As for the 1967 expansion, well, that was gained in war when Israel defeneded itself from attacks by several countries in the region.
Attacks made by Arabs after the Jews moved in and more or less annexed their own territory and kicked the Palestinian Arabs out.
While Israel does have a range of political views, just like here in the states, the majority of the people, to include those in the government have asked for only one thing for the creation of a palestinian state: A cessation of the attacks on them.
I agree with this aspect whole heartedly. If I start with no territory and then annex West Virginia and declare it Mormonopia and West Virginians start blowing themselves up I'd be more than happy to give them some of the land in return for a cessation of violence. I'm still left with a huge chunk of land were formally I had nothing. And the indigineous West Virginians would be ceasing violence in order to gain back less land than they had originally. This is obviously a better deal for one side.
Look, if I rob you and take 2 credit cards - should you be content if I offer to give one back? It just doesn't make sense.
And I'm not trying to argue that the Palestinians are justified - either in their tactics of terrorism or in there desire to eliminate Israel. In my opinion they're not only wrong - they're stupid for engaging a war of terrorism that they can't possibly win. All I'm saying is that Israel is blatantly using Palestian aggression to further their own ends. It's like if some 10 year old walks up and kicks you in the shin and you respond by kicking him in the shins and taking his lollipop. Sure, it was wrong and stupid of him to pick a fight with you but it doesn't change the fact that you took his stuff.
Israel is a big, clever, chip-on-the-shoulder bully and I'm just saying we're too unquestioning in our love and support of all they do.
That's clever. I say something is bad. Even if I'm the last one on earth that thinks it's awful it's just written in stone truth that the game is mediocore. Oh yeah - and if you disagree you're a "fanboi".
Look, everyone's got their own opinion and mine is quite simply that it was one of the best games I've ever played on any console or PC at any time. It had for me an incredibly compelling storyline made all the more interesting by the epic scope of the art. The soundtrack helped a lot - I own the soundtracks to both Halo and Halo2 not because I love the franchise that much but because I love the music itself that much.
If you want to get an understanding of how incredibly good Halo is then all you need to do is download all of the "I Love Bees" audio tracks and listen to the incredible depth of character and plot development that went into the Halo universe. It's obvious to me that Halo, from Bungie's point of view, has been a genuine labor of love.
There are very few games that will actually cause me - months or years after playing them - to wistfully think back to the in-game feelings with a genuine feeling of wanting to go back to that universe. Halo, for me at least, succeeded in completely immersing me in another story - another time - another place - another universe. I don't care if the next Halo game comes out on Xbox360, WindowsVista, Mac, or the MS Origami. If Bungie continues to treat the franchise as they have so far I will be there.
Heh. So maybe I'm a "fanboi" afterall. But I'll be a "fanboi" for a game that has genuine heart and passion any day of the week with no trace of shame at all.
We had one terrorist attack and we invaded two countries.
Which is actually an opportunity to show the stark contrast between our response and the Isreali response. The Palestinians - decades later - have no nation whatsoever. Isreal takes their land in response to attacks and moves them into refugee camps. Have we moved afghanis from their homeland? Did we attempt to maintain control over Iraqi soil?
I'm not arguing that America is saintly. It's simply that we don't need or want to take land from Iraq or Afhganistan and therefore we don't have ulterior motives to dealing with terrorism. Isreal, by contrast, is right there. And the temptation to move from "responding to terror threates" to "... and grabbing some land while we're at it" has proved irresistable for them.
but it's not like the Middle east doesn't have the money and population to create a formidable military force if they wanted to.
That doesn't really change the situation. Wheher militarily or economically it would be stupid for them to try and kill the US as we're their biggest customer at this point and taking us out would decimate the world market and move them back to the stoneage.
They have the strongest economy, strongest military and a strategic position in the middle east. These reasons alone are adequate for a continued alliance with them.
And this gets to the heart of my criticism for our support of Israel - it's entirely circular. Why do they have the strongest military and economy and a strategic position in the Middle East? Because the US supported and continues to support them. So in anwer to "why should Israel be our ally" your response is "because they are our ally".
I don't think that we could solve the mid east peast "crisis" (crisis is a funny name for a conflit as old as civilization) by switching sides - nor am I advocating that we do so. But I am saying, however, that we need to honestly re-evaluate our alliance with Isreal and decide how deeply in their pockets we really want to be.
There is no doubt that things in the Middle East have not worked out in our favor. I'm sure the decisions that were made in the 50s seemed reasonable at the time. As with most things in life, it's difficult to predict outcomes accurately. I'm sure in 40 years people will be looking back at our current activities and either applauding or denouncing the decisions that are being made.
Spoken like a true believer in Real Politik - all evaluations are purely practical. I believe that while practicality and realism is an essential ingrediant to reaching policy aims if practicality determines the aims themselves than we've lost the battle already. I'm less interested in an evaluation of the results of our actions (which are too complex to really conclusively and exhaustively examine) and more interested in evaluating the decision-making process itself. I believe that ideals are superior to realism and that realism exists to help move closer to idealism. The problem I have with American foreign policy is more a question of watching idealism fall prey to real politik than a question of tactical blunders.
As a quick example: in 1956 Soviet Russia essentially traded with the US to gain permission to crush a genuinely free and nationalistic revolt in Hungary for the tacit approval of a British conterattck to regain control of the Suez Canal. To me this seems a perfect example of real politik becoming an end in itself - when you start bargaining with the adversary to maintain the status quo it seems to me the greatest defeat of all. We ignored the desperate pleas of free and independent Hungarians for aid in determining their future for economic considerations. Without approval from the US it is not clear that USSR would have sent it's tank divisions into Hungary to massacre the revolutionaries. It's not clear that a war would have been precipitated. The Hungarian forces had already chased the Red Army from their nation. But we elected the practic
And because we draw cartoons and because we have troops in Saudi Arabia and and because our women walk around without their faces (and other parts of their anatomy) covered any number of other reasons. Read the Koran, Muslims hate infidels. It's part of their religion. Not all sects believe this, but many do.
How many Muslims are radicals? From the reports I've read many of those demonstration were instigated by gov't intelligence agencies (eg Syria). Here's something worth noting: the largest Muslim country in the world (by population) is Indonesia. Heard about any protests there? Clearly the religion is the excuse - not the problem.
Your analogy is WAY off. For starters, Israel was a HOLE prior to 1948. Nobody wanted to live there. I would be like Canada invading Idaho, wouldn't be that big of a deal. Second, the rest is history that happened almost 40 years ago, hardly seems like justification for blowing up the WTC.
Uh... personally I think that for starters those in Idaho would be rather pissed about it. Similarly the Palestinians - who were living in Palestine - would be rather pissed about it. Furthermore I (living in far-off VA) would be pissed if Canada invaded Idaho. I mean - it's Idaho. It's part of the US. Hell - I'd be pissed if people invaded Wyoming. It's a funny joke unless you think of a country actually doing it.
Really? Seems like that's EXACTLY what the US is doing. Maybe you should write a letter to your congressman. The Israelis are not using terrorist accounts to do whatever they want. I will guarantee you, if they thought they could get away with whatever they wanted they would load every Arab inside their borders and truck them right out of the country.
Your point? If the US is doing it that makes it OK for Israel? I agree that if the Israelis could get away with that they would. My point is that though they can't get away with that they can get away with a lot of other stuff (eg bulldozing houses and unilaterally deciding what the borders of a future palestinian state will look like in violation of UN and US sponsored agreements) that is decidedly unfair to the Palestinians.
Yeah, the whole country is in on the conspiracy, they are just hiding it from the rest of us. Nonsense. The Labor party and Sharon's Kadima party have been in power since 99. The population as a whole has been very supportive of the peace process, pulling out of Gaza, etc..
It's not a conspiracy and they're not hiding anything. It's out there in the open for anyone to see. It's just that they're doing a very good job with spin. It's a "security fence". Sounds reasonable. It also happens to be a defacto and unilateral redrawing of their borders. They're giving up land no one wants? Fantastic - it's a great opportunity for radical Palestinians to burn some Jewish flags to show how reasonable they are while buying Israel a bit more capital to spend on consolidating their settlements somewhere else.
Powerful nations? OPEC has us by the balls, has for years. Why do the Arab nations need any recourse to 'powerful nations'? They don't have enough power themselves?
That's just silly. OPEC has us by the balls in the same way that the USSR "had us by the balls" when they had all those ICMBS pointed at us. If they actually pulled the trigger we would have had mutual assured destruction. Similarly OPEC can bring us to our knees any time they want and then sell their oil to...? Exactly. Without the US the bottom drops out from the oil market. Not because the US takes all the oil on the market but because without oil the US economy tanks. If the US economy tanks the world economy will follow suit. Pretty soon we've got a world-wide economic disaster and OPEC has squat. Sure, in a few decades China may be big enough to take up the slack. And then we'll see if they pull the trigger or not. But for now the fact is that OPEC needs America just as much as we need OPEC. Difference being we also have the most powefu
If you're not equating the two, then I've got no beef. It just sounded like you were doing exactly that.
I agree wholeheartedly that if your point is simply that belief in a messiah and belief in wanting to topple another regime are insufficient to think someone is crazy. But it seems like you were going much further than that.
Furthermore it seems like you need to clue the rest of us in to what you are really thinking. If you're point is that it's hypocritical to condemn Iran's nuclear ambtions on this specific basis than I agree. But what you actually said was more along the lines of "it's hypocritical to condemn/fear Iran's nuclear ambitions and not condemn America's nuclear arsenal".
I just don't happen to think the reasons listed qualify, and the general tone of the post suggests the sort of "WOW ISLAM SUXXORZ" attitude that makes me sick.
Now that I understand what you were saying I agree but I'd add that you might want to try to tone down your revulsion for that kind of religious bigotry for the rest of us. In your (justifiable) vitriol and vehemence you sacrificed a good deal of clarity.
Oh yeah, and didn't Bush cite God as the reason behind the regime change in Iraq?
There's room, in my opinion, for religion AND reason. Bush is probably a little short on the reason side. Ahd, on the other hand, seems extremely short on the reason side. I don't think you can equate the two.
the Iranian President probably has LESS influence than the American president
Insofar as the Iranian President has links to the ruling fundamentalists you're just flat out wrong.
start opposing the U.S.A.'s arsenal of nuclear weapon
Are you SERIOUSLY saying that the danger from the US's nukes is equivalent to the danger from Iran's nukes? I just can't believe you would say that - but it sounds like you are.
OK, while I have to agree with Spec that it's just stupid and under-handed to start smearing religion I just can not agree that we can equate Bush and Ahmadinejad. Denying the Holocaust and (from every quote I've heard) calling for Isreal to be wiped off the map are not the marks of a bad politician - they are the marks of a fanatic.
While Stalinst Russia was evil - it was also rationale. They had no desire to die. Thus mutual assured destruction worked. When you're dealing with a religious leader who expects the apocalypse (whether it means Christ or the 12 imam is goign to come is immaterial) than M.A.D. loses it's effectiveness. I wholeheartedly agree that - to the extent that the characteriazation of Ahmadinejad is accurate - he's 10 times more dangerous with a nuke than any Russian leader ever was.
Popular vote. We have many Jewish people this country, especially in the 'blue states'. Many Jewish people are going to support a Jewish state.
Jews are a minority. Even if they all vote at once it's not enough to swing votes towards Isreal. It's the propaganda that suckers us Americans. And it's not Jews that engage in this - it's Zionists. There's a difference. I know of at least one Jewish campus leader who was removed from her position as head of a student group at the request of the Isreali embassy for her criticism of Isreali actions in the middle east.
Also, we've got born-agains with this infatuation that Isreal is the restored Zion prophesied of in the Bible. They're about as stable as the Iranian president with their end-of-the-world zeal, but the sad fact is that pro-Isreal is the one thing the red and blue states seem to agree on. But it's agreement based on religious fanatacism and propaganda - not, in my opinion, enough to constitute a "good reason" for anything.
They are our only ally in the Middle East.
The Muslims hate us BECAUSE of our unwavering support of Isreal at their expense. If the USSR had supported a Canadian land-grab of New York we'd probably be pissed off at the USSR too. Especially if the Canadians subsequently kicked our trash when we tried to take our land back and then took a few other states for good measure. And started erecting security fences. You get the picture.
It's the right thing to do. Israel is a country under siege. They measure their terrorist attacks in days and weeks, not years and decades like we do.
There's no excuse for Palestinian terrorism. But being the victim of terrorism doesn't give you defacto rights to do whatever the Hell you want to do. Blowing up buses is a tragic and awful thing - but it's not enough to threaten the extinction of the Isreali state. Meanwhile the Isreali's use the terrorism as an excuse to continue to keep the Palestinians margenalized, build a giant security fence so that they can pick their own borders and grab more land AND keep the moral high ground all at the same time. Country under siege my ass. That's like saying America was under siege to Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Remember - the one where we took 1/2 of Mexico and duubbed it Te
Islam has been the destabilizing factor in the Middle East since it's inception That's just historically false. Islam was a force for enlightenment and stability through much of its history. I'm not discounting radical Islam now - but I'd say the muslims have a better track record than the Christians if you include the last 1,000 years.
This has been proven by recent elections and recent activities of the government.
Or the withdrawal was just another well-calculated way to make people like you THINK that while Isreal continues on its merry way grabbing exactly the territory that it wants while the rest of the world blames Palestine for the failure of the peace plan. Palestinian terrorists are enabling this chain of events, but Isreal is taking full advantage of it and laughing all the way to the bank.
Maybe because the Palestinians blow themselves up.
That's just stupid. His whole point was that if Palestinians were blowing themselvse up there'd be way more dead Jews than Palestinians (as a ratio). One suicide bomber dead = 10 or 20 Jews dead. And that's what you believe (nation under siege) but the fact that there are more Palestinian dead than Isreali dead contradicts your point.
It's time for America to stop blindly supporting Israel. We're only encouraging terrorism (in this sense) by fueling the sense among Arabs and Muslims that they have no friends and no recourse to appeal to powerful nations.
Where are the Israeli politicians denying Iran's right to exist?
How about denying Palestine's right to exist? Sure - they talk about a seperate Palestinian state, but actions speak louder than words and while I wholeheartedly believe they intend to support some Palestinian state their actions clearly indicate that they expect such a state to be creater on their terms.
Holy cow - you need some serious medication dude! They were caling him a "kid". I'd say 33 is not "a kid". That's all! I didn't mean to say it's old or something.
You're either joking and I'm too tired to recognize the humor or you're a very sensitive individual. Congrats on all you've achieved in your 33 years by the way.
OK, before the flames, obviously I didn't mean the next step immediately after you figure out what an if-statement is. I meant after you've written several programs and are getting ready for more ambitious projects. Like this guy is.
I can't believe his age is even being discussed. He could be 33 for all I care. since when is it a crime to ask a question? Again - he's not wasting anybody's time. Anyone who resonds to this thread to complain about him proves they have the time to deal with the issue at least a little bit.
I think it's crazy that some poor guy manages to get his question posted on slashdot - which means he's probably going to get a wealth of information - and he ends up having the legitimacy of his question debated in terms of his age!
It's people like this that give techies such a bad reputation. It's one thing to laugh in fun at the dumb users who try to use the CD-drives as cup holders. It's another thing to get irritated with users who expect us to fix their messes after the screw stuff up. But to smack down someone who's actually trying to learn to do it on their own because you don't like their question? That's just elitist and anti-social.
I'd say asking the slashdot readership IS doing research. If you've got time to flame him for asking a question clearly you weren't too busy to respond to his question.
The smartest way to get knowledge is to ask the people that know. And by posting on Slashdot it's not like he's barging down your door or sauntering into your cubicle and demanding your attention. It's a very passive non-intrusive inquiry. You read the post, you responded, you have no reason left to complain about this.
Plus, as a largely self-taught programmer myself I know that asking a question from someone who knows can sometimes get an answer 10 times faster (and 10 times more clearly) than reading a bunch of manuals frequently written either for dummies or for experts. That in-between period when you don't need someone explaining how an if-statement works but you don't really quite know the next step is a difficult phase. In my opinion this isn't a question of laziness - it's a question of efficiency. There seem to be plenty of people here who want to help him. Why don't you kindly get out of their way?
I did say that cities are necessary for art. However it is a simple logical fallacy to take that to mean cities "cities exist to produce art / literature / culture." I agree with you that cities were formed initially around natural resources. In fact the oldest cities were formed around one central resource: water. Need for this resource is just as critical today as it was several thousand years ago. Cities that exist in fertial rivers basins have existed there for millenia. At the opposite end of the spectrum you have western ghost towns were a population sprang up around a resource (eg gold) that was quickly depleted leaving no further reason for the city to exist.
There are two essential things to notice, however. The first is that "resources" vary greatly by technology. Thousands of years ago salt was a valuable natural resource because there were no methods for extracting it from sea water economically. Now, however, there's no reason for a city to form around a salt deposit because it's simply not that rare. One thing that has increasingly become a resource, however, is the people themselves. If you look at the truly large cities like London or New York of Tokyo they don't exist because of some exploitable natural resource: the city becomes the resource. You stick the UN in New York because so many people are already there. So I disagree with your depiction of cities as transitory phenomena that sort of pop up and fade away as resources are found and exploited. As time goes by the natural resources become less rare, the cost of transporting them goes down, and the values of cities themslves (call it intellectual capital if you like) goes up. So cities increasingly become independent of transient economics.
The second thing to note is that cities don't just change where we live, they change how we live. The reason that cities are essential to the development of art and culture is simply this: they allow people to specialize. If you have 10,000 people spread out over 10,000 square miles they can not efficiently all trade with one another and therefore everyone has to be a generalist. If you have 10,000 people in 1 square mile you allow for specialization. Basic economics teaches that specialization and trading ALWAYS result in greater aggregate production by definition. It's this surplus of production that allows people to dedicate more or all of their time to fulfilling non-immediate needs. Translation: they can work on anything from epic poetry to particle physics as a direct result of the fact that they live in proximity to other people.
Now of course the definition of "proximity" also changes with technology. If we ever have the tech to reliable just bean oursleves around then - while gathering points would still be important - there would be less need for us to congregate in order to specialize. On a lesser scale the car has done this already - allowing suburban sprawl (although in my opinion this is a bad thing).
So - to respond directly to your post - I think your "dead animal" analogy is inherently flawed. Cities are no longer built around the dead animal of fossil fuels. If that were true - the oil fields would be huge metropolises. Clearly wateris more important and transport of fossil fuels is cheap enought that even though our cities depend on fossil fuels their location is independent of the location of those resources. So if you take fossil fuels away and replace them with any other power source the need for having cities is literally unchanged. Ur and Babylon existed well before industrialization and served the same purposse then as cities do today: provide an environment favorable to specialization.
Once you realize that the question of living in cities is wholly independent from fossil fuels (and while we're at it I think cities are more efficient than maintaining the same standard of living in a distributed environment) you realize that if the Mars colonies are pissed about a lack of resources it will be due to suburbanization - not urbaniza
Well yeah, and 65K makes you rich in Moazmbique. Or a begger in DC/Nortern VA. I figured he was talking about people in the general vicinity or it becomes utterly meaningless to talk about it at all.
Problem is we don't know what exactly is sustainable
That's pretty much the nail on the head right there. There's no such thing as one sustainable lifestyle. Sustainability just means renewability. So while everyone is moaning and groaning about how the Americna lifestyle is unsustainable they are forgetting to mention the fact that it is high technology that increases the level of sustainable lifestyles. Until solar power, ethanol, etc "sustainable" meant "what you can build with your hands". It is only thanks to advanced research that we may actually get a sustainable lifestyle that also involves such frivolous things as running water and medical treatment.
People who are all into "you can't justify going farther than you can walk" are the perfect example of a cure that's worse than the disease. If you can't go farther than you can walk you may save the environment but you completely decimate human society. Cities can not exist, universities can not exist, the bottom falls out from underneath society. You get a bunch of isolated pockets of survivalists who have no time for literature, art, or communal society. It's just neo-luditism. Why bother trying to save modern civilization if the answer is to destroy modern civilization? And by modern civilization I don't mean things like shopping malls. I have in mind things like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, and essentially all the human intellectual capital that rests on our ability to talk to one another over long distances and support specialists who don't have to tend their own fields every day.
Technology has made possible our ability to live the type of lifestyle that we currently live. Technology, in my opinion, is also crucial to increasing efficiency to a point where maintaining a semblance of this lifestyle can be done sustainably. It's no questions that we've annointed convenience as king of efficiency and we probably would have to give up things like hummers and civics (and priuses) to really become sustainable. But the question is - do you want to give up these for smaller, ethanol-driven vehicles or for your bare feet?
I'm not sure what you think you are proving. I've distinguished carefully between logical and rational thinking - which is common to both genuine religious thinkers and genuine scientific thinkers - and quantifiable phenomena - which distinguish scientific inquiry from religious or philosophical inquiry in general.
I may as well have mentioned Simone d'Beauvoir's (French existentialist atheist) theory of freedom as the root of human morality to have you respond "is it testable and falsifiable"? Well, no. That's why we call it philosophy and not physics. Does that mean that Simone is an idiot? You seem to imply that. Does it mean other people are idiots for either actually believing or at least taking what she says seriously? Again - you seem to assume that.
I would counter with two points. 1. "Falsifiable" still doesn't get you certainty. The only things that are certain are the mathematical and logical results. The link between those results and the real world is never inherently unbreakable. As a trivial example if you weigh two books and each is 8 ounces then you can conclude together they way 16 ounces. The math (8+8=16) is certain. However the scales could be off - meaning that your conclusion while logically sound is not actually valid to the state of things in the real world. Hence my previous point that science gets us more certainty than philosophy in general, but it's moving a long a spectrum. It's not (in terms of certainty) qualitatively different.
2. We act out our lives according to decisions based on insufficient data to meet scientific criteria. Decisions we make on a day to day basis like "will my wife more enjoy watching 24 or Buffy with me tonight?" yield conclusions "I think she's tired of Buffy" that while on general are probably pretty accurate are neither rigorously tested by us nor really conducive to such testing in the first place. My point is not that we should welcome unscientific methods in all our decisions (not such a great idea of your designing planes) but that there's a place in life for both falsifiable claims and non-falsifiable claims. Your political beliefs - for example - are almost certainly non-falsifiable. That probably doesn't stop you from holding them.
In fact the central point of your (implied) argument above: it's laughable to believe in "a magic sky daddy" is a perfect example of a non-falsifiable claim that you're totally unabashed in propounding.
So we get to a final (I hope) iteration of my main point: religious and scientific dogmatics have a common way of thinking. They ignore logic and simply expound their conclusions. They are uninterested in questioning the conclusions and therefore utterly incapable of realizing the illogical nature of their stance. Not because the conclusion is illogical. But because their rationale for that conclusion is illogical (or perhaps alogical would be a better term). They are parading around in the intellectual buff never capable of realizing that the emperor has no clothes on.
Meanwhile sincere and earnest religious, philosophical, and scientific thinkers all have at the root essentially the same characteristics. They are unwavering in their determination to follow the logic regardless of the conclusions to which it leads them. That's why physicists and mathemeticians end up believing in apparently ridiculous things like quantum mechanics. Because no matter how absurd the conclusion may appear on the face of it - it's born out by the logic (which in the case of science is based on quantifiable phenomena as well as mathematical and logical principles). And maybe, just maybe, that's why religious thinkers (again - think C. S. Lewis or Kirkegaard and not Falwell) embrace what to you is a seemingly ridiculous notion ("a magic sky daddy").
Since your not open to understanding their logic you'll never be in any better a position to judge the truth or even the reasonableness of their claims than some hard-core fundamentalist will be of evaluating geolgical evidenc
Thanks for taking the time to look through the thread. I completely agree with what you wrote about quantum mechanics. I only hit the very basics of that in college (at the end of a course on partial differential equations) so I can't really pretend to be more than an amateur on the topic.
I hadn't specifically envisioned the ID vs. evolution aspect - but I'll go with it wholeheartedly. But yeah - there's a huge difference between some crazy theory that's supported by mathematics, research, and experimentation vs. some crazy theory that's just crazy. For someone with no specialized expertise, however, it can be hard to tell the difference. In a way that's what's happening here. Yet another Slashdot religion basher who has (I'm assuming here) very, very little experience in either theology or philosophy is taking a look at religion and can't tell the difference between Jerry Fallwell rhetoric and (as an example) Christian existentialism. One has no acceptance amont serious thinkers anywhere - the other is accepted and regarded highly not just by Christian believers but by atheists, agnostics, and people of other faiths as well.
The metaphor was intentional. Here's a more in-depth exposition.
Some crazy guy is running around telling you about his cold-fusion proof. Upon examination of what he's saying, you realize he's full of it. It contradicts some basic laws of physics accepted by you and practically everyone else. So then along comes a scientist telling you about quantum mechanics. Do you take the time to actually listen to what he's saying or do you say "last PhD that sounded nuts was talking about cold fusion in a can - this guy must be retarded too?"
That's what people are doing when they come across fundamentalist claims (eg the earth is only 7000 years old) and then use those claims to dismiss anything outlandish a religion may have to say (eg - God exists and actually cares what happens to people on earth is plenty outlandish for many).
So you see, I chose quantum mechanics (as opposed to something like say partial differential equations) because not only is it complex but it seems outlandish. Despite seeming outlandish it's actually well-respected by people who care enough to study it. Similarly a lot of religious claims taht seem outlandish are taken very seriously by those who care enough to study them.
Of course the metaphor isn't perfect. You can read up on and theoretically conduct yourself the experiments that lead up to quantum mechanics. You can't similarly replicate research on God. But I'm not trying to convince people that religion (in general or in particular) is true - just that it's irrational to dismiss it without ever understanding it.
Sure - open means receptive. It doesn't mean credulous. An open mind with no skepticism is about as useful as a closed mind.
I'm not sure if I should assume from your post that you believe all religions and all religious tenets are "shite" or not. It's not a very radical view by Slashdot standards to simply write off all religion as being idiotic by definition. But I think before you make a decision on a way of life, a group of people, or a philosophy you should probably let adherents speak for themselves.
Sure, some radical fundamentalists might not make a very good case in terms of rationality, logic, or even coherence - but in my opinion they're the religious equivalent of scientific quacks. Just 'cause some nut with a PhD is running around telling you some weird story that makes no sense doesn't mean that quantum mechanics is a bunch of crap.
"You shouldn't delude yourself with trying to compare religious and "other" people."
And you shouldn't delude yourself by living in a world of overly-simplistic black-and-white charicatures. Your comments regarding religion indicate that you have no more concept for what a religious life actually entails than the most radical fundamentalist comprehends the work of a scientist.
The fact is that the biggest similarity between a rational scientist and a rational religious believer is being open to following whatever the evidence dictates. And the biggest similarity between religious and scientific dogmatics is the inability to ask genuine questions. You provide a perfect example. A superficial request for information Please, enlighten me. What exactly are the similarities between [religious] people and people researching phenomena and trying to logically and RATIONALLY explain them? followed without pause by your own answer: Exactly, there are NONE
You can't teach someone who follows dogma blindly anything not because they are stupid or incapable of learning, but because they are unwilling to question their own conclusions.
However, I'll provide an answer anyway. One such similarity is that many religious people ponder phenomena important to many people and try to logically and rationally explain them. Whereas a scientist may study physically observable phenomena - say gravity - a theologian may study a question like "why do bad things happen to good people?", or "is free will an illusion?". Regardless of how important you personally hold these questions to be some of the greatest minds of humanity have pondered these questions. Some - like Aristotle - were perhaps not religious in the conventional sense of the word (although he seemed to have respect for the God he knew). More recently we have thinkers like C.S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, and others (just to hit the Christian denomination since you find that particularly disgusting) who have greatly contributed to human thought concerning these questions.
So you see at the root it's exactly the same. But studying physically observable phenomena calls for a very different methodology than studying non-quantifiable - but just as real - phenomena.
The fact of the matter is that by blindly refusing to question your own dogma regarding what constitutes a religious follower you are impoverishing your own intellectual life. In science the results are not nearly as critical as the method. Scientific findings can be overthrown by subsequent research - but as long as the inquiry is honest the wealth of knowledge will grow. Similarly religious searching is more important for the quest than for the particulary beliefs one may espouse or reject at any given moment along the path. As long as the effort to learn is sincere the wisdom of the seeker will increase.
I reiterate - you are demonstrating that in this particular question your superficial distaste for religious thinkers is revealed to be an intimate kinship with the very worst religious non-thinkers. As long as you happily cling to your charicature of religion no one will convince you otherwise. Like those who mocked Galileo or Socrates the problem is deeper than one of evidence or logic - it's a question of capacity to be open to foreign ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the 1967 expansion, well, that was gained in war when Israel defeneded itself from attacks by several countries in the region.
Attacks made by Arabs after the Jews moved in and more or less annexed their own territory and kicked the Palestinian Arabs out.
While Israel does have a range of political views, just like here in the states, the majority of the people, to include those in the government have asked for only one thing for the creation of a palestinian state: A cessation of the attacks on them.
I agree with this aspect whole heartedly. If I start with no territory and then annex West Virginia and declare it Mormonopia and West Virginians start blowing themselves up I'd be more than happy to give them some of the land in return for a cessation of violence. I'm still left with a huge chunk of land were formally I had nothing. And the indigineous West Virginians would be ceasing violence in order to gain back less land than they had originally. This is obviously a better deal for one side.
Look, if I rob you and take 2 credit cards - should you be content if I offer to give one back? It just doesn't make sense.
And I'm not trying to argue that the Palestinians are justified - either in their tactics of terrorism or in there desire to eliminate Israel. In my opinion they're not only wrong - they're stupid for engaging a war of terrorism that they can't possibly win. All I'm saying is that Israel is blatantly using Palestian aggression to further their own ends. It's like if some 10 year old walks up and kicks you in the shin and you respond by kicking him in the shins and taking his lollipop. Sure, it was wrong and stupid of him to pick a fight with you but it doesn't change the fact that you took his stuff.
Israel is a big, clever, chip-on-the-shoulder bully and I'm just saying we're too unquestioning in our love and support of all they do.
-stormin
That's clever. I say something is bad. Even if I'm the last one on earth that thinks it's awful it's just written in stone truth that the game is mediocore. Oh yeah - and if you disagree you're a "fanboi".
Look, everyone's got their own opinion and mine is quite simply that it was one of the best games I've ever played on any console or PC at any time. It had for me an incredibly compelling storyline made all the more interesting by the epic scope of the art. The soundtrack helped a lot - I own the soundtracks to both Halo and Halo2 not because I love the franchise that much but because I love the music itself that much.
If you want to get an understanding of how incredibly good Halo is then all you need to do is download all of the "I Love Bees" audio tracks and listen to the incredible depth of character and plot development that went into the Halo universe. It's obvious to me that Halo, from Bungie's point of view, has been a genuine labor of love.
There are very few games that will actually cause me - months or years after playing them - to wistfully think back to the in-game feelings with a genuine feeling of wanting to go back to that universe. Halo, for me at least, succeeded in completely immersing me in another story - another time - another place - another universe. I don't care if the next Halo game comes out on Xbox360, WindowsVista, Mac, or the MS Origami. If Bungie continues to treat the franchise as they have so far I will be there.
Heh. So maybe I'm a "fanboi" afterall. But I'll be a "fanboi" for a game that has genuine heart and passion any day of the week with no trace of shame at all.
-stormin
We had one terrorist attack and we invaded two countries.
Which is actually an opportunity to show the stark contrast between our response and the Isreali response. The Palestinians - decades later - have no nation whatsoever. Isreal takes their land in response to attacks and moves them into refugee camps. Have we moved afghanis from their homeland? Did we attempt to maintain control over Iraqi soil?
I'm not arguing that America is saintly. It's simply that we don't need or want to take land from Iraq or Afhganistan and therefore we don't have ulterior motives to dealing with terrorism. Isreal, by contrast, is right there. And the temptation to move from "responding to terror threates" to "... and grabbing some land while we're at it" has proved irresistable for them.
but it's not like the Middle east doesn't have the money and population to create a formidable military force if they wanted to.
That doesn't really change the situation. Wheher militarily or economically it would be stupid for them to try and kill the US as we're their biggest customer at this point and taking us out would decimate the world market and move them back to the stoneage.
They have the strongest economy, strongest military and a strategic position in the middle east. These reasons alone are adequate for a continued alliance with them.
And this gets to the heart of my criticism for our support of Israel - it's entirely circular. Why do they have the strongest military and economy and a strategic position in the Middle East? Because the US supported and continues to support them. So in anwer to "why should Israel be our ally" your response is "because they are our ally".
I don't think that we could solve the mid east peast "crisis" (crisis is a funny name for a conflit as old as civilization) by switching sides - nor am I advocating that we do so. But I am saying, however, that we need to honestly re-evaluate our alliance with Isreal and decide how deeply in their pockets we really want to be.
There is no doubt that things in the Middle East have not worked out in our favor. I'm sure the decisions that were made in the 50s seemed reasonable at the time. As with most things in life, it's difficult to predict outcomes accurately. I'm sure in 40 years people will be looking back at our current activities and either applauding or denouncing the decisions that are being made.
Spoken like a true believer in Real Politik - all evaluations are purely practical. I believe that while practicality and realism is an essential ingrediant to reaching policy aims if practicality determines the aims themselves than we've lost the battle already. I'm less interested in an evaluation of the results of our actions (which are too complex to really conclusively and exhaustively examine) and more interested in evaluating the decision-making process itself. I believe that ideals are superior to realism and that realism exists to help move closer to idealism. The problem I have with American foreign policy is more a question of watching idealism fall prey to real politik than a question of tactical blunders.
As a quick example: in 1956 Soviet Russia essentially traded with the US to gain permission to crush a genuinely free and nationalistic revolt in Hungary for the tacit approval of a British conterattck to regain control of the Suez Canal. To me this seems a perfect example of real politik becoming an end in itself - when you start bargaining with the adversary to maintain the status quo it seems to me the greatest defeat of all. We ignored the desperate pleas of free and independent Hungarians for aid in determining their future for economic considerations. Without approval from the US it is not clear that USSR would have sent it's tank divisions into Hungary to massacre the revolutionaries. It's not clear that a war would have been precipitated. The Hungarian forces had already chased the Red Army from their nation. But we elected the practic
And because we draw cartoons and because we have troops in Saudi Arabia and and because our women walk around without their faces (and other parts of their anatomy) covered any number of other reasons. Read the Koran, Muslims hate infidels. It's part of their religion. Not all sects believe this, but many do.
How many Muslims are radicals? From the reports I've read many of those demonstration were instigated by gov't intelligence agencies (eg Syria). Here's something worth noting: the largest Muslim country in the world (by population) is Indonesia. Heard about any protests there? Clearly the religion is the excuse - not the problem.
Your analogy is WAY off. For starters, Israel was a HOLE prior to 1948. Nobody wanted to live there. I would be like Canada invading Idaho, wouldn't be that big of a deal. Second, the rest is history that happened almost 40 years ago, hardly seems like justification for blowing up the WTC.
Uh... personally I think that for starters those in Idaho would be rather pissed about it. Similarly the Palestinians - who were living in Palestine - would be rather pissed about it. Furthermore I (living in far-off VA) would be pissed if Canada invaded Idaho. I mean - it's Idaho. It's part of the US. Hell - I'd be pissed if people invaded Wyoming. It's a funny joke unless you think of a country actually doing it.
Really? Seems like that's EXACTLY what the US is doing. Maybe you should write a letter to your congressman. The Israelis are not using terrorist accounts to do whatever they want. I will guarantee you, if they thought they could get away with whatever they wanted they would load every Arab inside their borders and truck them right out of the country.
Your point? If the US is doing it that makes it OK for Israel? I agree that if the Israelis could get away with that they would. My point is that though they can't get away with that they can get away with a lot of other stuff (eg bulldozing houses and unilaterally deciding what the borders of a future palestinian state will look like in violation of UN and US sponsored agreements) that is decidedly unfair to the Palestinians.
Yeah, the whole country is in on the conspiracy, they are just hiding it from the rest of us. Nonsense. The Labor party and Sharon's Kadima party have been in power since 99. The population as a whole has been very supportive of the peace process, pulling out of Gaza, etc..
It's not a conspiracy and they're not hiding anything. It's out there in the open for anyone to see. It's just that they're doing a very good job with spin. It's a "security fence". Sounds reasonable. It also happens to be a defacto and unilateral redrawing of their borders. They're giving up land no one wants? Fantastic - it's a great opportunity for radical Palestinians to burn some Jewish flags to show how reasonable they are while buying Israel a bit more capital to spend on consolidating their settlements somewhere else.
Powerful nations? OPEC has us by the balls, has for years. Why do the Arab nations need any recourse to 'powerful nations'? They don't have enough power themselves?
That's just silly. OPEC has us by the balls in the same way that the USSR "had us by the balls" when they had all those ICMBS pointed at us. If they actually pulled the trigger we would have had mutual assured destruction. Similarly OPEC can bring us to our knees any time they want and then sell their oil to...? Exactly. Without the US the bottom drops out from the oil market. Not because the US takes all the oil on the market but because without oil the US economy tanks. If the US economy tanks the world economy will follow suit. Pretty soon we've got a world-wide economic disaster and OPEC has squat. Sure, in a few decades China may be big enough to take up the slack. And then we'll see if they pull the trigger or not. But for now the fact is that OPEC needs America just as much as we need OPEC. Difference being we also have the most powefu
If you're not equating the two, then I've got no beef. It just sounded like you were doing exactly that.
I agree wholeheartedly that if your point is simply that belief in a messiah and belief in wanting to topple another regime are insufficient to think someone is crazy. But it seems like you were going much further than that.
Furthermore it seems like you need to clue the rest of us in to what you are really thinking. If you're point is that it's hypocritical to condemn Iran's nuclear ambtions on this specific basis than I agree. But what you actually said was more along the lines of "it's hypocritical to condemn/fear Iran's nuclear ambitions and not condemn America's nuclear arsenal".
I just don't happen to think the reasons listed qualify, and the general tone of the post suggests the sort of "WOW ISLAM SUXXORZ" attitude that makes me sick.
Now that I understand what you were saying I agree but I'd add that you might want to try to tone down your revulsion for that kind of religious bigotry for the rest of us. In your (justifiable) vitriol and vehemence you sacrificed a good deal of clarity.
-stormin
Oh yeah, and didn't Bush cite God as the reason behind the regime change in Iraq?
There's room, in my opinion, for religion AND reason. Bush is probably a little short on the reason side. Ahd, on the other hand, seems extremely short on the reason side. I don't think you can equate the two.
the Iranian President probably has LESS influence than the American president
Insofar as the Iranian President has links to the ruling fundamentalists you're just flat out wrong.
start opposing the U.S.A.'s arsenal of nuclear weapon
Are you SERIOUSLY saying that the danger from the US's nukes is equivalent to the danger from Iran's nukes? I just can't believe you would say that - but it sounds like you are.
-stormin
OK, while I have to agree with Spec that it's just stupid and under-handed to start smearing religion I just can not agree that we can equate Bush and Ahmadinejad. Denying the Holocaust and (from every quote I've heard) calling for Isreal to be wiped off the map are not the marks of a bad politician - they are the marks of a fanatic.
While Stalinst Russia was evil - it was also rationale. They had no desire to die. Thus mutual assured destruction worked. When you're dealing with a religious leader who expects the apocalypse (whether it means Christ or the 12 imam is goign to come is immaterial) than M.A.D. loses it's effectiveness. I wholeheartedly agree that - to the extent that the characteriazation of Ahmadinejad is accurate - he's 10 times more dangerous with a nuke than any Russian leader ever was.
-stormin
About your "good reasons":
Popular vote. We have many Jewish people this country, especially in the 'blue states'. Many Jewish people are going to support a Jewish state.
Jews are a minority. Even if they all vote at once it's not enough to swing votes towards Isreal. It's the propaganda that suckers us Americans. And it's not Jews that engage in this - it's Zionists. There's a difference. I know of at least one Jewish campus leader who was removed from her position as head of a student group at the request of the Isreali embassy for her criticism of Isreali actions in the middle east.
Also, we've got born-agains with this infatuation that Isreal is the restored Zion prophesied of in the Bible. They're about as stable as the Iranian president with their end-of-the-world zeal, but the sad fact is that pro-Isreal is the one thing the red and blue states seem to agree on. But it's agreement based on religious fanatacism and propaganda - not, in my opinion, enough to constitute a "good reason" for anything.
They are our only ally in the Middle East.
The Muslims hate us BECAUSE of our unwavering support of Isreal at their expense. If the USSR had supported a Canadian land-grab of New York we'd probably be pissed off at the USSR too. Especially if the Canadians subsequently kicked our trash when we tried to take our land back and then took a few other states for good measure. And started erecting security fences. You get the picture.
It's the right thing to do. Israel is a country under siege. They measure their terrorist attacks in days and weeks, not years and decades like we do.
There's no excuse for Palestinian terrorism. But being the victim of terrorism doesn't give you defacto rights to do whatever the Hell you want to do. Blowing up buses is a tragic and awful thing - but it's not enough to threaten the extinction of the Isreali state. Meanwhile the Isreali's use the terrorism as an excuse to continue to keep the Palestinians margenalized, build a giant security fence so that they can pick their own borders and grab more land AND keep the moral high ground all at the same time. Country under siege my ass. That's like saying America was under siege to Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Remember - the one where we took 1/2 of Mexico and duubbed it Te
Islam has been the destabilizing factor in the Middle East since it's inception That's just historically false. Islam was a force for enlightenment and stability through much of its history. I'm not discounting radical Islam now - but I'd say the muslims have a better track record than the Christians if you include the last 1,000 years.
This has been proven by recent elections and recent activities of the government.
Or the withdrawal was just another well-calculated way to make people like you THINK that while Isreal continues on its merry way grabbing exactly the territory that it wants while the rest of the world blames Palestine for the failure of the peace plan. Palestinian terrorists are enabling this chain of events, but Isreal is taking full advantage of it and laughing all the way to the bank.
Maybe because the Palestinians blow themselves up.
That's just stupid. His whole point was that if Palestinians were blowing themselvse up there'd be way more dead Jews than Palestinians (as a ratio). One suicide bomber dead = 10 or 20 Jews dead. And that's what you believe (nation under siege) but the fact that there are more Palestinian dead than Isreali dead contradicts your point.
It's time for America to stop blindly supporting Israel. We're only encouraging terrorism (in this sense) by fueling the sense among Arabs and Muslims that they have no friends and no recourse to appeal to powerful nations.
-stormin
Where are the Israeli politicians denying Iran's right to exist?
How about denying Palestine's right to exist? Sure - they talk about a seperate Palestinian state, but actions speak louder than words and while I wholeheartedly believe they intend to support some Palestinian state their actions clearly indicate that they expect such a state to be creater on their terms.
-stormin
CodeProject.com has been really helpful to me. I have frequently gotten answers within hours of posting there.
-stormin
Holy cow - you need some serious medication dude! They were caling him a "kid". I'd say 33 is not "a kid". That's all! I didn't mean to say it's old or something.
You're either joking and I'm too tired to recognize the humor or you're a very sensitive individual. Congrats on all you've achieved in your 33 years by the way.
-stormin
OK, before the flames, obviously I didn't mean the next step immediately after you figure out what an if-statement is. I meant after you've written several programs and are getting ready for more ambitious projects. Like this guy is.
-stormin
I can't believe his age is even being discussed. He could be 33 for all I care. since when is it a crime to ask a question? Again - he's not wasting anybody's time. Anyone who resonds to this thread to complain about him proves they have the time to deal with the issue at least a little bit.
I think it's crazy that some poor guy manages to get his question posted on slashdot - which means he's probably going to get a wealth of information - and he ends up having the legitimacy of his question debated in terms of his age!
It's people like this that give techies such a bad reputation. It's one thing to laugh in fun at the dumb users who try to use the CD-drives as cup holders. It's another thing to get irritated with users who expect us to fix their messes after the screw stuff up. But to smack down someone who's actually trying to learn to do it on their own because you don't like their question? That's just elitist and anti-social.
-stormin
I'd say asking the slashdot readership IS doing research. If you've got time to flame him for asking a question clearly you weren't too busy to respond to his question.
The smartest way to get knowledge is to ask the people that know. And by posting on Slashdot it's not like he's barging down your door or sauntering into your cubicle and demanding your attention. It's a very passive non-intrusive inquiry. You read the post, you responded, you have no reason left to complain about this.
Plus, as a largely self-taught programmer myself I know that asking a question from someone who knows can sometimes get an answer 10 times faster (and 10 times more clearly) than reading a bunch of manuals frequently written either for dummies or for experts. That in-between period when you don't need someone explaining how an if-statement works but you don't really quite know the next step is a difficult phase. In my opinion this isn't a question of laziness - it's a question of efficiency. There seem to be plenty of people here who want to help him. Why don't you kindly get out of their way?
-stormin
I did say that cities are necessary for art. However it is a simple logical fallacy to take that to mean cities "cities exist to produce art / literature / culture." I agree with you that cities were formed initially around natural resources. In fact the oldest cities were formed around one central resource: water. Need for this resource is just as critical today as it was several thousand years ago. Cities that exist in fertial rivers basins have existed there for millenia. At the opposite end of the spectrum you have western ghost towns were a population sprang up around a resource (eg gold) that was quickly depleted leaving no further reason for the city to exist.
There are two essential things to notice, however. The first is that "resources" vary greatly by technology. Thousands of years ago salt was a valuable natural resource because there were no methods for extracting it from sea water economically. Now, however, there's no reason for a city to form around a salt deposit because it's simply not that rare. One thing that has increasingly become a resource, however, is the people themselves. If you look at the truly large cities like London or New York of Tokyo they don't exist because of some exploitable natural resource: the city becomes the resource. You stick the UN in New York because so many people are already there. So I disagree with your depiction of cities as transitory phenomena that sort of pop up and fade away as resources are found and exploited. As time goes by the natural resources become less rare, the cost of transporting them goes down, and the values of cities themslves (call it intellectual capital if you like) goes up. So cities increasingly become independent of transient economics.
The second thing to note is that cities don't just change where we live, they change how we live. The reason that cities are essential to the development of art and culture is simply this: they allow people to specialize. If you have 10,000 people spread out over 10,000 square miles they can not efficiently all trade with one another and therefore everyone has to be a generalist. If you have 10,000 people in 1 square mile you allow for specialization. Basic economics teaches that specialization and trading ALWAYS result in greater aggregate production by definition. It's this surplus of production that allows people to dedicate more or all of their time to fulfilling non-immediate needs. Translation: they can work on anything from epic poetry to particle physics as a direct result of the fact that they live in proximity to other people.
Now of course the definition of "proximity" also changes with technology. If we ever have the tech to reliable just bean oursleves around then - while gathering points would still be important - there would be less need for us to congregate in order to specialize. On a lesser scale the car has done this already - allowing suburban sprawl (although in my opinion this is a bad thing).
So - to respond directly to your post - I think your "dead animal" analogy is inherently flawed. Cities are no longer built around the dead animal of fossil fuels. If that were true - the oil fields would be huge metropolises. Clearly wateris more important and transport of fossil fuels is cheap enought that even though our cities depend on fossil fuels their location is independent of the location of those resources. So if you take fossil fuels away and replace them with any other power source the need for having cities is literally unchanged. Ur and Babylon existed well before industrialization and served the same purposse then as cities do today: provide an environment favorable to specialization.
Once you realize that the question of living in cities is wholly independent from fossil fuels (and while we're at it I think cities are more efficient than maintaining the same standard of living in a distributed environment) you realize that if the Mars colonies are pissed about a lack of resources it will be due to suburbanization - not urbaniza
Well yeah, and 65K makes you rich in Moazmbique. Or a begger in DC/Nortern VA. I figured he was talking about people in the general vicinity or it becomes utterly meaningless to talk about it at all.
-stormin
Actually, I'm not really poor (any more than most people in my income range)
Let's just ponder that statement for a minute.
-stormin (couldn't resist)
Problem is we don't know what exactly is sustainable
That's pretty much the nail on the head right there. There's no such thing as one sustainable lifestyle. Sustainability just means renewability. So while everyone is moaning and groaning about how the Americna lifestyle is unsustainable they are forgetting to mention the fact that it is high technology that increases the level of sustainable lifestyles. Until solar power, ethanol, etc "sustainable" meant "what you can build with your hands". It is only thanks to advanced research that we may actually get a sustainable lifestyle that also involves such frivolous things as running water and medical treatment.
People who are all into "you can't justify going farther than you can walk" are the perfect example of a cure that's worse than the disease. If you can't go farther than you can walk you may save the environment but you completely decimate human society. Cities can not exist, universities can not exist, the bottom falls out from underneath society. You get a bunch of isolated pockets of survivalists who have no time for literature, art, or communal society. It's just neo-luditism. Why bother trying to save modern civilization if the answer is to destroy modern civilization? And by modern civilization I don't mean things like shopping malls. I have in mind things like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, and essentially all the human intellectual capital that rests on our ability to talk to one another over long distances and support specialists who don't have to tend their own fields every day.
Technology has made possible our ability to live the type of lifestyle that we currently live. Technology, in my opinion, is also crucial to increasing efficiency to a point where maintaining a semblance of this lifestyle can be done sustainably. It's no questions that we've annointed convenience as king of efficiency and we probably would have to give up things like hummers and civics (and priuses) to really become sustainable. But the question is - do you want to give up these for smaller, ethanol-driven vehicles or for your bare feet?
-stormin
...for bringing a breath of sanity.
-stormin
I'm not sure what you think you are proving. I've distinguished carefully between logical and rational thinking - which is common to both genuine religious thinkers and genuine scientific thinkers - and quantifiable phenomena - which distinguish scientific inquiry from religious or philosophical inquiry in general.
I may as well have mentioned Simone d'Beauvoir's (French existentialist atheist) theory of freedom as the root of human morality to have you respond "is it testable and falsifiable"? Well, no. That's why we call it philosophy and not physics. Does that mean that Simone is an idiot? You seem to imply that. Does it mean other people are idiots for either actually believing or at least taking what she says seriously? Again - you seem to assume that.
I would counter with two points.
1. "Falsifiable" still doesn't get you certainty. The only things that are certain are the mathematical and logical results. The link between those results and the real world is never inherently unbreakable. As a trivial example if you weigh two books and each is 8 ounces then you can conclude together they way 16 ounces. The math (8+8=16) is certain. However the scales could be off - meaning that your conclusion while logically sound is not actually valid to the state of things in the real world. Hence my previous point that science gets us more certainty than philosophy in general, but it's moving a long a spectrum. It's not (in terms of certainty) qualitatively different.
2. We act out our lives according to decisions based on insufficient data to meet scientific criteria. Decisions we make on a day to day basis like "will my wife more enjoy watching 24 or Buffy with me tonight?" yield conclusions "I think she's tired of Buffy" that while on general are probably pretty accurate are neither rigorously tested by us nor really conducive to such testing in the first place. My point is not that we should welcome unscientific methods in all our decisions (not such a great idea of your designing planes) but that there's a place in life for both falsifiable claims and non-falsifiable claims. Your political beliefs - for example - are almost certainly non-falsifiable. That probably doesn't stop you from holding them.
In fact the central point of your (implied) argument above: it's laughable to believe in "a magic sky daddy" is a perfect example of a non-falsifiable claim that you're totally unabashed in propounding.
So we get to a final (I hope) iteration of my main point: religious and scientific dogmatics have a common way of thinking. They ignore logic and simply expound their conclusions. They are uninterested in questioning the conclusions and therefore utterly incapable of realizing the illogical nature of their stance. Not because the conclusion is illogical. But because their rationale for that conclusion is illogical (or perhaps alogical would be a better term). They are parading around in the intellectual buff never capable of realizing that the emperor has no clothes on.
Meanwhile sincere and earnest religious, philosophical, and scientific thinkers all have at the root essentially the same characteristics. They are unwavering in their determination to follow the logic regardless of the conclusions to which it leads them. That's why physicists and mathemeticians end up believing in apparently ridiculous things like quantum mechanics. Because no matter how absurd the conclusion may appear on the face of it - it's born out by the logic (which in the case of science is based on quantifiable phenomena as well as mathematical and logical principles). And maybe, just maybe, that's why religious thinkers (again - think C. S. Lewis or Kirkegaard and not Falwell) embrace what to you is a seemingly ridiculous notion ("a magic sky daddy").
Since your not open to understanding their logic you'll never be in any better a position to judge the truth or even the reasonableness of their claims than some hard-core fundamentalist will be of evaluating geolgical evidenc
Thanks for taking the time to look through the thread. I completely agree with what you wrote about quantum mechanics. I only hit the very basics of that in college (at the end of a course on partial differential equations) so I can't really pretend to be more than an amateur on the topic.
I hadn't specifically envisioned the ID vs. evolution aspect - but I'll go with it wholeheartedly. But yeah - there's a huge difference between some crazy theory that's supported by mathematics, research, and experimentation vs. some crazy theory that's just crazy. For someone with no specialized expertise, however, it can be hard to tell the difference. In a way that's what's happening here. Yet another Slashdot religion basher who has (I'm assuming here) very, very little experience in either theology or philosophy is taking a look at religion and can't tell the difference between Jerry Fallwell rhetoric and (as an example) Christian existentialism. One has no acceptance amont serious thinkers anywhere - the other is accepted and regarded highly not just by Christian believers but by atheists, agnostics, and people of other faiths as well.
-stormin
Yeah, and when Intel designs their own conferencing software...
Oh wait, they didn't.
-stormin
The metaphor was intentional. Here's a more in-depth exposition.
Some crazy guy is running around telling you about his cold-fusion proof. Upon examination of what he's saying, you realize he's full of it. It contradicts some basic laws of physics accepted by you and practically everyone else. So then along comes a scientist telling you about quantum mechanics. Do you take the time to actually listen to what he's saying or do you say "last PhD that sounded nuts was talking about cold fusion in a can - this guy must be retarded too?"
That's what people are doing when they come across fundamentalist claims (eg the earth is only 7000 years old) and then use those claims to dismiss anything outlandish a religion may have to say (eg - God exists and actually cares what happens to people on earth is plenty outlandish for many).
So you see, I chose quantum mechanics (as opposed to something like say partial differential equations) because not only is it complex but it seems outlandish. Despite seeming outlandish it's actually well-respected by people who care enough to study it. Similarly a lot of religious claims taht seem outlandish are taken very seriously by those who care enough to study them.
Of course the metaphor isn't perfect. You can read up on and theoretically conduct yourself the experiments that lead up to quantum mechanics. You can't similarly replicate research on God. But I'm not trying to convince people that religion (in general or in particular) is true - just that it's irrational to dismiss it without ever understanding it.
-stormin
Sure - open means receptive. It doesn't mean credulous. An open mind with no skepticism is about as useful as a closed mind.
I'm not sure if I should assume from your post that you believe all religions and all religious tenets are "shite" or not. It's not a very radical view by Slashdot standards to simply write off all religion as being idiotic by definition. But I think before you make a decision on a way of life, a group of people, or a philosophy you should probably let adherents speak for themselves.
Sure, some radical fundamentalists might not make a very good case in terms of rationality, logic, or even coherence - but in my opinion they're the religious equivalent of scientific quacks. Just 'cause some nut with a PhD is running around telling you some weird story that makes no sense doesn't mean that quantum mechanics is a bunch of crap.
-stormin
"You shouldn't delude yourself with trying to compare religious and "other" people."
And you shouldn't delude yourself by living in a world of overly-simplistic black-and-white charicatures. Your comments regarding religion indicate that you have no more concept for what a religious life actually entails than the most radical fundamentalist comprehends the work of a scientist.
The fact is that the biggest similarity between a rational scientist and a rational religious believer is being open to following whatever the evidence dictates. And the biggest similarity between religious and scientific dogmatics is the inability to ask genuine questions. You provide a perfect example. A superficial request for information Please, enlighten me. What exactly are the similarities between [religious] people and people researching phenomena and trying to logically and RATIONALLY explain them? followed without pause by your own answer: Exactly, there are NONE
You can't teach someone who follows dogma blindly anything not because they are stupid or incapable of learning, but because they are unwilling to question their own conclusions.
However, I'll provide an answer anyway. One such similarity is that many religious people ponder phenomena important to many people and try to logically and rationally explain them. Whereas a scientist may study physically observable phenomena - say gravity - a theologian may study a question like "why do bad things happen to good people?", or "is free will an illusion?". Regardless of how important you personally hold these questions to be some of the greatest minds of humanity have pondered these questions. Some - like Aristotle - were perhaps not religious in the conventional sense of the word (although he seemed to have respect for the God he knew). More recently we have thinkers like C.S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, and others (just to hit the Christian denomination since you find that particularly disgusting) who have greatly contributed to human thought concerning these questions.
So you see at the root it's exactly the same. But studying physically observable phenomena calls for a very different methodology than studying non-quantifiable - but just as real - phenomena.
The fact of the matter is that by blindly refusing to question your own dogma regarding what constitutes a religious follower you are impoverishing your own intellectual life. In science the results are not nearly as critical as the method. Scientific findings can be overthrown by subsequent research - but as long as the inquiry is honest the wealth of knowledge will grow. Similarly religious searching is more important for the quest than for the particulary beliefs one may espouse or reject at any given moment along the path. As long as the effort to learn is sincere the wisdom of the seeker will increase.
I reiterate - you are demonstrating that in this particular question your superficial distaste for religious thinkers is revealed to be an intimate kinship with the very worst religious non-thinkers. As long as you happily cling to your charicature of religion no one will convince you otherwise. Like those who mocked Galileo or Socrates the problem is deeper than one of evidence or logic - it's a question of capacity to be open to foreign ideas.
-stormin
-stormin