Exactly. Choices in an OS all too often mean multiple incompatible systems, networks, applications etc. It doesn't have to be this way, but too frequently is.
As for the monolith comment, I think he's referring to the kernel design. The two main forms of design are monolithic kernel and microkernel. Linux, Windows, and UNIX all are monolithic kernels (yes, yes I know, some are more monolithic than others).
The thing is that the more stuff you build into kernel space, the less context switching needs to occur, which helps performance. However, this means that the kernel is one huge big piece of interdependant code, which makes any changes a nightmare.
The only really big OS using microkernel architecture is Mac OS X. In theory this should make it much easier for Apple to roll out major OS revisions and improvements, which does seem to be the case so far.
Since silence implies assent, I will respond to your comment if only to state that I find the attitude repugnant. You seem to be the master of the one-line troll.
Keep in mind that Africa is 52 countries, not one. Many have very good governments, and booming economies. Don't write off an entire continent based on a few bad apples.
There is no way to supply an exponentially growing population forever...The yardstick is wether the region is able to sustain it's inhabitants. If it cannot, it is overpopulated.
Absolutely agreed.
Yeah, they need contraceptives.
Again, agreed. Decent family planning is a major requirement. However certain ideologically driven governments in the West block all aid to NGOs that supply abortion/contraceptives. Similarly some very powerful Christian churches in Africa tell their parishoners that using condoms will condemn them to Hell/give them AIDS, etc.
The ultimate birth control, as evidenced throughout the world, is education and prosperity. Unfortunately, high birth rates strain the resources available to supply these. Cleverer aid, targeted at providing decent education and jobs will drastically scale back the birth rates, as opposed to the current policies of just feeding those who are desperate. Coupled with good family planning, and provision of birth control, we'd easily be able to get overpopulation under control.
My point is that current aid policies don't work. Instead of attacking the symptoms, we should be going after the causes. Insisting on good governance, more education spending, and economic liberalisation is key. Many African countries have banded together to provide exactly this kind of pressure on other African governments. Hopefully this attempt will be successful. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic.
It's especially important for my country (South Africa), because as the economic and industrial powerhouse of the continent, a more stable and prosperous Africa means more markets and opportunities.
The reason we see famine in Africa is that Africa has increased its population by 10 in the last 70-80 years.
Actually, the reason we see famine in Africa is a combination of bad government, instability, and economics. If it's cheaper to ship heavily subsidised US food exports to Africa than it is to grow it there, then the small farmers are squeezed out of the market. They move to the cities and their fields lay fallow. When a disruption occurs that squeezes the countrys resources (like say a drought), it suddenly has to spend WAY more for food. This causes a feedback cycle, with more farmers leaving their drought-stricken farms, and thus more imports required, putting a further strain on the fiscus. Any corruption/incompetance in government, or civil disorder accelerates and worsens this trend.
Bad farming practices are another contributing factor with many subsistence farmers practicing slash and burn agriculture which damages the topsoil, and hampers future crop yields.
Since Africa's population in 1948 was about 145 million, and the current populations is just over 600 million, the increase in population in the last 58 years is just over 4 times. If you stretch back to 1850, the population then is estimated at about 90 million, which would give us almost 7 times growth in 156 years. I'm a bit unsure of where you got 10 times in 80 years. The current growth rate is 3%.
As a matter of fact, ANY region that is permanently dependent on outside help is just plain overpopulated, no matter how much food is produced or even wasted in other regions.
Africas population density is 65 people per square mile, as compared to Europes 134, and the USAs 76. The world average population density (excl Antartica) is 115. That put Africa marginally above half the average, below half of Europes density, and 14% below the USA.
That said, your main point was that the reliance on aid indicates that there is overpopulation. On this it's hard to dispute you. When you count only arable land, Africas population density is almost double, putting it close to Europe. Coupled with inefficient farming, this is a recipe for disaster.
Personally, I just with the aid given to Africa was more intelligent. Keep in mind that very little of the aid given to Africa actually arrives here. I forget the exact figure, but it's about 10 cents in the dollar. Most of the aid money goes to farmers/transport companies in the donor country in order to supply food and transport it to Africa. It's an idiotic waste of money, and completely misdirected. Short term stopgap food convoys are not going to help in the long term.
Idiotic policies like the "build huge dams" strategies of the World Bank and IMF in the 70's, or the "cut back on education" policies of the 90's don't help either. They make grants and loans conditional on the implementation of these policies, and then wash their hands when the results are an unmitigated disaster. In my neighbouring country, Mozambique, their cashew nut industry (a major export earner), was wiped out by a 27 year old IMF official who had never visited the country in his life.
But that's the point isn't it? If I die, and meet God face to face, and He tells me that he's sent even a single soul to eternal torment, no matter what the circumstances, then I'll deny Him. A guaranteed chance to escape an immoral punishment does not make the punishment any less immoral.
Quite simply there are plenty of scientists who don't agree with the theory of evolution, in just about every field of science.
Well, I'm most interested in biologists here. Besides Behe, I don't know of any.
Everything came from nothing
Actually he said nothing of the sort. This claim just goes to show that you're talking out of your hat. Evolution makes no claims about matter, or about the origin of life, merely about how life proceeded once it existed.
The Missing Link
Again he never mentioned any "missing link". In fact his theory was proposed, and accepted at a time when the view of the fossil record was much more incomplete than it is today. Despite that, not one fossil has been found that casts doubt on evolutionary theory.
Neither. It would have been a gradual set of changes in response to evolutionary pressures. There are no "instructions" for this going in, and neither is it random.
The original purpose of the adaptation becomes less important due to a change in environment. At the same time new evolutionary pressures build up, where the adaptation is useful in a different way. Now, the adaptation is selected for it's new function, and gradually becomes better at it. If you read the Kitzmiller transcripts there's a fascinating discussion of the bacterial flagellum that goes through exactly this. Can't remember the name of the witness offhand, but he was rebutting Behe.
Oh dear, people don't agree with you, so therefore religion is banned from discussion. Can you please tell me when you posted these banned missives so we can contact the Slashdot editors and tell them to stop censoring your views?
You quite clearly have a very limited grasp of evolution and science which makes me wonder why you claim to support it so. If you don't understand at least the fundamentals, I'd think it'd be intellectually dishonest to boost the theory.
Your conflation of abiogenesis and evolution is a case in point. Evolution says nothing about how life began, merely how it proceeded once it began. To turn around and point to something explicitly left out of the theory as a weakness in the theory is a bit silly wouldn't you say? Evolution comes into play the moment you have life, not before.
As for your comments about science explaining everything I happen to agree with you. I don't think science will ever be able to explain everything. I doubt that many scientists believe it will either. Science itself claims that there are certain fundamental limits on what we can know. We cannot even in principle view the internals of a black hole, we cannot directly observe the past. Since FTL travel is denied us by Relativity we could not visit and observer every planet in the Universe. The list goes on.
I personally doubt that we will ever have a really clear picture of how life originated on Earth. We may have some plausible hypotheses, but since they would rely on processes that no longer exist, and that we have no evidence for, they would likely remain in that state indefinately.
A while back you said you were a proponent of evolution, yet now you seem to have no idea of how evolution works? I think it's a bit sad that you go around boosting a theory that you don't understand.
1. Take 1 organism with a mutable hereditary genetic structure.
1a. You can substitute with more organisms if desired. 2 would be the minimum required if the organisms require mates for breeding.
2. Place said organism(s) into an environment containing food and competition for said food.
3. Wait a few million years.
This in fact was the reason I first doubted God. I don't believe that any crime justifies eternal torment. I certainly feel that anyone willing to commit a person to eternal damnation, whether God or just a sick and twisted mind, is completely evil.
To relish in the idea of someone being tortured without end adds a certain dimension of nastiness to the whole enterprise. If that's you and your God, you can have him, even if I had proof that such a God existed I would spit in His face, because he would be more monster than anything else.
Before you so readily sneer out your eternal damnations perhaps you'd better read up on what Christ said about forgiveness, mercy and humility, you seem to have missed those parts.
Interesting, I thought this was currently accepted. As I recall nuclear fissions dicovery was hailed as a way of explaining the heat of the centre of the Earth. If it isn't happening, what else has kept the Eart hot all these billions of years?
Wow, that's really intellectually dishonest, quote one of six definitions listed. How about the first listed definition?
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
You're indeed correct (see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.htm l). I was actually under the impression that the terms had been introduced by creationists, and just adopted by the scientific community, but I was wrong.
In effect macroevolution is speciation and above. The poor creationists are now in a pickle because the speciation has been observed, and thus macroevolution has too.
Actually, the macro/micro thing is pure creationist fluff. First they denied any evolution. Micro was small adaptations, and macro was speciation. Then speciation was observed in a laboratory. Ooops!
So now micro was small changes and small speciation events, and macro was defined as everything else. As more and more compelling evidence pours in, the definition of "micro evolution" grows larger and more encompassing at the expense of "macro evolution".
It's stock standard God of the Gaps thinking, which raises the question of what you'll think when "micro evolution" encompasses the whole TOE.
Personally, I don't think we have to go reaching for things like punk-eek to explain the apparent sudden appearance of new species. Imagine an isolated group of animals in some part of the world. They evolve for some time, becoming dramatically different from their ancestral species. Then, for whatever reason, they become able to move beyond their isolated area, and rapidly out-compete and spread.
What we would now see across their entire new range is a sudden appearance of a new and very distinct species. Only if we found the area where they evolved to be so different would we see the whole picture (and only if that area was conducive to fossilisation). IIRC this has been encountered before, where what appeared to be rapid speciation turned out to be normal evolution in a constrained geographical area, followed by the rapid spread of the species.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that science class should not be simply a study of received authority. In an ideal world, something like evolution would be taught by retracing with the students the intellectual steps taken by scientists in coming up with the theory. Teachers could point out the bewildering flood of fossils discovered in the 18th & 19th centuries, along with the clear relationships between them. Students could discuss what could account for these relationships, and the teacher could introduce new evidence that would force the students to re-evaluate their ideas.
In such a scenario, I would even be happy with discussions of ID-like concepts, assuming the teachers pointed out that the answer "something did it, we don't know how or why" adds nothing to out knowledge of the way the world works.
Well, that's a relief, I've always wanted to be a fanatic;-D
Well, we cartainly couldn't wait for all time just to ensure that one theory was correct could we? So what science does is, yes, assume that something that has consistently happened in the past will be just as consistent in the future. We do this ourselves every day. Why do you set your alarm clock to get up in the morning?
Because you believe that the Sun will come up, just like it has in the past. We make decisions about the future that are based upon the past the whole time. Sometimes it doesn't work out, (e.g. if the parachute fails to open), but mostly it does. However, if something stops happening, we adjust our behaviour.
As for the whole cause-effect thing, we have never observed an effect without a cause. You don't like the idea of assuming that a cause-effect relationship seen in the past would hold in the future, but want to posit that something never seen before would happen at some point? I think you need to be more consistent;-)
As for where the most basic physical rules come from, I have no idea, and would be suspicious of anyone claiming to have the answer. Not knowing the source of something does not make that thing any less real though. I can play chess, according to the rules, without knowing where and how and by who they were invented.
In fact science is a bit like not knowing the rules of a chess game, but being able to watch one in progress, and trying to derive the rules from the observations made: Right, the pieces move two squares forwards
Damn, okay the pieces can move one or two squares forwards
Wait a minute! That piece moved diagonally to the edge of the board!
Looks like white and black make alternate moves
Okay, looks like it's just those little ones which do the one or two moves
etc...
Yeah, something about the whole debate tends to turn both sides into frothing madmen - apologies to all madwomen;-D
A couple of points, first the Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang. Evolution deals only with reproducing life. As such, it has nada to say about anything before the first organism reproduced. Secondly, it has nothing to do with random chance either. It is a directed process, albeit with chance as a factor, but directed nonetheless. Just because there is no guiding intelligence behind something doesn't mean it can't have rules.
Third, the theory of evolution is no guess. A theory in scientific terms means a whole lot more than just a guess. Simply put, a theory is a coherent abstraction that explains a whole bunch of evidence, is not contradicted by any evidence, and offers predictions/explanations that are also supported by the evidence. It's that whole "supported by the evidence" thing that makes it science.
Fourth, nothing in science is ever "proven". Proof is for mathemeticians, not scientists. All science can do is try to explain what we observe.
Fifth, evolution does affect our daily lives. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics, bird flu may evolve to spread amoungst humans, genetically modified foods may evolve beyond the parameters set for them.
Sixth (almost finished, promise), if we didn't use any science that was still in "beta" as it were, we wouldn't have any progress at all. All science is always in beta. Newtons "Laws" are still in beta, and in fact are incorrect on some details, yet we use them to guide spacecraft to other planets and beyond our Solar System.
As for your sentiments about ramming things down throats, I wholeheartedly agree. I certainly do not want to force people to believe in evolution. However, I do feel that in science class one should teach science. Since evolution is science, it should be taught as such. Similarly, if a school had a religion class, I would expect that they would not teach that Young Earth Creationism supports the Big Bang theory.
You see, many people who believe in that God created the world in 6 days think that this should be taught as science. Similarly many people who feel that evolution somehow "disproves" the existence of God (which it definately does not), also want that taught. Both those extremes are ramming stuff down peoples throats.
I'm an atheist, although I don't claim to be 'educated', merely well-read;-D
Just as a point though, you are confusing the Big Bang with evolution. Evolution says nothing about anything that happened before the first life form appeared. Want to know how it appeared? Evolution does not have an answer. Want to know where the Universe came from? Ask a cosmologist, not an evolutionary biologist.
As such evolution makes no comments about anything even remotely resembling the beginning of time. Your dust particle idea, while interesting, says nothing about evolution whatsoever. I'd enjoy arguing the cosmology, but think I should stay on topic.
Anyway, back to your ideas about God being involved in the Big Bang, I'd have to agree with you whole-heartedly. There is most definately a possibility that He did kick off the whole shebang. Personally I don't believe that's what happened, but that's just my opinion. The idea is also not scientific, however that doesn't neccesarily make it false.
As for your "evolutionists" who pull out "dates and timelines" to argue with you, if they're using it to dispute the idea that God created the Universe with the Big Bang, then they're up the creek without a paddle. Carbon dating says nothing about the Big Bang, since when it happened there wasn't any carbon:-)
If they're using it to dispute that God was involved in the process of evolution on Earth, they're similarly mistaken, since carbon dating will tell you nothing about how something happened, merely an approximate date when it did. We do have numerous other concepts to explain how things happened, such as mutation, natural selection and so forth, but none of them rule out a guiding God. They simply ignore the possibility, not because scientists are neccesarily atheists or anything, but simply because science doesn't deal in supernatural events, and limits itself to the natural.
Actually, if we're talking science, then evolution is a theory, and ID and creationism are discredited hypotheses.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I am not afraid of the possibility of a higher power at all, and have no problem with creationism and ID being taught in school. However, I do have a problem with creationism and ID being taught in science class. Since they're not scientific, that's not their place.
The fear is coming from the people terrified that if they can't cloak their beliefs in scientific garb, that somehow this will invalidate their beliefs. Science by it's very methodology rules out the supernatural. This does not mean that the supernatural does not exist, merely that science doesn't deal with it.
As such, supernatural beliefs should be dealt with and taught in applicable places: the home, comparative religion studies, and the church/temple/mosque. If we start to blur the lines between religion and science, as so many fundamentalists appear to desire, we will harm both.
Well, you can believe or not I guess, that's completely your concern. For all I care you can believe that the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around us too.
Your belief is immaterial as to whether the theory is accurate or not. The theory stands or falls on it's evidence and consistency with other theories. Right now, there is no evidence contradicting evolution, and plenty of evidence supporting it.
Now, as you correctly point out, that doesn't mean the theory is complete, or even completely correct, it merely means that we have no better explanations that fit all the available evidence.
Being misinformed most certainly doesn't equate to idiocy, but your knowledge of evolutionary theory is sorely lacking if you spout claptrap such as your statement about micro/macro. Put simply, "macro evolution" is billions upon billions of "micro evolution" events piled on top of each other. They are not separate types of evolution, merely the same process at different stages of advancement. Any experiment to test "macro evolution" would take unreasonably large amounts of time, just as, say, experiments on solar lifecycles would. In such circumstance we must use inference and evidence to explain what we see. Or do you suggest that all science should be limited to laboratory experiments?
Also, keep in mind that just as with gravity, whilst we don't fully understand all the details of the mechanisms, the fact that evolution actually occurs is beyond serious dispute. Common descent is an observed fact, beneficial mutations are an observed fact, ditto speciation.
Actually, if you bothered reading the answer you'd find that he said nothing of the sort. His response was that high-priority updates are available to all and sundry. Those would be patches to the vectors that allow the machine to attack others.
If you have malware that slows your unlicensed system to a crawl, but otherwise doesn't affect anyone else, then tough luck.
But this is in fact the entire problem. Which distro should a company use? Linux has now become so fragmented that the choice of distro is now a strategic choice. It used to be that choosing Linux was the the strategic choice. No longer. Now, if you're going to choose Linux you have to investigate at least 5 distros.
I know of no companies that are willing to go through that effort. They'd rather just stick to the MS upgrade cycle than try to figure out which of their applications will work on Suse with KDE as opposed to Red Hat with Gnome. Linux fundies feel that the options available are a good thing. They are, for developers, but not for business.
The strength of linux, data processing wise, is that once you get it, you need to have the admin, so the mid-level user is saved from himself.
In Windows, not only *can* mid-level users configure printers and attach drives, it's easy, and it tries to make sure that they don't make a mistake.
Requiring an admin to do such a fundamentally simple operation means your OS cannot be used by your standard home user. Unless you're advocating that every home user have an Administrator hanging around?
Any static system is vulnerable to exploit given anough time. If the bank consistently sends out update CD's then these are open to social engineering attacks. All you need to do is get inside the CD distribution loop and you're in.
I like your idea about disallowing access from known compromised distros, but I wonder how that'll go down with users trying to do their banking when (for whatever reason) all they have is the old CD.
The usability, distribution and update problems will probably combine to make this one of those wonderful ideas that never get off the ground. Users are generally happy with the options they have now. The banks aren't, but frankly users don't care about that. Some bank tells them they have to reboot their computer and use unfamiliar software to access their accounts, and many users will just switch to a bank that doesn't have such onerous requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Choices in an OS all too often mean multiple incompatible systems, networks, applications etc. It doesn't have to be this way, but too frequently is.
As for the monolith comment, I think he's referring to the kernel design. The two main forms of design are monolithic kernel and microkernel. Linux, Windows, and UNIX all are monolithic kernels (yes, yes I know, some are more monolithic than others). The thing is that the more stuff you build into kernel space, the less context switching needs to occur, which helps performance. However, this means that the kernel is one huge big piece of interdependant code, which makes any changes a nightmare.
The only really big OS using microkernel architecture is Mac OS X. In theory this should make it much easier for Apple to roll out major OS revisions and improvements, which does seem to be the case so far.
Since silence implies assent, I will respond to your comment if only to state that I find the attitude repugnant. You seem to be the master of the one-line troll.
The ultimate birth control, as evidenced throughout the world, is education and prosperity. Unfortunately, high birth rates strain the resources available to supply these. Cleverer aid, targeted at providing decent education and jobs will drastically scale back the birth rates, as opposed to the current policies of just feeding those who are desperate. Coupled with good family planning, and provision of birth control, we'd easily be able to get overpopulation under control.
My point is that current aid policies don't work. Instead of attacking the symptoms, we should be going after the causes. Insisting on good governance, more education spending, and economic liberalisation is key. Many African countries have banded together to provide exactly this kind of pressure on other African governments. Hopefully this attempt will be successful. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic.
It's especially important for my country (South Africa), because as the economic and industrial powerhouse of the continent, a more stable and prosperous Africa means more markets and opportunities.
Bad farming practices are another contributing factor with many subsistence farmers practicing slash and burn agriculture which damages the topsoil, and hampers future crop yields.
Since Africa's population in 1948 was about 145 million, and the current populations is just over 600 million, the increase in population in the last 58 years is just over 4 times. If you stretch back to 1850, the population then is estimated at about 90 million, which would give us almost 7 times growth in 156 years. I'm a bit unsure of where you got 10 times in 80 years. The current growth rate is 3%. Africas population density is 65 people per square mile, as compared to Europes 134, and the USAs 76. The world average population density (excl Antartica) is 115. That put Africa marginally above half the average, below half of Europes density, and 14% below the USA.
That said, your main point was that the reliance on aid indicates that there is overpopulation. On this it's hard to dispute you. When you count only arable land, Africas population density is almost double, putting it close to Europe. Coupled with inefficient farming, this is a recipe for disaster.
Personally, I just with the aid given to Africa was more intelligent. Keep in mind that very little of the aid given to Africa actually arrives here. I forget the exact figure, but it's about 10 cents in the dollar. Most of the aid money goes to farmers/transport companies in the donor country in order to supply food and transport it to Africa. It's an idiotic waste of money, and completely misdirected. Short term stopgap food convoys are not going to help in the long term.
Idiotic policies like the "build huge dams" strategies of the World Bank and IMF in the 70's, or the "cut back on education" policies of the 90's don't help either. They make grants and loans conditional on the implementation of these policies, and then wash their hands when the results are an unmitigated disaster. In my neighbouring country, Mozambique, their cashew nut industry (a major export earner), was wiped out by a 27 year old IMF official who had never visited the country in his life.
But that's the point isn't it? If I die, and meet God face to face, and He tells me that he's sent even a single soul to eternal torment, no matter what the circumstances, then I'll deny Him. A guaranteed chance to escape an immoral punishment does not make the punishment any less immoral.
Actually he said nothing of the sort. This claim just goes to show that you're talking out of your hat. Evolution makes no claims about matter, or about the origin of life, merely about how life proceeded once it existed. Again he never mentioned any "missing link". In fact his theory was proposed, and accepted at a time when the view of the fossil record was much more incomplete than it is today. Despite that, not one fossil has been found that casts doubt on evolutionary theory.
Neither. It would have been a gradual set of changes in response to evolutionary pressures. There are no "instructions" for this going in, and neither is it random.
The original purpose of the adaptation becomes less important due to a change in environment. At the same time new evolutionary pressures build up, where the adaptation is useful in a different way. Now, the adaptation is selected for it's new function, and gradually becomes better at it. If you read the Kitzmiller transcripts there's a fascinating discussion of the bacterial flagellum that goes through exactly this. Can't remember the name of the witness offhand, but he was rebutting Behe.
Oh dear, people don't agree with you, so therefore religion is banned from discussion. Can you please tell me when you posted these banned missives so we can contact the Slashdot editors and tell them to stop censoring your views?
You quite clearly have a very limited grasp of evolution and science which makes me wonder why you claim to support it so. If you don't understand at least the fundamentals, I'd think it'd be intellectually dishonest to boost the theory.
Your conflation of abiogenesis and evolution is a case in point. Evolution says nothing about how life began, merely how it proceeded once it began. To turn around and point to something explicitly left out of the theory as a weakness in the theory is a bit silly wouldn't you say? Evolution comes into play the moment you have life, not before.
As for your comments about science explaining everything I happen to agree with you. I don't think science will ever be able to explain everything. I doubt that many scientists believe it will either. Science itself claims that there are certain fundamental limits on what we can know. We cannot even in principle view the internals of a black hole, we cannot directly observe the past. Since FTL travel is denied us by Relativity we could not visit and observer every planet in the Universe. The list goes on.
I personally doubt that we will ever have a really clear picture of how life originated on Earth. We may have some plausible hypotheses, but since they would rely on processes that no longer exist, and that we have no evidence for, they would likely remain in that state indefinately.
A while back you said you were a proponent of evolution, yet now you seem to have no idea of how evolution works? I think it's a bit sad that you go around boosting a theory that you don't understand.
1. Take 1 organism with a mutable hereditary genetic structure.
1a. You can substitute with more organisms if desired. 2 would be the minimum required if the organisms require mates for breeding.
2. Place said organism(s) into an environment containing food and competition for said food.
3. Wait a few million years.
This in fact was the reason I first doubted God. I don't believe that any crime justifies eternal torment. I certainly feel that anyone willing to commit a person to eternal damnation, whether God or just a sick and twisted mind, is completely evil.
To relish in the idea of someone being tortured without end adds a certain dimension of nastiness to the whole enterprise. If that's you and your God, you can have him, even if I had proof that such a God existed I would spit in His face, because he would be more monster than anything else.
Before you so readily sneer out your eternal damnations perhaps you'd better read up on what Christ said about forgiveness, mercy and humility, you seem to have missed those parts.
Interesting, I thought this was currently accepted. As I recall nuclear fissions dicovery was hailed as a way of explaining the heat of the centre of the Earth. If it isn't happening, what else has kept the Eart hot all these billions of years?
You're indeed correct (see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.htm l). I was actually under the impression that the terms had been introduced by creationists, and just adopted by the scientific community, but I was wrong.
In effect macroevolution is speciation and above. The poor creationists are now in a pickle because the speciation has been observed, and thus macroevolution has too.
Thanks for correcting me.
Actually, the macro/micro thing is pure creationist fluff. First they denied any evolution. Micro was small adaptations, and macro was speciation. Then speciation was observed in a laboratory. Ooops!
So now micro was small changes and small speciation events, and macro was defined as everything else. As more and more compelling evidence pours in, the definition of "micro evolution" grows larger and more encompassing at the expense of "macro evolution".
It's stock standard God of the Gaps thinking, which raises the question of what you'll think when "micro evolution" encompasses the whole TOE.
Personally, I don't think we have to go reaching for things like punk-eek to explain the apparent sudden appearance of new species. Imagine an isolated group of animals in some part of the world. They evolve for some time, becoming dramatically different from their ancestral species. Then, for whatever reason, they become able to move beyond their isolated area, and rapidly out-compete and spread.
What we would now see across their entire new range is a sudden appearance of a new and very distinct species. Only if we found the area where they evolved to be so different would we see the whole picture (and only if that area was conducive to fossilisation). IIRC this has been encountered before, where what appeared to be rapid speciation turned out to be normal evolution in a constrained geographical area, followed by the rapid spread of the species.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that science class should not be simply a study of received authority. In an ideal world, something like evolution would be taught by retracing with the students the intellectual steps taken by scientists in coming up with the theory. Teachers could point out the bewildering flood of fossils discovered in the 18th & 19th centuries, along with the clear relationships between them. Students could discuss what could account for these relationships, and the teacher could introduce new evidence that would force the students to re-evaluate their ideas.
In such a scenario, I would even be happy with discussions of ID-like concepts, assuming the teachers pointed out that the answer "something did it, we don't know how or why" adds nothing to out knowledge of the way the world works.
Well, that's a relief, I've always wanted to be a fanatic ;-D
;-)
Well, we cartainly couldn't wait for all time just to ensure that one theory was correct could we? So what science does is, yes, assume that something that has consistently happened in the past will be just as consistent in the future. We do this ourselves every day. Why do you set your alarm clock to get up in the morning?
Because you believe that the Sun will come up, just like it has in the past. We make decisions about the future that are based upon the past the whole time. Sometimes it doesn't work out, (e.g. if the parachute fails to open), but mostly it does. However, if something stops happening, we adjust our behaviour.
As for the whole cause-effect thing, we have never observed an effect without a cause. You don't like the idea of assuming that a cause-effect relationship seen in the past would hold in the future, but want to posit that something never seen before would happen at some point? I think you need to be more consistent
As for where the most basic physical rules come from, I have no idea, and would be suspicious of anyone claiming to have the answer. Not knowing the source of something does not make that thing any less real though. I can play chess, according to the rules, without knowing where and how and by who they were invented.
In fact science is a bit like not knowing the rules of a chess game, but being able to watch one in progress, and trying to derive the rules from the observations made:
Right, the pieces move two squares forwards
Damn, okay the pieces can move one or two squares forwards
Wait a minute! That piece moved diagonally to the edge of the board!
Looks like white and black make alternate moves
Okay, looks like it's just those little ones which do the one or two moves
etc...
Yeah, something about the whole debate tends to turn both sides into frothing madmen - apologies to all madwomen ;-D
A couple of points, first the Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang. Evolution deals only with reproducing life. As such, it has nada to say about anything before the first organism reproduced. Secondly, it has nothing to do with random chance either. It is a directed process, albeit with chance as a factor, but directed nonetheless. Just because there is no guiding intelligence behind something doesn't mean it can't have rules.
Third, the theory of evolution is no guess. A theory in scientific terms means a whole lot more than just a guess. Simply put, a theory is a coherent abstraction that explains a whole bunch of evidence, is not contradicted by any evidence, and offers predictions/explanations that are also supported by the evidence. It's that whole "supported by the evidence" thing that makes it science.
Fourth, nothing in science is ever "proven". Proof is for mathemeticians, not scientists. All science can do is try to explain what we observe.
Fifth, evolution does affect our daily lives. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics, bird flu may evolve to spread amoungst humans, genetically modified foods may evolve beyond the parameters set for them.
Sixth (almost finished, promise), if we didn't use any science that was still in "beta" as it were, we wouldn't have any progress at all. All science is always in beta. Newtons "Laws" are still in beta, and in fact are incorrect on some details, yet we use them to guide spacecraft to other planets and beyond our Solar System.
As for your sentiments about ramming things down throats, I wholeheartedly agree. I certainly do not want to force people to believe in evolution. However, I do feel that in science class one should teach science. Since evolution is science, it should be taught as such. Similarly, if a school had a religion class, I would expect that they would not teach that Young Earth Creationism supports the Big Bang theory.
You see, many people who believe in that God created the world in 6 days think that this should be taught as science. Similarly many people who feel that evolution somehow "disproves" the existence of God (which it definately does not), also want that taught. Both those extremes are ramming stuff down peoples throats.
I'm an atheist, although I don't claim to be 'educated', merely well-read ;-D
:-)
Just as a point though, you are confusing the Big Bang with evolution. Evolution says nothing about anything that happened before the first life form appeared. Want to know how it appeared? Evolution does not have an answer. Want to know where the Universe came from? Ask a cosmologist, not an evolutionary biologist.
As such evolution makes no comments about anything even remotely resembling the beginning of time. Your dust particle idea, while interesting, says nothing about evolution whatsoever. I'd enjoy arguing the cosmology, but think I should stay on topic.
Anyway, back to your ideas about God being involved in the Big Bang, I'd have to agree with you whole-heartedly. There is most definately a possibility that He did kick off the whole shebang. Personally I don't believe that's what happened, but that's just my opinion. The idea is also not scientific, however that doesn't neccesarily make it false.
As for your "evolutionists" who pull out "dates and timelines" to argue with you, if they're using it to dispute the idea that God created the Universe with the Big Bang, then they're up the creek without a paddle. Carbon dating says nothing about the Big Bang, since when it happened there wasn't any carbon
If they're using it to dispute that God was involved in the process of evolution on Earth, they're similarly mistaken, since carbon dating will tell you nothing about how something happened, merely an approximate date when it did. We do have numerous other concepts to explain how things happened, such as mutation, natural selection and so forth, but none of them rule out a guiding God. They simply ignore the possibility, not because scientists are neccesarily atheists or anything, but simply because science doesn't deal in supernatural events, and limits itself to the natural.
Good luck with the studies.
Actually, if we're talking science, then evolution is a theory, and ID and creationism are discredited hypotheses.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I am not afraid of the possibility of a higher power at all, and have no problem with creationism and ID being taught in school. However, I do have a problem with creationism and ID being taught in science class. Since they're not scientific, that's not their place.
The fear is coming from the people terrified that if they can't cloak their beliefs in scientific garb, that somehow this will invalidate their beliefs. Science by it's very methodology rules out the supernatural. This does not mean that the supernatural does not exist, merely that science doesn't deal with it.
As such, supernatural beliefs should be dealt with and taught in applicable places: the home, comparative religion studies, and the church/temple/mosque. If we start to blur the lines between religion and science, as so many fundamentalists appear to desire, we will harm both.
Well, you can believe or not I guess, that's completely your concern. For all I care you can believe that the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around us too.
Your belief is immaterial as to whether the theory is accurate or not. The theory stands or falls on it's evidence and consistency with other theories. Right now, there is no evidence contradicting evolution, and plenty of evidence supporting it.
Now, as you correctly point out, that doesn't mean the theory is complete, or even completely correct, it merely means that we have no better explanations that fit all the available evidence.
Being misinformed most certainly doesn't equate to idiocy, but your knowledge of evolutionary theory is sorely lacking if you spout claptrap such as your statement about micro/macro. Put simply, "macro evolution" is billions upon billions of "micro evolution" events piled on top of each other. They are not separate types of evolution, merely the same process at different stages of advancement.
Any experiment to test "macro evolution" would take unreasonably large amounts of time, just as, say, experiments on solar lifecycles would. In such circumstance we must use inference and evidence to explain what we see. Or do you suggest that all science should be limited to laboratory experiments?
Also, keep in mind that just as with gravity, whilst we don't fully understand all the details of the mechanisms, the fact that evolution actually occurs is beyond serious dispute. Common descent is an observed fact, beneficial mutations are an observed fact, ditto speciation.
Actually, if you bothered reading the answer you'd find that he said nothing of the sort. His response was that high-priority updates are available to all and sundry. Those would be patches to the vectors that allow the machine to attack others.
If you have malware that slows your unlicensed system to a crawl, but otherwise doesn't affect anyone else, then tough luck.
Umm, IIRC you don't need to validate your Windows install in order to download security patches.
But this is in fact the entire problem. Which distro should a company use? Linux has now become so fragmented that the choice of distro is now a strategic choice. It used to be that choosing Linux was the the strategic choice. No longer. Now, if you're going to choose Linux you have to investigate at least 5 distros.
I know of no companies that are willing to go through that effort. They'd rather just stick to the MS upgrade cycle than try to figure out which of their applications will work on Suse with KDE as opposed to Red Hat with Gnome. Linux fundies feel that the options available are a good thing. They are, for developers, but not for business.
I like your idea about disallowing access from known compromised distros, but I wonder how that'll go down with users trying to do their banking when (for whatever reason) all they have is the old CD.
The usability, distribution and update problems will probably combine to make this one of those wonderful ideas that never get off the ground. Users are generally happy with the options they have now. The banks aren't, but frankly users don't care about that. Some bank tells them they have to reboot their computer and use unfamiliar software to access their accounts, and many users will just switch to a bank that doesn't have such onerous requirements.