I'm more concerned about the things God told men to do in Leviticus. Stoning a woman for being raped or a child for disobedience is much too brutal for a devine being to have said. If the Bible says that this is the case, how can I believe the Bible to be devine? Besides, if it was ever right, by the definitions of having a perfect God, then it is still the right thing to do. I think religions are very good at showing how morality of man has progressed.
These kind of things still happen, regrettably. But you make a good point.
Larry would have you believe that there is no basis for morality without religion,
I don't believe that. I don't believe in gods, but I do believe in morality, but I think it exists because it, and the expectations it brings (i.e. people should not kill you or steal your hard-earned food), are necessary to build a civilization, whether it's a religious one or not. Perhaps the pre-civilization humans couldn't build a stable society because they lacked the concept of Thou Shalt Not Kill?
but an atheist will usually say that religion is an expression of the human desire for morality that branched from the Golden Rule, equality, and very rudementary logic.
My hypothesis on religion is, it served a useful purpose: once people had developed morality and stable societies, they needed a reason to keep obeying the leaders. Thus, the smart leaders made up tales of supernatural beings, who created the earth and themselves, and whom they represented. This way, the people would have a common cause and a faith that would give them strength during harsh times, which were plenty. Just about all primitive tribes discovered in the last couple of centuries has some king of religion. Perhaps the non-religious tribes had died out ages ago, because they didn't have the internal consistency to co-operate during hard times?
I hold these as being truths that I test any potential religion with. Sexism (men are better than women) and racism (jews are God's favorite) only serve to make the writers of the Bible feel better about themselves (being jewish men and all). I fail to see how it's so easy to take the Bible seriously with such statements in it. I'm sure Larry isn't sexist, but the Bible is. Should Larry be sexist, or is Larry smarter than God?
It's clear he's pretty smart, but as I don't believe in God, I can't compare them without getting a "Use of uninitialized value" warning:-)
According to the Bible, one or the other must be true. Don't give me that crap about "all will prophesy in the end"
I won't give you that crap. I'm not sure there will ever be an end. That depends on the Hubble-constant, it appears.
because according to the Bible, all women are still being punished for Eve's sin. Appearantly you're being judged before your own existence based on others. Today, we call this prejudice(look up it's roots... pre->before, judice->judgement), and it's not tolerated. Society has evolved beyond the Bible, and Christians are leaving it behind (not taking it literally already).
I'm an ex-Christian. I know as much about the Bible as the average christian, I just got tired of making excuses for the Bible's prejudice.
I've never been religious, but I've seen some movies about the bible, and read lots of (mostly translated) Greek myths, and have been extensively schooled about the Greek and especially the Roman cultures, so I know that the world was quite a bit crueler back then.
Hopefully, this knob of which he speeks will have a "Readable" selection. I find myself, after having written some perl (and commented it), wondering what I just did to make it work. When I go back to fix some bug, I find it easier to just redo a section than to figure out exactly why it was functional (not even considering the bug at this point). The line noise perl programs should be impossible when the knob is set "Readable".
I'm sorry, but you really must be doing something wrong. It's entirely possible to write readable Perl programs. Also, it looks like you can't read regular expressions. When I didn't know about them, they looked like line noise. After I read about them, they suddenly didn't look like line noise at all, they looked like regular expressions.
Go look at some Greek text, then learn the Greek alphabet (not hard), and then look at it again. It'll suddenly not look like some garbled text anymore! (Of course it's still Greek.)
Really, all that flak that Perl is getting for being unreadable seems to be from people who haven't bothered to learn it (of course, I don't know how well you know Perl, and I am generalizing here).
If you use strict and warnings and take care to use a consistent style, you'll see your programs actually are readable.
As for theology, the existance of God to me is a qubit that can be observed with any given teaching. When I use the Bible to observe it, I keep getting a 0 because the old testiment was much to brutal for me to accept as devine. That's better than getting the -1 that I think I would get with scientology though:).
The Old Testament is probably much more realistic than the New One. In those days, there was no such concept as human rights. The King 0wnzed j00. If you read the Greek mythology, you'll know that just looking in the wrong way at someone in power could cost you your head.
Regarding Scientology, I think everything that has to be said has already been said. Someone here on Slashdot has a signature that goes something like:
Lawsuits are to Scientology as breathing is to humans.
MIT reproduced a very small number of copies (approximately 25 copies)," of the document for "educational activities," the school did not violate the Lais' rights.
Okay, so how is this any different from downloading some MP3 songs to see if you'd like to buy the CD?
The Federation cares about both sentience and sapience. I believe there's another episode where they mention that their terraforming projects won't touch a world if it has so much as a bacterium on it.
There's also at least one episode where they state there's no life on the planet and proceed to beam down into a... forest!
A similar debate is just now starting about our exploration of Mars. If it had life on it, what is the possibility that that life still exists somewhere. And if it exists, what should we do to make sure that we don't accidentally exterminate the 1 possible instance of extra-terrestrial life we have ever encountered.
I'm not convinced that a couple of bacteria on Mars will prevent corporations from exploiting the planet once it becomes profitable to do so. Just look at the rainforests.
Re:odd futurama reference
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Nobody will find out until they develop robots capable of lifting them (and willing to):-)
Yeah, right. Like the real world is anything like an RTS game, where you just need to build a building, and suddenly, you can train troops you couldn't train before.
No Unix I've seen has a "shotgun" command to do away with zombie processes. Imagine if they did, though; that would result in sysadmins who said "zombie process? just click on the shotgun" and they wouldn't have any clue what was really going on. That's what the concern is.
Well I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun, oh I'll shoot her with my railgun Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes, when she comes
It's true that no evidence doesn't imply that it couldn't exist. However, conservation of energy is just such an overreaching principle that it would take a LOT of effort to dislodge it.
No, re-read my sentence. I'm not disagreeing with you at all:-P
re: observations -
That's my point exactly. We never would have developed the idea of conservation of matter/energy if this were true - but we did, because we didn't see any examples of it being violated.
What if time-travel is rare enough to allow scientists to come up with these matter/energy conservation concepts? I.e., not naturally occurring in the circumstances we know, like on the earth's surface where people live?
Finally: the comment that I was making:
Conservation of energy is a statement that the Universe is symmetric under time-translation - that is, there is no point along the time axis of the Universe that is "special". If we break conservation of energy, that implies that that period in time is "special" somehow. You can already see large portions of physics (including relativity, which is what this is based on!) going out the window...
Good point. But then again, this symmetry is probably a human-invented concept. Is there any hard evidence for it? For example, I can name one point on the time axis that looks very special to me: the start, a.k.a. the Big Bang.
Yes. Point. However, the idea is that we have a mountain of observational data supporting the fact that this does NOT exist, and none supporting the fact that it does exist. I tend to believe the huge reams of data.
Evidence of absence does not mean absence of evidence!:-P
That is, imagine back hundreds of years ago, when people were just figuring out conservation of matter - weighing burned wood and the gases left off, for instance: imagine if they had found out that in some bizarre circumstances, matter WASN'T conserved. They wouldn't've known it was due to time travel. It just would've appeared as violation of conservation of energy.
If their observations would not indicate conservation of matter/energy, they wouldn't see that as a violation of the conservation of matter/energy, because they wouldn't exist as concepts, would they?
So, yah. I concede that point. However, throwing conservation of energy out the window is NOT something you want to do lightly. It screws up a LOT of things, even if it only happens under "abnormal" circumstances. Energy has to be conserved. If CTLs and stuff like that exist, then there's a "global temporal" conservation of energy, with conservation of energy locally as an approximation. It's possible. I just don't consider it likely.
Interesting, although I don't think I completely understand you here.
If/when cryogenics were practical, it of course wouldn't be real time-travel like in SF, and it'd only be one-directional (even though Fry seems to think differently "If I want to go back to the year 2000, I'll just freeze myself again."), it'd be the next best thing.
Plus, it'd be a killer combo when combined with long-distance space travel if warp speeds turn out to be harder to achieve than we want them to be:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Is Apple a convicted monopolist?
Well, with modern inkjets, that is the most economical use of them...
These kind of things still happen, regrettably. But you make a good point.
I don't believe that. I don't believe in gods, but I do believe in morality, but I think it exists because it, and the expectations it brings (i.e. people should not kill you or steal your hard-earned food), are necessary to build a civilization, whether it's a religious one or not. Perhaps the pre-civilization humans couldn't build a stable society because they lacked the concept of Thou Shalt Not Kill?
My hypothesis on religion is, it served a useful purpose: once people had developed morality and stable societies, they needed a reason to keep obeying the leaders. Thus, the smart leaders made up tales of supernatural beings, who created the earth and themselves, and whom they represented. This way, the people would have a common cause and a faith that would give them strength during harsh times, which were plenty. Just about all primitive tribes discovered in the last couple of centuries has some king of religion. Perhaps the non-religious tribes had died out ages ago, because they didn't have the internal consistency to co-operate during hard times?
It's clear he's pretty smart, but as I don't believe in God, I can't compare them without getting a "Use of uninitialized value" warning :-)
I won't give you that crap. I'm not sure there will ever be an end. That depends on the Hubble-constant, it appears.
I've never been religious, but I've seen some movies about the bible, and read lots of (mostly translated) Greek myths, and have been extensively schooled about the Greek and especially the Roman cultures, so I know that the world was quite a bit crueler back then.
I'm sorry, but you really must be doing something wrong. It's entirely possible to write readable Perl programs. Also, it looks like you can't read regular expressions. When I didn't know about them, they looked like line noise. After I read about them, they suddenly didn't look like line noise at all, they looked like regular expressions.
Go look at some Greek text, then learn the Greek alphabet (not hard), and then look at it again. It'll suddenly not look like some garbled text anymore! (Of course it's still Greek.)
Really, all that flak that Perl is getting for being unreadable seems to be from people who haven't bothered to learn it (of course, I don't know how well you know Perl, and I am generalizing here).
If you use strict and warnings and take care to use a consistent style, you'll see your programs actually are readable.
The Old Testament is probably much more realistic than the New One. In those days, there was no such concept as human rights. The King 0wnzed j00. If you read the Greek mythology, you'll know that just looking in the wrong way at someone in power could cost you your head.
Regarding Scientology, I think everything that has to be said has already been said. Someone here on Slashdot has a signature that goes something like:
which I think is awfully close to the truth.
The One Commandment:
God Needs Booze
Yes, you are correct, although IANANP.
Looks like they won't be including the manual in pdf format :-P
Okay, so how is this any different from downloading some MP3 songs to see if you'd like to buy the CD?
There's also at least one episode where they state there's no life on the planet and proceed to beam down into a... forest!
I'm not convinced that a couple of bacteria on Mars will prevent corporations from exploiting the planet once it becomes profitable to do so. Just look at the rainforests.
Nobody will find out until they develop robots capable of lifting them (and willing to) :-)
That's just outrageous! Bah!
Yeah, right. Like the real world is anything like an RTS game, where you just need to build a building, and suddenly, you can train troops you couldn't train before.
There are already Jedi temples all over the world: digital theatres :-P
No, paint it. And then watch you get bored to death watching the paint dry :-P
One word: sysadmin-doom :-P
Well I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes
Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes
Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun, oh I'll shoot her with my railgun
Yes I'll shoot her with my railgun when she comes, when she comes
-- Bender
No, re-read my sentence. I'm not disagreeing with you at all :-P
What if time-travel is rare enough to allow scientists to come up with these matter/energy conservation concepts? I.e., not naturally occurring in the circumstances we know, like on the earth's surface where people live?
Good point. But then again, this symmetry is probably a human-invented concept. Is there any hard evidence for it? For example, I can name one point on the time axis that looks very special to me: the start, a.k.a. the Big Bang.
Evidence of absence does not mean absence of evidence! :-P
If their observations would not indicate conservation of matter/energy, they wouldn't see that as a violation of the conservation of matter/energy, because they wouldn't exist as concepts, would they?
Interesting, although I don't think I completely understand you here.
Thermodynamics? But those physical laws were theorized and tested under "normal" circumstances, i.e. no time-travel or extreme gravity etc..
Who knows what effect these extreme circumstances might have on the physical laws we all know and love/hate?
Hey! Stop disseminating my compression scheme that I haven't patented yet! :-P
If/when cryogenics were practical, it of course wouldn't be real time-travel like in SF, and it'd only be one-directional (even though Fry seems to think differently "If I want to go back to the year 2000, I'll just freeze myself again."), it'd be the next best thing.
:-)
Plus, it'd be a killer combo when combined with long-distance space travel if warp speeds turn out to be harder to achieve than we want them to be
Make the black paper longer, and tie the ends together >:->
I think they should just write those big numbers in exponential notation. On Slashdot, this should be perfectly acceptable.
Read Google Cache of VirtualDub's Vidomi News Page or Vidomi.com itself.
Yes, and they can also only move files, not copy them. The MPAA must've succeeded in placing DRM technology in everything!