Part 1 clearly explained that the nuclear reaction was necessary for time travel. Part 3 then goes back and says the reactor is only necessary for the electrical components.
I still love BTF. But Zemeckis sure didn't let a little thing like consistency get in the way of good story-telling.
1. The Genesis timeline does not parallel the evolutionary timeline. At best it's a poetic, non-literal embellishment of events the author did not see, and at worst it is intentionally literal and therefore false on just about every account. 2. Since evolution is a cruel, wasteful process, it doesn't mesh well with the idea of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator. 3. There appears to be more than one God (e.g. El/YHWH, often translated "God" and "LORD") in the Hebrew scriptures. So an "open mind" to Genesis would include polytheism. 4. Old-Earth Creationists who accept "macro-" evolution usually believe that humans are a special case and did not evolve, when this is not what science tells us.
YECs will also point out that in Exodus God/Moses uses the literal 6-day creation as the reason for instituting the Sabbath, and that the "evening/morning" descriptors explicitly indicate that the author of Genesis meant a literal 24-hour day.
No, the Genesis account needs far more work than the Hebrew word for "day" meaning more than a literal day before it is reconciled with modern scientific models.
"Increasing global warming requires a bigger and bigger piece of ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all." "But..." "ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!"
In the case of chess, the algorithm required to solve it is well-known and complete.
All it would take now to run the algorithm is time and memory. A LOT of time and memory.
It is well-known that neural networks are Turing Machine-equivalent. So, a neural network big and complex enough to solve "easy-for-humans-hard-for-computers" problems is easily implemented. It's just a serious pain in the ass to run.
Here is what theists usually leave unsaid when they assert that "atheism is faith".
Most believe so strongly that they have such irrefutable personal and circumstantial evidence for their particular deity that to believe anything else must by necessity be an article of faith. Their god is so real to them that everyone else must already know it too.
This is why it is so hard for some people. To them, atheists are simply denying reality. It's as though atheists were saying the sky is green and yellow plaid. Any such blatant denial of something so concrete must, in their minds, be a deliberate assertion of blind faith.
There are also multiple forms of atheism, ranging from... "scientists" (a solid belief that science alone can solve life's problems) Tell me you did not just say professional science is a subset of atheism.
If you did, you've got a hell of a lot of confused theist scientists to answer for.
Crazies?... you're the "crazy" in the minority if you live in America. I resent being called crazy for simply being an agnostic in America, even though we make up a scant 0.5% of the population.
By "crazies", I refer to those whose mode of debate is intentionally deceptive and misleading. Scientists are misquoted, facts are distorted, bogus statistics are cited, and then when you provide scientific counterarguments, they get emotional and start plugging their ears or damn you to hell rather than listen to you. YMMV but I classify this behavior as crazy.
Of course, this behavior in my own experience comes only from a handful of Creationists. Most others will either live and let live, or at least make an admirable effort to meet you halfway.
55-75% of the American population considers itself Christian 76%, actually.
Which, in light of the evolution/creationism survey, would appear to mean that a healthy minority of American Christians don't buy young earth creationism either.
No, not all U.S. citizens are creationists, and there's enough of us "non-creationists" that to generalize thus is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
According to U.S. Census reports, in 2001, 14.2% of Americans self-identified as non-religious.
Further, in 2004, 45% of Americans reported accepting some form current evolutionary theory (including "macro" evolution).
So, while that's a minority, it's not a HUGE minority. Roughly every other American you talk to, all else being equal, will support rational inquiry.
I suspect, since this is Slashdot, that those numbers will be skewed slightly in favor of the science, though the crazies try to make up for it by being extremely vocal.
Rather than lump us all into "brainwashed Christian" territory, why don't you try ignoring the crazies when they come out of the woodwork?
Next, a lot of what is in the bible is written metaphorically in order to push a point out.
Why, then, couldn't it be possible for the creation/flood/tower accounts in Genesis to be metaphor as well?
Re:Let's hurry up and get to the point...
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 1
1. If evolution is not true, you lose 2. If evolution is true, you lose later, from either one of our respective worldviews Give me a break. Pascal's wager is completely flawed as it is, and since it is no more than a justification for personal belief, it has no business being applied to the validity of evolutionary biology.
macro-counting (1 to a million) is bunk and is has never been done before. I once heard a guy start to count "1... 2... 3...", then I got bored and went to the bathroom. When I came back, he was saying "802... 803... 804..." and I got bored again and left to go do a sudoku, which I became frustrated with and burned. Meanwhile, every time I checked over the next 11.57 days, I'd hear him count a couple numbers "24,386... 24,387... 24,388..." finally, he finished: "999,998... 999,999... 1,000,000".
Since I have huge gaps in my understanding of his counting session, and zero evidence that he actually counted between these numbers -- literally hundreds of thousands of missing links (has anyone ever seen 67,221 of anything? yeah, I didn't think so), combined with the fact that the numbers I observed are radically different from one another, I can safely assume that macro-counting is just as much an article of faith as is intelligent prenumericalization.
I mean, saying macro-counting is real is the same thing as saying 6+1=5732. You're not an idiot, are you?
Surely your not going to tell me that evolution is a must for understanding that blending yellow and blue pigments would produce a green pigment. Well, actually, it does play a role. What colors you see is a strictly biological response. Materials and objects do not possess intrinsic greenness or redness. Sorry.
So when I disagreed with a doctor about my baby's ability to breastfeed I was simply being ignorant? Psst. Doctors aren't scientists.
Re:Social or physical sciences?
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Evolution as origins of life = ZERO lab reproducible results of abiogenesis, however it too is 'scientific fact'. First: Abiogenesis != Evolution. No evolutionary biologist has ever made that claim or ever will.
At some time t0 no life existed on earth. At some time t2 life existed on earth. Therefore, at some time t1 between t0 and t2, life came into existence (-genesis) on earth where there was no (a-) life (-bio-) prior. Saying abiogenesis hasn't happened is exactly the same as saying that biological life has always existed, which is patently absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
Missed one:
4) unidentified factor => more drinking AND bad scientist
LOL. Well, can't beat primary research. I'll take your word for it.
I used to create fires in my backyard by sticking two live 9Vs together, terminal-to-terminal.
What happens when you stick two of THESE babies together in the same way?
FAIL
Neat! Source?
Though now I'd like to see a legislator who can design a web server chip in CMOS.
Yep. See follow-up. Just got a little too hasty there.
And technically, it's a placeholder URL.
That'll teach me to lift a hyperlink from a third-party page and not check it first. Let alone research it thoroughly.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2772260294.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrema
Also, it apparently never saw the light of day.
I've been toying with an idea for something like this for a while. For my own living room of course, not as a business venture.
What, you mean this? ;)
I never use cat. I use less, awk, head, tail, grep and sometimes vim to discover the contents of my log files.
But now there's proof that cat can help my heart... !
Most. Blatant. Retcon. Ever.
Part 1 clearly explained that the nuclear reaction was necessary for time travel.
Part 3 then goes back and says the reactor is only necessary for the electrical components.
I still love BTF. But Zemeckis sure didn't let a little thing like consistency get in the way of good story-telling.
Most secularists would point out that:
1. The Genesis timeline does not parallel the evolutionary timeline. At best it's a poetic, non-literal embellishment of events the author did not see, and at worst it is intentionally literal and therefore false on just about every account.
2. Since evolution is a cruel, wasteful process, it doesn't mesh well with the idea of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator.
3. There appears to be more than one God (e.g. El/YHWH, often translated "God" and "LORD") in the Hebrew scriptures. So an "open mind" to Genesis would include polytheism.
4. Old-Earth Creationists who accept "macro-" evolution usually believe that humans are a special case and did not evolve, when this is not what science tells us.
YECs will also point out that in Exodus God/Moses uses the literal 6-day creation as the reason for instituting the Sabbath, and that the "evening/morning" descriptors explicitly indicate that the author of Genesis meant a literal 24-hour day.
No, the Genesis account needs far more work than the Hebrew word for "day" meaning more than a literal day before it is reconciled with modern scientific models.
"Increasing global warming requires a bigger and bigger piece of ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all."
"But..."
"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!"
I should say, however, that if P=NP someone actually proves it, "human-level" AI may be more within our reach than is currently thought.
Not that I'm holding my breath.
In the case of chess, the algorithm required to solve it is well-known and complete.
All it would take now to run the algorithm is time and memory. A LOT of time and memory.
It is well-known that neural networks are Turing Machine-equivalent. So, a neural network big and complex enough to solve "easy-for-humans-hard-for-computers" problems is easily implemented. It's just a serious pain in the ass to run.
Here is what theists usually leave unsaid when they assert that "atheism is faith".
Most believe so strongly that they have such irrefutable personal and circumstantial evidence for their particular deity that to believe anything else must by necessity be an article of faith. Their god is so real to them that everyone else must already know it too.
This is why it is so hard for some people. To them, atheists are simply denying reality. It's as though atheists were saying the sky is green and yellow plaid. Any such blatant denial of something so concrete must, in their minds, be a deliberate assertion of blind faith.
If you did, you've got a hell of a lot of confused theist scientists to answer for.
By "crazies", I refer to those whose mode of debate is intentionally deceptive and misleading. Scientists are misquoted, facts are distorted, bogus statistics are cited, and then when you provide scientific counterarguments, they get emotional and start plugging their ears or damn you to hell rather than listen to you. YMMV but I classify this behavior as crazy.
Of course, this behavior in my own experience comes only from a handful of Creationists. Most others will either live and let live, or at least make an admirable effort to meet you halfway. 55-75% of the American population considers itself Christian 76%, actually.
Which, in light of the evolution/creationism survey, would appear to mean that a healthy minority of American Christians don't buy young earth creationism either.
No, not all U.S. citizens are creationists, and there's enough of us "non-creationists" that to generalize thus is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
According to U.S. Census reports, in 2001, 14.2% of Americans self-identified as non-religious.
Further, in 2004, 45% of Americans reported accepting some form current evolutionary theory (including "macro" evolution).
So, while that's a minority, it's not a HUGE minority. Roughly every other American you talk to, all else being equal, will support rational inquiry.
I suspect, since this is Slashdot, that those numbers will be skewed slightly in favor of the science, though the crazies try to make up for it by being extremely vocal.
Rather than lump us all into "brainwashed Christian" territory, why don't you try ignoring the crazies when they come out of the woodwork?
The Hitchhiker's Guide is trying to access C:\Program Files\
allow | deny
Why, then, couldn't it be possible for the creation/flood/tower accounts in Genesis to be metaphor as well?
2. If evolution is true, you lose later, from either one of our respective worldviews Give me a break. Pascal's wager is completely flawed as it is, and since it is no more than a justification for personal belief, it has no business being applied to the validity of evolutionary biology.
Since I have huge gaps in my understanding of his counting session, and zero evidence that he actually counted between these numbers -- literally hundreds of thousands of missing links (has anyone ever seen 67,221 of anything? yeah, I didn't think so), combined with the fact that the numbers I observed are radically different from one another, I can safely assume that macro-counting is just as much an article of faith as is intelligent prenumericalization.
I mean, saying macro-counting is real is the same thing as saying 6+1=5732. You're not an idiot, are you?
Second: Lab reproducible abiogenesis? No. Lab reproducible evolution? Yes.
Third:
At some time t0 no life existed on earth.
At some time t2 life existed on earth.
Therefore, at some time t1 between t0 and t2, life came into existence (-genesis) on earth where there was no (a-) life (-bio-) prior.
Saying abiogenesis hasn't happened is exactly the same as saying that biological life has always existed, which is patently absurd.