It is free as opposed to proprietary, not free as opposed to commercial. Canonical will gladly sell you a copy of Ubuntu, and Microsoft gives away Internet Explorer, but we still speak of the former as freer than the latter.
To a layman, evolution does sound implausible. They look at the incredibly complex world, that looks just as if it had been designed to work the way it does, and say, "This cannot have happened by chance. It just doesn't make any sense." The fact is that in our normal life, all non-living complex systems are created by an intelligence. Furthermore, anything non-living tends to go decay from complex organization to simple. Evolution says exactly the opposite: mechanistic processes going from simple to complex without any intelligent interference. So there is a gap between "common sense" and what evolution describes. There have been all kinds of essays and writings trying to bridge this gap, but the fact is that there is a gap there to be bridged. And just with other gaps between science and common experience (like, "heaver objects fall at the same rate as light objects", and "the earth goes around the sun"), most people need at least a little bit of evidence and convincing before they're willing to accept them.
Why does the world "look as though it was designed"? Indeed, why would the God of St. Anselm design anything, what do metaphysically perfect beings need to accomplish?
Also, the earth's climate is a non-living complex system, was it created by intelligence? Does it decay? And is the resistance to evolution due to "common sense" or religious training?
Religion presents an interesting conundrum to atheistic evolution. The fact is that the vast majority of humans over the course of history have believed in some sort of spiritual realm. According to atheistic evolution, this must mean that this belief in a spiritual realm gave reproductive advantage to those who held it. But if there really is no spiritual realm, then it means that there can be evolutionary advantage in believing something that is not true.
Then so be it. The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Socrates. I treat evolution as a biological fact, not a system of ethics.
My main point was that Christians have direct experience which confirms (to them) the truth of Christianity, whereas they frequently do not have direct experience of the truth of evolution.
And what is this direct experience?
You can imagine that if someone came to me with some implausible-sounding theory, and then said that because of this theory I should give up solving problems or that I'd be much better off if I left my wife and went back to living the single life, I'd think they were nuts. And if they started trying to teach my children that because of this implausible-sounding theory, engineering was valueless and that marriage was a waste of time, I'd be pretty upset, and would be doing something to fight back.
What implausible-sounding theory? Evolution? Has it occurred to you that theism may be even less plausible?
The main reward I get from Christianity is having a relationship with God. God knows me, cares about me, values me, and loves me. I also love God -- I love serving him, I love seeing the cool things that he's made, I love talking to him and learning from him. God guides me: I am where I am right now because God has led me here, and although I don't know exactly where I'll be living or doing in one year from now, I know he has a plan and trust him to let me know when I need to know. God protects me and provides for me.
And if there is no God with whom to have a relationship?
But is there such a thing as spirituality outside of consciousness? And even if it were not subject to scientific explanation, would that make it amenable to a religious explanation?
I suspect that Socrates could have explained friendship better than most theologians. Nor is unlikely that modern secular philosophers could also explain it better.
Reality purports to describe spirit, science actually describes stuff. That is the difference between them.
I now understand that spirituality is a response to a nihilistic, pointless existence. Some people will always fill that void with some form of religion no matter how much science may prove that point.
But is it a legitimate response? If one believes one's life to be nihilistic and pointless, how will religion solve that? Religion purports to give people meaning, but can it? If God has the "usual" attributes ascribed to him (omniscience, immortality, etc), then how do values, meaning and purpose apply to Him?
No, that's a parody of a particular Christian doctrine, held by a segment of American Protestants. I'm not sure whether you mean to assert that your parody is "theism", or the actual doctrine is theism, but I'm quite sure that neither one is theism.
Theism is simply the belief in god(s). If the GP believes that Elvis is God and will return to rule the world, how is that not theistic?
Besides, everyone knows it's Jim Morrison, not Elvis who's going to rule the world.
What happens to Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore?
Science should be wide open to all curiosity, humble enough to know its limitations, and bold enough to say what it knows. Religion should provide pathways for philosophy, service, and self-improvement. Using religion to fill in science's blanks just sets us up for these social disasters we've seen time after time.
And how does religion provide these pathways? Whether science can or not isn't the question. The question is if religion has any proper magisterium at all (to use a term from Stephen Gould).
Christianity gives them hope, comfort, healing, strength, a way to understand the world, a way to improve themselves and their life. They have direct, first-hand experience of this help to them.
So Marx was right in saying that religion is the opiate of the masses? How does Christianity help them understand the world, as opposed to making them "feel" better about it? How does it improve their lives, and by what standard of improvement? And what is this "direct, first-hand experience"?
Another problem is editing grub.conf to change the default boot order, but this is only marginally better on Windows. I would however expect a higher percentage of Linux users to be utilising more than one OS.
How hard is it to change the default, or the fallbacks in menu.lst (the file dealing with the boot order)?
Also, how does one set up Windows to allow for booting multiple OSes? I've seen the result at a former work computer, where one had the option of Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Can one boot non-Microsoft OSes as well?
Even if one screws up menu.lst so badly that the system is unbootable from the hard drive, one can still fix it booting off a Live CD and editing menu.lst.
For example, having to edit a handful of documented registry keys to re-enable old file formats in Office 2007 (ignoring the rights and wrongs of disabling them in the first place) is "ludicrous" and "impractical for 99% of the user-base", but much more complex command line actions are routinely required even on Ubuntu.
I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, what are the complex command-line actions?
And what version of Windows includes TeX/LaTeX, gcc (or some similar compiler), Apache (or a similar web server), GNU emacs (or a similar text editor), an ftp server, a telnet/ssh server, python, perl, a database server, and support for multiple desktops?
That's nice, and I have downloaded some of those. But I prefer having TeX/LaTeX, GNU emacs, gcc, Apache, etc. being included with a distribution. I'd rather not have to download from hell and beyond to have nice programs. Indeed, I first got Linux in 1998 (a week after getting my first computer) and I had only a dialup connection at the time. Would you want to download TeX/LaTeX over a 56k modem?
Slashdot Mirror
It is free as opposed to proprietary, not free as opposed to commercial. Canonical will gladly sell you a copy of Ubuntu, and Microsoft gives away Internet Explorer, but we still speak of the former as freer than the latter.
To a layman, evolution does sound implausible. They look at the incredibly complex world, that looks just as if it had been designed to work the way it does, and say, "This cannot have happened by chance. It just doesn't make any sense." The fact is that in our normal life, all non-living complex systems are created by an intelligence. Furthermore, anything non-living tends to go decay from complex organization to simple. Evolution says exactly the opposite: mechanistic processes going from simple to complex without any intelligent interference. So there is a gap between "common sense" and what evolution describes. There have been all kinds of essays and writings trying to bridge this gap, but the fact is that there is a gap there to be bridged. And just with other gaps between science and common experience (like, "heaver objects fall at the same rate as light objects", and "the earth goes around the sun"), most people need at least a little bit of evidence and convincing before they're willing to accept them.
Why does the world "look as though it was designed"? Indeed, why would the God of St. Anselm design anything, what do metaphysically perfect beings need to accomplish?
Also, the earth's climate is a non-living complex system, was it created by intelligence? Does it decay? And is the resistance to evolution due to "common sense" or religious training?
Religion presents an interesting conundrum to atheistic evolution. The fact is that the vast majority of humans over the course of history have believed in some sort of spiritual realm. According to atheistic evolution, this must mean that this belief in a spiritual realm gave reproductive advantage to those who held it. But if there really is no spiritual realm, then it means that there can be evolutionary advantage in believing something that is not true.
Then so be it. The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Socrates. I treat evolution as a biological fact, not a system of ethics.
My main point was that Christians have direct experience which confirms (to them) the truth of Christianity, whereas they frequently do not have direct experience of the truth of evolution.
And what is this direct experience?
You can imagine that if someone came to me with some implausible-sounding theory, and then said that because of this theory I should give up solving problems or that I'd be much better off if I left my wife and went back to living the single life, I'd think they were nuts. And if they started trying to teach my children that because of this implausible-sounding theory, engineering was valueless and that marriage was a waste of time, I'd be pretty upset, and would be doing something to fight back.
What implausible-sounding theory? Evolution? Has it occurred to you that theism may be even less plausible?
The main reward I get from Christianity is having a relationship with God. God knows me, cares about me, values me, and loves me. I also love God -- I love serving him, I love seeing the cool things that he's made, I love talking to him and learning from him. God guides me: I am where I am right now because God has led me here, and although I don't know exactly where I'll be living or doing in one year from now, I know he has a plan and trust him to let me know when I need to know. God protects me and provides for me.
And if there is no God with whom to have a relationship?
I prefer having a factual reason for living.
But is there such a thing as spirituality outside of consciousness? And even if it were not subject to scientific explanation, would that make it amenable to a religious explanation?
I suspect that Socrates could have explained friendship better than most theologians. Nor is unlikely that modern secular philosophers could also explain it better.
Reality purports to describe spirit, science actually describes stuff. That is the difference between them.
And yet you have time to post on Slashdot.
I now understand that spirituality is a response to a nihilistic, pointless existence. Some people will always fill that void with some form of religion no matter how much science may prove that point.
But is it a legitimate response? If one believes one's life to be nihilistic and pointless, how will religion solve that? Religion purports to give people meaning, but can it? If God has the "usual" attributes ascribed to him (omniscience, immortality, etc), then how do values, meaning and purpose apply to Him?
No, that's a parody of a particular Christian doctrine, held by a segment of American Protestants. I'm not sure whether you mean to assert that your parody is "theism", or the actual doctrine is theism, but I'm quite sure that neither one is theism.
Theism is simply the belief in god(s). If the GP believes that Elvis is God and will return to rule the world, how is that not theistic?
Besides, everyone knows it's Jim Morrison, not Elvis who's going to rule the world.
What happens to Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore?
religion describes the spiritual.
Does it? What happens as neurophysiologists and cognitive psychologists explain consciousness in nonreligious terms?
Science should be wide open to all curiosity, humble enough to know its limitations, and bold enough to say what it knows. Religion should provide pathways for philosophy, service, and self-improvement. Using religion to fill in science's blanks just sets us up for these social disasters we've seen time after time.
And how does religion provide these pathways? Whether science can or not isn't the question. The question is if religion has any proper magisterium at all (to use a term from Stephen Gould).
Yeah, but can he cross bodies of water by running on crocodiles/alligators?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070328/
Actually, it was a 19th-century technique.
Christianity gives them hope, comfort, healing, strength, a way to understand the world, a way to improve themselves and their life. They have direct, first-hand experience of this help to them.
So Marx was right in saying that religion is the opiate of the masses? How does Christianity help them understand the world, as opposed to making them "feel" better about it? How does it improve their lives, and by what standard of improvement? And what is this "direct, first-hand experience"?
Sorry, I started on this subthread in response to an Anonymous Coward who made such a claim. It's the parent of my first post in this exchange.
And this "functionality" a good idea?
No, thank you. I prefer to have certain files be marked as nonexecutable. I just sleep better that way.
And using Word 2007 wastes less time than LaTeX + emacs?
If your market is already dead, then aren't you already in Elysium? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium
Should we just start calling it "Airstrip One"?
Another problem is editing grub.conf to change the default boot order, but this is only marginally better on Windows. I would however expect a higher percentage of Linux users to be utilising more than one OS.
How hard is it to change the default, or the fallbacks in menu.lst (the file dealing with the boot order)?
Also, how does one set up Windows to allow for booting multiple OSes? I've seen the result at a former work computer, where one had the option of Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Can one boot non-Microsoft OSes as well?
Even if one screws up menu.lst so badly that the system is unbootable from the hard drive, one can still fix it booting off a Live CD and editing menu.lst.
For example, having to edit a handful of documented registry keys to re-enable old file formats in Office 2007 (ignoring the rights and wrongs of disabling them in the first place) is "ludicrous" and "impractical for 99% of the user-base", but much more complex command line actions are routinely required even on Ubuntu.
I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, what are the complex command-line actions?
And what do you use for writing mathematics? Or do you just not "waste" your time with that?
And what version of Windows includes TeX/LaTeX, gcc (or some similar compiler), Apache (or a similar web server), GNU emacs (or a similar text editor), an ftp server, a telnet/ssh server, python, perl, a database server, and support for multiple desktops?
Yes, I could download these, but why bother?
That's nice, and I have downloaded some of those. But I prefer having TeX/LaTeX, GNU emacs, gcc, Apache, etc. being included with a distribution. I'd rather not have to download from hell and beyond to have nice programs. Indeed, I first got Linux in 1998 (a week after getting my first computer) and I had only a dialup connection at the time. Would you want to download TeX/LaTeX over a 56k modem?