Well what do you expect for $69 on the internet? Point was, it most definitely can not "only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories".
You can certainly claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) provides the necessary preconditions for logic--however, the Scriptural evidence for the FSM utterly pales in comparison to the Christian God.
Irrelevant. The number of times a statement has been written, as well as the age of said writing, has no bearing whatsoever on its truth, from a logical standpoint. Even if you still wanted to use this measure of authority, then there are just as ancient and widespread writings that deny your Christian texts, and you would end up losing anyway.
And lastly, the FSM worldview is not available to you today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are not a true adherent to the FSM religion--you don't really believe in it. If not, you cannot use it as a worldview in order to try to disprove the Christian worldview.
I was under the impression that we were arguing by logic here. My personal subjective beliefs should at no point be relevant.
Remember, the Christian claim is that if you reject God, knowledge is impossible. What happens when you construct a worldview that is obviously false to refute Christian Theism? To what worldview do you return if you were to show that the FSM provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility? Do you become a FSM follower?
I am not sure what your argument here is - you seem to have misunderstood my intent. I am making the argument that the FSM does not provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, in just the same way that Christianity does not.
Now, when you must invent a worldview in order to defeat mine--I ask, why aren't you willing to defend your own worldview? Why won't you put your worldview up to the challenge?
My worldview is that it is, indeed, impossible to find solid logical ground for knowledge. I have no way of trusting even my own senses, so how could I ever make a statement about the "real world", when I might be being continuously deceived about its nature? It might even be your christian god who is deceiving both me and you, and neither of us can ever know.
My worldview is that this does not matter. I apply Occam's razor liberally, and accept the universe at face value. I do not feel the need to create a greater authority than myself to make the universe absolute. I accept that the world will always be ambiguous, and I adapt to it. I live by morals of my own choosing, and I am "good" out of my own free will. I see all acts of kindness as being made by humans, and I do not devalue them by assigning their existence to some outside influence.
No, Laws of Logic exist and they exist outside of the material world. It is right to impose them on other thoughts and ideas because God requires us to be rational beings, as He is.
The Inductive Principle can be relied upon because God made nature to be uniform and tells us that He fixes the world to be consistent in advance.
You were doing a good job arguing logically up to this point. Here, you suddenly veer wildly off course and claim that your argument holds because of a vague statement in a millenia-old book.
I can easily make the exact same claim as you, but replace "God" with the oh-so-popular Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other than the paragraph in the old book, the argument is exactly the same, and exactly as valid. Any claim of authority for the book amounts to circular reasoning, and is easily dimissed. The whole argument amount to nothing but wishful thinking.
(A side note: If "God requires us to be rational beings, as He is", why did he forbid Adam and Eve to gain knowledge? Did he change his mind later on?)
"Consequences" is the oppressor's favourite word for the punishments he gives to those who disobey him, as if they were some sort of natural process that happens independent of himself, and he himself is not to blame.
This is thoroughly disingenuous. God's choice to punish Adam and Even was his own. He first forbade them to attain knowledge, and then punished them when they did.
The creator of a thing has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the thing that he or she created. The creator gets to make the rules.
I think you'll find it hard to justify that statement on any level. Besides, now you're just back to saying "because GOD SAYS SO!".
Besides, God says "you can do A and bad things will happen, or do B and good things will happen" That's a little different than your analogy.
You can do A, and I will shoot you, or you can do B, and I will give you candy. Does that seem justfied and fair to you? If not candy, then how big a reward do I have to offer you, to allow me to shoot you if you don't do what I say?
God did/not/ prevent Adam and Eve from understanding good and evil. He told them that doing so was against his will.
In other words, he would not let them think for themselves. They were not allowed to decide for themselves which concepts were important, and which were not.
Rationality requires being able to think for yourself. If god is actively preventing me from understanding good and evil, I am obviously not allowed to think for myself.
As a people, we're still no more self-sufficient than Adam was
We are allowed to think for ourselves, and make our own choices, which Adam was not. We are free. Adam was not.
God knows that if man rebels against Him, no good will come of it.
Being omnipotent, it is entirely his own choice that no good will come of it.
If I aim a gun at you, and tell you that you'd better not do something, or harm will come to you, I am not merely advising you about the facts of life.
There's nothing contradictory in those two statements, unless you're objecting to the use of "heat" instead of "heat differential", which is just sloppy writing and has little to do with the functioning of the actual device. And I was under the impression that they were claiming exactly to have re-invented the peltier device, only more efficient.
That's a pretty disingenuous presentation of God's intentions. Are you denying the bible is full of threats by God made from a position of superiority against mankind if they do not follow him? That's not "allowing you to go your own way", that's throwing one hell of a hissy fit.
However, saying that rejecting the Christian God will result in the undermining of all human knowledge, morality, dignity, and science--that's extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim.
I am speechless at the utter absurdity of this statement. It is not worth an answer - if you actually claim this, you are either so blinded by dogma that I could never get an argument through to you, or you are just plain putting me on.
Eating the fruit allowed them to understand the basis for discernment of good and evil. Before that, they clearly understood that there was a rule, and that violation of that rule made them subject to punishment.
The root problem is that they (like us) want to do what THEY want rather than obey God. When they chose to disobey God, the consequence was separation from Him, and ultimately, death - for themselves and for their offspring.
And you know what? It was the best thing to ever happen to mankind. They broke away from the influence of the malignant authority that wanted to keep them forever ignorant and dependent, and chose self-sufficiency and rational thought. They grew up and left their abusive parent.
The fact that Christianity thinks of this as a sinful act speaks volumes of its inherent philosophy.
Babbage never built his difference engine, so how could Lovelace write programs for it?
You've never studied Computer Science, have you? Some of these people would never lower themselves to write code for something that actually existed. Preferrably, not even the language you're using should exist.
I found this rather odd, given how "RFID Gung Ho" they seem.
Because we know that the only reason anybody would want to use RFID is because they absolutely hate the fact that their customers have privacy, and will do anything they can to undermine it.
It's a good thing you pointed this out, because I am sure none of the people who do this have realized this yet. They're just sitting around looking at the maps without ever noticing that they don't update and are out of date! You will truly be heralded as a hero for this revelation.
Slashdot Mirror
it must also come from the same IP address that received the image, and within a reasonable time limit.
You know, if you stopped and thought for half a minute, you would see how an IP check is completely useless.
Well what do you expect for $69 on the internet? Point was, it most definitely can not "only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories".
can only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories
http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm
They most definitely do not use it in smoke detectors, the half-life is far too short to be useful.
http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm
Not over the counter, but how about on the internet? Only $69!
You can certainly claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) provides the necessary preconditions for logic--however, the Scriptural evidence for the FSM utterly pales in comparison to the Christian God.
Irrelevant. The number of times a statement has been written, as well as the age of said writing, has no bearing whatsoever on its truth, from a logical standpoint. Even if you still wanted to use this measure of authority, then there are just as ancient and widespread writings that deny your Christian texts, and you would end up losing anyway.
And lastly, the FSM worldview is not available to you today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are not a true adherent to the FSM religion--you don't really believe in it. If not, you cannot use it as a worldview in order to try to disprove the Christian worldview.
I was under the impression that we were arguing by logic here. My personal subjective beliefs should at no point be relevant.
Remember, the Christian claim is that if you reject God, knowledge is impossible. What happens when you construct a worldview that is obviously false to refute Christian Theism? To what worldview do you return if you were to show that the FSM provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility? Do you become a FSM follower?
I am not sure what your argument here is - you seem to have misunderstood my intent. I am making the argument that the FSM does not provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, in just the same way that Christianity does not.
Now, when you must invent a worldview in order to defeat mine--I ask, why aren't you willing to defend your own worldview? Why won't you put your worldview up to the challenge?
My worldview is that it is, indeed, impossible to find solid logical ground for knowledge. I have no way of trusting even my own senses, so how could I ever make a statement about the "real world", when I might be being continuously deceived about its nature? It might even be your christian god who is deceiving both me and you, and neither of us can ever know.
My worldview is that this does not matter. I apply Occam's razor liberally, and accept the universe at face value. I do not feel the need to create a greater authority than myself to make the universe absolute. I accept that the world will always be ambiguous, and I adapt to it. I live by morals of my own choosing, and I am "good" out of my own free will. I see all acts of kindness as being made by humans, and I do not devalue them by assigning their existence to some outside influence.
No, Laws of Logic exist and they exist outside of the material world. It is right to impose them on other thoughts and ideas because God requires us to be rational beings, as He is.
The Inductive Principle can be relied upon because God made nature to be uniform and tells us that He fixes the world to be consistent in advance.
You were doing a good job arguing logically up to this point. Here, you suddenly veer wildly off course and claim that your argument holds because of a vague statement in a millenia-old book.
I can easily make the exact same claim as you, but replace "God" with the oh-so-popular Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other than the paragraph in the old book, the argument is exactly the same, and exactly as valid. Any claim of authority for the book amounts to circular reasoning, and is easily dimissed. The whole argument amount to nothing but wishful thinking.
(A side note: If "God requires us to be rational beings, as He is", why did he forbid Adam and Eve to gain knowledge? Did he change his mind later on?)
"Consequences" is the oppressor's favourite word for the punishments he gives to those who disobey him, as if they were some sort of natural process that happens independent of himself, and he himself is not to blame.
This is thoroughly disingenuous. God's choice to punish Adam and Even was his own. He first forbade them to attain knowledge, and then punished them when they did.
The creator of a thing has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the thing that he or she created. The creator gets to make the rules.
I think you'll find it hard to justify that statement on any level. Besides, now you're just back to saying "because GOD SAYS SO!".
Besides, God says "you can do A and bad things will happen, or do B and good things will happen" That's a little different than your analogy.
You can do A, and I will shoot you, or you can do B, and I will give you candy. Does that seem justfied and fair to you? If not candy, then how big a reward do I have to offer you, to allow me to shoot you if you don't do what I say?
Do you have any idea what "prior art" even means?
God did /not/ prevent Adam and Eve from understanding good and evil. He told them that doing so was against his will.
In other words, he would not let them think for themselves. They were not allowed to decide for themselves which concepts were important, and which were not.
They were right to disobey him.
Rationality does not require morality.
Rationality requires being able to think for yourself. If god is actively preventing me from understanding good and evil, I am obviously not allowed to think for myself.
As a people, we're still no more self-sufficient than Adam was
We are allowed to think for ourselves, and make our own choices, which Adam was not. We are free. Adam was not.
God knows that if man rebels against Him, no good will come of it.
Being omnipotent, it is entirely his own choice that no good will come of it.
If I aim a gun at you, and tell you that you'd better not do something, or harm will come to you, I am not merely advising you about the facts of life.
There's nothing contradictory in those two statements, unless you're objecting to the use of "heat" instead of "heat differential", which is just sloppy writing and has little to do with the functioning of the actual device. And I was under the impression that they were claiming exactly to have re-invented the peltier device, only more efficient.
That's a pretty disingenuous presentation of God's intentions. Are you denying the bible is full of threats by God made from a position of superiority against mankind if they do not follow him? That's not "allowing you to go your own way", that's throwing one hell of a hissy fit.
However, saying that rejecting the Christian God will result in the undermining of all human knowledge, morality, dignity, and science--that's extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim.
I am speechless at the utter absurdity of this statement. It is not worth an answer - if you actually claim this, you are either so blinded by dogma that I could never get an argument through to you, or you are just plain putting me on.
So Christianity is valid because there's an old book about it?
There are older books about other religions, you know. Are those more valid than Christianity?
Eating the fruit allowed them to understand the basis for discernment of good and evil. Before that, they clearly understood that there was a rule, and that violation of that rule made them subject to punishment.
The root problem is that they (like us) want to do what THEY want rather than obey God. When they chose to disobey God, the consequence was separation from Him, and ultimately, death - for themselves and for their offspring.
And you know what? It was the best thing to ever happen to mankind. They broke away from the influence of the malignant authority that wanted to keep them forever ignorant and dependent, and chose self-sufficiency and rational thought. They grew up and left their abusive parent.
The fact that Christianity thinks of this as a sinful act speaks volumes of its inherent philosophy.
Babbage never built his difference engine, so how could Lovelace write programs for it?
You've never studied Computer Science, have you? Some of these people would never lower themselves to write code for something that actually existed. Preferrably, not even the language you're using should exist.
I found this rather odd, given how "RFID Gung Ho" they seem.
Because we know that the only reason anybody would want to use RFID is because they absolutely hate the fact that their customers have privacy, and will do anything they can to undermine it.
Just what "bubbles" are you "bursting" here by mentioning the fact that you are ignorant of the physics involved, anyway?
It's a good thing you pointed this out, because I am sure none of the people who do this have realized this yet. They're just sitting around looking at the maps without ever noticing that they don't update and are out of date! You will truly be heralded as a hero for this revelation.
You know, when I hear "wailing fanboys", I don't think FF or IE. Those people are fairly composed and sane.
The proponents of certain other browsers, however...
(Actually, it leaves a hole the diameter of the beam.
Maybe you should stop getting your information about lasers from comic books, to start with, and actually try to learn how they work.