> Perhaps, but logically it only makes sense to begin with
> the assumption that God doesn't exist.
Not logically, it doesn't - "X does not exist" is an article of faith unless there is evidence to back it up. Saying "the existence of X is unknown" is the correct course of action. Consider the results in terms of Bayesian probability:
If the a priori probability of God existing is P(G), then the probability of God existing in light of new evidence we're examining is:
P(G|E) = P(E|G)*P(G)/P(E)
i.e., the relative probabilities of this evidence being observed in possible worlds where God does/does not exist. If we start with the assumption that God does not exist - i.e., P(G) = 0 - then:
P(G|E) = P(E|G)*0/P(E) = 0
i.e., no evidence can ever change our minds if we reason according to the laws of probability. In other words, starting with the assumption that God absolutely-for-sure does not exist is not rational---it means you have decided in advance that no evidence can ever change your mind.
Of course, that doesn't mean you have to start with the assumption that God does exist, either. I cases like these, "I don't know" is often an excellent starting point.
> your comment about the murder rate being linked to a
> "very small portion of the US population" is beyond the pale.
No it isn't. It's quite a sensible realization that, for most people, the US isn't as dangerous a place as the evening news would lead us to believe. A frightened society is a pliable one, and I don't feel like having my civil liberties plied any more, thankyouverymuch.
That's not to say there are not terrible problems with poverty, lack of opportunity/hope, and even discrimination - there are. Acknowledging that many things are distributed very unevenly in the US - from money to violence - is a fact whose ignoring does nobody any favours. How can you address inequality without first acknowledging it?
> The aforementioned right to free speech would be a biggie. Americans are allowed to insight all of the hate
> they want, as long as they don't directly command a violent act to take place or do something to the effect
> of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater.
One could argue that inciting hate is not so different from shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre; injury to innocent people is likely in either case.
Forgive me for being slow, but I'm still not sure I see "allowed to willfully incite hate" and "allowed ownership of a larger class of firearms" as "many civil liberties". Is there a list somewhere which details what you were referring to?
> The mouth would be the shotgun, shooting it would be denying the > holocaust, and murder would be the hate crime...it would seem quite > clear that Canada has no problem seeking legal action against people > if the words that come out of the mouth are deemed hateful.
So, continuing your analogy, that would be "it would seem quite clear that Canada has no problem seeking legal actions against people if the shootings of their shotgun are deemed murderous."
Er, well, yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make, and I thought you were trying to argue against---it's not the speech that's criminalized in Canada, it's the incitement of hate. Speech without incitement of hate = no crime; incitement of hate without speech = crime.
I guess we weren't disagreeing, though(?), so there's not much more to say.
> how people might react to that situation today could be totally
> different than, say, 20 years from now.
True; however:
(a) The door to the cabin is kept locked for the entire flight now, so hijackers would be unable to take control of the plane anyway.
(b) With 100+ people on a plane, the odds are very good that a small group of people will have heard of the dangerous of letting hijackers have control of the plane, and will feel hero/frightened enough to act to prevent it. Once they start, other passengers are likely to pile on, quickly overcoming lightly-armed hijackers.
When the dangers of submitting to hijackers are illustrated so clearly by something as shocking to the US as 9/11, they're unlikely to be forgotten by every single one of 100+ random people for a long, long time.
> Only 67% of the number that we graduate, adjusted for population....it's
> just a scare number, not a real metric.
So it's okay if we have only a small edge in the types of highly-trained people who drive our economy? Does that mean you're okay with having only a small edge in GDP, adjusted for population?
It's not "just a scare number"---the claim is that if we lose our edge in one, we'll lose our edge in the other. That claim may not be true, but simply saying "well, per-capita..." does nothing to lessen the ramifications if it is.
"The one person [of 500] found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test.... around 12 percent of passengers tend to show stress even when they have nothing to hide."
I'm not sure how to reconcile these two statements, especially since the 12% figure was used in a "those who fail" context. I would guess that the former statement is marketing spin, especially since it makes claims about the plans of the people tested, and the false positive rate is going to be much closer to the 12% rate from the second quote.
Also a consideration, what is the false negative rate? It's pretty common for law-abiding people to get nervous when confronted by law enforcement---they're not used to it. By the same token, actual criminals often are used to dealing with law enforcement, and hence are often calmer than many normal folk!
When combined with active spoofing of the test (examples), I would be surprised if this procedure was particularly more accurate than a standard polygraph, which is to say, not very.
Given that, I strongly suspect this will turn out to be a security procedure with no benefit beyond allowing people to point at it and say "see, we're doing something to improve security!!" without having to go to the trouble of finding a way to actually improve security.
The problem with that (beyond the waste and hypocrisy) is that the more useless steps there are in a security procedure, the more the useful steps are diluted and rendered ineffective. If Joe Smith looked kinda funny but passed the lie detector, well, I gotta let him go so I have time to interrogate and search Gertrude McGrandma who flunked it.
A measure which gives no information is worse than useless. Hopefully either this won't be one, or we won't use it.
> Standard news will make the UN look bad all on it's own- which you'd know
> if you've been paying any attention to the oil-for-food scandal, or any
> other story that's popped up in the past decade or so.
Any other story? Such as this one from The Economist which talks about how the weight of evidence clearly shows that UN peacekeeping is extremely effective and cost-efficient at stabilizing and rehabilitating failed states, and has a much better track record at doing so than the US despite spending orders of magnitude less money?
How, exactly, does THAT story make the UN look bad? You made the blanket claim that "any other story" about the UN made it look bad, so clearly you'll have a detailed counter-argument to the study referred to in the article?
Or are you exactly the type of deluded, jingoistic anti-UN fool that the grandparent poster was talking about, and felt like you should provide an example to illustrate his point?
(As for the oil-for-food scandal, yes, that's bad; however, considering that similar bribery and kickbacks were occurring in the Coalition Provisional Authority within months of the invasion, I humbly submit that such corruption is a problem related to large sums of money sloshing around, rather than somehow unique to the UN.)
> Don't keep your mind too open, buddy, or people will throw a lot of trash into it.
Yeah, can't have those damn facts polluting the purity of your ideology, can you?
The US (which lost about 400,000 soldiers) came off much luckier than China, which lost 10 times as many soldiers, and of course the USSR, which lost 25 times as many soldiers. Both nations were allies of the US---despite what some history revisionists in this thread would try to claim---and both suffered even more civilian casualties than military.
Not that there's much sense in starting a who-did-how-much pissing contest over this; however, the relatives of those 14,500,000 dead Chinese and Soviet soldiers who fought and died for the same reasons our soldiers did would probably prefer not to be forgotten just because you're feeling pissy at the French for falling to the Blitzkrieg too quickly.
> That's like saying that shooting someone in the head with a
> shotgun is not illegal, but murder is.
No - it's like saying shooting a shotgun is not illegal, but shooting a shotgun with intent to injure or killis illegal, because of that intent.
You have provided no evidence that peaceful, well-intentioned holocaust-questioning is illegal in Canada. (Admittedly, such a thing may no even exist, but the fact remains that your claim is still completely unsupported).
> The energy in the match already exists as potential energy.
And the energy in the unburned diesel that's being lost out the tailpipe already exists as potential energy.
The hydrogen is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-lost diesel, just like the KE involved in striking a match is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-unburned match.
How many times do people have to be told to RTFA before they'll at least stop pretending they know what they're talking about?
> The idea, that Universe existed "forever" is contrary to science.
You are wrong. There are multipletheories which fully take into account all observations while positing an ever-existing universe.
As an added bonus, they have testable differences from the standard Big Bang theory, some of which (such as low-frequency gravity waves) we're working on detectors for even now.
> What I hear from creationist/ID scientists, however, is if they
> want a shot at having their research published, they dress it
> in the language of evolution
Yes and no.
One of the fundamental problems with trying to publish anything supporting ID is that ID is essentially the null hypothesis.
In other words, ID is the theory that no naturalistic theory can explain the organisms we see; any correct theories must necessarily include a guiding intelligence.
That's an extremely strong claim, much stronger than merely "Darwinian evolution is wrong"---the claim is that not only is evolution wrong, but no correct theory is possible which does not rely on a guiding intelligence.
In all of science, such negative theories---"X does not exist"---are much harder to gather convincing evidence for than positive theories---"X exists and has this form". In particular, all such negative theories must have a very strong answer to the criticism "well, maybe you just didn't look hard enough for X".
Due to that negative phrasing of ID, even a researcher with the purest of intentions and solidest of research methodologies will have a very hard time coming up with compelling evidence to support it. Unless ID can be rephrased to be a positive theory---i.e., the organisms we see came about because of X process---it will continue to be almost impossible to collect solid evidence for the theory, and it will continue to be---rightfully---ignored by mainstream science. Without strong evidence, a theory is nothing, and negative theories almost never get strong evidence---this ain't unique to ID.
> And unless a given person can throw off this yoke of belief,
> he will forever be denying his own heritage, his gift as a
> self-aware rational creature.
Why?
Suppose a person believes that God created Man with powerful reasoning abilities precisely in order to develop a deep, nuanced understanding of himself and the universe around him. To this person, the universe is an unfolding wonder on which to hone his reasoning faculties in aid of his ultimate goal - understanding himself, his relationship with God, and the nature of morality and spirituality.
Only by fostering such development of thought, the argument might go, could God truly allow souls to become self-aware, and to make a full and informed choice as to their eternal disposition.
A person with this sort of belief system would probably be at least as self-aware as a typical atheist, and almost certainly much more so - he would see it as his divine duty to tirelessly seek to understand himself, the world around him, and the nature of what it means to be human.
If you find it "hard to believe" that faith in divinity is compatible with self-awareness and self-responsibility, that's little more than a failure of imagination on your part (and perhaps a sad testament to the religious folk you've had run-ins with - that some are irrational doesn't mean all are, any more than it does for atheists).
(As an aside, the belief system I've sketched above actually bears a fair similarity to Islam in its golden age, back when it was the scientific centre of the western world and coming up with things like algebra. It's not such an uncommon belief nowadays, either - a fairly recent Nobel prizewinner in particle physics saw his research as exploring Allah's wondrously complex gift to humanity. That he co-won the prize with a staunch atheist didn't seem to bother either one of them. As it should be.)
> (information only comes from intelligence; order decreases over time...)
Your error is in misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. Those state that in a closed system, order decreases over time. No part of the earth is a closed system, however, and your "observation" is in fact very simple to debunk:
Plant a seed.
What was once nothing but a tumultuous pile of dirt lashed by wind and rain will soon become a highly-ordered plant. While entropy increases as a whole (i.e., the sun is still fusing), local increases in order are something we observe all the time.
As for information coming only from intelligence, well, I suggest you read up on the optimization of chemical trails ants lay to a food source. Very, very simple rules govern those trails, but they quickly lay out an efficient path for the ants to follow. That's information, and I would argue that ants ain't all that smart.
I would also argue that if your faith is so weak that evolution threatens it, you have bigger problems. How much of Christ's message was about speciation, and how much about interacting with God and your fellow man?
You might want to read up on how Jesus treated those who followed the letter of the law and ignored the spirit (Pharisees, mostly) - I think you may be misguided.
Gross physiological changes, like many-legs (centipede) to 6-legs (ant)? Found the gene
There's a pretty good transitional fossil record for several species showing many steps of macroevolution, such as horses (gradual change from multi-toed and small to single-external-toed and large) and humans, so there is reasonably strong fossil evidence for macroevolution, as well as the above predictive and experimental evidence.
Hence, since there does exist this reasonably strong evidence that macroevolution can and does occur, it becomes reasonable to ask what evidence suggests that it does not occur. Do you know of any?
> That bad ideas are good ideas if none better can be found
Why is macroevolution a priori a bad idea? If it fits the observed data (it does) and has demonstrated predictive power (it does) and is supported by experimental evidence (it is), then why is it bad? (It may indeed be, but that's a claim you'll need to substantiate.)
> How would data pointing to an intelligent designer differ
> from data pointing to randomness?
Quality of the resulting designs.
Standard examples are the human eye (the retina would not need a blind spot if it were installed the other way around; it's inefficient compared to the reflective-coated eyes of cats and other animals, etc.), the appendix, the prostate gland (prone to infection and dangerously constricts the urinary tract when that happens), and so on.
Some would interpret bad designs like these as evidence of "whatever works first" randomness, rather than careful and intelligent crafting of a pinnacle of creation.
Read the first link I gave - there is strong experimental evidence for speciation in the "reproductive isolation" sense. Macroevolution has pretty strong evidence in favour of it; I don't see why that's a challenge to your faith, though. Does it really matter whether the earth is 6000 or 5 billion years old? Does it really matter if animals were created in a day or an eon? Does it really matter if man was created in an instant or over millenia? Are those the really important questions that faith addresses?
Not if you're Christian, they're not. Christ didn't talk a whole lot about where the earth and animals came from, but he did speak at length about how we should interact with each other, and with God. Those who hold doggedly to a literal interpretation of the Bible while glossing over the actual content of Jesus's message would likely get much the same treatment as the Pharisees---which is to say, quite the surprise in the afterlife. Something to consider.
> Exactly. Don't force your atheism on me or my children, please.
Science is not atheism.
Science is "here is how the world appears to work, based on our observations, and here is a method for continuing to expand our knowledge."
Atheism is "there is no god".
Science does not discuss divinity or lack thereof, only our observations of the world around us. That world may have been made by God, or not - science does not address that point, regardless of what theists might fear and fundamentalist atheists might wish.
If that's your sole concern, you're in good shape - theism and atheism are subjects of theology, which is a different field from science.
Where you run into problems, though, is when one field is inappropriately applied to the other, such as an atheist saying "humans evolved from apes, so there is no god" or a theist saying "God created man in His image, so evolution must not happen". The former is a bogus theological argument, and hence has no place (as written) in a well-run theological class. The latter is a bogus scientific argument, and hence has no place in a well-run science class.
The problem that this thread is addressing is that people are trying to use bogus arguments like the latter to push theology into science classes; preventing that from occurring is not extolling atheism, it's simply keeping theology out of science class. Extolling atheism would be putting the former argument ("evolution means no god") in a science class, which would also be pushing theology into a science class, and hence would be bad for exactly the same reason.
So, if that---"evolution means no god"---is what is being taught in your children's science classes, then you do indeed have cause to complain. If their classes are teaching "evolution is the way the world works" without discussing the theological implications of it, though, then they are correctly leaving theology for theology classes instead of science classes, and you have no grounds for complaint.
Some people complain anyway, though, which makes their intentions pretty clear---they want theology (their theology, of course) taught in science class. That's forcing their beliefs, and that's just as bad as forcing "God is dead" on your children.
> Can you name any reputable scientific journals that would
> publish a paper that looked even slightly sympathetic to the
> Intelligent Design viewpoint, regardless of empirical data?
Based on my experience with publishing research, I suspect many of them would.
The thing is, scientists---and science in general---loves proving earlier work wrong. Every time an old theory is found to be inadequate, that (a) opens up a huge new area of research that's fresh and exciting to explore, and (b) means we're one step closer to truly understanding the universe. So science is very keen on disproving flawed theories, regardless of how well-established they might be.
Now, admittedly, many scientists, especially the older ones, aren't too keen on seeing the theory they've based 30 years of work on crumble before their eyes. Fortunately, new scientists are being trained all the time, and come into the discussion with fresh eyes, fresh ideas, less vested interest, and a deep desire to shake the foundations of science ('cuz that's what makes you a rock star in the world of science). So they will fully poke holes in old, cherished theories, regardless of whether the old scientists want them to or not.
And, once a theory has enough holes poked in it, it no longer carries weight among new scientists (and the better old scientists) - it's no longer a cherished theory, just a flawed one that needs to be fixed.
Frankly, if you believe science resists unpopular ideas for decades simply because scientists don't like them, you aren't terribly familiar with science. Even the examples of theories which truly did shake the foundations of science, and which really were strongly resisted by the most influential scientists of their day---such as quantum theory---were quickly adapted by many, and after evidence accumulated (and maybe a few older guys died off...) wholly accepted by the scientific community.
Young scientists love to rock the scientific boat, so if your pet theory hasn't gained any traction in the scientific community, it ain't for lack of people looking for good new theories. That's why anyone who says "the Scientific Establishment is ignoring this brilliant theory!" is almost always a crackpot---if the theory really were that good, some young scientists with little or nothing to lose would have seized on it as their ticket to success, especially considering how tough the competition is for jobs and money in many fields. Groundbreaking new theories are the chart-toppers, best-sellers, and blockbusters of the science world---everybody dreams of having one, and ain't likely to pass up that chance lightly.
If your theory ain't gettin' scientific interest, it ain't science that's the problem. Get evidence for the theory, or get used to being ignored.
> But it's hard to imagine such a laissez-faire creator having > strong opinions about what we should do; if he cared he'd have > taken an active role in our design!
Why?
Humans might be a convenient way to test the moral character of souls, with the precise details of what humanity turned out to be being essentially irrelevant.
> would have intervened on this one little planet to make us > better at it! But evolution says this didn't happen.
No it doesn't.
Evolution simply says that organisms evolve to suit their environment. The changes they undergo by no means need to be optimal (witness the human eye), leaving tremendous scope for subtle direction of evolution.
Moreover, evolution could be indirectly controlled by controlling the environment itself, using anything from wild animal attacks (social cohesion for mutual defense) to natural disasters (altruism for survival of the group) to influence physical, mental, and social development of a species.
You seem to think that evolution says things it does not. At its core, it's really quite a simple theory: living organisms change in response to external forces, and those changes drive separated groups of organisms apart. God, or lack thereof, simply isn't addressed by the theory, and it's a mistake to claim otherwise, regardless which side of that debate you stand on.
>>> WoW has the right to deny you access to THEIR private property > > That's reasonable as far as it goes, but it fails to take into account > that Blizzard is also refuses to permit competitors to exist.
Really? So when did they shut down Ultima Online and Everquest?
Sure, the only way to play World of Warcraft is via Blizzard, but the only way to get an Apple computer is via Apple. There's plenty of competition---other games/MMORGs or computers, as appropriate---unless you're using some radically different definition of the term I'm not familiar with?
> Science almost always STARTS with a wild hypothesis for which there isn't much available evidence.
Very true; however, those wild hypotheses aren't taught to high-school students until they become well-supported with solid evidence. Until Intelligent Design, or Crystal Healing, or Jedi Mind Tricks, or There's A Monster Under My Bed have solid, verifiable evidence supporting them, none of them have any place in a high-school curriculum.
Students at that level often don't have the analytical tools to properly sift through reams of questionable hypotheses---even if some later turn out to be true---and also don't have the time to spend on any of the thousands of wild hypotheses currently being investigated. Given the huge body of well-supported and fundamental scientific knowledge that it would be useful for them to know, what justifies giving some of that practical knowledge up for any particular wild hypothesis?
> Since when does it matter that there are a FEW counter-arguments. > The man was saying that most atrocities in history were caused by religion.
No - he was saying the greatest atrocities in history were caused by religion. So I listed a few of the most deadly ones, all of which happen to be (a) recent, and (b) largely or wholly unconnected to religion.
i.e., evidence suggests his claim is false.
> Hitler based his arguments on religion
National socialism was a movement based on race and nationalism, not religion. See, for example here or here.
> Mao Zedong also did his bidding in the name of religion, though completely backward. > He wanted to stamp it out, essentially forcing his (albeit atheistic) religion on > his fellow countrymen.
Now you're just making stuff up. Not everything you dislike is "religion", and Mao's beliefs and movement certainly qualify as "political" rather than "religious". That religion was one of the many things he disliked and tried to get rid of hardly means that the blame for his actions and movement rests with religion.
> The Indians were killed because dumb-ass RELIGIOUS Americans thought their god > gave them the right to the Indians' land
The Natives were killed because the colonists coveted their land. Whether the colonists also happened to be religious is irrelevant (unless you want to also credit all discoveries and advances made by religious people to religion). Whether the colonists gave religious rationalizations for their actions is also irrelevant---the claim was that religion caused these atrocities, not that it later might have been used to excuse them.
> Or when Jesus has a last supper of mushrooms and his own piss with his disciples, and they > trip balls and he predicts obvious shit (like Judah ratting him out). Great stuff, you > should read it some time.
I've read some of it, but I'm suspecting you haven't, and are just repeating things you've heard from other fundamentalist fanatics.
Because---make no mistake---that is what you are: a fundamentalist fanatic. That you are an atheist rather than a theist is a fairly minor point; you are one of the obnoxious, loud-mouthed, closed-minded buffoons who screeches and flings feces at anyone who dares to believe other than you do.
You, sir, are a fine representative of the sort who give all belief systems a bad name and a reputation for being packed with ignorant, bigoted fools. That your frothing, unreasoning faith is currently vested in the unprovable lack of a higher power rather than the unprovable existence of a higher power is hardly reason to crow.
Were you---and your ideologically opposite clones on the other side of the divide---able to stop ranting and open your minds long enough to engage in a reasoned dialogue, we might make some faster progress in society. Or at least shut up long enough for those of us willing and able to listen to reasoned arguments to be able to hear each other.
Because however many deaths have been caused by religion, a damn sight more have been due to ignorance and stupidity...
Slashdot Mirror
> the assumption that God doesn't exist.
Not logically, it doesn't - "X does not exist" is an article of faith unless there is evidence to back it up. Saying "the existence of X is unknown" is the correct course of action. Consider the results in terms of Bayesian probability:
If the a priori probability of God existing is P(G), then the probability of God existing in light of new evidence we're examining is:
P(G|E) = P(E|G)*P(G)/P(E)
i.e., the relative probabilities of this evidence being observed in possible worlds where God does/does not exist. If we start with the assumption that God does not exist - i.e., P(G) = 0 - then:
P(G|E) = P(E|G)*0/P(E) = 0
i.e., no evidence can ever change our minds if we reason according to the laws of probability. In other words, starting with the assumption that God absolutely-for-sure does not exist is not rational---it means you have decided in advance that no evidence can ever change your mind.
Of course, that doesn't mean you have to start with the assumption that God does exist, either. I cases like these, "I don't know" is often an excellent starting point.
> "very small portion of the US population" is beyond the pale.
No it isn't. It's quite a sensible realization that, for most people, the US isn't as dangerous a place as the evening news would lead us to believe. A frightened society is a pliable one, and I don't feel like having my civil liberties plied any more, thankyouverymuch.
That's not to say there are not terrible problems with poverty, lack of opportunity/hope, and even discrimination - there are. Acknowledging that many things are distributed very unevenly in the US - from money to violence - is a fact whose ignoring does nobody any favours. How can you address inequality without first acknowledging it?
> they want, as long as they don't directly command a violent act to take place or do something to the effect
> of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater.
One could argue that inciting hate is not so different from shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre; injury to innocent people is likely in either case.
Forgive me for being slow, but I'm still not sure I see "allowed to willfully incite hate" and "allowed ownership of a larger class of firearms" as "many civil liberties". Is there a list somewhere which details what you were referring to?
> that no one in Canada does.
What would those be? (Other than guns, of course.)
You clearly pay more attention on your flights than I do! (Or maybe you sit closer to the front so you can actually see what's going on...)
Interesting - thanks for the info.
> The mouth would be the shotgun, shooting it would be denying the
> holocaust, and murder would be the hate crime...it would seem quite
> clear that Canada has no problem seeking legal action against people
> if the words that come out of the mouth are deemed hateful.
So, continuing your analogy, that would be "it would seem quite clear that Canada has no problem seeking legal actions against people if the shootings of their shotgun are deemed murderous."
Er, well, yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make, and I thought you were trying to argue against---it's not the speech that's criminalized in Canada, it's the incitement of hate. Speech without incitement of hate = no crime; incitement of hate without speech = crime.
I guess we weren't disagreeing, though(?), so there's not much more to say.
> different than, say, 20 years from now.
True; however:
(a) The door to the cabin is kept locked for the entire flight now, so hijackers would be unable to take control of the plane anyway.
(b) With 100+ people on a plane, the odds are very good that a small group of people will have heard of the dangerous of letting hijackers have control of the plane, and will feel hero/frightened enough to act to prevent it. Once they start, other passengers are likely to pile on, quickly overcoming lightly-armed hijackers.
When the dangers of submitting to hijackers are illustrated so clearly by something as shocking to the US as 9/11, they're unlikely to be forgotten by every single one of 100+ random people for a long, long time.
> just a scare number, not a real metric.
So it's okay if we have only a small edge in the types of highly-trained people who drive our economy? Does that mean you're okay with having only a small edge in GDP, adjusted for population?
It's not "just a scare number"---the claim is that if we lose our edge in one, we'll lose our edge in the other. That claim may not be true, but simply saying "well, per-capita..." does nothing to lessen the ramifications if it is.
From the article:
"The one person [of 500] found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test.
around 12 percent of passengers tend to show stress even when they have nothing to hide."
I'm not sure how to reconcile these two statements, especially since the 12% figure was used in a "those who fail" context. I would guess that the former statement is marketing spin, especially since it makes claims about the plans of the people tested, and the false positive rate is going to be much closer to the 12% rate from the second quote.
Also a consideration, what is the false negative rate? It's pretty common for law-abiding people to get nervous when confronted by law enforcement---they're not used to it. By the same token, actual criminals often are used to dealing with law enforcement, and hence are often calmer than many normal folk!
When combined with active spoofing of the test (examples), I would be surprised if this procedure was particularly more accurate than a standard polygraph, which is to say, not very.
Given that, I strongly suspect this will turn out to be a security procedure with no benefit beyond allowing people to point at it and say "see, we're doing something to improve security!!" without having to go to the trouble of finding a way to actually improve security.
The problem with that (beyond the waste and hypocrisy) is that the more useless steps there are in a security procedure, the more the useful steps are diluted and rendered ineffective. If Joe Smith looked kinda funny but passed the lie detector, well, I gotta let him go so I have time to interrogate and search Gertrude McGrandma who flunked it.
A measure which gives no information is worse than useless. Hopefully either this won't be one, or we won't use it.
> if you've been paying any attention to the oil-for-food scandal, or any
> other story that's popped up in the past decade or so.
Any other story? Such as this one from The Economist which talks about how the weight of evidence clearly shows that UN peacekeeping is extremely effective and cost-efficient at stabilizing and rehabilitating failed states, and has a much better track record at doing so than the US despite spending orders of magnitude less money?
How, exactly, does THAT story make the UN look bad? You made the blanket claim that "any other story" about the UN made it look bad, so clearly you'll have a detailed counter-argument to the study referred to in the article?
Or are you exactly the type of deluded, jingoistic anti-UN fool that the grandparent poster was talking about, and felt like you should provide an example to illustrate his point?
(As for the oil-for-food scandal, yes, that's bad; however, considering that similar bribery and kickbacks were occurring in the Coalition Provisional Authority within months of the invasion, I humbly submit that such corruption is a problem related to large sums of money sloshing around, rather than somehow unique to the UN.)
> Don't keep your mind too open, buddy, or people will throw a lot of trash into it.
Yeah, can't have those damn facts polluting the purity of your ideology, can you?
Wrong.
The US (which lost about 400,000 soldiers) came off much luckier than China, which lost 10 times as many soldiers, and of course the USSR, which lost 25 times as many soldiers. Both nations were allies of the US---despite what some history revisionists in this thread would try to claim---and both suffered even more civilian casualties than military.
Not that there's much sense in starting a who-did-how-much pissing contest over this; however, the relatives of those 14,500,000 dead Chinese and Soviet soldiers who fought and died for the same reasons our soldiers did would probably prefer not to be forgotten just because you're feeling pissy at the French for falling to the Blitzkrieg too quickly.
> shotgun is not illegal, but murder is.
No - it's like saying shooting a shotgun is not illegal, but shooting a shotgun with intent to injure or kill is illegal, because of that intent.
You have provided no evidence that peaceful, well-intentioned holocaust-questioning is illegal in Canada. (Admittedly, such a thing may no even exist, but the fact remains that your claim is still completely unsupported).
> The energy in the match already exists as potential energy.
And the energy in the unburned diesel that's being lost out the tailpipe already exists as potential energy.
The hydrogen is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-lost diesel, just like the KE involved in striking a match is only useful to aid in burning that otherwise-unburned match.
How many times do people have to be told to RTFA before they'll at least stop pretending they know what they're talking about?
You are wrong. There are multiple theories which fully take into account all observations while positing an ever-existing universe.
As an added bonus, they have testable differences from the standard Big Bang theory, some of which (such as low-frequency gravity waves) we're working on detectors for even now.
> want a shot at having their research published, they dress it
> in the language of evolution
Yes and no.
One of the fundamental problems with trying to publish anything supporting ID is that ID is essentially the null hypothesis. In other words, ID is the theory that no naturalistic theory can explain the organisms we see; any correct theories must necessarily include a guiding intelligence.
That's an extremely strong claim, much stronger than merely "Darwinian evolution is wrong"---the claim is that not only is evolution wrong, but no correct theory is possible which does not rely on a guiding intelligence.
In all of science, such negative theories---"X does not exist"---are much harder to gather convincing evidence for than positive theories---"X exists and has this form". In particular, all such negative theories must have a very strong answer to the criticism "well, maybe you just didn't look hard enough for X".
Due to that negative phrasing of ID, even a researcher with the purest of intentions and solidest of research methodologies will have a very hard time coming up with compelling evidence to support it. Unless ID can be rephrased to be a positive theory---i.e., the organisms we see came about because of X process---it will continue to be almost impossible to collect solid evidence for the theory, and it will continue to be---rightfully---ignored by mainstream science. Without strong evidence, a theory is nothing, and negative theories almost never get strong evidence---this ain't unique to ID.
> he will forever be denying his own heritage, his gift as a
> self-aware rational creature.
Why?
Suppose a person believes that God created Man with powerful reasoning abilities precisely in order to develop a deep, nuanced understanding of himself and the universe around him. To this person, the universe is an unfolding wonder on which to hone his reasoning faculties in aid of his ultimate goal - understanding himself, his relationship with God, and the nature of morality and spirituality.
Only by fostering such development of thought, the argument might go, could God truly allow souls to become self-aware, and to make a full and informed choice as to their eternal disposition.
A person with this sort of belief system would probably be at least as self-aware as a typical atheist, and almost certainly much more so - he would see it as his divine duty to tirelessly seek to understand himself, the world around him, and the nature of what it means to be human.
If you find it "hard to believe" that faith in divinity is compatible with self-awareness and self-responsibility, that's little more than a failure of imagination on your part (and perhaps a sad testament to the religious folk you've had run-ins with - that some are irrational doesn't mean all are, any more than it does for atheists).
(As an aside, the belief system I've sketched above actually bears a fair similarity to Islam in its golden age, back when it was the scientific centre of the western world and coming up with things like algebra. It's not such an uncommon belief nowadays, either - a fairly recent Nobel prizewinner in particle physics saw his research as exploring Allah's wondrously complex gift to humanity. That he co-won the prize with a staunch atheist didn't seem to bother either one of them. As it should be.)
>
> Has it ever been observed to occur? (Examples?)
Yes it can, yes it has, and here you go (skip to the "Experimental Results" section if you're feeling lazy).
> Does it fit with what can been observed
Quite well.
> (information only comes from intelligence; order decreases over time...)
Your error is in misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. Those state that in a closed system, order decreases over time. No part of the earth is a closed system, however, and your "observation" is in fact very simple to debunk:
Plant a seed.
What was once nothing but a tumultuous pile of dirt lashed by wind and rain will soon become a highly-ordered plant. While entropy increases as a whole (i.e., the sun is still fusing), local increases in order are something we observe all the time.
As for information coming only from intelligence, well, I suggest you read up on the optimization of chemical trails ants lay to a food source. Very, very simple rules govern those trails, but they quickly lay out an efficient path for the ants to follow. That's information, and I would argue that ants ain't all that smart.
I would also argue that if your faith is so weak that evolution threatens it, you have bigger problems. How much of Christ's message was about speciation, and how much about interacting with God and your fellow man? You might want to read up on how Jesus treated those who followed the letter of the law and ignored the spirit (Pharisees, mostly) - I think you may be misguided.
> of dichotomy between macro and micro evolution.
Define "macro" and "micro".
Speciation? Evidence is out there.
Gross physiological changes, like many-legs (centipede) to 6-legs (ant)? Found the gene
There's a pretty good transitional fossil record for several species showing many steps of macroevolution, such as horses (gradual change from multi-toed and small to single-external-toed and large) and humans, so there is reasonably strong fossil evidence for macroevolution, as well as the above predictive and experimental evidence.
Hence, since there does exist this reasonably strong evidence that macroevolution can and does occur, it becomes reasonable to ask what evidence suggests that it does not occur. Do you know of any?
> That bad ideas are good ideas if none better can be found
Why is macroevolution a priori a bad idea? If it fits the observed data (it does) and has demonstrated predictive power (it does) and is supported by experimental evidence (it is), then why is it bad? (It may indeed be, but that's a claim you'll need to substantiate.)
> How would data pointing to an intelligent designer differ
> from data pointing to randomness?
Quality of the resulting designs.
Standard examples are the human eye (the retina would not need a blind spot if it were installed the other way around; it's inefficient compared to the reflective-coated eyes of cats and other animals, etc.), the appendix, the prostate gland (prone to infection and dangerously constricts the urinary tract when that happens), and so on.
Some would interpret bad designs like these as evidence of "whatever works first" randomness, rather than careful and intelligent crafting of a pinnacle of creation.
Read the first link I gave - there is strong experimental evidence for speciation in the "reproductive isolation" sense. Macroevolution has pretty strong evidence in favour of it; I don't see why that's a challenge to your faith, though. Does it really matter whether the earth is 6000 or 5 billion years old? Does it really matter if animals were created in a day or an eon? Does it really matter if man was created in an instant or over millenia? Are those the really important questions that faith addresses?
Not if you're Christian, they're not. Christ didn't talk a whole lot about where the earth and animals came from, but he did speak at length about how we should interact with each other, and with God. Those who hold doggedly to a literal interpretation of the Bible while glossing over the actual content of Jesus's message would likely get much the same treatment as the Pharisees---which is to say, quite the surprise in the afterlife. Something to consider.
Science is not atheism.
Science is "here is how the world appears to work, based on our observations, and here is a method for continuing to expand our knowledge."
Atheism is "there is no god".
Science does not discuss divinity or lack thereof, only our observations of the world around us. That world may have been made by God, or not - science does not address that point, regardless of what theists might fear and fundamentalist atheists might wish.
If that's your sole concern, you're in good shape - theism and atheism are subjects of theology, which is a different field from science.
Where you run into problems, though, is when one field is inappropriately applied to the other, such as an atheist saying "humans evolved from apes, so there is no god" or a theist saying "God created man in His image, so evolution must not happen". The former is a bogus theological argument, and hence has no place (as written) in a well-run theological class. The latter is a bogus scientific argument, and hence has no place in a well-run science class.
The problem that this thread is addressing is that people are trying to use bogus arguments like the latter to push theology into science classes; preventing that from occurring is not extolling atheism, it's simply keeping theology out of science class. Extolling atheism would be putting the former argument ("evolution means no god") in a science class, which would also be pushing theology into a science class, and hence would be bad for exactly the same reason.
So, if that---"evolution means no god"---is what is being taught in your children's science classes, then you do indeed have cause to complain. If their classes are teaching "evolution is the way the world works" without discussing the theological implications of it, though, then they are correctly leaving theology for theology classes instead of science classes, and you have no grounds for complaint.
Some people complain anyway, though, which makes their intentions pretty clear---they want theology (their theology, of course) taught in science class. That's forcing their beliefs, and that's just as bad as forcing "God is dead" on your children.
Is the distinction clear?
> publish a paper that looked even slightly sympathetic to the
> Intelligent Design viewpoint, regardless of empirical data?
Based on my experience with publishing research, I suspect many of them would.
The thing is, scientists---and science in general---loves proving earlier work wrong. Every time an old theory is found to be inadequate, that (a) opens up a huge new area of research that's fresh and exciting to explore, and (b) means we're one step closer to truly understanding the universe. So science is very keen on disproving flawed theories, regardless of how well-established they might be.
Now, admittedly, many scientists, especially the older ones, aren't too keen on seeing the theory they've based 30 years of work on crumble before their eyes. Fortunately, new scientists are being trained all the time, and come into the discussion with fresh eyes, fresh ideas, less vested interest, and a deep desire to shake the foundations of science ('cuz that's what makes you a rock star in the world of science). So they will fully poke holes in old, cherished theories, regardless of whether the old scientists want them to or not.
And, once a theory has enough holes poked in it, it no longer carries weight among new scientists (and the better old scientists) - it's no longer a cherished theory, just a flawed one that needs to be fixed.
Frankly, if you believe science resists unpopular ideas for decades simply because scientists don't like them, you aren't terribly familiar with science. Even the examples of theories which truly did shake the foundations of science, and which really were strongly resisted by the most influential scientists of their day---such as quantum theory---were quickly adapted by many, and after evidence accumulated (and maybe a few older guys died off...) wholly accepted by the scientific community.
Young scientists love to rock the scientific boat, so if your pet theory hasn't gained any traction in the scientific community, it ain't for lack of people looking for good new theories. That's why anyone who says "the Scientific Establishment is ignoring this brilliant theory!" is almost always a crackpot---if the theory really were that good, some young scientists with little or nothing to lose would have seized on it as their ticket to success, especially considering how tough the competition is for jobs and money in many fields. Groundbreaking new theories are the chart-toppers, best-sellers, and blockbusters of the science world---everybody dreams of having one, and ain't likely to pass up that chance lightly.
If your theory ain't gettin' scientific interest, it ain't science that's the problem. Get evidence for the theory, or get used to being ignored.
> But it's hard to imagine such a laissez-faire creator having
> strong opinions about what we should do; if he cared he'd have
> taken an active role in our design!
Why?
Humans might be a convenient way to test the moral character of souls, with the precise details of what humanity turned out to be being essentially irrelevant.
> would have intervened on this one little planet to make us
> better at it! But evolution says this didn't happen.
No it doesn't.
Evolution simply says that organisms evolve to suit their environment. The changes they undergo by no means need to be optimal (witness the human eye), leaving tremendous scope for subtle direction of evolution.
Moreover, evolution could be indirectly controlled by controlling the environment itself, using anything from wild animal attacks (social cohesion for mutual defense) to natural disasters (altruism for survival of the group) to influence physical, mental, and social development of a species.
You seem to think that evolution says things it does not. At its core, it's really quite a simple theory: living organisms change in response to external forces, and those changes drive separated groups of organisms apart. God, or lack thereof, simply isn't addressed by the theory, and it's a mistake to claim otherwise, regardless which side of that debate you stand on.
>>> WoW has the right to deny you access to THEIR private property
>
> That's reasonable as far as it goes, but it fails to take into account
> that Blizzard is also refuses to permit competitors to exist.
Really? So when did they shut down Ultima Online and Everquest?
Sure, the only way to play World of Warcraft is via Blizzard, but the only way to get an Apple computer is via Apple. There's plenty of competition---other games/MMORGs or computers, as appropriate---unless you're using some radically different definition of the term I'm not familiar with?
> YM pelvic bones, which whales today still have and use to breed.
NO, he means LEGS.
> Science almost always STARTS with a wild hypothesis for which there isn't much available evidence.
Very true; however, those wild hypotheses aren't taught to high-school students until they become well-supported with solid evidence. Until Intelligent Design, or Crystal Healing, or Jedi Mind Tricks, or There's A Monster Under My Bed have solid, verifiable evidence supporting them, none of them have any place in a high-school curriculum.
Students at that level often don't have the analytical tools to properly sift through reams of questionable hypotheses---even if some later turn out to be true---and also don't have the time to spend on any of the thousands of wild hypotheses currently being investigated. Given the huge body of well-supported and fundamental scientific knowledge that it would be useful for them to know, what justifies giving some of that practical knowledge up for any particular wild hypothesis?
> The man was saying that most atrocities in history were caused by religion.
No - he was saying the greatest atrocities in history were caused by religion. So I listed a few of the most deadly ones, all of which happen to be (a) recent, and (b) largely or wholly unconnected to religion.
i.e., evidence suggests his claim is false.
> Hitler based his arguments on religion
National socialism was a movement based on race and nationalism, not religion. See, for example here or here.
> Mao Zedong also did his bidding in the name of religion, though completely backward.
> He wanted to stamp it out, essentially forcing his (albeit atheistic) religion on
> his fellow countrymen.
Now you're just making stuff up. Not everything you dislike is "religion", and Mao's beliefs and movement certainly qualify as "political" rather than "religious". That religion was one of the many things he disliked and tried to get rid of hardly means that the blame for his actions and movement rests with religion.
> The Indians were killed because dumb-ass RELIGIOUS Americans thought their god
> gave them the right to the Indians' land
The Natives were killed because the colonists coveted their land. Whether the colonists also happened to be religious is irrelevant (unless you want to also credit all discoveries and advances made by religious people to religion). Whether the colonists gave religious rationalizations for their actions is also irrelevant---the claim was that religion caused these atrocities, not that it later might have been used to excuse them.
> Or when Jesus has a last supper of mushrooms and his own piss with his disciples, and they
> trip balls and he predicts obvious shit (like Judah ratting him out). Great stuff, you
> should read it some time.
I've read some of it, but I'm suspecting you haven't, and are just repeating things you've heard from other fundamentalist fanatics.
Because---make no mistake---that is what you are: a fundamentalist fanatic. That you are an atheist rather than a theist is a fairly minor point; you are one of the obnoxious, loud-mouthed, closed-minded buffoons who screeches and flings feces at anyone who dares to believe other than you do.
You, sir, are a fine representative of the sort who give all belief systems a bad name and a reputation for being packed with ignorant, bigoted fools. That your frothing, unreasoning faith is currently vested in the unprovable lack of a higher power rather than the unprovable existence of a higher power is hardly reason to crow.
Were you---and your ideologically opposite clones on the other side of the divide---able to stop ranting and open your minds long enough to engage in a reasoned dialogue, we might make some faster progress in society. Or at least shut up long enough for those of us willing and able to listen to reasoned arguments to be able to hear each other.
Because however many deaths have been caused by religion, a damn sight more have been due to ignorance and stupidity...