How would we know ? We don't have the Bible. We have 1500+ Greek texts that are very divergent. And the pre-Christian Hebrew Old Testament is likely lost to history. Currently we make guess as to which texts were likely in line with original thinking and which weren't, in order to construct a Bible.
Book: The Illusion Of Conscious Will by D. Wegner
In this book they place people in FMRI scanners and ask them to touch their fingers together at some random time. The results suggest that the decision area of the brain (neo-cortex) gets involved quite late in the process. Worse than that, there research to suggest that there is a region of the brain whose job is to construct some narrative so that it seems like we actually made the decision. (Some patients have lost this area due to stroke, and they can produce strange results in testing).
The citizenry of of modern societies face not one potential inside enemy (the government) but two (government and corporations). The trick is to balance these so there is healthy commerce while not abusing too much of the citizenry. To be honest, any sane society will keep an eye on any center of power, it is a problem with all large organizational structures (Scientology). Remember that government is at least theoretically responsible for keeping the system healthy for citizens, while in the US, for practical purposes, corporations have a charter (sometimes enforced by shareholder lawsuit) to make a profit at any cost.
It seems to me that once you start looking backward and asking origin type questions, you are eventually forced to confront infinities. Either we assume something has always existed, or a god created it, and god was around for infinity. My understanding is that infinity is a mathematical symbol, and not yet observed in the physical universe. Would it even be possible to witness any infinite thing, or it's infinite-ness ? Aside from mathematics, I am not sure the word infinity qualifies as an actual signifier of anything.
I totally agree that language allows us to pose questions that do not map to reality. (How old is the current kind of France ?) And I understand there are cosmological answers that look reasonable as long as I agree not to ask certain questions relating to what I experience. I do not ever experience the king of France however. I do experience [the illusion of] time, and it totally makes sense to think of a previous moment in time. Your answer regarding the big bang is a good answer, but it requires my acceptance of something I have never experienced and can make no sense of. Materialism holds that that the universe moves through a series of states via a series of causes. Except for the first state. That troubles me. The origin problem remains, you just say that I must not [cannot ?] ask the question.
We probably differ on very little. The god described in the Bible, I cannot see that as being true. But something else ? What would a god be anyway ? My original point was there is no easy answer to the origin problem, not in theism, not in atheism. You can decide not to ponder the question. Otherwise, the remaining imaginable options are all problematic. I am burdened with the same problem as everyone else. If I do believe that something rather that nothing exists, (I do, I at least know I am conscious, even if I am dreaming) then I either have to adopt some metaphysical position, which puts me in the faith camp. Or remain agnostic and continue to ponder it. People who are only considering the biological genesis problem, or the cosmological problem, don't realize there is a much bigger problem, the ontological problem.
But just saying you don't know doesn't absolve you of taking a stance on the matter.
If I don't make a claim or take a stance, how would you know ? Let's say I wake up in a strange room that is on fire, with a door to the left and a door to the right. As a practical matter I choose the door on the left, but at no time do I make a claim that it is in fact the exit. Just a practical decision, no claim to truth. While you will find me making certain practical decisions, you won't often hear me announcing truth claims.
Even if you answer this with "I'm not sure", this is essentially the same as saying "they have similar possibilities of being correct."
Sorry, I don't agree, the second part there would constitute a claim.
my brother is 1 millimeter tall or 6 feet tall,
The 1mm answer would be silly of course, but I don't think it makes your argument that I have made a claim. Your argument seems to imply that it would not be possible for me to truly not know the answer to certain questions.
I am responding to the post above, not how evolution got started, which is a somewhat smaller problem. The context of the above post was about how anything got started, a place you end up ultimately if you keep thinking about it. I am an agnostic because I think the burden of proof rests with those who make a positive claim. When I say I don't know, there is nothing I need to prove.
Agnostic here. IMHO we really have no way to think or talk about the origin problem. We can insert some placeholder, that semantically answers the question (like God started it all, or time goes back infinitely, or time started at the big bang), but ontologically, we still got nothin'. How do we make sense of a beginning with no previous moment ? Or an infinitely backward extending line of time ? Go ahead and act like the problem is resolved, but it is still an open question. And this is a problem because I have a belief that something, rather than nothing, exists, which raises these nasty origin questions.
I recently tried gaffer's tape in making valves for a harmonica. Worked pretty well. The small rectangular piece of tape is sits over a rectangular hole in the reed plate. The tape is attached to the brass plate at one end. When you blow the harmonica, air travels up thru the slot, lifting the tape (valve) so that air passes thru. But then you draw (suck air) the tape clamps down, blocking the air flow, forcing all the air thru the opposing draw reed. Which gives a different sound, and allows the pitch bending of notes not normally bendable.
I can't be a pilot or a doctor without passing certain tests. Why should we put mentally ill people in charge of these large, powerful organizations ? I think it would be possible for experts to screen out a certain percentage of sociopaths / psychopaths.
Your question is sadly relevant. We create these huge powerful organizational structures (corporations, governments, religions, etc) without any thought of what might go wrong. And if you haven't had any experience in these large organizations, you could look at a number of studies suggesting that the top layers of these organizations are reserved for psychopaths, and people with some variety of anti-social disorders / no capacity for empathy. History suggests all these structures will eventually fail and be replaced. I think it will be a more painful process in these modern times.
I am not against this option since 99% of my screen time is youtube documentaries. But I had purchased two years of the Moonshiners series, and last I checked they are gone. And good luck trying to get any customer service.
years ago. A couple of things I remember: 1) the system wasn't ready when the testing started so all cars passed with random passing numbers, 2) 3/4 the way through the study I discovered that a software bug (not mine) was setting the simulated vehicle weight of all vehicles (on the electric dynamometer) to 3000lbs. So that is why we can't get the Geo Metro up to 50 mph ! 3) Toward the end of the study every other vehicle scheduled for test was an RV/Camper. This test was to determine the relative accuracy of low/med/high priced emission testing systems.
I have a little Sony handycam and made a video of a headless 8 string acoustic guitar I built. Using the Blender video sequence editor, the audio kept drifting.
So I just split the audio into two minute chunks and sync'd each one. I figured I was doing something wrong, but it appears this is a widespread problem.
It is not totally a matter of faith, or subscribing to some dogma. There are many statements made about the dating and fidelity of our modern Bible. These can and have been tested. It is not looking good for those who cling to traditional idea that we actually even have the original texts. Not only do the source texts not agree, the further you back the worse the divergence gets. Check out Bart Ehrman.
Societies will have to decide whether to let people starve, or consider some idea like universal income. I am old enough to remember when anyone who showed up and did a good job was on their way up, and was not always planning for the next every-3-year job hop due to failing companies. Take a look at the short documentary "Humans Need Not Apply". Between the unavoidable stagnation of first world economies, automation, and other factors, the future will be one without many jobs. And part-time jobs at the mall and Taco Bell are going to cut it. Shaming the unemployed will not make sense, if it ever did.
Seems like that system would need to deliver a lot of current. Are there potential safety issues here, for example a piece of metal falling on the road over the inductors ?
I was on ATT DSL. Cox makes DSL look heavenly. Cox works ok for a while but periodically just stops for about a minute. Now my wife understands my efforts to try to avoid cable modem. They gave everyone a supposed bump up from 5mb to 15. I say keep the 10mb and just give me a DSL level reliable connection.
The idea is that there is more than one perspective to consider. I could make money pimping my kids, or reducing my mother-in-law to two meals a day. Profit at any cost is the name of the game these days. It is a sinking ship. Here, have a life preserver.
A friend of mine is a physics professor. He is not a Creationist (doesn't believe in 4-10k year old earth). But he is an intelligent design proponent (he's not sure about cross-phyla evolution). He thinks there might be an important ingredient we are not aware of that got the whole thing started. Like an extra-terrestrial race like some Sumerian texts imply. I listen to all these ideas. I really don't think there is an alternative to the general evolutionary theory. But sure, pieces of it might be problematic like my friend says. Above all, I try not to embrace anything in a dogmatic way. Let's see what the evidence says. Of course none of this address the ontological question of how it all got started or where the laws of nature came from, etc
On the surface it appears they are questioning cross-specie evolution and how amino acids starting forming proteins (presumably without any RNA / DNA). But it is really an argument toward theocracy and away from secular society. Good luck with that. One of their arguments again cross-specie evolution is the lack of transitional fossils. This may be determined to be such a fossil. I am no scientist, but every theory should be questioned, it is science.
Slashdot Mirror
How would we know ? We don't have the Bible. We have 1500+ Greek texts that are very divergent. And the pre-Christian Hebrew Old Testament is likely lost to history. Currently we make guess as to which texts were likely in line with original thinking and which weren't, in order to construct a Bible.
Book: The Illusion Of Conscious Will by D. Wegner In this book they place people in FMRI scanners and ask them to touch their fingers together at some random time. The results suggest that the decision area of the brain (neo-cortex) gets involved quite late in the process. Worse than that, there research to suggest that there is a region of the brain whose job is to construct some narrative so that it seems like we actually made the decision. (Some patients have lost this area due to stroke, and they can produce strange results in testing).
The citizenry of of modern societies face not one potential inside enemy (the government) but two (government and corporations). The trick is to balance these so there is healthy commerce while not abusing too much of the citizenry. To be honest, any sane society will keep an eye on any center of power, it is a problem with all large organizational structures (Scientology). Remember that government is at least theoretically responsible for keeping the system healthy for citizens, while in the US, for practical purposes, corporations have a charter (sometimes enforced by shareholder lawsuit) to make a profit at any cost.
+1
Seems like these new cars should have a Disable Autopilot button.
It seems to me that once you start looking backward and asking origin type questions, you are eventually forced to confront infinities. Either we assume something has always existed, or a god created it, and god was around for infinity. My understanding is that infinity is a mathematical symbol, and not yet observed in the physical universe. Would it even be possible to witness any infinite thing, or it's infinite-ness ? Aside from mathematics, I am not sure the word infinity qualifies as an actual signifier of anything.
I totally agree that language allows us to pose questions that do not map to reality. (How old is the current kind of France ?) And I understand there are cosmological answers that look reasonable as long as I agree not to ask certain questions relating to what I experience. I do not ever experience the king of France however. I do experience [the illusion of] time, and it totally makes sense to think of a previous moment in time. Your answer regarding the big bang is a good answer, but it requires my acceptance of something I have never experienced and can make no sense of. Materialism holds that that the universe moves through a series of states via a series of causes. Except for the first state. That troubles me. The origin problem remains, you just say that I must not [cannot ?] ask the question.
We probably differ on very little. The god described in the Bible, I cannot see that as being true. But something else ? What would a god be anyway ? My original point was there is no easy answer to the origin problem, not in theism, not in atheism. You can decide not to ponder the question. Otherwise, the remaining imaginable options are all problematic. I am burdened with the same problem as everyone else. If I do believe that something rather that nothing exists, (I do, I at least know I am conscious, even if I am dreaming) then I either have to adopt some metaphysical position, which puts me in the faith camp. Or remain agnostic and continue to ponder it. People who are only considering the biological genesis problem, or the cosmological problem, don't realize there is a much bigger problem, the ontological problem.
But just saying you don't know doesn't absolve you of taking a stance on the matter.
If I don't make a claim or take a stance, how would you know ? Let's say I wake up in a strange room that is on fire, with a door to the left and a door to the right. As a practical matter I choose the door on the left, but at no time do I make a claim that it is in fact the exit. Just a practical decision, no claim to truth. While you will find me making certain practical decisions, you won't often hear me announcing truth claims.
Even if you answer this with "I'm not sure", this is essentially the same as saying "they have similar possibilities of being correct."
Sorry, I don't agree, the second part there would constitute a claim.
my brother is 1 millimeter tall or 6 feet tall,
The 1mm answer would be silly of course, but I don't think it makes your argument that I have made a claim. Your argument seems to imply that it would not be possible for me to truly not know the answer to certain questions.
I am responding to the post above, not how evolution got started, which is a somewhat smaller problem. The context of the above post was about how anything got started, a place you end up ultimately if you keep thinking about it. I am an agnostic because I think the burden of proof rests with those who make a positive claim. When I say I don't know, there is nothing I need to prove.
Agnostic here. IMHO we really have no way to think or talk about the origin problem. We can insert some placeholder, that semantically answers the question (like God started it all, or time goes back infinitely, or time started at the big bang), but ontologically, we still got nothin'. How do we make sense of a beginning with no previous moment ? Or an infinitely backward extending line of time ? Go ahead and act like the problem is resolved, but it is still an open question. And this is a problem because I have a belief that something, rather than nothing, exists, which raises these nasty origin questions.
I recently tried gaffer's tape in making valves for a harmonica. Worked pretty well. The small rectangular piece of tape is sits over a rectangular hole in the reed plate. The tape is attached to the brass plate at one end. When you blow the harmonica, air travels up thru the slot, lifting the tape (valve) so that air passes thru. But then you draw (suck air) the tape clamps down, blocking the air flow, forcing all the air thru the opposing draw reed. Which gives a different sound, and allows the pitch bending of notes not normally bendable.
I can't be a pilot or a doctor without passing certain tests. Why should we put mentally ill people in charge of these large, powerful organizations ? I think it would be possible for experts to screen out a certain percentage of sociopaths / psychopaths.
It must either deal with it or be designed to fail gracefully. It's not like we have a choice.
Your question is sadly relevant. We create these huge powerful organizational structures (corporations, governments, religions, etc) without any thought of what might go wrong. And if you haven't had any experience in these large organizations, you could look at a number of studies suggesting that the top layers of these organizations are reserved for psychopaths, and people with some variety of anti-social disorders / no capacity for empathy. History suggests all these structures will eventually fail and be replaced. I think it will be a more painful process in these modern times.
I am not against this option since 99% of my screen time is youtube documentaries. But I had purchased two years of the Moonshiners series, and last I checked they are gone. And good luck trying to get any customer service.
years ago. A couple of things I remember: 1) the system wasn't ready when the testing started so all cars passed with random passing numbers, 2) 3/4 the way through the study I discovered that a software bug (not mine) was setting the simulated vehicle weight of all vehicles (on the electric dynamometer) to 3000lbs. So that is why we can't get the Geo Metro up to 50 mph ! 3) Toward the end of the study every other vehicle scheduled for test was an RV/Camper. This test was to determine the relative accuracy of low/med/high priced emission testing systems.
I have a little Sony handycam and made a video of a headless 8 string acoustic guitar I built. Using the Blender video sequence editor, the audio kept drifting. So I just split the audio into two minute chunks and sync'd each one. I figured I was doing something wrong, but it appears this is a widespread problem.
It is not totally a matter of faith, or subscribing to some dogma. There are many statements made about the dating and fidelity of our modern Bible. These can and have been tested. It is not looking good for those who cling to traditional idea that we actually even have the original texts. Not only do the source texts not agree, the further you back the worse the divergence gets. Check out Bart Ehrman.
Societies will have to decide whether to let people starve, or consider some idea like universal income. I am old enough to remember when anyone who showed up and did a good job was on their way up, and was not always planning for the next every-3-year job hop due to failing companies. Take a look at the short documentary "Humans Need Not Apply". Between the unavoidable stagnation of first world economies, automation, and other factors, the future will be one without many jobs. And part-time jobs at the mall and Taco Bell are going to cut it. Shaming the unemployed will not make sense, if it ever did.
Seems like that system would need to deliver a lot of current. Are there potential safety issues here, for example a piece of metal falling on the road over the inductors ?
I was on ATT DSL. Cox makes DSL look heavenly. Cox works ok for a while but periodically just stops for about a minute. Now my wife understands my efforts to try to avoid cable modem. They gave everyone a supposed bump up from 5mb to 15. I say keep the 10mb and just give me a DSL level reliable connection.
The idea is that there is more than one perspective to consider. I could make money pimping my kids, or reducing my mother-in-law to two meals a day. Profit at any cost is the name of the game these days. It is a sinking ship. Here, have a life preserver.
A friend of mine is a physics professor. He is not a Creationist (doesn't believe in 4-10k year old earth). But he is an intelligent design proponent (he's not sure about cross-phyla evolution). He thinks there might be an important ingredient we are not aware of that got the whole thing started. Like an extra-terrestrial race like some Sumerian texts imply. I listen to all these ideas. I really don't think there is an alternative to the general evolutionary theory. But sure, pieces of it might be problematic like my friend says. Above all, I try not to embrace anything in a dogmatic way. Let's see what the evidence says. Of course none of this address the ontological question of how it all got started or where the laws of nature came from, etc
On the surface it appears they are questioning cross-specie evolution and how amino acids starting forming proteins (presumably without any RNA / DNA). But it is really an argument toward theocracy and away from secular society. Good luck with that. One of their arguments again cross-specie evolution is the lack of transitional fossils. This may be determined to be such a fossil. I am no scientist, but every theory should be questioned, it is science.