Him being elected will not fix racism but it is a big step in the right direction.
Really? I wonder about that. I might even say it's possible he got elected *because* of racism. How many black people voted for him simply because he has dark skin? (Of course you always have the flip-side of "How many white people voted against him for the same reason?") Don't get me wrong, many people (including myself) voted based on the issues. But the day we vote and race isn't even mentioned, when it doesn't matter at all, is when the turning point will be. Maybe it had to be this way because it is a first, but it still makes me sick to know his race was that big an issue.
This kind of "hardware" has a more applicable term that differentiates it from actual hardware (boards, resistors, etc.): firmware. As the name applies, it is kind of software, but not really software, and kind of hardware, but not quite hardware. It sits somewhere in the middle. It is described by "code" (more aptly called a Hardware Description Language, or HDL) but the result is "hardware" in the form of a chip (be it an ASIC, FPGA, CPLD, etc.). It seems to be an intrinsic gray area. Should we handle it like software? Or hardware? Or both? Or neither? Answers to these types of questions are not always clean-cut.
And in case you are wondering, I design firmware for a living.
I have only a single core Athlon 64 (2.2 GHz) and Gnome (2.18 on Fedora 7 x86_64) is plenty fast enough for me (I'm also running AIGLX compositing with Compiz). I have not timed it, but after login it takes maybe about 10 seconds to completely calm down, and is plenty usable after 3-5 seconds. Menus do take some time to show icons the first time around (not a big deal to me, it takes longer to read the menu), but after that, it is very fast (instant). Anyway, I think performance is one area where work is being done, to answer your question.
What makes them think that it is possible for us (or an "ultra-intelligent" machine, for that matter) to make something that is more intelligent than ourselves? Seems like that must be a possibility first if any of this is to happen. What evidence/reasoning do they give for such an implicit belief. I am not necessarily saying that I think it is not possible, more just throwing out the question of whether or not it is. But, just thinking aloud, if we can build something, should there not be someone who at least has some grasp over how it works? And if they understand how it works, does that not make them more intelligent, at least in some sense of the word? I guess that goes back to some of the other comments about intelligence not being easily quantifiable in a linear manner.
First off, let me say that I do not intend to be argumentative (in the raised-voice, angry sort of sense). But I would like to point out a couple of things and express what I believe to be true.
In its broadest sense, a fundamentalist is someone who believes that unvarying principles must apply to all people or every situation, in this case, the Bible as absolute truth. So, if someone believes every word of the Bible is absolute truth and nothing is metaphorical, simplified in terms that the people of the time would understand, and was completely accurate in its translation from language to language, then that would qualify them as a fundamentalist in my mind.
The Bible being absolute truth does not necessitate all those things that you expand it to in the second sentence. Of course some things are metaphorical (though a literal interpretation should always be considered where possible). Of course translations can be erroneous. Neither of these takes away from the veracity of the Bible.
In general, there is nothing wrong with that. I see no problem with believing what you believe. It's when you force that belief on other people that causes problems. Open discussion of beliefs on the other hand, is good for everyone involved.
How did we get to forcing beliefs on other people? By vary nature of the thing, you cannot force someone to believe anything. One can merely present his beliefs and the reasoning behind them and offer someone the choice of believing as they do. Anyone with a proper understanding of the Bible would agree that attempting to force anyone to believe the Bible is not only foolish, but dangerous, as coerced belief is no belief at all.
Now, what do I believe? I am a Christian, but I believe there is one problem with the Bible: it was physically written be humans.
On what do you base your assertion that you are a Christian? That is, what does "being a Christian" mean to you? I find it very odd that you claim to be a Christian, yet openly question the veracity of the Bible, the very basis of the foundation of the Christian faith.
This means two primary things to me:
It could only be written in terms that the person writing it could understand. This could lead to simplification of concepts. For example, in the story of creation, seven days may not necessarily equate to seven 24-hour periods. It could just mean seven stages, where each stage could take years, centuries, millenniums, etc.
Because humans are flawed, some of those who physically wrote the Bible may have injected their views of the world into it. It then becomes a problem to decipher what may have been written by a human voice and not God's. This can only be done through self reflection which will be different for each person.
Let me see if I can show you where these ideas lead. In making these statements, you are limiting God and saying that He is not capable of perfectly inspiring the writers of the Bible to write His word as He intended it. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and everything that Christians normally believe He is, then why could He not direct people to correctly record His word so that people could know Him? 2 Timothy 3:16 states that "All scripture is God-breathed" (NIV) or "inspired by God" (NASB). There are other very strong assertions that the Bible as a whole is the very word of God. It should be noted that the Bible never claims to be a scientific book.
The issue with questioning parts of the Bible is that, if parts of it are erroneous, then how can any of it be trusted? Then you end up with every variation of belief from some throwing out different parts of the Bible that they think have errors. Why, then, even associate your beliefs with the Bible?
This is just what I believe and I have no expectations of other pe
The hardware is not open source. Actually, the hardware is a Spartan-3E Starter Kit board. Nothing special there. What will be open source is the *firmware* (as well as the software running on top). Semantics aside, this should be an interesting project. This seems to be an attempt to build an entire system in an FPGA with open source firmware/software. As others have expressed, I am not sure how useful it will be as a logic analyzer, but perhaps this could be a start for more open source firmware projects.
If it doesn't have to run all the time, you can use the Xilinx soft-core EMAC (10/100) for free. The catch is that it times out after about 8-9 hours, at which time it stops functioning. It is limiting, but it will get the job done if you cannot afford to buy the full core.
supports access via almost any PC with a serial port But those are getting scarce nowadays, on low-price PC systems and laptops. Just get a USB-to-RS232 adapter. A nice one will work fairly well and is not too expensive. Just don't get the dirt cheap ones; they might not work. But we use USB adapters all the time at work for new laptops that lack a real serial port.
People don't deliberately keep large piles of pointless bits or stuff with a bunch of useless bits at the end on their hard drives. They don't? If it is an image of the entire hard drive (or even just one partition), I would expect there to be random bits in the unused sections. I guess it depends on what the "image" is. Is it a pure binary image or just a copy of all the files on the disk?
Ignoring them only serve make things worse. Bad news sucks, but it needs to be heard. GP said nothing about ignoring the bad news. Only expressed the desire that the networks show more of the good news. Yeah, the bad news has to be heard, but surely there is enough good news out there to even things out some.
Seems pretty even to me... Okay, so it does seem close. It looks like you forgot Socket M for Intel, making it dead even. And I think we might could debate about whether Slot A, under AMD, should count;-). But regardless, look at the timeline here. For AMD, the last three sockets have come out in the last few years (with AM2 being almost brand new). I believe all five of Intel's sockets were out during the time that the first three AMD sockets were used. That was mostly my point. That and basically any time AMD has changed the socket, it has been necessitated by a change in the memory architecture.
socket 939 X2 3800+ for $95. Yeah, but I was hoping for something a little more powerful. Or at least cheaper. I currently have a 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 3500+. And for $140 I could get a 2.5 GHz, 65 nm, x2 for Socket AM2. For a processor, I consider the extra $45 almost negligible (plus the AM2 is a retail, whereas the 939 is an OEM).
The only problem is I have to, at minimum, also get a new motherboard (~$100-150 maybe) and new memory (I currently have 2 GB, so that would probably be ~$175-200 to match that) to use it. And then it is probably worth it to go ahead and get a new video card, case, PSU, and hard disk to make a whole new system.
...Unless there is someone out there who would like to buy a used socket 939 motherboard with a 3500+ CPU and 2 GB RAM...:-)
Intel does the same thing but not as bad as AMD. Ummm, right.... Before the 64s came out, AMD had the Socket A, which was around for a very long time (Duron through Athlon XP). Before that was (Super) Socket 7. How many sockets did Intel go through in the same amount of time? Check out Wikipedia. Also, remember that with CPUs, even a few months can be a *long* time. Only recently has AMD been changing sockets with any sort of frequency. And each change has been for a single reason: memory. Since the memory controller is integrated on the CPU, the socket and memory type are closely related. Socket 754 uses single channel DDR SDRAM. Socket 939 uses dual-channel DDR SDRAM. Now the new Socket AM2 uses DDR2 SDRAM. Different memory, different controller, different socket. It is that simple. AMD has been much more stable than Intel in the area of sockets. Period.
Not that I like the changes either. I have a 939 motherboard and only a single core processor that I bought about a year and a half ago. I would like to be able to pick up a cheap 939 x2, but looks like maybe I waited too long. But that is the way it goes.
Why did the submitter have to phrase the title that way?! This is some really cool stuff. Yet as it is, I think I saw about three posts that did not in some way allude to sex.... *sigh* What are you to expect from the Slashdot crowd?
Automated Rendezvous and Docking is an exciting field right now. Success of the Orbital Express mission is going to be a huge step forward (trying to be optimistic). The linked article looks pretty good. Space.com also has a good story on it.
Oh and exit should be return, but I guess that's just a typo. Yeah, that was the one to which I was referring. That will break the compile. Computers don't care about typos:-). I didn't catch the quotes rather than angle brackets, but that one might be a problem as well.
(the c++ version used that spawn of the devil statement 'using namespace std;'.. ffs don't they teach the harmful effects of namespace pollution any more?) Heh. Yeah, in the couple of classes that I have had on C++, I think it was mentioned, but not in depth. I mostly write C (embedded code) now, but I will avoid "using namespace std;" when in C++, just out of cleanliness. You rarely need *all* of std...
Hey, i made a multi platform virus that can infect almost any existing computer. And it's easy to spread : just compile following code:
#include "stdio.h"
int main (void) {
printf("YOU ARE INFECTED BY ULTRAdOOM NExT gen, F3AR THE L0RD !!\n");
exit 0;
}
Launch and here you are ! (yes, i know, i should have posted that on my blog and write a story for Slashdot) Hmmm, I don't think it will spread too easily by the means you mention. That code won't compile;-).
I want a clear quote that mentions genetic engineering specifically, not just your interpretation of some obscure passage. I mean, seriously, where do you so-called Christians get off making shit up and then claiming, "God said so?" Just because you get creeped out by human-sheep hybrids doesn't mean that God does. Your demand is rather ridiculous. How is the Bible, or any religious or moral or otherwise book, supposed to cover every conceivable topic *specifically*? Especially a topic that will not have any relevance for another few thousand years. Does it not make more sense to give general guidelines which can be applied with wisdom to a number of specific situations? Everything must be interpreted at some point. To write this response you had to interpret what the GP said. Please note that I am not saying I necessarily agree with what GP said or how they said it.
I'm agnostic. I think if there is a God, he doesn't give a rat's ass what we do. If he did, he would have made it a whole lot clearer. He wouldn't have just had humans write what he said in a book, because that is so easy to fake. not to mention, everyone seems to have their own book. Which one is right? Why would God create something like the universe and humans and not care about it at all? Have you ever worked on and made something and not cared about it? In what way does God not make it clear that He is concerned about what we do? There is plenty of evidence out there to support the authenticity of the Bible and the claims in it. Much more than I could present here.
Assuming you are Christian, didn't God say to dominate nature for our own purposes, putting fear and terror into the hearts of all animals? Heck, that's pretty much license to do whatever we want to nature, don't you think? Wow, that is very wrong. Perhaps you should actually try reading the Bible before you try to quote it. And you can always look it up and actually quote it. A sibling already referenced where God gave man charge over the world, including the animals. Note that with authority always comes responsibility. God gaving man charge to rule over the animals does not in any way imply that we can do whatever we want. Genesis 9:1-4 talks about the "fear and terror" you talk about. Note that it does not say for us to put fear and terror into animals, just that they will fear us. Hence most wild animals usually try to avoid humans.
To directly address the topic at hand, I am not entirely sure what to think of it. It certainly is very strange sounding. There seem to be legitimate concerns that need to be addressed and studied before we dive headlong into this sort of thing. Some disease moving from sheep to humans or vice versa is bound to be a problem if it happened. I believe we need to be responsible with life and not careless.
"The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?"
Hah! Attempting to differentiate between micro- and macro-evolution. There is no difference; small change*lots of time = large change.
Umm, no. First off, micro-evolution requires no real changes in DNA. It is just genetics. The strong survive to breed and pass on those traits to their offspring. Nothing more. Macro-evolution requires that new DNA be "created" somehow, so that what was animal X is now animal Y. Also, especially in biology, the whole is often more than the sum of its parts. Take the eye for instance. It would be pretty useless unless it was fully developed as it is now. Why, following the guides for evolution, would the small change that started the evolution of the eye continue, since it would be a pretty useless trait?
If you MUST ask the question, though, ask it right: Have we observed a species diverge into two separate breeding pools that cannot breed with one another? The answer's "yes".
Oh really? Care to provide an example? But let's be careful with definitions here. Take domesticated dogs for instance. There are breeds of dogs that cannot breed with each other. Yet that does not make them not all dogs. What I'm looking for would be more like from a dog you eventually get a split such that you get dogs from one line and cats from another. Got any examples like that?
Over a very long period of time, one would guess this leads to a heirarchy of flora and fauna, and soo-prize, soo-prize, that's what we have.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but if you are arguing that the different forms of life that we see is evidence of evolution, that's ridiculous. I can easily explain the different forms of life by saying that God created it. It has no real significance for either argument. Why is evolution a more likely (or even likely, for that matter) explanation for the existence of life?
"I might argue that some of the greatest scientists that ever lived believed strongly in God (take Newton or Einstein for example)"
Um. Einstein was a deist at best. He had the Church all over him for telling them he was misquoted. He believed in the wonderful complexity of the universe, and referred to that as 'God', in the philosophical sense.
I didn't say Einstein was a Christian, just that he believed in God. I am certainly not old enough to have even possibly known him personally, so I cannot say for certain what he did or did not believe. From the quotes that I found, it seemed he had some belief in some sort of God. That was my point.
As for Newton; one can hardly blame a guy in the 16- and 1700's for being religious. There was little choice. Philosophically, you might say that's why atheism is becoming a 'problem' in modern times; lack of church control.
Oh, so there were no atheists back in the 16- and 1700s, huh? There is always a choice of what you believe. You might not get to believe it for long in your current state (alive), depending on where and when you lived, but you always have a choice.
Still, especially in the field of biology, established religion and science are usually at odds. When this conflict occurs, I'm sorry but Science must win out if there is to be any progress.
Who is to say that "science" is right and "religion" is wrong? And why are they usually at odds? Most of the time they are at odds because the "scientists" don't like God so they try and look for ways around having God. That involves a lot of explaining and hand-waving (a lot of cumulative random chance) to get where we are. On the other hand, God explains things quite elegantly.
Besides, I could argue that origins (how did life begin) is not a topic for science. Is it observable? Testable?
"You either have to regress infinitely..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy.
Interesting thought, but I am not sure how valid it is. How would you come up with the probability of either case? Since we are talking about origin, be careful not to include any assumptions taken from the way we interpret things. Something complex existing being less probable than something simple seems to be a very evolutionary concept, which would be an invalid basis for your probabilities if an "eternal complex being" exists. We could go into other evidences for or against an eternal God or eternal matter, but that would probably stray more into philosophy than science.
Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
Naturally. That is why I referred to "matter/energy" in one place. As best we can tell (and I understand it), it seems matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. At the very least we know we can get one from the other. Oh, and we weren't discussing Hell here;-).
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Some science deals quite a bit with things we cannot directly see or interact with. Just because we cannot observe or interact with something does not mean it doesn't exist. Makes it very hard to do science on it, but says nothing of its existence.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
I disagree. The way you see the world and interpret science can change drastically. I know science is supposed to be objective, etc. but let's face it, scientists are human and we all interpret things. How we interpret depends on our view of the world. Also, see my quote at the end. It does make a difference.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
There are no parameters that must be externally controlled? I think that is relevant. If there is no God, there is no external control or input in the real life system.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Looking at the bigger picture of producing all the forms of life that we see from that single piece of self-replicating matter that just happened, the probability begins to shrink rapidly. I have seen no direct evidence anywhere of evolution between species (macro-evolution). Micro-evolution (that within a species, aka natural selection) does happen and on a scale that we can observe it. It seems to be this process that genetic algorithms use. The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plau
This is not the first time I've seen christianity compared to taoism. I don't know a lot aboout taoism, but every time I read or hear about it, it reminds me of the teachings of Jesus himself. It seems like the only real difference is that the Tao is an abstract force, while God has personality. And that is a significant difference. The whole point of Christianity is having a personal relationship with God through the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Without that, it may as well be Taoism, but because of that, it is so much more than just a religion. Or at least it should be. Sadly, Christianity is often reduced to just a religious exercise instead of the dynamic relationship it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
My question would be, why didn't 95% of whites vote for Obama?
Because some of them disagreed with his politics?
News organizations are run by people. *That* means they all have a bias.
Him being elected will not fix racism but it is a big step in the right direction.
Really? I wonder about that. I might even say it's possible he got elected *because* of racism. How many black people voted for him simply because he has dark skin? (Of course you always have the flip-side of "How many white people voted against him for the same reason?") Don't get me wrong, many people (including myself) voted based on the issues. But the day we vote and race isn't even mentioned, when it doesn't matter at all, is when the turning point will be. Maybe it had to be this way because it is a first, but it still makes me sick to know his race was that big an issue.
I hope you have up-to-date backups. 'Cause after a making a comment like that, you are sure to have a drive or two fail in the coming week...
This kind of "hardware" has a more applicable term that differentiates it from actual hardware (boards, resistors, etc.): firmware. As the name applies, it is kind of software, but not really software, and kind of hardware, but not quite hardware. It sits somewhere in the middle. It is described by "code" (more aptly called a Hardware Description Language, or HDL) but the result is "hardware" in the form of a chip (be it an ASIC, FPGA, CPLD, etc.). It seems to be an intrinsic gray area. Should we handle it like software? Or hardware? Or both? Or neither? Answers to these types of questions are not always clean-cut.
And in case you are wondering, I design firmware for a living.
Wow, that is pretty cool. Does anyone know how the modulation is done?
I have only a single core Athlon 64 (2.2 GHz) and Gnome (2.18 on Fedora 7 x86_64) is plenty fast enough for me (I'm also running AIGLX compositing with Compiz). I have not timed it, but after login it takes maybe about 10 seconds to completely calm down, and is plenty usable after 3-5 seconds. Menus do take some time to show icons the first time around (not a big deal to me, it takes longer to read the menu), but after that, it is very fast (instant). Anyway, I think performance is one area where work is being done, to answer your question.
What makes them think that it is possible for us (or an "ultra-intelligent" machine, for that matter) to make something that is more intelligent than ourselves? Seems like that must be a possibility first if any of this is to happen. What evidence/reasoning do they give for such an implicit belief. I am not necessarily saying that I think it is not possible, more just throwing out the question of whether or not it is. But, just thinking aloud, if we can build something, should there not be someone who at least has some grasp over how it works? And if they understand how it works, does that not make them more intelligent, at least in some sense of the word? I guess that goes back to some of the other comments about intelligence not being easily quantifiable in a linear manner.
In its broadest sense, a fundamentalist is someone who believes that unvarying principles must apply to all people or every situation, in this case, the Bible as absolute truth. So, if someone believes every word of the Bible is absolute truth and nothing is metaphorical, simplified in terms that the people of the time would understand, and was completely accurate in its translation from language to language, then that would qualify them as a fundamentalist in my mind.
The Bible being absolute truth does not necessitate all those things that you expand it to in the second sentence. Of course some things are metaphorical (though a literal interpretation should always be considered where possible). Of course translations can be erroneous. Neither of these takes away from the veracity of the Bible.
In general, there is nothing wrong with that. I see no problem with believing what you believe. It's when you force that belief on other people that causes problems. Open discussion of beliefs on the other hand, is good for everyone involved.
How did we get to forcing beliefs on other people? By vary nature of the thing, you cannot force someone to believe anything. One can merely present his beliefs and the reasoning behind them and offer someone the choice of believing as they do. Anyone with a proper understanding of the Bible would agree that attempting to force anyone to believe the Bible is not only foolish, but dangerous, as coerced belief is no belief at all.
Now, what do I believe? I am a Christian, but I believe there is one problem with the Bible: it was physically written be humans.
On what do you base your assertion that you are a Christian? That is, what does "being a Christian" mean to you? I find it very odd that you claim to be a Christian, yet openly question the veracity of the Bible, the very basis of the foundation of the Christian faith.
This means two primary things to me:
Let me see if I can show you where these ideas lead. In making these statements, you are limiting God and saying that He is not capable of perfectly inspiring the writers of the Bible to write His word as He intended it. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and everything that Christians normally believe He is, then why could He not direct people to correctly record His word so that people could know Him? 2 Timothy 3:16 states that "All scripture is God-breathed" (NIV) or "inspired by God" (NASB). There are other very strong assertions that the Bible as a whole is the very word of God. It should be noted that the Bible never claims to be a scientific book.
The issue with questioning parts of the Bible is that, if parts of it are erroneous, then how can any of it be trusted? Then you end up with every variation of belief from some throwing out different parts of the Bible that they think have errors. Why, then, even associate your beliefs with the Bible?
This is just what I believe and I have no expectations of other pe
The hardware is not open source. Actually, the hardware is a Spartan-3E Starter Kit board. Nothing special there. What will be open source is the *firmware* (as well as the software running on top). Semantics aside, this should be an interesting project. This seems to be an attempt to build an entire system in an FPGA with open source firmware/software. As others have expressed, I am not sure how useful it will be as a logic analyzer, but perhaps this could be a start for more open source firmware projects.
If it doesn't have to run all the time, you can use the Xilinx soft-core EMAC (10/100) for free. The catch is that it times out after about 8-9 hours, at which time it stops functioning. It is limiting, but it will get the job done if you cannot afford to buy the full core.
The only problem is I have to, at minimum, also get a new motherboard (~$100-150 maybe) and new memory (I currently have 2 GB, so that would probably be ~$175-200 to match that) to use it. And then it is probably worth it to go ahead and get a new video card, case, PSU, and hard disk to make a whole new system.
Not that I like the changes either. I have a 939 motherboard and only a single core processor that I bought about a year and a half ago. I would like to be able to pick up a cheap 939 x2, but looks like maybe I waited too long. But that is the way it goes.
Why did the submitter have to phrase the title that way?! This is some really cool stuff. Yet as it is, I think I saw about three posts that did not in some way allude to sex.... *sigh* What are you to expect from the Slashdot crowd?
Automated Rendezvous and Docking is an exciting field right now. Success of the Orbital Express mission is going to be a huge step forward (trying to be optimistic). The linked article looks pretty good. Space.com also has a good story on it.
#include "stdio.h"
int main (void) {
printf("YOU ARE INFECTED BY ULTRAdOOM NExT gen, F3AR THE L0RD !!\n");
exit 0;
}
Launch and here you are ! (yes, i know, i should have posted that on my blog and write a story for Slashdot) Hmmm, I don't think it will spread too easily by the means you mention. That code won't compile
To directly address the topic at hand, I am not entirely sure what to think of it. It certainly is very strange sounding. There seem to be legitimate concerns that need to be addressed and studied before we dive headlong into this sort of thing. Some disease moving from sheep to humans or vice versa is bound to be a problem if it happened. I believe we need to be responsible with life and not careless.
"The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?"
Hah! Attempting to differentiate between micro- and macro-evolution. There is no difference; small change*lots of time = large change.
Umm, no. First off, micro-evolution requires no real changes in DNA. It is just genetics. The strong survive to breed and pass on those traits to their offspring. Nothing more. Macro-evolution requires that new DNA be "created" somehow, so that what was animal X is now animal Y. Also, especially in biology, the whole is often more than the sum of its parts. Take the eye for instance. It would be pretty useless unless it was fully developed as it is now. Why, following the guides for evolution, would the small change that started the evolution of the eye continue, since it would be a pretty useless trait?
If you MUST ask the question, though, ask it right: Have we observed a species diverge into two separate breeding pools that cannot breed with one another? The answer's "yes".
Oh really? Care to provide an example? But let's be careful with definitions here. Take domesticated dogs for instance. There are breeds of dogs that cannot breed with each other. Yet that does not make them not all dogs. What I'm looking for would be more like from a dog you eventually get a split such that you get dogs from one line and cats from another. Got any examples like that?
Over a very long period of time, one would guess this leads to a heirarchy of flora and fauna, and soo-prize, soo-prize, that's what we have.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but if you are arguing that the different forms of life that we see is evidence of evolution, that's ridiculous. I can easily explain the different forms of life by saying that God created it. It has no real significance for either argument. Why is evolution a more likely (or even likely, for that matter) explanation for the existence of life?
"I might argue that some of the greatest scientists that ever lived believed strongly in God (take Newton or Einstein for example)"
Um. Einstein was a deist at best. He had the Church all over him for telling them he was misquoted. He believed in the wonderful complexity of the universe, and referred to that as 'God', in the philosophical sense.
I didn't say Einstein was a Christian, just that he believed in God. I am certainly not old enough to have even possibly known him personally, so I cannot say for certain what he did or did not believe. From the quotes that I found, it seemed he had some belief in some sort of God. That was my point.
As for Newton; one can hardly blame a guy in the 16- and 1700's for being religious. There was little choice. Philosophically, you might say that's why atheism is becoming a 'problem' in modern times; lack of church control.
Oh, so there were no atheists back in the 16- and 1700s, huh? There is always a choice of what you believe. You might not get to believe it for long in your current state (alive), depending on where and when you lived, but you always have a choice.
Still, especially in the field of biology, established religion and science are usually at odds. When this conflict occurs, I'm sorry but Science must win out if there is to be any progress.
Who is to say that "science" is right and "religion" is wrong? And why are they usually at odds? Most of the time they are at odds because the "scientists" don't like God so they try and look for ways around having God. That involves a lot of explaining and hand-waving (a lot of cumulative random chance) to get where we are. On the other hand, God explains things quite elegantly.
Besides, I could argue that origins (how did life begin) is not a topic for science. Is it observable? Testable?
"You either have to regress infinitely ..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy.
Interesting thought, but I am not sure how valid it is. How would you come up with the probability of either case? Since we are talking about origin, be careful not to include any assumptions taken from the way we interpret things. Something complex existing being less probable than something simple seems to be a very evolutionary concept, which would be an invalid basis for your probabilities if an "eternal complex being" exists. We could go into other evidences for or against an eternal God or eternal matter, but that would probably stray more into philosophy than science.
Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
Naturally. That is why I referred to "matter/energy" in one place. As best we can tell (and I understand it), it seems matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. At the very least we know we can get one from the other. Oh, and we weren't discussing Hell here ;-).
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Some science deals quite a bit with things we cannot directly see or interact with. Just because we cannot observe or interact with something does not mean it doesn't exist. Makes it very hard to do science on it, but says nothing of its existence.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
I disagree. The way you see the world and interpret science can change drastically. I know science is supposed to be objective, etc. but let's face it, scientists are human and we all interpret things. How we interpret depends on our view of the world. Also, see my quote at the end. It does make a difference.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
There are no parameters that must be externally controlled? I think that is relevant. If there is no God, there is no external control or input in the real life system.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Looking at the bigger picture of producing all the forms of life that we see from that single piece of self-replicating matter that just happened, the probability begins to shrink rapidly. I have seen no direct evidence anywhere of evolution between species (macro-evolution). Micro-evolution (that within a species, aka natural selection) does happen and on a scale that we can observe it. It seems to be this process that genetic algorithms use. The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plau
And that is a significant difference. The whole point of Christianity is having a personal relationship with God through the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Without that, it may as well be Taoism, but because of that, it is so much more than just a religion. Or at least it should be. Sadly, Christianity is often reduced to just a religious exercise instead of the dynamic relationship it should be.