You totally missed the point of my analogy. Not every PVR is just a desktop box in a small form-factor. There are many such PCs sold as PVRs, but that doesn't mean that a PVR needs all the functionality of a home PC. Why does a PVR necessarily need an ethernet port? or modem? or USB port? That's like saying that because my computer can burn DVDs, that all DVD-recorders, even set-top boxes, need to be full featured PCs.
For instance, VIA has specialized CPUs and motherboards designed specifically for building PVR boxes with. They are much cheaper than Intel or AMD CPUs, yet they are much more efficient because, though their performance in general computing tasks are rather lackluster, they have been optimized for video-encoding/decoding tasks. Their instruction sets and chip architecture are designed with PVR functions in mind. Now, these chips still conform to x86 architecture, so they're still just PC chips marketed towards computer hobbyists who simply want to build a custom PVR box. As such, they are far from fully optimized, but they still sell for far less than AMD/Intel CPUs with similar video-encoding/decoding performance in addition to being much quieter/cooler, and far less energy consuming. Right now you can get an 800MHz VIA C3 for just $26.00 retail.
In case you still don't fully undersand, let me provide a different angle. Panasonic sells set-top DVD recorders in the U.S. for ~$100 retail. Obviously, a DVD recorder needs to be able to recieve TV signals, but it's gonna be through an integrated component, not a PCI tuner card. A DVD recorder also needs to be able to decode the TV signal, and encode it into mpeg streams, and this will also be done through the set-top box's specialized hardware components and integrated design, not through an application layer desktop program on top of a general purpose operating system. This way, the two core functionality of a PVR are covered, and done much cheaper computing-resource-wise, and thus also component-cost-wise. If this were all done in an x86 desktop box (what form-factor you use doesn't really matter), it would require a much faster processor, more memory, and other hardware and software bloat that aren't essential to a functioning PVR.
So if a general purpose x86 CPU only moderately optimized for media-applications and can handle PVR video-encoding/decoding can be sold at a profit for less than $30, and a set-top DVD recorder which features all of the core functionality of a PVR can be sold for $100, then it should certainly be possible to mass produce PVRs for far less than an average PC, and more along the price point of a set-top DVD recorder. And considering that Panasonic sells DVD recorders in the U.S. for $100, I'm sure you can find generics in Taiwan or China for far less--probably closer to $50. And it'd certainly cost less than per unit to manufacture.
If you think that retail PVRs like TiVo are made of the same high-priced consumer components as your home PC, then you're sadly mistaken. You can call any kind of electronic device with a processor in it a "computer," but that is a very generic term covering a wide range of electronics. Most consumer electronics have a much more integrated design than PCs, and are much more efficient. A home-built PVR box is just a PC running PVR software, but that's not what a TiVo is, not even close.
What kind of important decisions do IQ tests help us make?
The problem with IQ tests, and also SAT tests, are that they usually have certain inherent biases or flaws in their design which benefit particular social groups. Specifically, standardized tests such as IQ tests and the SATs have been shown to have cultural biases in the way questions are phrases, or perhaps even in the kinds of questions used in the tests. Stereotypes have also been shown to psychologically handicap certain minorities.
Additionally, most standardized tests commonly used to grant access into academia or other coveted sectors of society usually have exploitable flaws which tend to favor the financially successful. For example, many asian students from an upper-middle class financial background score exceptionally high (relative to their peers from different socio-economic/cultural backgrounds) on the SATs not because they are particularly smart or studious, but simply because they knew how to prepare for the test, and have had a lot of practice studying for the test. This results in the test not measuring the academic abilities/merit of a student, but simply how familiar they were with the SAT test--a skill with essentially no academic/intellectual value.
So students with rich parents who can afford to send them to the best SAT prep schools score higher than students with more academic merit simply because they're familiar with test taking strategies with respect to the SATs. This is often exploited in the Asian community, which gives students of a different culture an unfair disadvantage simply because they aren't aware of how big of an advantage a good SAT prep school can give. Even if everyone were aware of this exploitable flaw in the tests, it still leaves you with a bunch of students spending hours after school everyday to study how to take a test rather than simply engaging in true intellectual pursuits which they are interested in.
So the inherent flaws in these standardized tests, in combination with their roles as gatekeepers to upper-mobility resources--in other words, de facto determiners of the maximum level of success one may achieve--causes serious inequities in our society to persist. So outside of medical/scientific research on brain & psychological development, I really don't see many legitimate uses for such tests as they exist today.
I shared similar experiences in my childhood, though I'm only 20. Up until maybe 5th or 6th grade I didn't do too well in school compared to other students (though my parents claimed that they could tell I was above average in intelligence from very early on. but then again, they are my parents) but by 6th grade I was easily one of the top students at my school, a trend which continued throughout jr. high, high school, and college. I can't say that I didn't have to work very hard (often to the point of tears I was so bad at certain subjects such as writing), but even when I became a total slacker in high school and college I still found it easy to keep up in math and science classes, and even set the curve semi-regularly without studying ahead of time or doing homework assignments.
It seems that early on my brain adapted to a certain type of thinking, such as the thought processes used for math and science, and perhaps my neural connections are just optimized for those kinds of problem-solving skills or whatnot. The area I seem to have the most difficulties in is language skills. I have a hard time learning new languages. I nearly failed out of my sign language class in high school, and I used to be a very poor writer. I've been able to improve my writing skills through lots and lots of practice, but I still have a hard time picking up new languages.
Perhaps schools shouldn't be taylored towards only one specific kind of intelligence?
Also, research has shown that cultural attitudes, and the way it effects the psychological development of children in certain social groups, cause them to test poorly when they know it is a test, but when they are told it is an ungraded activity, the test scores seem to increase and fall in line with the global average.
True, you can't deny biological factors, but I think most people have a lot of misconceptions about "intelligence" and IQ tests. More often than not, environmental factors, such as culture, can be more of an obstacle for one's intellectual development than biological factors. And in 99% of the cases, one can in fact increase their intelligence significantly simply by apply themselves in the right manner.
A lot of people seem to have the misconception that intelligence can be accurately quantified, as if IQ directly correlates to one's intelligence. Like you said, there are many types of intelligence and mental faculties, and most are not very well understood. It's not as simple as how many brain cells you have. You must also factor in the quality of the neural connections, and other things that neurologists are only beginning to understand.
What interests me the most is the apparent connection between different mental gifts and mental illness. In particular, the observed correlation between mathematical genius and autism/asperg's, and also the link between creativity and depression/bipolarism. I'm still not quite sure if the correlation represents a direct relationship, or if there are other factors that we aren't seeing.
Yea, much of it is in fact derived from building connections and social networking. That is how you learn most often, or atleast get a hold of necessary resources. Most system engineers simply don't have the time and energy to explore the back alleys of the web and slowly gain the trust and respect of other hackers in the blackhat community in order to obtain access to the information/tools/resources that one needs to be a blackhat hacker.
A PVR is essentially a comptur in the same way that a calculator is essentially a computer. Home PCs are general computing appliances though. A PVR should technically be able to run off of set-top DVD recorder hardware. And a set-top DVD-recorders probably cost a little more than a DVD-player to make, and there are definitely $40 DVD players out there. Minus artificially inflated prices, factor in bulk-manufacturing discounts, I don't have a hard time believing that a cheap PVR could be manufactured by a compnay like Sony or Panasonic for less than $40.
I recently bought a region-free DVD player for a friend that could play DivX/XviD, mpeg, avi, wmv, mp3 videos that only cost $69. It was also made by panasonic I believe. You'd be surprised at how little "computing power" you need to perform video-encoding/decoding with specialized components. I can guarantee you that the processor in a TiVo is nowhere near as powerful as the minimum processor speed required for a desktop box PVR.
AIDS isn't the only problem in Africa. Someone just raised the issue of AIDS, which is completely unrelated to the goals of the project. Laptops can be good for general education. And it doesn't necessarily have to go to the poorest of the poor. It could go to kids who are already in schools, who want to learn, but have very poor learning facilities.
While it might not be coerced physically, you can't say that threat of eternal damnatin of one's soul isn't a form of coercion. And in the Old Testament there are plenty of instances where God would smite people simply for subscribing to "deviant ideas." And even without physical coercion, it's still ultimately a master-subject relationship. This is evident in the popular allegorical representation of a king and his kingdom. Worship in itself implies a role of subservience/subordination.
I just find it hard to believe that a being who is supposed to be enlightened and virtuous would seek for a kingdom of worshippers. In fact, I can't imagine any enlightened person wanting others to grovel at their feet. It just seems very petty and vainglorious. However, this belief that spiritual devotion is demonstrated through worship, and consequently that piety requires subservience, is deeply entrenched in most religious doctrines.
That's funny, I love my parents, and I'm constantly in awe of nature and human achievement, yet I don't worship either of those. I think the master-slave relationship is the lowest form of social connection, hardly something I would expect from an enlightened/divine being. Love doesn't mean you need to worship someone and essentially grovel at their feet. Awe is something that simply inspires and enlivens the spirit, not something that demands subservience.
I don't buy that "God has a greater plan that we as human beings are incapable of comprehending" BS. It discounts the suffering of others. You wouldn't say that if your son were born mentally retarded or your wife were maimed in a car accident. You have the luxury of making such blithe remarks about other people's sufferng because you aren't the one who is going through it. That's exactly the kind of attitude that I have a problem with. You're basically justifying the sufferng that other people go through even though you can't provide the reasoning for such justifying it.
Could you give some examples of miracles which you have witnessed, or just know of, which were the result of prayers?
I wouldn't compare praying to God with conversing with your wife. When you talk to your wife, it's usually a 2-way dialog; it's a social activity--that is why it has intrinsic value. Whereas, when you pray, it's usually a one-way dialog. People may ask for signs or interpret events that follow as God answering their prayers, but this is the same as believing in divination.
Coincidentally, I've noticed that those who are very religious often demonstrate a strong cognitive bias tending to overdraw from experiences which confirm their pre-existing and deeply entrenched beliefs, while conveniently omitting occurances which negate such beliefs. This allows one to believe in the "power of prayer" despite overwhelming evidence against it.
For instance, when good things happen, it is often attributed to God; whereas, when bad things happen, it's usually attributed to man (or the Devil). What really annoys me about this is when people survive a near-fatal accident or something and say something to the effect of, "it's a miracle. God must have been protecting me," and disregard all the people who didn't have God there to protect them. I mean, if it had really been an act of God which saved that person, then were all those other people not deserving of God's help? It's one thing to be grateful to be alive and acknowledge that you were simply lucky, and others weren't as lucky. It's another thing to attribute your luck as the deliberate result of divine intervention (or worse, some masterplan). Because that would mean that those who weren't as fortunate were deliberately chosen to suffer, that God had justification in saving you and not them (presuming that God is a perfectly benevolent omniscient and omnipotent being, who doesn't exercise arbitrary favoritism). It's just inconsiderate and self-absorbed.
I respect your beliefs, and I can understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, from my experience most theists of any mainstream religion don't seem to put as much thought and research into their choice religion as you. A lot of people simply go through the motions and participate in the rituals, and don't give much critical thought to their spiritual development.
So because the Bible says God exists, you believe that God exists. And the test is whether you believe the Bible or not. Then there really is no test.
How do you know the bible is an accurate account of history? There have been a lot of inaccuracies observed in the Bible, and it's acknowledged by most biblical historians that the Bible wasn't even written by whom the church claims to have written it. The Old Testament was written by three different unidentified individuals transcribing oral traditions (a good primary source for historical research, but not an all too reliable source for taking at face value). The New Testament was also written hundreds of years after Jesus' passing, not as a collection of first-hand accounts as it's often claimed. Not to mention that the Bible often contradicts itself in many places. There are also scriptures that early church leaders arbitrarily decided were "unorthodox," and excluded from the canon, simply because they were out of line with popular beliefs within church leadership at the time.
You ought to also bear in mind that there are many people alive today who make claims of witnessing equally fantastic miracles or supernatural events along the same vein as biblical stories, but those people are generally considered to be disconnected from reality. So what gives you so much faith in the historical accuracy of the Bible? Anyone studying antiquities should understand that even with known first-hand accounts of events, you can't really take anything at face value and trust that the retelling of events is fully accurate. And many biblical accounts have in fact been found in contradiction to other historical accounts from the period. So why not, then, believe in the greek gods?
I disagree. You can't prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist, but it's still pretty damn silly to believe in the FSM. It's stupid to believe in something when it flies in the face of reason. It shouldn't be up to skeptics to prove that God, as described by the Bible, does not exist. I could claim that there are invisible unicorns everywhere that can't be seen by anyone or detected by scientific instruments, is it up to disbelievers to prove that they don't exist? or is my claim ludicrous because most likely I just made it up?
The UN is not a nation. UN affairs are not national affairs to the U.S. or any other nation. UN affairs are international affairs.
I've lost my interest in this discussion as it has not been the least bit productive. You can continue to believe that Florida is a country if you want, but the rest of the world disagrees with you.
I'm not actually asking those questions. Read the entire post. Those were rhetorical questions raised to highlight the problem with certain religious beliefs. And those questions aren't unanswerable, though they may be subjective. I can come up with a lot of good reasons to do those things. My point was that a spiritual belief which devalues our earthly existence is inherently flawed because it unrightly dismisses any value in some of the greatest things in life.
True, but those researchers were probably more interested on this topic, and that's what they got their grant for. Perhaps those researchers actually believes that prayer could have some kind of scientifically verifiable effect on medicine. I think this research is a sign of how intellectually crippled our society has become. A lot of people out their believe in half-baked ideas. A small number of them are researchers, but the societal impact is far greater than merely having these scientific investigations.
Anti-abortionists simply lack an understanding of fundamental biology. It's a self-righteous social movement by mislead people. If you want to debate on whether abortion is murder or not I will gladly humor you, but I was referring to the philosophical implications of mainstream religion--implications which I outlined and you promptly ignored.
Theists often emphasize how humanity is born into sin, that our only salvation is gained through worshipping God, so that we may enter into heaven and be at God's side (to worship him for all eternity) in the after-life. But this devalues our earthly existence. It gives us no reason to improve society and try to achieve a more just and compassionate society on earth. It leads to people justifying the suffering of others via the "God has a masterplan" argument instead of empathizing with those sufferng and trying to help them. It leads to people simply accepting horrible conditions instead of trying to improve them.
Religious charities are great and all, but I'm talking about many Christians' justification of sufferng (usually other people's sufferng) when people ask "why would God allow this?"
"The answer is "yes." The states are the source of all sovereignty within the United States, and have opted to grant them to a new construct, the federal government, through a constitution. The federal government acts in the name of the states (if only in name nowadays), much as how Parliament acts in the name of the British monarch."
It's one or the other, not both. The states may have been considered autonomous political entities initially, but today they are the same as provinces in other nations. When a shared constitution was adopted by all the states, they ceased being a confederation of sovereign states, and entered into a new political arrangement wherein the individual states could no longer act autonomously, but were inextricably bound to the federation of states by necessity. This arranegment was entered into voluntarily because the ex-colonies knew that without political unity realized through a central national government, they were weak and vulnerable, and would be unable to fend for themselves against the european imperialist nations.
"Nation" can have different meanings. For example, when Thomas Paine wrote about the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Nation," he seemed to be of the opinion that the French people used the word "nation" not to refer to the government or to a piece of real estate, but to the body of the French people. The people of the United States are (for better or for worse) rather homogeneous throughout, so it is proper to refer to the "American people" as a singular.
You're going off on a tangent again. In common usage, atleast in the context of political science, 'nation' means a nation-state; a sovereign state--such as the U.S. If people really consider the U.S. a nation simply because it has a homogeneous population, not because of its political structure, then why do people not consider Canada part of the U.S.? Your arguments keep getting more and more ridiculous. And the U.S. is far from homogeneous, both ethnically and culturally. I'm guessing you haven't travelled in the U.S. much have you?
The states conduct all elections in the United States. They even decide who gets to vote.
I asked why don't the states conduct their own national elections. You seem to like ignoring crucial words to change the question when you can't find an adequate answer. The states participate in a national election, but California itself doesn't get to decide who the president is. Florida doesn't get to vote for its own president. The states don't hold separate elections. If each state is its own sovereign nation, then why are national elections held across all states? Let me spell it out in even simpler terms for you: why would a sovereign nation conduct a national election outside of its own nation? unless ofcourse, the states consider themselves merely subnational political entities part of a greater nation, namely, the U.S. That would seem to be the most obvious and logical explaination. Which might be why most everyone in the world agree that the U.S. is a single nation, not 50 independent ones.
Because there are studies out there that make the claim that prayer does have a statistical impact on rovery. It is up to other scientists to verify or negate these studies by trying to reproduce those results. That's how science works. They do the same thing with all scientific theories.
I think his point was that God appears to care more about his own ego than the needs of suffering people. You're just picking at his wording of it.
Also, the point you make raises one of the problems I have with mainstream religion; it's that it often devalues humanity and life (this life). All that is good and virtuous and extricated from humanity and placed in the symbol of "God," leaving humanity a base creature whose only salvation is in groveling at the feet of this perfect and vastly superior being. People glorify the afterlife and in return devalue the life they are living now, which is also earthly and "impermanent," as you say.
So why persue science and medicine at all? why make discoveries? why create art? why listen to music? why start a family? Why not just spend our entire lives cloistered and worshipping this divine being who gives our life its only true meaning?
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You totally missed the point of my analogy. Not every PVR is just a desktop box in a small form-factor. There are many such PCs sold as PVRs, but that doesn't mean that a PVR needs all the functionality of a home PC. Why does a PVR necessarily need an ethernet port? or modem? or USB port? That's like saying that because my computer can burn DVDs, that all DVD-recorders, even set-top boxes, need to be full featured PCs.
For instance, VIA has specialized CPUs and motherboards designed specifically for building PVR boxes with. They are much cheaper than Intel or AMD CPUs, yet they are much more efficient because, though their performance in general computing tasks are rather lackluster, they have been optimized for video-encoding/decoding tasks. Their instruction sets and chip architecture are designed with PVR functions in mind. Now, these chips still conform to x86 architecture, so they're still just PC chips marketed towards computer hobbyists who simply want to build a custom PVR box. As such, they are far from fully optimized, but they still sell for far less than AMD/Intel CPUs with similar video-encoding/decoding performance in addition to being much quieter/cooler, and far less energy consuming. Right now you can get an 800MHz VIA C3 for just $26.00 retail.
In case you still don't fully undersand, let me provide a different angle. Panasonic sells set-top DVD recorders in the U.S. for ~$100 retail. Obviously, a DVD recorder needs to be able to recieve TV signals, but it's gonna be through an integrated component, not a PCI tuner card. A DVD recorder also needs to be able to decode the TV signal, and encode it into mpeg streams, and this will also be done through the set-top box's specialized hardware components and integrated design, not through an application layer desktop program on top of a general purpose operating system. This way, the two core functionality of a PVR are covered, and done much cheaper computing-resource-wise, and thus also component-cost-wise. If this were all done in an x86 desktop box (what form-factor you use doesn't really matter), it would require a much faster processor, more memory, and other hardware and software bloat that aren't essential to a functioning PVR.
So if a general purpose x86 CPU only moderately optimized for media-applications and can handle PVR video-encoding/decoding can be sold at a profit for less than $30, and a set-top DVD recorder which features all of the core functionality of a PVR can be sold for $100, then it should certainly be possible to mass produce PVRs for far less than an average PC, and more along the price point of a set-top DVD recorder. And considering that Panasonic sells DVD recorders in the U.S. for $100, I'm sure you can find generics in Taiwan or China for far less--probably closer to $50. And it'd certainly cost less than per unit to manufacture.
If you think that retail PVRs like TiVo are made of the same high-priced consumer components as your home PC, then you're sadly mistaken. You can call any kind of electronic device with a processor in it a "computer," but that is a very generic term covering a wide range of electronics. Most consumer electronics have a much more integrated design than PCs, and are much more efficient. A home-built PVR box is just a PC running PVR software, but that's not what a TiVo is, not even close.
What kind of important decisions do IQ tests help us make?
The problem with IQ tests, and also SAT tests, are that they usually have certain inherent biases or flaws in their design which benefit particular social groups. Specifically, standardized tests such as IQ tests and the SATs have been shown to have cultural biases in the way questions are phrases, or perhaps even in the kinds of questions used in the tests. Stereotypes have also been shown to psychologically handicap certain minorities.
Additionally, most standardized tests commonly used to grant access into academia or other coveted sectors of society usually have exploitable flaws which tend to favor the financially successful. For example, many asian students from an upper-middle class financial background score exceptionally high (relative to their peers from different socio-economic/cultural backgrounds) on the SATs not because they are particularly smart or studious, but simply because they knew how to prepare for the test, and have had a lot of practice studying for the test. This results in the test not measuring the academic abilities/merit of a student, but simply how familiar they were with the SAT test--a skill with essentially no academic/intellectual value.
So students with rich parents who can afford to send them to the best SAT prep schools score higher than students with more academic merit simply because they're familiar with test taking strategies with respect to the SATs. This is often exploited in the Asian community, which gives students of a different culture an unfair disadvantage simply because they aren't aware of how big of an advantage a good SAT prep school can give. Even if everyone were aware of this exploitable flaw in the tests, it still leaves you with a bunch of students spending hours after school everyday to study how to take a test rather than simply engaging in true intellectual pursuits which they are interested in.
So the inherent flaws in these standardized tests, in combination with their roles as gatekeepers to upper-mobility resources--in other words, de facto determiners of the maximum level of success one may achieve--causes serious inequities in our society to persist. So outside of medical/scientific research on brain & psychological development, I really don't see many legitimate uses for such tests as they exist today.
I shared similar experiences in my childhood, though I'm only 20. Up until maybe 5th or 6th grade I didn't do too well in school compared to other students (though my parents claimed that they could tell I was above average in intelligence from very early on. but then again, they are my parents) but by 6th grade I was easily one of the top students at my school, a trend which continued throughout jr. high, high school, and college. I can't say that I didn't have to work very hard (often to the point of tears I was so bad at certain subjects such as writing), but even when I became a total slacker in high school and college I still found it easy to keep up in math and science classes, and even set the curve semi-regularly without studying ahead of time or doing homework assignments.
It seems that early on my brain adapted to a certain type of thinking, such as the thought processes used for math and science, and perhaps my neural connections are just optimized for those kinds of problem-solving skills or whatnot. The area I seem to have the most difficulties in is language skills. I have a hard time learning new languages. I nearly failed out of my sign language class in high school, and I used to be a very poor writer. I've been able to improve my writing skills through lots and lots of practice, but I still have a hard time picking up new languages.
Perhaps schools shouldn't be taylored towards only one specific kind of intelligence?
Also, research has shown that cultural attitudes, and the way it effects the psychological development of children in certain social groups, cause them to test poorly when they know it is a test, but when they are told it is an ungraded activity, the test scores seem to increase and fall in line with the global average.
True, you can't deny biological factors, but I think most people have a lot of misconceptions about "intelligence" and IQ tests. More often than not, environmental factors, such as culture, can be more of an obstacle for one's intellectual development than biological factors. And in 99% of the cases, one can in fact increase their intelligence significantly simply by apply themselves in the right manner.
A lot of people seem to have the misconception that intelligence can be accurately quantified, as if IQ directly correlates to one's intelligence. Like you said, there are many types of intelligence and mental faculties, and most are not very well understood. It's not as simple as how many brain cells you have. You must also factor in the quality of the neural connections, and other things that neurologists are only beginning to understand.
What interests me the most is the apparent connection between different mental gifts and mental illness. In particular, the observed correlation between mathematical genius and autism/asperg's, and also the link between creativity and depression/bipolarism. I'm still not quite sure if the correlation represents a direct relationship, or if there are other factors that we aren't seeing.
Robosexuals?
"Stay away from our women! You've got metal fever, boy! Metal fever!" -- Bender
Yea, much of it is in fact derived from building connections and social networking. That is how you learn most often, or atleast get a hold of necessary resources. Most system engineers simply don't have the time and energy to explore the back alleys of the web and slowly gain the trust and respect of other hackers in the blackhat community in order to obtain access to the information/tools/resources that one needs to be a blackhat hacker.
A PVR is essentially a comptur in the same way that a calculator is essentially a computer. Home PCs are general computing appliances though. A PVR should technically be able to run off of set-top DVD recorder hardware. And a set-top DVD-recorders probably cost a little more than a DVD-player to make, and there are definitely $40 DVD players out there. Minus artificially inflated prices, factor in bulk-manufacturing discounts, I don't have a hard time believing that a cheap PVR could be manufactured by a compnay like Sony or Panasonic for less than $40.
I recently bought a region-free DVD player for a friend that could play DivX/XviD, mpeg, avi, wmv, mp3 videos that only cost $69. It was also made by panasonic I believe. You'd be surprised at how little "computing power" you need to perform video-encoding/decoding with specialized components. I can guarantee you that the processor in a TiVo is nowhere near as powerful as the minimum processor speed required for a desktop box PVR.
Heh, I can totally see that scenario. I'm sure lots of people out there write books simply out of egotism rather than inner inspiration.
AIDS isn't the only problem in Africa. Someone just raised the issue of AIDS, which is completely unrelated to the goals of the project. Laptops can be good for general education. And it doesn't necessarily have to go to the poorest of the poor. It could go to kids who are already in schools, who want to learn, but have very poor learning facilities.
While it might not be coerced physically, you can't say that threat of eternal damnatin of one's soul isn't a form of coercion. And in the Old Testament there are plenty of instances where God would smite people simply for subscribing to "deviant ideas." And even without physical coercion, it's still ultimately a master-subject relationship. This is evident in the popular allegorical representation of a king and his kingdom. Worship in itself implies a role of subservience/subordination.
I just find it hard to believe that a being who is supposed to be enlightened and virtuous would seek for a kingdom of worshippers. In fact, I can't imagine any enlightened person wanting others to grovel at their feet. It just seems very petty and vainglorious. However, this belief that spiritual devotion is demonstrated through worship, and consequently that piety requires subservience, is deeply entrenched in most religious doctrines.
Personally, I see it as an act of idolatry.
That's funny, I love my parents, and I'm constantly in awe of nature and human achievement, yet I don't worship either of those. I think the master-slave relationship is the lowest form of social connection, hardly something I would expect from an enlightened/divine being. Love doesn't mean you need to worship someone and essentially grovel at their feet. Awe is something that simply inspires and enlivens the spirit, not something that demands subservience.
I don't buy that "God has a greater plan that we as human beings are incapable of comprehending" BS. It discounts the suffering of others. You wouldn't say that if your son were born mentally retarded or your wife were maimed in a car accident. You have the luxury of making such blithe remarks about other people's sufferng because you aren't the one who is going through it. That's exactly the kind of attitude that I have a problem with. You're basically justifying the sufferng that other people go through even though you can't provide the reasoning for such justifying it.
Could you give some examples of miracles which you have witnessed, or just know of, which were the result of prayers?
I wouldn't compare praying to God with conversing with your wife. When you talk to your wife, it's usually a 2-way dialog; it's a social activity--that is why it has intrinsic value. Whereas, when you pray, it's usually a one-way dialog. People may ask for signs or interpret events that follow as God answering their prayers, but this is the same as believing in divination.
Coincidentally, I've noticed that those who are very religious often demonstrate a strong cognitive bias tending to overdraw from experiences which confirm their pre-existing and deeply entrenched beliefs, while conveniently omitting occurances which negate such beliefs. This allows one to believe in the "power of prayer" despite overwhelming evidence against it.
For instance, when good things happen, it is often attributed to God; whereas, when bad things happen, it's usually attributed to man (or the Devil). What really annoys me about this is when people survive a near-fatal accident or something and say something to the effect of, "it's a miracle. God must have been protecting me," and disregard all the people who didn't have God there to protect them. I mean, if it had really been an act of God which saved that person, then were all those other people not deserving of God's help? It's one thing to be grateful to be alive and acknowledge that you were simply lucky, and others weren't as lucky. It's another thing to attribute your luck as the deliberate result of divine intervention (or worse, some masterplan). Because that would mean that those who weren't as fortunate were deliberately chosen to suffer, that God had justification in saving you and not them (presuming that God is a perfectly benevolent omniscient and omnipotent being, who doesn't exercise arbitrary favoritism). It's just inconsiderate and self-absorbed.
I respect your beliefs, and I can understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, from my experience most theists of any mainstream religion don't seem to put as much thought and research into their choice religion as you. A lot of people simply go through the motions and participate in the rituals, and don't give much critical thought to their spiritual development.
So because the Bible says God exists, you believe that God exists. And the test is whether you believe the Bible or not. Then there really is no test.
How do you know the bible is an accurate account of history? There have been a lot of inaccuracies observed in the Bible, and it's acknowledged by most biblical historians that the Bible wasn't even written by whom the church claims to have written it. The Old Testament was written by three different unidentified individuals transcribing oral traditions (a good primary source for historical research, but not an all too reliable source for taking at face value). The New Testament was also written hundreds of years after Jesus' passing, not as a collection of first-hand accounts as it's often claimed. Not to mention that the Bible often contradicts itself in many places. There are also scriptures that early church leaders arbitrarily decided were "unorthodox," and excluded from the canon, simply because they were out of line with popular beliefs within church leadership at the time.
You ought to also bear in mind that there are many people alive today who make claims of witnessing equally fantastic miracles or supernatural events along the same vein as biblical stories, but those people are generally considered to be disconnected from reality. So what gives you so much faith in the historical accuracy of the Bible? Anyone studying antiquities should understand that even with known first-hand accounts of events, you can't really take anything at face value and trust that the retelling of events is fully accurate. And many biblical accounts have in fact been found in contradiction to other historical accounts from the period. So why not, then, believe in the greek gods?
What's the method that the bible describes for testing whether God exists?
I disagree. You can't prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist, but it's still pretty damn silly to believe in the FSM. It's stupid to believe in something when it flies in the face of reason. It shouldn't be up to skeptics to prove that God, as described by the Bible, does not exist. I could claim that there are invisible unicorns everywhere that can't be seen by anyone or detected by scientific instruments, is it up to disbelievers to prove that they don't exist? or is my claim ludicrous because most likely I just made it up?
The UN is not a nation. UN affairs are not national affairs to the U.S. or any other nation. UN affairs are international affairs.
I've lost my interest in this discussion as it has not been the least bit productive. You can continue to believe that Florida is a country if you want, but the rest of the world disagrees with you.
I'm not actually asking those questions. Read the entire post. Those were rhetorical questions raised to highlight the problem with certain religious beliefs. And those questions aren't unanswerable, though they may be subjective. I can come up with a lot of good reasons to do those things. My point was that a spiritual belief which devalues our earthly existence is inherently flawed because it unrightly dismisses any value in some of the greatest things in life.
True, but those researchers were probably more interested on this topic, and that's what they got their grant for. Perhaps those researchers actually believes that prayer could have some kind of scientifically verifiable effect on medicine. I think this research is a sign of how intellectually crippled our society has become. A lot of people out their believe in half-baked ideas. A small number of them are researchers, but the societal impact is far greater than merely having these scientific investigations.
Anti-abortionists simply lack an understanding of fundamental biology. It's a self-righteous social movement by mislead people. If you want to debate on whether abortion is murder or not I will gladly humor you, but I was referring to the philosophical implications of mainstream religion--implications which I outlined and you promptly ignored.
Theists often emphasize how humanity is born into sin, that our only salvation is gained through worshipping God, so that we may enter into heaven and be at God's side (to worship him for all eternity) in the after-life. But this devalues our earthly existence. It gives us no reason to improve society and try to achieve a more just and compassionate society on earth. It leads to people justifying the suffering of others via the "God has a masterplan" argument instead of empathizing with those sufferng and trying to help them. It leads to people simply accepting horrible conditions instead of trying to improve them.
Religious charities are great and all, but I'm talking about many Christians' justification of sufferng (usually other people's sufferng) when people ask "why would God allow this?"
It's one or the other, not both. The states may have been considered autonomous political entities initially, but today they are the same as provinces in other nations. When a shared constitution was adopted by all the states, they ceased being a confederation of sovereign states, and entered into a new political arrangement wherein the individual states could no longer act autonomously, but were inextricably bound to the federation of states by necessity. This arranegment was entered into voluntarily because the ex-colonies knew that without political unity realized through a central national government, they were weak and vulnerable, and would be unable to fend for themselves against the european imperialist nations.
You're going off on a tangent again. In common usage, atleast in the context of political science, 'nation' means a nation-state; a sovereign state--such as the U.S. If people really consider the U.S. a nation simply because it has a homogeneous population, not because of its political structure, then why do people not consider Canada part of the U.S.? Your arguments keep getting more and more ridiculous. And the U.S. is far from homogeneous, both ethnically and culturally. I'm guessing you haven't travelled in the U.S. much have you?
I asked why don't the states conduct their own national elections. You seem to like ignoring crucial words to change the question when you can't find an adequate answer. The states participate in a national election, but California itself doesn't get to decide who the president is. Florida doesn't get to vote for its own president. The states don't hold separate elections. If each state is its own sovereign nation, then why are national elections held across all states? Let me spell it out in even simpler terms for you: why would a sovereign nation conduct a national election outside of its own nation? unless ofcourse, the states consider themselves merely subnational political entities part of a greater nation, namely, the U.S. That would seem to be the most obvious and logical explaination. Which might be why most everyone in the world agree that the U.S. is a single nation, not 50 independent ones.
Because there are studies out there that make the claim that prayer does have a statistical impact on rovery. It is up to other scientists to verify or negate these studies by trying to reproduce those results. That's how science works. They do the same thing with all scientific theories.
I think his point was that God appears to care more about his own ego than the needs of suffering people. You're just picking at his wording of it.
Also, the point you make raises one of the problems I have with mainstream religion; it's that it often devalues humanity and life (this life). All that is good and virtuous and extricated from humanity and placed in the symbol of "God," leaving humanity a base creature whose only salvation is in groveling at the feet of this perfect and vastly superior being. People glorify the afterlife and in return devalue the life they are living now, which is also earthly and "impermanent," as you say.
So why persue science and medicine at all? why make discoveries? why create art? why listen to music? why start a family? Why not just spend our entire lives cloistered and worshipping this divine being who gives our life its only true meaning?