I read it again to see if there was someting I'd missed, to see if there really was somewhere where you'd discussed this as you claim. Nope. There wasn't.
"The heartland" is a term that really ends up referring to pretty much anywhwere inbetween the two major mountain ranges, depending on who's doing the speaking at the time they have a different idea of what it means - it could be anything from the Rockies to the Appalacians. In other words, anything not on the coastline. There's plenty of differentiation within that range. For an example of that differentiation, About 90 miles to the northeast of me is Appleton, WI. It's the home of that most infamous historical senator in favor of using any means necessary to root out unamerican ideas, Senator Joe McCarthey. But, here near me, a mere 6 miles away in Middleton, WI, is the home of the current Sentator Russ Feingold - the only senator, out of all 100, that voted against the USA/PATRIOT act, and he used a reasoning almost the exact opposite of McCarthey's to do so.
I'm just trying to point out here that there's a lot of room for differentiation. Location doesn't have much to do with it.
The distinction you are attempting to make doesn't exist as a matter of law in this case, and is a pathetic attempt to cling to the liberal mantra that there was no Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection
Pretending to know what I'm thinking when you know damned well you don't is an act of lying. I'm not a liberal. I just give a damn about truth. (If I fit the liberal profile, I wouldn't be in favor of space exploration at all.) I'm a logical thinker - that makes me incompatable with BOTH parties.
Continuing the failed policies of forty years of liberal control of the education system certainly isn't going to do it.
Nor is letting fundamentalist idiots run the show.
There were just as many people then who were not creationists as now.
As a percentage? No. (Keep in mind that under this context, "creationist" doesn't JUST mean that someone believes there's a god who created the universe, but that this god did so in a way incompatable with evolutionary theory. There are a lot of people who believe BOTH evolution and that there's a god. I don't understand that mindset myself, since it would have to be a very sloppy god that isn't really in control, but I do know that such people exist.
And of course, if you were an honest person, you'd know that rejecting a theory does not mean rejecting all similar theories. You cite people who have rejected SPECIFIC models of evolution, and then say this means they are anti-evolution.
The other problem, of course, is that by watching the water level move all you've proven is that theres' been a change in pressure. That *could* be caused by a reduction in how much gaseous material there is (which would have to mean it transformed into something else - the matter doesn't just go away), OR it could be caused by reforming the gases into new kinds of gases that don't take up the same volume per mass, and thus the pressure they produce changes.
The key problem is that apple didn't invent the transparent window UI. It's existed in other systems before (Heck, even video games. I'm playing Deus Ex again, and it uses transparent windows all the time). If apple wants to say, "nobody else can do transparent windows using this precise technique we used", then that's okay. But that's not how software patents get used. It's always, "because we came up with this one particular way of doing it, nobody else is allowed to do anything that has a similar effect, even if they use a different method to pull it off." That's why software patents are evil. They break the way patents are supposed to be used - a patent is supposed to merely be a ban on ONE SPECIFIC METHOD of doing something, not a ban on all other similar things that use any vaguely similar methods. The problem with software patents is that they are being granted for things that are way too high-level and generic. As an example, think of the Amazon.com one-click patent.
It's a relevant and accurate observation about science and religion.
I was with you until this line. Accuracy should have nothing whatsoever to do with moderation, which is precisely why it was wrong to mod this guy down. I say it was wrong to call him a troll *despite* the accuracy (or lack thereof) of his post. Disagreement does not mean trolling.
People thinking atheists are those who believe they have conclusive evidece god doesn't eixst really start to irk me sometimes. It's like people who believe that "hacker" just means "one who breaks into comptuers".
You're painting a group with too wide a brush. It is not required that one believe god cannnot possibly exist in order for one to be an atheist.
That the calendar is based on the alleged birth of Jesus is not proof of Jesus existing. It's merely proof that the Romans who made the calendar, at the time, believed in Jesus existing.
You know, regional mischaracterizations are also a form of ignorance, superstition, and fear. I live in the "Great American Heartland". I'm an atheist. The city I live in is home to the Freedom From Relgion Foundation. Rattlesnake worship cults are only really seen far (1000 miles) to the south of here. The Heartland is really, really, BIG, and there's plenty of room for differentiation.
original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers
The phrase "Founding Fathers" generally does not refer to the original first few colonists (the ones who came here for religious reasons). It refers to the people over 100 years later who formed the government - a very different set of people. You insult the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Ben Franklin by lumping them in with people like the Plymouth Rock pilgrims.
Atheism is a flawed argument itself, as one cannot prove or disprove the existence of a god with mere science from this world. Any insight you have would be most interesting.
I too agree that you cannot disprove the existence of god. But I AM an atheist (and an agnostic - the terms are not mutually exclusive as so many seem to think). The difference is that I recognize that I don't actually HAVE the burden of proof here. If something doesn't exist, it won't leave behind one iota of evidence. You can't prove non-existance of any proposed thing unless it is definitionally impossible (i.e. a four-sided triangle). So long as the definition describes something possible IN THEORY, then it cannot ever be disproven. Unless you are willing to hold a potential belief in an infinite number of things, then assuming non-existence by default is the default hypothesis you have to take for any proposed thing.
Now, looking at it from the other side, if someone proposes an existing thing that can't leave behind any evidence even just theoretically, then I'm not the slightest bit concerned about it, since they just ended up defining a thing that doesn't matter, and has zero effect on the universe. Sure, believe it exists, it doesn't change anything. In order for your proposed thing to be relevant, it's got to actually AFFECT something about the universe, and that means evidence theoretically exists for it (but might not be found yet).
The only reason you can't disprove god is that the term is fuzzily defined. You *can* disprove certain very nailed-down specific instances of god (for example, if part of your definition of god is that it's a being that created the world 6000 years ago), but the generic term is too vague to be able to cover everything it means with a proof.
The problem is that an atheist shouldn't have to prove one thing about god. Not one. It's NOT his idea. The skeptic to a claim does not need to prove the counterclaim. People portray atheism as a claim, when it's not. It's the default hypothesis. Whenever proposing a thing exists, the answer "I'm sitting on the fence, y'know, kinda 50/50, not sure" is NOT the unassuming default hypothesis as so many claim. The answer, "I'll act on the hypothesis it doesn't exist until shown otherwise" is. Why? Because there are an infinite number of things that could theoretically be proposed, and only a finite number of them can actually exist - therefore if you have nothing more to go on other than "I made up this hypothetical thing", then the odds of you being right are nearly zero.
That difference in burden of proof is why theists and atheists are not both equally sticking their necks out with their positions. Neither has evidence, that's true, but only one side actually needs it.
(And now a note about moderation)
While I completely disagree with you, it was unfair that someone modded you as "troll". Hey, moderators: Even if you, like me, believe this guy is incorrect, being factually incorrect is not the same thing as trolling. Now, if this long religious post was a response to something completely unrelated, I could see the validity of a negative mod, or if it was obvious that this poster is lying to get a rise out of people. But this was perfectly on-topic, and in response to the point, and spoken with honesty. Honestly reporting a belief that you think is mistaken is not the same thing as trolling, even when you are right about that belief being mistaken. You aren't supposed to moderate for agreement or disagreement, or even for correctness or incorrectness (which is really the same thing since you can't get an external viewpoint to differentiate "I think he's wrong" from "I know he's wrong".) There's a *reason* there aren't any options like that on the moderation pull-down list.
Yes and No. India was the *reason* for the trip, but he would have expected to get there by landing on one of the more easterly parts of Asia (like China) first. One of the reasons he wasn't that concerned about getting lost was that he figured he's only got to hit asia somewhere - how hard could that be, it's huge... and then once he landed there he could re-fix his position and continue. His mistake was thinking the earth was smaller around than it is. (And while it's common myth to say that those opposed to his going thought the earth was flat, in actuality they were opposed because they thought it was bigger around than he did. They were right. He was really lucky there was another continent in the way that none of them knew about.)
Your sig is deceptive. The law case in question merely found that Iraq gave funding to Al-Queda, which is a large blanket organization doing lots of terrorist activity. It did not claim, as your summary implies heavily, that the funding was earmarked for the 9/11 attacks, but just for Al-Queda's operations in general (which is still a problem, granted, but you are being deliberately deceptive with that summarization.)
So, if you want the human race to become extinct, vote for John Kerry. If you want us to survive, vote for George Bush.
Throwing money at the problem is only half the story of how to make a moonbase. Having a population of people better educated in science is just as important, and Bush is not going to make that happen.
The most certain way to get modded as a troll is to claim that people will mod you down for merely being honest. Regardless of the veracity of your claim, the instant you make that kind of attachment to it, you are trolling, and your claim you will be modded down becomes a self-fufilling prophecy.
Since the taxonomy of creatures is an arbitrary classification made up by people, if you *want* to say that no species have ever evolved into another, it's very easy to do by tautology - just make it so that you call any form you see that's halfway between two other forms its own species. If an intermediate transitionary form is known, it will be called it's own species.
Both religion and science seek answers - but only one of them has a tradition of self-doubt about them and a desire to TEST them wherever possible.
The less testable something is in science, the less certain scientists are about it. So the cutting-edge pie-in-the-sky stuff where scientists are currently pushing the boundries of the unknown is always the least certain part of science, and the part most open to debate.
Science: Start from stuff that's fairly certain, and derive stuff that you're not as certain about from it.
Religion: Start from stuff that's uncertain, and derive stuff that you're certain about from it.
Have you tried this experiment? The reason I ask is that it seems to me that since burned wood ash is lighter than the original hunk of wood it came from, that maybe the process of burning actually ADDS more gasseous material to the air than it removes - sure it removes oxygen, but it's not so much removing it as transforming it - and in the process some of the solid matter in the fuel becomes part of the new gasseous matter being created. (And that's where the visible flame is coming from - it's from the new gasses being released.)
Correcting myself here. I said: "If a car takes 5 feet to slow from 40 Mph to zero, that takes only a fifth as much force as if it takes one foot to do so."
That's not even close to correct. I was thinking of 5 seconds versus 1 second, not 5 feet versus 1 foot. Its still true that the 5-foot decelleration takes less force to accomplish than the 1-foot, but my calculation of exactly by how much was way, way wrong.
People are more expensive to fix or replace than cars. The current model of car body is designed to crumple so as to soften the impact on the occupants. (If a car takes 5 feet to slow from 40 Mph to zero, that takes only a fifth as much force as if it takes one foot to do so. So you ruin the car, but save money in the long run by having a shorter hospital stay and/or disability payouts.)
These things will rise to the surface like bobs, or the road will sink around them. Just watch.
In which case it will still be true that a plow would be a problem long before a car running over them will be. By design, they *must* be something you can roll over, since they mark the road between the lands and will be rolled over repeatedly by people changing langes. If they reach the point where you can't roll over them anymore because they stick up to far, then a snowplow would have destroyed them long before that point.
Slashdot Mirror
I read it again to see if there was someting I'd missed, to see if there really was somewhere where you'd discussed this as you claim. Nope. There wasn't.
"The heartland" is a term that really ends up referring to pretty much anywhwere inbetween the two major mountain ranges, depending on who's doing the speaking at the time they have a different idea of what it means - it could be anything from the Rockies to the Appalacians. In other words, anything not on the coastline. There's plenty of differentiation within that range. For an example of that differentiation, About 90 miles to the northeast of me is Appleton, WI. It's the home of that most infamous historical senator in favor of using any means necessary to root out unamerican ideas, Senator Joe McCarthey. But, here near me, a mere 6 miles away in Middleton, WI, is the home of the current Sentator Russ Feingold - the only senator, out of all 100, that voted against the USA/PATRIOT act, and he used a reasoning almost the exact opposite of McCarthey's to do so.
I'm just trying to point out here that there's a lot of room for differentiation. Location doesn't have much to do with it.
You're not supposed to be able to patent how you USE something, only how you ACCOPLLISH it.
The distinction you are attempting to make doesn't exist as a matter of law in this case, and is a pathetic attempt to cling to the liberal mantra that there was no Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection
Pretending to know what I'm thinking when you know damned well you don't is an act of lying. I'm not a liberal. I just give a damn about truth. (If I fit the liberal profile, I wouldn't be in favor of space exploration at all.) I'm a logical thinker - that makes me incompatable with BOTH parties.
Continuing the failed policies of forty years of liberal control of the education system certainly isn't going to do it.
Nor is letting fundamentalist idiots run the show.
There were just as many people then who were not creationists as now.
As a percentage? No. (Keep in mind that under this context, "creationist" doesn't JUST mean that someone believes there's a god who created the universe, but that this god did so in a way incompatable with evolutionary theory. There are a lot of people who believe BOTH evolution and that there's a god. I don't understand that mindset myself, since it would have to be a very sloppy god that isn't really in control, but I do know that such people exist.
And of course, if you were an honest person, you'd know that rejecting a theory does not mean rejecting all similar theories. You cite people who have rejected SPECIFIC models of evolution, and then say this means they are anti-evolution.
God bless you DunbarTheInept.
Don't Pray On Me.
The other problem, of course, is that by watching the water level move all you've proven is that theres' been a change in pressure. That *could* be caused by a reduction in how much gaseous material there is (which would have to mean it transformed into something else - the matter doesn't just go away), OR it could be caused by reforming the gases into new kinds of gases that don't take up the same volume per mass, and thus the pressure they produce changes.
The key problem is that apple didn't invent the transparent window UI. It's existed in other systems before (Heck, even video games. I'm playing Deus Ex again, and it uses transparent windows all the time). If apple wants to say, "nobody else can do transparent windows using this precise technique we used", then that's okay. But that's not how software patents get used. It's always, "because we came up with this one particular way of doing it, nobody else is allowed to do anything that has a similar effect, even if they use a different method to pull it off." That's why software patents are evil. They break the way patents are supposed to be used - a patent is supposed to merely be a ban on ONE SPECIFIC METHOD of doing something, not a ban on all other similar things that use any vaguely similar methods. The problem with software patents is that they are being granted for things that are way too high-level and generic. As an example, think of the Amazon.com one-click patent.
It's a relevant and accurate observation about science and religion.
I was with you until this line. Accuracy should have nothing whatsoever to do with moderation, which is precisely why it was wrong to mod this guy down. I say it was wrong to call him a troll *despite* the accuracy (or lack thereof) of his post. Disagreement does not mean trolling.
This is why creation science will never be taken seriously regardless of the evidence.
The evidence, or lack thereof, is precisely WHY it's not being taken seriously.
People thinking atheists are those who believe they have conclusive evidece god doesn't eixst really start to irk me sometimes. It's like people who believe that "hacker" just means "one who breaks into comptuers".
You're painting a group with too wide a brush. It is not required that one believe god cannnot possibly exist in order for one to be an atheist.
That the calendar is based on the alleged birth of Jesus is not proof of Jesus existing. It's merely proof that the Romans who made the calendar, at the time, believed in Jesus existing.
You know, regional mischaracterizations are also a form of ignorance, superstition, and fear. I live in the "Great American Heartland". I'm an atheist. The city I live in is home to the Freedom From Relgion Foundation. Rattlesnake worship cults are only really seen far (1000 miles) to the south of here. The Heartland is really, really, BIG, and there's plenty of room for differentiation.
original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers
The phrase "Founding Fathers" generally does not refer to the original first few colonists (the ones who came here for religious reasons). It refers to the people over 100 years later who formed the government - a very different set of people. You insult the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Ben Franklin by lumping them in with people like the Plymouth Rock pilgrims.
Atheism is a flawed argument itself, as one cannot prove or disprove the existence of a god with mere science from this world. Any insight you have would be most interesting.
I too agree that you cannot disprove the existence of god. But I AM an atheist (and an agnostic - the terms are not mutually exclusive as so many seem to think). The difference is that I recognize that I don't actually HAVE the burden of proof here. If something doesn't exist, it won't leave behind one iota of evidence. You can't prove non-existance of any proposed thing unless it is definitionally impossible (i.e. a four-sided triangle). So long as the definition describes something possible IN THEORY, then it cannot ever be disproven. Unless you are willing to hold a potential belief in an infinite number of things, then assuming non-existence by default is the default hypothesis you have to take for any proposed thing.
Now, looking at it from the other side, if someone proposes an existing thing that can't leave behind any evidence even just theoretically, then I'm not the slightest bit concerned about it, since they just ended up defining a thing that doesn't matter, and has zero effect on the universe. Sure, believe it exists, it doesn't change anything. In order for your proposed thing to be relevant, it's got to actually AFFECT something about the universe, and that means evidence theoretically exists for it (but might not be found yet).
The only reason you can't disprove god is that the term is fuzzily defined. You *can* disprove certain very nailed-down specific instances of god (for example, if part of your definition of god is that it's a being that created the world 6000 years ago), but the generic term is too vague to be able to cover everything it means with a proof.
The problem is that an atheist shouldn't have to prove one thing about god. Not one. It's NOT his idea. The skeptic to a claim does not need to prove the counterclaim. People portray atheism as a claim, when it's not. It's the default hypothesis. Whenever proposing a thing exists, the answer "I'm sitting on the fence, y'know, kinda 50/50, not sure" is NOT the unassuming default hypothesis as so many claim. The answer, "I'll act on the hypothesis it doesn't exist until shown otherwise" is. Why? Because there are an infinite number of things that could theoretically be proposed, and only a finite number of them can actually exist - therefore if you have nothing more to go on other than "I made up this hypothetical thing", then the odds of you being right are nearly zero.
That difference in burden of proof is why theists and atheists are not both equally sticking their necks out with their positions. Neither has evidence, that's true, but only one side actually needs it.
(And now a note about moderation)
While I completely disagree with you, it was unfair that someone modded you as "troll". Hey, moderators: Even if you, like me, believe this guy is incorrect, being factually incorrect is not the same thing as trolling. Now, if this long religious post was a response to something completely unrelated, I could see the validity of a negative mod, or if it was obvious that this poster is lying to get a rise out of people. But this was perfectly on-topic, and in response to the point, and spoken with honesty. Honestly reporting a belief that you think is mistaken is not the same thing as trolling, even when you are right about that belief being mistaken. You aren't supposed to moderate for agreement or disagreement, or even for correctness or incorrectness (which is really the same thing since you can't get an external viewpoint to differentiate "I think he's wrong" from "I know he's wrong".) There's a *reason* there aren't any options like that on the moderation pull-down list.
Yes and No. India was the *reason* for the trip, but he would have expected to get there by landing on one of the more easterly parts of Asia (like China) first. One of the reasons he wasn't that concerned about getting lost was that he figured he's only got to hit asia somewhere - how hard could that be, it's huge... and then once he landed there he could re-fix his position and continue. His mistake was thinking the earth was smaller around than it is. (And while it's common myth to say that those opposed to his going thought the earth was flat, in actuality they were opposed because they thought it was bigger around than he did. They were right. He was really lucky there was another continent in the way that none of them knew about.)
Your sig is deceptive. The law case in question merely found that Iraq gave funding to Al-Queda, which is a large blanket organization doing lots of terrorist activity. It did not claim, as your summary implies heavily, that the funding was earmarked for the 9/11 attacks, but just for Al-Queda's operations in general (which is still a problem, granted, but you are being deliberately deceptive with that summarization.)
So, if you want the human race to become extinct, vote for John Kerry. If you want us to survive, vote for George Bush.
Throwing money at the problem is only half the story of how to make a moonbase. Having a population of people better educated in science is just as important, and Bush is not going to make that happen.
The most certain way to get modded as a troll is to claim that people will mod you down for merely being honest. Regardless of the veracity of your claim, the instant you make that kind of attachment to it, you are trolling, and your claim you will be modded down becomes a self-fufilling prophecy.
Did you know that the "fathers" of many significant branches of modern science were creationists?
Of course. So was EVERYBODY ELSE AT THE TIME. Duh.
The genesis story claims the Earth formed before the Sun did. So much for your theory.
Since the taxonomy of creatures is an arbitrary classification made up by people, if you *want* to say that no species have ever evolved into another, it's very easy to do by tautology - just make it so that you call any form you see that's halfway between two other forms its own species. If an intermediate transitionary form is known, it will be called it's own species.
Both religion and science seek answers - but only one of them has a tradition of self-doubt about them and a desire to TEST them wherever possible.
The less testable something is in science, the less certain scientists are about it. So the cutting-edge pie-in-the-sky stuff where scientists are currently pushing the boundries of the unknown is always the least certain part of science, and the part most open to debate.
Science: Start from stuff that's fairly certain, and derive stuff that you're not as certain about from it.
Religion: Start from stuff that's uncertain, and derive stuff that you're certain about from it.
One is definately more honest than the other.
Have you tried this experiment? The reason I ask is that it seems to me that since burned wood ash is lighter than the original hunk of wood it came from, that maybe the process of burning actually ADDS more gasseous material to the air than it removes - sure it removes oxygen, but it's not so much removing it as transforming it - and in the process some of the solid matter in the fuel becomes part of the new gasseous matter being created. (And that's where the visible flame is coming from - it's from the new gasses being released.)
Correcting myself here. I said: "If a car takes 5 feet to slow from 40 Mph to zero, that takes only a fifth as much force as if it takes one foot to do so."
That's not even close to correct. I was thinking of 5 seconds versus 1 second, not 5 feet versus 1 foot. Its still true that the 5-foot decelleration takes less force to accomplish than the 1-foot, but my calculation of exactly by how much was way, way wrong.
People are more expensive to fix or replace than cars. The current model of car body is designed to crumple so as to soften the impact on the occupants. (If a car takes 5 feet to slow from 40 Mph to zero, that takes only a fifth as much force as if it takes one foot to do so. So you ruin the car, but save money in the long run by having a shorter hospital stay and/or disability payouts.)
These things will rise to the surface like bobs, or the road will sink around them. Just watch.
In which case it will still be true that a plow would be a problem long before a car running over them will be. By design, they *must* be something you can roll over, since they mark the road between the lands and will be rolled over repeatedly by people changing langes. If they reach the point where you can't roll over them anymore because they stick up to far, then a snowplow would have destroyed them long before that point.
It seems you have an inflated sense of the importance of arbitrary units of measure.