Of course science does not conflict with the theory of a creator/God...it's a pretty plausible theory (even though arguable uninteresting).
But let's not mince our words, God/Creator!=Religion. Science absolutely does conflict with most of the literal religions of the world. I'm sick of it already and I don't think I am alone.
The argument on the merit of a creator/God theory is very much something to be resolved through science. But that's not the problem. It's all the other bs people try to attach to a perfectly credible (for now anyway) theory and still claim it credible.
The Christians (I use the term Christian in the loosest of senses i.e. they go to Christian churches) I respect most are the ones that see the bible for what it is, a book written by people. They place no significance in the bible and focus on believing in a creator/God rather than a book in which they're too smart to blindly believe. I'm not saying they don't pray and whatnot but at least the imaginary conversations and alleged miracles are back down to clinically treatable levels of misguidedness. At least you can tell they're on the same planet. The praying can be looked at as a symbolic gesture, or human nature (things like hopes and wishes) so I would say their position does not conflict with science...the miracles being their choice of interpretation of an event because they'd rather think of it like that.
The issue is not that his posts were appalling or offensive. The problem is that what he said was a real threat. This was even bigger than a death threat. This was posting a public notice calling all racists, telling them that the boy's death should be celebrated, and that they should murder the rest of the family. There was already a group crazy enough to stab the boy through the head for no reason, are you saying that there's no chance a group is watching this and wanting to make a public statement about "how they feel about black people" or whatever it is they want to say?
Bringing free-speech into this is the same as saying "he just happened to say out loud that he'll pay such and such an amount to anyone who kills this certain person" and a hitman just happened to be in the room. Even in that case it could be partly forgiven if it was found that the person honestly didn't mean it and was speaking out of anger or frustration or whatever. But you don't make national, even global announcements by accident. You clearly knew what you were doing and it took too much thought to be a passing moment of jest. This racist prat deserved everything he got. In fact, he probably deserved attempted murder rather than just incitement.
*waves byebye to non-existent karma*
*clears throat*
Somewhere in all this smut did someone bother to mention why google providing a service to chinese citizens is immoral or evil? Sorry but all i see is nonsensical google bashing (which i have noticed a lot lately, even more nonsensical than MS bashing) and people speaking sense but in reply to something so stupid that it just nullifies it.
So here's my nullified lump of sense mixed in with some opinion:
This whole cencsorship thing in china is political. If the american government doesn't like it, that's great, because politics is their field NOT the field of private multinational corporations.
The "do no evil" thing i like to think of in regards to business ethics NOT personal ethics/morals. If google started hurting it's users in pursuit of profit then i'd say they were being hypocrtis. Since when did following the law = hurting users? The law is the law, if anyone is hurting the users then it's the government and even more so the users doing things they know are against the law. It's different if they went the extra mile (or 10,000 miles in cisco's case) but they haven't.
At the end of the day if the chinese government pressure Google to give up information on people who aren't even breaking a specific law then they can always just pack up and go home.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course science does not conflict with the theory of a creator/God...it's a pretty plausible theory (even though arguable uninteresting). But let's not mince our words, God/Creator!=Religion. Science absolutely does conflict with most of the literal religions of the world. I'm sick of it already and I don't think I am alone.
The argument on the merit of a creator/God theory is very much something to be resolved through science. But that's not the problem. It's all the other bs people try to attach to a perfectly credible (for now anyway) theory and still claim it credible.
The Christians (I use the term Christian in the loosest of senses i.e. they go to Christian churches) I respect most are the ones that see the bible for what it is, a book written by people. They place no significance in the bible and focus on believing in a creator/God rather than a book in which they're too smart to blindly believe. I'm not saying they don't pray and whatnot but at least the imaginary conversations and alleged miracles are back down to clinically treatable levels of misguidedness. At least you can tell they're on the same planet. The praying can be looked at as a symbolic gesture, or human nature (things like hopes and wishes) so I would say their position does not conflict with science...the miracles being their choice of interpretation of an event because they'd rather think of it like that.
The issue is not that his posts were appalling or offensive. The problem is that what he said was a real threat. This was even bigger than a death threat. This was posting a public notice calling all racists, telling them that the boy's death should be celebrated, and that they should murder the rest of the family. There was already a group crazy enough to stab the boy through the head for no reason, are you saying that there's no chance a group is watching this and wanting to make a public statement about "how they feel about black people" or whatever it is they want to say?
Bringing free-speech into this is the same as saying "he just happened to say out loud that he'll pay such and such an amount to anyone who kills this certain person" and a hitman just happened to be in the room. Even in that case it could be partly forgiven if it was found that the person honestly didn't mean it and was speaking out of anger or frustration or whatever. But you don't make national, even global announcements by accident. You clearly knew what you were doing and it took too much thought to be a passing moment of jest. This racist prat deserved everything he got. In fact, he probably deserved attempted murder rather than just incitement.
*waves byebye to non-existent karma*
*clears throat*
Somewhere in all this smut did someone bother to mention why google providing a service to chinese citizens is immoral or evil? Sorry but all i see is nonsensical google bashing (which i have noticed a lot lately, even more nonsensical than MS bashing) and people speaking sense but in reply to something so stupid that it just nullifies it.
So here's my nullified lump of sense mixed in with some opinion:
This whole cencsorship thing in china is political. If the american government doesn't like it, that's great, because politics is their field NOT the field of private multinational corporations.
The "do no evil" thing i like to think of in regards to business ethics NOT personal ethics/morals. If google started hurting it's users in pursuit of profit then i'd say they were being hypocrtis. Since when did following the law = hurting users? The law is the law, if anyone is hurting the users then it's the government and even more so the users doing things they know are against the law. It's different if they went the extra mile (or 10,000 miles in cisco's case) but they haven't.
At the end of the day if the chinese government pressure Google to give up information on people who aren't even breaking a specific law then they can always just pack up and go home.