Yes, however, if you take it as justification of theories regarding panspermia, you would need much more evidence to back other claims.
For me personally, the biggest single piece of evidence reqiured will be a demonstration of how microorganisims can escape the gravity of their "mother" planet in the first place.
Did this man read All The President's Men? Does he know what CREEP "ratfucking" types will do to his precious Wiki once they find out? He'd better pray his user base is high enough to root out sustained vandalism.
Danm it! I paid $20 dollars for that plot an all I got was this lousy meteorite hit. It's always the same. The minute you buy, some chump down the street gets blown away or some meteorite just crashes all over prime development land. And me with all these solar power bills to pay.
I've also decided to change streams again. This time three functions will not be supported. You guess which three!
Hah! Hoisted by your own petard Stroustrup!! Your creation turns against you! It's now an easy matter to implement legacy_io::cin , legacy_io::cout , legacy_io::cerr and still pass their references in a void pointer array!! Haha!
Nobody will deny the power of some of the C++ GUI's out there, QT is probably best of breed.
Using a procedural, compiled programming languague for GUI's is a fundamentally flawed concept to begin with. If you want to create a user interface, just use HTML, XUL, XAML whatever. 300+ lines of Visual C++ code just to display hello world is indicative of an underlying problem.
Bring back DDT, save billions of the next few decades.
DDT is saving millions of lives right now by combating malaria. However, putting the stuff on foods intended for comsuption is a fundamentally flawed concept.
I fully support genetically modified foods and the continued promotion of such foods not only to feed the poor, but to offer us a more stable yield and a less expensive standard of living.
If you believe all that then I have a bridge to sell you.
You don't get something for nothing. Gene manipulation is not a precise science. In fact, with the difficulties in reproducing results, it's in some cases, hardly a sciene at all. Gene manipulators essentially resemble olden day alchemists more so than the likes of chemists. Not that their work isn't important.
GM crops are still totally unproven as a source of our staple diet. DDT was "logically" the best way to spray crops. You'll excuse me if I don't jump all over GM crops as a panecea to all ills, especially since I was perfectly happy with the regular, unmodified stuff.
You draw the line when whoever your giving data to, doesn't need to know. For instance, if I buy something in a hardware store, and the clerk asks for my name and address for the recipt, I'll be annoyed, but given that the expensive hardware may break, I'll go along generally.
However, if the company starts asking my age, education level, bank account number, purchase history etc, I'm going to be seriously offended. If they do, I just lie outright. Give the dirty data fiends some serious false positives. Why I'm a 36 year old primary school dropout who will be buying at least $20,000 worth of home applicances this year.
There is, within the faith, a process by which one can stay Catholic and not believe in/agree with almost anything the Catholic Church holds true.
Sorry, but that is NOT how Catholicism works. The Pope is your lord and master. his word is law, and his word is passed down through church law. You obey these teachings or you are in a state of sin. You may think otherwise, but if you want to call yourself a Catholic then you must accept the above mentioned dogmas of the church. Anything less is essentially Protestantism.
My argument is that humanity simply isn't advanced enough to know either way- so in a way, I'm not actually arguing EITHER side. I'm saying we're too stupid to decide.
Have the integrity to stand by your argument. You are arguing for Intelligent Design based on the premise that it is beyond our ability to explain evolution.
This is false. It is not beyond our ability to explain evolution. In fact, we are able to exlain and account for the entire process remarkably well. Nor is it beyond our ability, or yours, to understand evolution.
It may however be beyond the ability of some to simply accept this process that they can both understand and explain. If so, then that is a problem you are either going to have to come to terms with, or come up with a better explanation for.
If ID is your better explanation, fine. Just don't beset some misfortunate children with such an odious belief system as that. Especially on taxpayers money.
Atheism is a faith. It can't be proven. It can't be tested. It makes claims about man's place in the universe, about existence after death, and about whether there is an inherent morality to the universe. It is a minimalist religion with no formalized moral code.
If atheism is a faith then teetotalism is a drug addiction, pacifism is an act of aggression, and quite frankly up is down.
I do not believe in divine beings or holy scriptures. That isn't a system of belief. It's just my opinion. It doesn't grant me any special privilages, unlike someone who actually does believe in something. In fact, but not believing in something, one could argue that I am some sort of second class citizen who must keep his mouth shut while people go around him believing in the most outlandish notions with no proof whatsoever. Then it gets a bit more serious when this religious class uses its additional rights and powers to attemtp to force its beliefs, illogical as they are, down my throat.
To me, the essence of bigotry is to hate something so much that you build a two-dimensional characature of it built solely on negatives, and you blindly disregard the positives as irrelevant. It is the same whether it is racism, elitism, sexism, or religious intolerance.
It's hard to see the positives when there are so, so many well documented negatives. I would argue that religion has been a force for evil more so than good in this world, and I could make a convincing argument for that.
The trouble with religion is that you must accept the evils with the good. you must accept the commands from the clergy on high, else you are cast out. They use the kindness, love and eternal life as the bait, and before you know it you're paying tithes, snipping your childrens genitals, your wife can't sit next to you in church and you're voting the way the local padre tells you to. You don't even know you've been conned because you've been practically brainwashed by the expert prose and argument, and the worst part is someone who wants to help you out of the mess you're in can't do so because the whole thing is a constitutionally protected process. Google Scientology and try and explain to me what the fundamental difference between that and any other major religion actually is.
Do you know that because you RTFA'ed? The article told you so? Who is "we", the slashdot collective mind?
I know that because I have been educated, unlike the misfortunate children being subjected to this ID fallacy. Most slashdotters you will find are rational types and so will be able too see through your argument and read between the lines.
To say that ID is creationism in disguise tells me that you discredited my post from the onset. There is a very clear distinction between creationism and ID.
I do not have to discredit your post. You can do that all on your own. You have discredited yourself! You have stood up and lied through your teeth. You have misled, misinformed, twisted logic, contorted argument. you do not even have the integrity to admit that this Intelligent Design nonsense is simply your newest method of forcing creationism down the throats of those with more integrity than you.
Even now you persist in your outright falsehood. Have you at last come to the point where no shred of self respect is left? Tell us your true opinion. Do not skulk behind false argument any longer. Stand for once in open daylight and tell us what you truely believe. If you cannot do that, then I know not how you can ever look whatever god you believe in in the face.
You know that Intelligent Design is creationism. You've known it all along! Now say it! Or begone sir!
And yet, I believe not one of those things, while simultaneously being Catholic.
Then by definition you are not a Catholic, and you are in fact a heretic. Sorry, but that's the way your religion works. And that's what your children may well end up being taught by zealots while your back is turned.
No, you probably wouldn't, at least not in the U.S. (with the possible exception of your "infidels should all be killed" bit, which might qualify as actionable hate speech...whatever that means). If you went ahead and actually started castrating young girls, that would be a different issue entirely, of course.
But what if in those same United States your religious beliefs dictated that your dying child could not recieve a life saving blood transplant? What then? Or perhaps a comatose loved one? Why should a doctor be stopped, or in any way impeded from saving someones life because of unaccountable and unscrutible religious beliefs?
Of course, you might want to consider that the set of all people who adhere to ID is not the same as the set of all people who aren't atheists before you resume your little tirade.
I know that. But I also know that a great many people who are religious are swayed by the arguments of ID and other fundamentalist dogma. Isn't homosexual marraige now illegal in eleven states? A perfect example of persecution by the religious. Something I'm not protected against, even though those same persectutors are protected against religious persecution, i.e. any attempt to hold their beliefs accountable.
Most religious people might not be rabid fundamentalists, but in my expierience the majority are more intolerent and willing to persecute than the non-religious.
The two things having sex are living. If not, then you can't make babies. I don't think this is too dificult a concept to grasp.
That's a good point. But what about IVF treatments? There are no living things involved here. In fact sperm and ovas are often cyrogenically frozen beforehand and then thawed and there are still people walking arounf today who were born using this method.
Would you care to explain in rigorous scientific detail what exactly this mysterious precursor to life actually is? Does it have mass, charge, volume, speed? Are your sure you're not just making it up without any evidence at all?
What does that quote have to do with evolution? They are discussing how dna is copied, not mutated.
Mutations are a result of "errors" in the copying process, as like any process, DNA facimilation is subject to certain tolerances for error. That quote has everything to do with evolution. In effect, it touches the very foundations of evolution and life on this planet.
This is called a "ad hominem". Look it up.
When someone comes out with statements as patently ridiculous as that, it falls upon those opposing them to question their competance. If someone refuses to engage in rational debate by coming out with absolutely preposterous and outrageous statements along the lines of what the great-grand-parent threw out, then I have every right to question the seriousness of their participation in that debate.
I merely want people to be CLEAR on what ID really is.
We are clear. We already know that it's just creationism in disguise. We also know that it is making a luaghing stock of the whole scientific community. Most of us also know that it is flat out wrong.
Don't patronise Slashdotters pal. A lot of us RTFA.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, however, if you take it as justification of theories regarding panspermia, you would need much more evidence to back other claims.
For me personally, the biggest single piece of evidence reqiured will be a demonstration of how microorganisims can escape the gravity of their "mother" planet in the first place.
Did this man read All The President's Men? Does he know what CREEP "ratfucking" types will do to his precious Wiki once they find out? He'd better pray his user base is high enough to root out sustained vandalism.
If Windows and Linux are outdated, then what about x86 microchip architectures?
The only way to purge this infestation is to burn the infection out with high priced legal action!!
Oh wait...
Danm it! I paid $20 dollars for that plot an all I got was this lousy meteorite hit. It's always the same. The minute you buy, some chump down the street gets blown away or some meteorite just crashes all over prime development land. And me with all these solar power bills to pay.
What next!
I've also decided to change streams again. This time three functions will not be supported. You guess which three!
Hah! Hoisted by your own petard Stroustrup!! Your creation turns against you! It's now an easy matter to implement legacy_io::cin , legacy_io::cout , legacy_io::cerr and still pass their references in a void pointer array!! Haha!
Nobody will deny the power of some of the C++ GUI's out there, QT is probably best of breed.
Using a procedural, compiled programming languague for GUI's is a fundamentally flawed concept to begin with. If you want to create a user interface, just use HTML, XUL, XAML whatever. 300+ lines of Visual C++ code just to display hello world is indicative of an underlying problem.
Ruby is OK until you stumble upon 'Rails. Then the addiction truely takes hold.
When I found the C language, I stopped looking. Ah well.
Go hack mplayers source code, and then come back saying that. C++ might not be a panaeca, but danm, C code can get very, very, very ugly sometimes.
Bring back DDT, save billions of the next few decades.
DDT is saving millions of lives right now by combating malaria. However, putting the stuff on foods intended for comsuption is a fundamentally flawed concept.
Sir, your comment makes no sense. We are all in fact dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your immortal soul.
I do not support the dollar -- I have nearly 98% of my currency in the only true store of wealth: gold and silver
That is one wierd and whacky school of business you ent to there.
I fully support genetically modified foods and the continued promotion of such foods not only to feed the poor, but to offer us a more stable yield and a less expensive standard of living.
If you believe all that then I have a bridge to sell you.
You don't get something for nothing. Gene manipulation is not a precise science. In fact, with the difficulties in reproducing results, it's in some cases, hardly a sciene at all. Gene manipulators essentially resemble olden day alchemists more so than the likes of chemists. Not that their work isn't important.
GM crops are still totally unproven as a source of our staple diet. DDT was "logically" the best way to spray crops. You'll excuse me if I don't jump all over GM crops as a panecea to all ills, especially since I was perfectly happy with the regular, unmodified stuff.
I for one, welcome out new exo-skeletalequipped, overfunded overlords.
You draw the line when whoever your giving data to, doesn't need to know. For instance, if I buy something in a hardware store, and the clerk asks for my name and address for the recipt, I'll be annoyed, but given that the expensive hardware may break, I'll go along generally.
However, if the company starts asking my age, education level, bank account number, purchase history etc, I'm going to be seriously offended. If they do, I just lie outright. Give the dirty data fiends some serious false positives. Why I'm a 36 year old primary school dropout who will be buying at least $20,000 worth of home applicances this year.
Hahaha, this is insane enough that I find it hilarious.
Hey. What makes you think it's so outrageous?
Have a very Merry Slashdot Christmas!
There is, within the faith, a process by which one can stay Catholic and not believe in/agree with almost anything the Catholic Church holds true.
Sorry, but that is NOT how Catholicism works. The Pope is your lord and master. his word is law, and his word is passed down through church law. You obey these teachings or you are in a state of sin. You may think otherwise, but if you want to call yourself a Catholic then you must accept the above mentioned dogmas of the church. Anything less is essentially Protestantism.
My argument is that humanity simply isn't advanced enough to know either way- so in a way, I'm not actually arguing EITHER side. I'm saying we're too stupid to decide.
Have the integrity to stand by your argument. You are arguing for Intelligent Design based on the premise that it is beyond our ability to explain evolution.
This is false. It is not beyond our ability to explain evolution. In fact, we are able to exlain and account for the entire process remarkably well. Nor is it beyond our ability, or yours, to understand evolution.
It may however be beyond the ability of some to simply accept this process that they can both understand and explain. If so, then that is a problem you are either going to have to come to terms with, or come up with a better explanation for.
If ID is your better explanation, fine. Just don't beset some misfortunate children with such an odious belief system as that. Especially on taxpayers money.
Atheism is a faith. It can't be proven. It can't be tested. It makes claims about man's place in the universe, about existence after death, and about whether there is an inherent morality to the universe. It is a minimalist religion with no formalized moral code.
If atheism is a faith then teetotalism is a drug addiction, pacifism is an act of aggression, and quite frankly up is down.
I do not believe in divine beings or holy scriptures. That isn't a system of belief. It's just my opinion. It doesn't grant me any special privilages, unlike someone who actually does believe in something. In fact, but not believing in something, one could argue that I am some sort of second class citizen who must keep his mouth shut while people go around him believing in the most outlandish notions with no proof whatsoever. Then it gets a bit more serious when this religious class uses its additional rights and powers to attemtp to force its beliefs, illogical as they are, down my throat.
To me, the essence of bigotry is to hate something so much that you build a two-dimensional characature of it built solely on negatives, and you blindly disregard the positives as irrelevant. It is the same whether it is racism, elitism, sexism, or religious intolerance.
It's hard to see the positives when there are so, so many well documented negatives. I would argue that religion has been a force for evil more so than good in this world, and I could make a convincing argument for that.
The trouble with religion is that you must accept the evils with the good. you must accept the commands from the clergy on high, else you are cast out. They use the kindness, love and eternal life as the bait, and before you know it you're paying tithes, snipping your childrens genitals, your wife can't sit next to you in church and you're voting the way the local padre tells you to. You don't even know you've been conned because you've been practically brainwashed by the expert prose and argument, and the worst part is someone who wants to help you out of the mess you're in can't do so because the whole thing is a constitutionally protected process. Google Scientology and try and explain to me what the fundamental difference between that and any other major religion actually is.
Now you are being ignorant. That isn't ex nihilo. Last time I checked both partners having sex were alive! Your logic sucks.
So you wouldn't mind explainig then how a plant changes water and air into a living organism? Ex nihilo as you say.
Do you know that because you RTFA'ed? The article told you so? Who is "we", the slashdot collective mind?
I know that because I have been educated, unlike the misfortunate children being subjected to this ID fallacy. Most slashdotters you will find are rational types and so will be able too see through your argument and read between the lines.
To say that ID is creationism in disguise tells me that you discredited my post from the onset. There is a very clear distinction between creationism and ID.
I do not have to discredit your post. You can do that all on your own. You have discredited yourself! You have stood up and lied through your teeth. You have misled, misinformed, twisted logic, contorted argument. you do not even have the integrity to admit that this Intelligent Design nonsense is simply your newest method of forcing creationism down the throats of those with more integrity than you.
Even now you persist in your outright falsehood. Have you at last come to the point where no shred of self respect is left? Tell us your true opinion. Do not skulk behind false argument any longer. Stand for once in open daylight and tell us what you truely believe. If you cannot do that, then I know not how you can ever look whatever god you believe in in the face.
You know that Intelligent Design is creationism. You've known it all along! Now say it! Or begone sir!
And yet, I believe not one of those things, while simultaneously being Catholic.
Then by definition you are not a Catholic, and you are in fact a heretic. Sorry, but that's the way your religion works. And that's what your children may well end up being taught by zealots while your back is turned.
No, you probably wouldn't, at least not in the U.S. (with the possible exception of your "infidels should all be killed" bit, which might qualify as actionable hate speech...whatever that means). If you went ahead and actually started castrating young girls, that would be a different issue entirely, of course.
But what if in those same United States your religious beliefs dictated that your dying child could not recieve a life saving blood transplant? What then? Or perhaps a comatose loved one? Why should a doctor be stopped, or in any way impeded from saving someones life because of unaccountable and unscrutible religious beliefs?
Of course, you might want to consider that the set of all people who adhere to ID is not the same as the set of all people who aren't atheists before you resume your little tirade.
I know that. But I also know that a great many people who are religious are swayed by the arguments of ID and other fundamentalist dogma. Isn't homosexual marraige now illegal in eleven states? A perfect example of persecution by the religious. Something I'm not protected against, even though those same persectutors are protected against religious persecution, i.e. any attempt to hold their beliefs accountable.
Most religious people might not be rabid fundamentalists, but in my expierience the majority are more intolerent and willing to persecute than the non-religious.
Why would I avoid the God-given gift of intellect, and the miracles that it creates?
I have been asking myself much the same question since the beginning of this thread.
I'm saying there is a problem with our definition of what is science, at a very basic level.
Our definition of science is fine. You're the one whose having problems.
The two things having sex are living. If not, then you can't make babies. I don't think this is too dificult a concept to grasp.
That's a good point. But what about IVF treatments? There are no living things involved here. In fact sperm and ovas are often cyrogenically frozen beforehand and then thawed and there are still people walking arounf today who were born using this method.
Would you care to explain in rigorous scientific detail what exactly this mysterious precursor to life actually is? Does it have mass, charge, volume, speed? Are your sure you're not just making it up without any evidence at all?
What does that quote have to do with evolution? They are discussing how dna is copied, not mutated.
Mutations are a result of "errors" in the copying process, as like any process, DNA facimilation is subject to certain tolerances for error. That quote has everything to do with evolution. In effect, it touches the very foundations of evolution and life on this planet.
This is called a "ad hominem". Look it up.
When someone comes out with statements as patently ridiculous as that, it falls upon those opposing them to question their competance. If someone refuses to engage in rational debate by coming out with absolutely preposterous and outrageous statements along the lines of what the great-grand-parent threw out, then I have every right to question the seriousness of their participation in that debate.
I merely want people to be CLEAR on what ID really is.
We are clear. We already know that it's just creationism in disguise. We also know that it is making a luaghing stock of the whole scientific community. Most of us also know that it is flat out wrong.
Don't patronise Slashdotters pal. A lot of us RTFA.