, leaving her with three teenagers, she retrained at the university as a computer programmer, trashing the idea that all grandparents cannot work computers. As she got older, she did prefer dad to help her with stuff - he installed a new monitor, fixed her A/V software and so on.
That said, if this feature allows Microsoft to sell more copies of a version of MSN that is paid for, then it could actually get them profit. The idea, most likely, is to prevent other protocols from using custom emoticons and get more users on MSN. Then perhaps they'll release them as part of a zombie army.
Perhaps best to ignore the last part.
No, they are actually patenting the IMG tag - whereby the pixels are sent from client a to client b and reassembled at b. Now, I know virtually nothing about patents, but someone down there said that you only need infringe one claim to be liable. Therefore, any application implementing img tags for .pngs is infringing, although it might require the image to be an emoticon.
For logic paths, likewise. It often helps to have things down so that by the time I've got to the end, I can look back and remember how I started.
Ever heard of FEET?
Not only do you not have any right to drive whatsoever, but you are infringing others' rights to safety. We're not talking about a single offence for a suspension, we're talking repeated. I believe in some cases, a first offence will result in a verbal warning only, anyway. If you prove to the authorities that you are unable to drive safely, then it's just as if you proved to your driving instructor that you are unable.
If you fail your test, then you cannot drive. If you subsequently drive unsafely, in a fashion similar to that which would fail a driving test, of course you will be prevented from driving.
Added to that, the article states that the statistics came from the mouths of the immediate decision makers, not the workers themselves, and the specific word used was "believe." That's not a statistic, that's a postulation.
When people become an adult, grow up and leave home, they don't have to stay in the same country, or same area. It's quite possible to move to somewhere within walking distance of shops, work and entertainment, although it may not be ideal. If you choose to live somewhere where you are unable to walk or cycle or bus or train or whatever to work, then it's simply your responsibility to obey the rules.
The fact is, you can't live wherever you "damn well please," nor can you drive wherever you, "damn well please." If you drive onto someone's private property, for a start, it's illegal without permission. If you repeatedly violate traffic laws, then you can expect to get points on your license and have it revoked.
Just because you got away with it doesn't mean it's still your right to drive, and I think the discrepancy in the speeding tickets is irrelevant. If you indeed didn't start speeding in the newer, faster, flashier car, then it was more likely that you hadn't been booked for offences before, rather than being booked unfairly this time. You know, if you speed, you get speeding tickets - it's fairly easy to work out, and then you go complain when you're stopped from driving?
Excuse me, but that just sounds childishly stupid.