That answers the critical question, is it better to believe or not believe. (Technically not a test of God's existence - but why do you care?
Your idea, while interesting, doesn't answer the question, as you admitted to. All you are testing for is a persons chemical state when they believe there is a god compared to if they don't believe. After all, that is what happiness is. A chemical state. One could be just as happy not believing as believing and your test would be just as valid.
As far as why do I care, because that is the crux of the matter. ID says that an intelligent being must have created things but some things seem to be too complicated to be natural.
If the ID supporters go around saying this or that of evolution isn't proven then it is a perfectly valid question to ask of them, prove that an intelligent being exists.
As I said in my original post, the ID supporters start with the presumption that such a being exists and then try to prove that existence through observation (and only observation I might add) when in reality one would start with the end result and work backwards to find a cause.
Newtons laws aren't known to be factual, they are merely helpful
You might want to rethink that. I would direct you to this page which gives an easy to understand definiton of what a hypothesis, theory and law are along with examples. Newton's laws are about as factual as one can get.
Mainly because there is circumstancial evidence for, and no evidence against.
And what might that evidence be? Again, you're stating that there is some evidence to support the idea of a supernatural being but you never say how you arrive at that conclusion. You are doing the very thing that I mentioned above: you're starting with the conclusion and trying to make things fit what you believe.
And yes, if evolutionary theory can't explain some development, that is a problem with the theory.
Then apparently there is a problem with the Big Bang Theory as well because it can't explain where all the matter in the universe came from let alone how the actual bang itself started.
So I guess by your measure God did create the Big Bang.
Theories do not have to explain every nuance of an event. They only have to make enough testable predictions to cover most of the bases. No one has ever said that Einsteins theories predict every instance of what they try to explain and because of that lack of evidence should be ignored.
And yes, ID is bad science. Using a supernatural explanation for a natural event is not science. You know what drives me nuts about the IDers? They never answer the question: how do you test for a god (or intelligent being as the semantics are now used). Instead, they turn around and try to point out flaws in evolution. That's not how science works. You think your idea is better than someone elses, you provide the evidence and let your peers decide.
To date not one person in the creationism/ID camp has ever put forward any evidence or test to show that an intelligent being could exist. Instead, they start with the premise that such a being exists and move forward from there.
Why not? If that time was when businesses began the land rush to the web and at the same time was when people began realizing the power of being able to purchase online, why not start there?
The U.S. census is only done every 10 years yet it shows vital statistics and patterns.
I realize you were hoping for a once a year survey but all that would have shown is the gradual climb in user statistics. A ten year survey is fine for this purpose.
Mr Gates said that the PC of today is still not the PC he dreamed about 30 years ago however, and that was a challenge he would continue to pursue.
Here's a hint: power to weight ratio. As the original poster said the pcs of today are stronomically more powerful than ever before but at the same time the amount of weight they have to move (the OS) has also increased. Why? Because either it's a feature or it's part of the OS. Look at the requirements for Vista. Why not just go out and see if you can get a used render farm from Pixar to run that monster.
If Gates and Company would focus on streamlining things then the ability of a pc to do more wouldn't be so compromised. Yes, that means they will have to stop backwards compatibility for the oldest programs out there but that's a sacrifice which will have to be made.
On a final note, just because Microsoft wants to be bigger than Google doesn't mean they'll be better. As a poster up the page a bit lamented, trying to find an answer to a Microsoft problem on Microsofts own site is practically a death march. Until they can clear up that mess of a search process, let alone their useless MSN search, Google has nothing to fear no matter how big Microsoft gets.
You mean it's not a good thing for the execs to communicate with one another?
Oh wait, you mean when the execs say something like, "Yeah, that Bob from Accouting. What a tightwad. I'm pretty sure if he bent over the board in his ass would snap."
There's this thing called 'gravity' that has a tendency to pull objects towards it.
Yeah, but gravity is only a theory. It isn't a fact
P.S. Note to mods. No, this isn't flamebaiting or trolling. Having a supposed scientist claim that astrology could fit under the definition of a theory reminds me of the morons who keep using the phrase re: evolution: but it's only a theory, not a fact, when in fact evolution is a fact but the theory of evolution, that which describes the process, is not a fact. Just like gravity is a fact but the Theory of Gravity is not. The Theory only attempts to describe the fact (gravity)
that promotes socialist misinformation by ignoring futures markets and speculation, the fundamental methods by which resource fluctuations and overuse are stamped out.
You mean like Enron used to hike the price of electricity, right?
those who oppose the political goals of certain homosexuals.
You mean like equal protection under the law for the way they happen to be born? Or did you mean to marry who they want because they love that person?
When people talk about the political goals of a group they usually mean that they don't want that group to have the same rights as they do.
Take your pick. The anti-slavery groups, womens suffrage, womens rights, the people in these groups were denouced at one time or another (and to some extent still are) because these groups wanted the same rights for their members as the rest of the people had (usually white men).
exhibiting lewd behavior on "gay pride" day you're branded a homophobe.
So it's okay when heterosexual women flash their breasts (lewd behavior) during Mardi Gras or get felt up by their studmuffin while sitting on the park bench.
The difference between FF having an issue and IE having an issue is that when FF has an issue it only affects the browser itself. When IE has an issue it can cause issues with your entire operating system because the browser (an application) has been retro-welded into the OS.
Also, FF is being developed by people who aren't getting paid (well, most aren't) for their service compared to Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar corporation which has had 10 years to try and get the bugs out of their product.
Absolutely. I didn't mean that a site had to be coded perfectly. Just that it had to be somewhat close. Even FF will forgive some errors.
However, leaving out an opening or closing <HTML> tag will cause FF to display text rather than the page whereas IE will continue to render the page because it will put in the missing tag.
In the past, I've been of mixed feelings with IE correctly rendering the "intent" of a web-designer when the web-designer has created buggy HTML - this includes such things as omitting terminating tags (e.g., <l\li>) as well as a few other things
I once made a comment in the Firefox forums about the difference between the way IE and Firefox interpret web pages. IE believes that everyone is an idiot and will pat the designer on the head and fix the errors without telling you what you did wrong. Firefox on the other hand presumes you are reasonably competent at what you are doing and will let you know when you screw up.
One does not have to swear on a bible in court. You can affirm to tell the truth rather than swear to tell the truth. Marlon Brando did this when he had to testify in court years ago and they had to dust off the second oath because he didn't believe in a God and would not swear on a bible.
In fact, the oath of office for President of the United States has two versions. One can either swear or affirm the oath. Note also that nowhere does the word God appear in the oath. That was only added from George Washington but is not part of the official oath. In other words, when a President adds, "So help me God." they are ad libbing.
There was no 'possible' about it. The military threw him out of Iraq because he did violate the rules. The action was delayed for a few days while Fox appealed the decision but in the end Geraldo was ejected from Iraq. He had to spend the rest of the time in Kuwait, away from the frontline troops.
Here's an article from the Houston Chronicle which details the event. For the record, I screwed up. It wasn't the 82nd but the 101st Airborne. Please note at the end where Geraldo goes after his former employer trying to claim that they are behind getting him ejected (as I had mentioned previously).
For a secondary article see CNNs take on what was going to happen and again, Geraldos comments that what was being said was lies.
Needless to say Fox says he 'volunteered' to leave Iraq but the military wanted him out regarless of how he left was called.
Unfortunately from what the news is reporting I'm not hopeful in the outcome. Either the plaintiffs aren't stressing the point hard enough that ID is not testable (in addition to be religious based) and thus isn't a scientific theory or the news isn't bringing that part out.
In fact, even one local station keeps using the the phrase, 'The theory of Intelligent Design'. Talk about having apoplectic seizures everytime that phrase is mentioned.
You mean like when Geraldo was with the 82nd Airborne during the beginning of our occupation of Iraq and on live tv said, to the effect, "We're here and we're going here" and then, when the military wanted to throw him out, whined and moaned how he hadn't given up operational secrets and it was really the fault of his former employer just trying to speak badly of him and Fox News fired him and distanced the network from the story?
Not that this is about a true dream but on IRC my quit message is:
I live in my dreams because they are more real
Now if only I could hit the Powerball* and change my quit message to:
I live my dreams because I have the money
* Yes, I'm aware of the ridiculous chance of me actually winning but it's my money and I'll do with it what I want. You spend more on your coffee/soda every day than I spend on lottery tickets in a month.
Are you so far gone that you want to believe that information on obviously FORGED documents is true?
Considering the secretary who wrote such letters, as requested by the commanding officer, confirmed that the sentiment of what was written was correct even if the actual document produced was not real, then yes, I'll believe what comes from the horses mouth.
Considering the religious establishment won't admit that according to the bible we're all the product of incest (Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel. Cain found a woman and had a child. Where did the woman come from unless it was Eve herself? After all, nowhere in the bible does it say God created anyone other than Adam and Eve.) so I'm sure they could come up with some lame excuse as to how life on another planet is still the work of God even though the first two lines of Genesis specifically state it was Earth that was created.
Though I have to admit it will sure be fun to see all the squirming and contorting that will take place from the religious establishment in trying to prove their point.
Didn't you know? Flash is it! You can't have a web page nowadays without having Flash.
Want to show a table? Put it in Flash! Want to show a single image? Put it in Flash! Want to hear the sound of humping wombats? Put it in Flash!
The days of providing a useful website where one can find the information they are looking for are over. Now, to be really l337, you have to make sure your site uses every available bell and whistle to insure the maximum bandwidth usage possible so that when people on dial-up whine about a site taking forever to load you can respond with the proverbial, "Get broadband you luser! Everybody else has it!"
No, I haven't read the linked article but just by reading the posting I can see/hear it now: "Hey honey, why don't I start a blog so I too can make X thousands of dollars a year. That way I can quit my crappy job and we can live like royalty."
Just because one person claims that they are making X thousands of dollars does not mean you or I will. These claims remind me of those real estate scammercials where they insist that for only $200 (or whatever amount) you too can live the life you've already wanted by buying houses for no money down.
Sure, one or two people live in a market where they could flip a house and make some money but the vast, vast, VAST majority either barely break even or lose money on their deals.
Slashdot Mirror
Your idea, while interesting, doesn't answer the question, as you admitted to. All you are testing for is a persons chemical state when they believe there is a god compared to if they don't believe. After all, that is what happiness is. A chemical state. One could be just as happy not believing as believing and your test would be just as valid.
As far as why do I care, because that is the crux of the matter. ID says that an intelligent being must have created things but some things seem to be too complicated to be natural.
If the ID supporters go around saying this or that of evolution isn't proven then it is a perfectly valid question to ask of them, prove that an intelligent being exists.
As I said in my original post, the ID supporters start with the presumption that such a being exists and then try to prove that existence through observation (and only observation I might add) when in reality one would start with the end result and work backwards to find a cause.
Newtons laws aren't known to be factual, they are merely helpful
You might want to rethink that. I would direct you to this page which gives an easy to understand definiton of what a hypothesis, theory and law are along with examples. Newton's laws are about as factual as one can get.
Mainly because there is circumstancial evidence for, and no evidence against.
And what might that evidence be? Again, you're stating that there is some evidence to support the idea of a supernatural being but you never say how you arrive at that conclusion. You are doing the very thing that I mentioned above: you're starting with the conclusion and trying to make things fit what you believe.
Then apparently there is a problem with the Big Bang Theory as well because it can't explain where all the matter in the universe came from let alone how the actual bang itself started.
So I guess by your measure God did create the Big Bang.
Theories do not have to explain every nuance of an event. They only have to make enough testable predictions to cover most of the bases. No one has ever said that Einsteins theories predict every instance of what they try to explain and because of that lack of evidence should be ignored.
And yes, ID is bad science. Using a supernatural explanation for a natural event is not science. You know what drives me nuts about the IDers? They never answer the question: how do you test for a god (or intelligent being as the semantics are now used). Instead, they turn around and try to point out flaws in evolution. That's not how science works. You think your idea is better than someone elses, you provide the evidence and let your peers decide.
To date not one person in the creationism/ID camp has ever put forward any evidence or test to show that an intelligent being could exist. Instead, they start with the premise that such a being exists and move forward from there.
That line of thinking is bad science incarnate.
Because they were designed to do so.
The internet? Is that thing still around?
Yes, shamelessly stolen from The Simpsons.
Why not? If that time was when businesses began the land rush to the web and at the same time was when people began realizing the power of being able to purchase online, why not start there?
The U.S. census is only done every 10 years yet it shows vital statistics and patterns.
I realize you were hoping for a once a year survey but all that would have shown is the gradual climb in user statistics. A ten year survey is fine for this purpose.
Here's a hint: power to weight ratio. As the original poster said the pcs of today are stronomically more powerful than ever before but at the same time the amount of weight they have to move (the OS) has also increased. Why? Because either it's a feature or it's part of the OS. Look at the requirements for Vista. Why not just go out and see if you can get a used render farm from Pixar to run that monster.
If Gates and Company would focus on streamlining things then the ability of a pc to do more wouldn't be so compromised. Yes, that means they will have to stop backwards compatibility for the oldest programs out there but that's a sacrifice which will have to be made.
On a final note, just because Microsoft wants to be bigger than Google doesn't mean they'll be better. As a poster up the page a bit lamented, trying to find an answer to a Microsoft problem on Microsofts own site is practically a death march. Until they can clear up that mess of a search process, let alone their useless MSN search, Google has nothing to fear no matter how big Microsoft gets.
You mean it's not a good thing for the execs to communicate with one another?
Oh wait, you mean when the execs say something like, "Yeah, that Bob from Accouting. What a tightwad. I'm pretty sure if he bent over the board in his ass would snap."
Never mind. Now I understand.
To think that my mod points expired yesterday. If only I had my last remaining one to mod you up.
Yeah, but gravity is only a theory. It isn't a fact
P.S. Note to mods. No, this isn't flamebaiting or trolling. Having a supposed scientist claim that astrology could fit under the definition of a theory reminds me of the morons who keep using the phrase re: evolution: but it's only a theory, not a fact, when in fact evolution is a fact but the theory of evolution, that which describes the process, is not a fact. Just like gravity is a fact but the Theory of Gravity is not. The Theory only attempts to describe the fact (gravity)
Since the current season of BSG has ended the answer to that question is yes so you need not bother to wonder.
You mean like Enron used to hike the price of electricity, right?
You mean like equal protection under the law for the way they happen to be born? Or did you mean to marry who they want because they love that person?
When people talk about the political goals of a group they usually mean that they don't want that group to have the same rights as they do.
Take your pick. The anti-slavery groups, womens suffrage, womens rights, the people in these groups were denouced at one time or another (and to some extent still are) because these groups wanted the same rights for their members as the rest of the people had (usually white men).
exhibiting lewd behavior on "gay pride" day you're branded a homophobe.
So it's okay when heterosexual women flash their breasts (lewd behavior) during Mardi Gras or get felt up by their studmuffin while sitting on the park bench.
The difference between FF having an issue and IE having an issue is that when FF has an issue it only affects the browser itself. When IE has an issue it can cause issues with your entire operating system because the browser (an application) has been retro-welded into the OS.
Also, FF is being developed by people who aren't getting paid (well, most aren't) for their service compared to Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar corporation which has had 10 years to try and get the bugs out of their product.
Absolutely. I didn't mean that a site had to be coded perfectly. Just that it had to be somewhat close. Even FF will forgive some errors.
However, leaving out an opening or closing <HTML> tag will cause FF to display text rather than the page whereas IE will continue to render the page because it will put in the missing tag.
I once made a comment in the Firefox forums about the difference between the way IE and Firefox interpret web pages. IE believes that everyone is an idiot and will pat the designer on the head and fix the errors without telling you what you did wrong. Firefox on the other hand presumes you are reasonably competent at what you are doing and will let you know when you screw up.
In fact, the oath of office for President of the United States has two versions. One can either swear or affirm the oath. Note also that nowhere does the word God appear in the oath. That was only added from George Washington but is not part of the official oath. In other words, when a President adds, "So help me God." they are ad libbing.
Here's an article from the Houston Chronicle which details the event. For the record, I screwed up. It wasn't the 82nd but the 101st Airborne. Please note at the end where Geraldo goes after his former employer trying to claim that they are behind getting him ejected (as I had mentioned previously).
For a secondary article see CNNs take on what was going to happen and again, Geraldos comments that what was being said was lies.
Needless to say Fox says he 'volunteered' to leave Iraq but the military wanted him out regarless of how he left was called.
Really? You might want to let these dimwits know about this because that is exactly what they are trying to do.
Unfortunately from what the news is reporting I'm not hopeful in the outcome. Either the plaintiffs aren't stressing the point hard enough that ID is not testable (in addition to be religious based) and thus isn't a scientific theory or the news isn't bringing that part out.
In fact, even one local station keeps using the the phrase, 'The theory of Intelligent Design'. Talk about having apoplectic seizures everytime that phrase is mentioned.
This shouldn't be that much of a surprise considering an Alabama state senator has said the hurricanes this year are the result of God judging people in that area for sinful behavior AND that 32% of poll respondents agreed with him.
You mean like when Geraldo was with the 82nd Airborne during the beginning of our occupation of Iraq and on live tv said, to the effect, "We're here and we're going here" and then, when the military wanted to throw him out, whined and moaned how he hadn't given up operational secrets and it was really the fault of his former employer just trying to speak badly of him and Fox News fired him and distanced the network from the story?
You mean like that situation?
Not that this is about a true dream but on IRC my quit message is:
I live in my dreams because they are more real
Now if only I could hit the Powerball* and change my quit message to:
I live my dreams because I have the money
* Yes, I'm aware of the ridiculous chance of me actually winning but it's my money and I'll do with it what I want. You spend more on your coffee/soda every day than I spend on lottery tickets in a month.
Considering the secretary who wrote such letters, as requested by the commanding officer, confirmed that the sentiment of what was written was correct even if the actual document produced was not real, then yes, I'll believe what comes from the horses mouth.
Though I have to admit it will sure be fun to see all the squirming and contorting that will take place from the religious establishment in trying to prove their point.
Didn't you know? Flash is it! You can't have a web page nowadays without having Flash.
Want to show a table? Put it in Flash! Want to show a single image? Put it in Flash! Want to hear the sound of humping wombats? Put it in Flash!
The days of providing a useful website where one can find the information they are looking for are over. Now, to be really l337, you have to make sure your site uses every available bell and whistle to insure the maximum bandwidth usage possible so that when people on dial-up whine about a site taking forever to load you can respond with the proverbial, "Get broadband you luser! Everybody else has it!"
No, I haven't read the linked article but just by reading the posting I can see/hear it now: "Hey honey, why don't I start a blog so I too can make X thousands of dollars a year. That way I can quit my crappy job and we can live like royalty."
Just because one person claims that they are making X thousands of dollars does not mean you or I will. These claims remind me of those real estate scammercials where they insist that for only $200 (or whatever amount) you too can live the life you've already wanted by buying houses for no money down.
Sure, one or two people live in a market where they could flip a house and make some money but the vast, vast, VAST majority either barely break even or lose money on their deals.
Same with blogs.