Wired has more than that wrong. I was stunned at the statement:
After posting perfect scores on his final undergraduate exams, he went on to graduate school at the University of Bonn, where he wrote a paper showing for the first time how a robotic cart, in motion, could balance a pole.
This is simply an inverted pendulum experiment which has been in classical control theory for years. There is no way he did that for the first time in the early 1990s.
A good engineer after crunching the numbers always asks himself "does this make sense?" Physicists seem to have to put this step aside when dealing with quantum mechanics (which is why I did so badly in that course - too may uncertainties and fudge factors. I kept thinking "this can't be right. They've got to be kidding" )
More anthropologists these days are leaning towards the idea that humans evolved next to riversides and on beaches. (Bipedalism came about because of wading, it explains the lack of hair, webbed fingers, ability to hold our breath, the direction of the hairs on our body, the shape of our noses, etc, etc.)
If you make the supposition that the garden of Eden was really the ocean then it all makes sense! Abundance of food, no need to wear clothes...
Then they get thrown out (God/evolution removes ability to breath underwater) and now we are stuck tilling soil and wearing clothes.
Moreover, I thought Einstein was referring to the uncertainties of the quantum theory (i.e. Schrödinger's cat) when he said, "God does not play dice", meaning that he didn't accept it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
To severely paraphrase, Einstein believed the unverse has a fundamental, simple order to it. To have random unknown chance (for example the probability waves) be part of the equation severely bothered him and was the fundamental part of quantum physics that he could not accept. That was also why he believed there was some model underneath quantum physics that would predict and bring determinism to the randomness.
Your problem seems to be that you think belief in evolution precludes belief in God. If you accept that God and evolution can coexist then there is no need to debate Intelligent Design.
My audience, and the people who were responding to my posts were creationists who were pushing Intelligent Design as science.
You seem to be confusing IDers with creationists. They are not the same thing. If I look at a mouse trap, not knowing its origin, I might conclude that it is designed, and not the result of unguided random processes. Likewise, if I look at certain structures of a cell, I might come to the same conclusion. Making observations and coming up with hypotheses does not suddenly make one a young earth creationist.
ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one in rebuttal.
Ya know, there is that planet called Pern where they did this very thing. Came in very handy when Treadfall was about. A nice side benefit was that the dragons could teleport to almost any place on the planet in an instant.
Here I am trying to come up with legitimate solutions to environmental problems and you start talking crazy talk with teleporting dragons on other planets. Sheesh!;-)
Just because you have a GPS receiver doesn't mean a 3rd party can use it to track you. A GPS is receive only, you need additional hardware to rebroadcast your position for someone to track you.
But I would be interested in what you mean by "God went through this elaborate lie to trick us."
That certainly doesn't sound like you are giving God much of the benefit of the doubt.
Also, holding the view that the entire universe was created solely for our benefit (which is what IDers are implying when they say it is 6000 years old and created according to our bible) is possibly the most arrogant thing I've ever heard. Nowhere in the bible does it say this -it is solely a human interpretation. There are countless billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. Why would all of this be just for us when we cant even see the galaxies let alone visit them? This simply doesn't make sense.
It is so much simpler and more logical to believe that God created the universe out of nothing (i.e. the Big Bang) as the bible says, and allowed the universe to evolve on its own according to a set of rules that he set up (i.e. rules we discover and call Physics, Geology, Astrophysics, etc.) You can always interpret the bible such that it does not conflict with known and accepted science - the majority of Christians and other religions take this approach, and it is the official view of their church.
Most of the time it should be pretty clear to an intelligent person which is which.
EXACTLY. which is why a sane person when he reads Genesis realizes that it is just an analogy to how the universe was created and does not interpret 'day' to mean a real day. Example, since the Sun wasn't created until the fourth 'day', how is it possible to have 'evenings' and 'mornings' for the first three days?
Genesis is not meant to be literal. As you say any intelligent person can see this. So trying to discredit areas of science and introducing pseudo science such as Intelligent Design to try and prove the literal biblical view of the earth being 6000 years old is a stupid waste of time at the least, and corrupting the minds of youth against science at the most.
You missed a bunch, namely Numbers, Ezekiel, Job, and Isaiah. Not all of these are visions.
Also in Matthew, the description of the temptation of Christ during his fast: "the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them". One can only see all the Kingdoms if the earth was flat.
Not trolling; just showing that it is ridiculous to try and take all of the passages of the bible literally as the ID proponents claim to do.
a rock slamming into another rock does not cause an explosion
Yes it does. The force of the impact is great enough that it vaporizes the ground around it. This molten rock cloud then expands and rapidly cools releasing a huge flash of light as it does so. In short an explosion, albeit one without sound.
What amazes me is the speed that they come up with that artist rendering. They must have these guys sitting around waiting for something to happen so they can draw it.
..as soon as you build a time machine to take you back to the mid-1980s.:-D
lol - actually most aerospace companies use old technology -its proven and it works.
Besides the actual language doesn't matter, just the concept. Once you get the 0-0 concept down then you can quickly learn any language you want to after that.
Slashdot Mirror
You have no idea what you are talking about do you?
A good engineer after crunching the numbers always asks himself "does this make sense?" Physicists seem to have to put this step aside when dealing with quantum mechanics (which is why I did so badly in that course - too may uncertainties and fudge factors. I kept thinking "this can't be right. They've got to be kidding" )
If you make the supposition that the garden of Eden was really the ocean then it all makes sense! Abundance of food, no need to wear clothes...
Then they get thrown out (God/evolution removes ability to breath underwater) and now we are stuck tilling soil and wearing clothes.
Hey it all fits!
Your problem seems to be that you think belief in evolution precludes belief in God. If you accept that God and evolution can coexist then there is no need to debate Intelligent Design.
My audience, and the people who were responding to my posts were creationists who were pushing Intelligent Design as science.
ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one in rebuttal.
Just because you have a GPS receiver doesn't mean a 3rd party can use it to track you. A GPS is receive only, you need additional hardware to rebroadcast your position for someone to track you.
Probably because the US perceived the old Galileo proposal as a threat and had it killed off years ago.
Please read my other post about this here.
Also, holding the view that the entire universe was created solely for our benefit (which is what IDers are implying when they say it is 6000 years old and created according to our bible) is possibly the most arrogant thing I've ever heard. Nowhere in the bible does it say this -it is solely a human interpretation. There are countless billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. Why would all of this be just for us when we cant even see the galaxies let alone visit them? This simply doesn't make sense.
It is so much simpler and more logical to believe that God created the universe out of nothing (i.e. the Big Bang) as the bible says, and allowed the universe to evolve on its own according to a set of rules that he set up (i.e. rules we discover and call Physics, Geology, Astrophysics, etc.) You can always interpret the bible such that it does not conflict with known and accepted science - the majority of Christians and other religions take this approach, and it is the official view of their church.
EXACTLY. which is why a sane person when he reads Genesis realizes that it is just an analogy to how the universe was created and does not interpret 'day' to mean a real day. Example, since the Sun wasn't created until the fourth 'day', how is it possible to have 'evenings' and 'mornings' for the first three days?
Genesis is not meant to be literal. As you say any intelligent person can see this. So trying to discredit areas of science and introducing pseudo science such as Intelligent Design to try and prove the literal biblical view of the earth being 6000 years old is a stupid waste of time at the least, and corrupting the minds of youth against science at the most.
You missed a bunch, namely Numbers, Ezekiel, Job, and Isaiah. Not all of these are visions.
Also in Matthew, the description of the temptation of Christ during his fast: "the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them". One can only see all the Kingdoms if the earth was flat.
Not trolling; just showing that it is ridiculous to try and take all of the passages of the bible literally as the ID proponents claim to do.
Depends where you live but where I am I'd guess the major content for outdoor dust is pollen and various forms of pollution.
That's exactly my point (which you've obviously missed)- the bible cannot be taken literally.
So for ID proponents to say the earth is 6000 years old and was made in 6 days because Genesis tells us it is so is absolutely absurd.
Yes it does. The force of the impact is great enough that it vaporizes the ground around it. This molten rock cloud then expands and rapidly cools releasing a huge flash of light as it does so. In short an explosion, albeit one without sound.
What amazes me is the speed that they come up with that artist rendering. They must have these guys sitting around waiting for something to happen so they can draw it.
Actually it can be very fine grained. The closest analogy I've seen officially used for testing vehicles for the moon is fine dry Portland cement.
Dust on earth is primarily ash, flakes of skin, dust mites, and dust mite fecal matter, so moon dust is certainly not like earth dust.
(in a singsong voice) ring around urANUS! ring around urANUS !
Yup. Intelligent Design proponents claim to be following a literal interpretation of the bible, but they are not really.
If you really want to take it literally you have to go hardcore - go flat.
lol - actually most aerospace companies use old technology -its proven and it works.
Besides the actual language doesn't matter, just the concept. Once you get the 0-0 concept down then you can quickly learn any language you want to after that.