It will just take a very long time to test climate scientist predictions. Science's predictions are not always easily testable, but they are always testable and falsifiable in principle.
given you will be incapable of producing proof that a creator *doesn't* exist, logically you must allow for it to be possible
Oh, sure. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Teapot Orbiting Mars are all "logically possible". That doesn't mean anyone in his or her right mind will take them seriously for more than a nanosecond.
No scientific explanation of anything thus far has demanded the existence of a creator; therefore, it's up to those who assert such a thing exists to offer proof. It's not up to scientists to offer a disproof.
On the other, you have the undeniable fact that most science is... essentially no different than assuming the existence of gods
When I get on a comfortable modern airplane to visit my family across the continent, I'm happy in the knowledge that science and technology will get me there in one piece. Now you strap a couple of two-by-fours to a firecracker and leap off a cliff happy in the knowledge that your god will save your life. Go on, try it.
Science makes falsifiable, testable predictions. After a scientific theory has survived thousands of such falsifiable predictions, I'm willing to trust it with my life by getting into an airplane.
Religion can spout whatever unprovable nonsense it wants with no justification whatsoever. See the difference? That is "essentially different" from the scientific method, contrary to your claim.
I run Asterisk at home. If a call comes in from outside my area code, and it's not one of a handful of whitelisted long-distance numbers belonging to friends and family, the dialplan directs the called to press 1 in order to ring my phones. Since most telemarketers and scammers use automatic dialling machines, the 1 is never pressed and my Asterisk box hangs up after about 10 seconds. My phones never ring.
I've gone from 3-6 telemarketing calls a week getting through to maybe one a month or so.
Beef is cheap in the US because they feed cattle corn instead of grass. Cattle are not designed to eat corn, so they get bloated and sick. They're also kept confined in small areas in conditions that promote the spread of disease, so they need antibiotics.
The environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of large-scale factory-farming is a major culprit in the abuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Sometime down the line, we're going to pay the true cost of the "cheap" food.
They also promote monoculture farming and depletion of soil, which in turn requires huge inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and also makes GMO attractive.
The US corn policy is exceedingly damaging to the economy, the environment, and public health.
Does anyone in the West actually believe anything coming out of the Iranian gov't? They'll say whatever needs to be said to avoid sanctions and then do whatever the hell they want in secret anyway.
t's not just that he did these things – which were highly questionable, but might possibly have had some legitimate justification – but that he did them immediately before being placed on administrative leave, when he knew his employers wanted to relocate or fire him. The timing leaves little doubt of his intent.
That seems very fishy to me. I think he was trying to cause trouble.
The password is not the real issue here... it's a distraction. The real issue is that Terry Childs apparently deliberately caused a lot of unnecessary expense and hassle to his employer. It doesn't really matter whether he did it by withholding a password or going through the drop ceilings cutting ethernet cables... the net effect was the same.
You know what? If the British Police did indeed foil a Westgate-style attack, I would have to think long and hard about spying on citizens and whether or not I oppose it. We'll probably never know for sure, so we will never have definitive answers, but reflexive opposition to all forms of surveillance is just as wrong-headed as reflexive support. Reality is more nuanced.
Maybe Oracle has a larger quantity of documentation than PostgreSQL, but how's the quality? (I genuinely don't know, having last used Oracle as an intern on MS-DOS back in 1989...)
Claiming a religion and actually practising it are very different things.
This is a common politically-correct but meaningless response to religiously-motivated terrorism. Sorry, but religion does not get a free pass. If lots of people claim to be religiously inspired when they commit terrorist attacks, its time to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the religious philosophy itself is dangerous and needs reform or in the ideal world, to disappear completely.
The problem with religion is that it is practiced by imperfect people
No, that is not the problem with religion. The problem with religion is that it's based on the existence of a supernatural being that cannot be argued with or disagreed with. This leads weak-minded people into fundamentalist stances.
Back when the most up-to-date weapons were swords or rocks, religion did not pose a serous threat to civilization. Now that people can get their hands on highly-destructive weapons, religion is simply too dangerous. And it's up to all who oppose religion to speak out about its dangers and try nonviolently to convince religious followers of the danger.
Other open-source projects with really good documentation: The Linux man pages (documenting the Linux API), Tcl/Tk and Perl. And as far as end-user docs go, LibreOffice is fairly decent, though not in the same league as PostgreSQL.
But how much of the routine clerical work that keeps your business afloat is routed through MS Office?
None. We have no Windows machines. I (and the non-technical people) do use LibreOffice writer for some things, and I have to admit I do like LibreOffice Calc for figuring out commission when doing payroll. (I own the company, so get to set the software standards.)
I've used Wordstar, Wordstar 2000 (or 3000?), WordPerfect, MS Word, and OpenOffice/LibreOffice writer and they all pretty much suck. Most people misuse them. They don't integrate well with other software. And they produce ugly results.
I wrote my master's thesis using FrameMaker which was quite a bit better. However, for my current document-production needs, I use LaTeX. I maintain the manuals for my company's software products and we have a great workflow for building the manuals. The same Makefile that builds the software also builds the manuals: PDF versions directly from the LaTeX and HTML versions using htlatex run on the LaTeX sources. Then a post-processor fixes things up so that our HTML documentation is linked context-sensitively from the web pages of our app, and special goodies like embedded training videos are placed in the HTML documentation at the right place.
The power and control we get from this workflow is unmatched.
The criminal justice system in the West is formed entirely from norms formed from its Judeo-Christian history.
I hate the term "Judeo-Christian". Judaism and Christianity are very different in many respects.
Anyway...
The so-called norms you're talking about prescribe death for homosexual behaviour. Thankfully, we in the West have evolved past those "norms" of morality. We are still saddled, however, with ridiculous Christian ideas about how sex is somehow "dirty." Gee, thanks for that, Great Judeo-Christian [sic] norms.
The cave man has no basis by which to consider any action better or worse ethically than any other action, and neither do you, today.
Total utter crap.
Here's the basis for ethical behavior: If something causes more harm than good, then it's unethical. Otherwise, it is not. And the origin for this rule is three billion years of evolution: In the long run, we will survive as a species if we can build cooperative and well-functioning societies.
There are some people who will always behave unethically and immorally; they're called psychopaths and they lack the gene for compassion. Society is justified in removing those people from society---the harm done to the psychopaths is outweighed by the good done to the rest of us.
You don't need to invoke some imaginary supernatural being to explain ethical behaviour. In fact, it's harmful to do so because it leads to fanaticism: To the true believe, no compromise against God's word is possible.
Religion is most emphatically not the source of ethical behaviour in humans.
Slashdot Mirror
It will just take a very long time to test climate scientist predictions. Science's predictions are not always easily testable, but they are always testable and falsifiable in principle.
What Paul supposedly said is not evidence. It's called "deluded rambling", my friend.
given you will be incapable of producing proof that a creator *doesn't* exist, logically you must allow for it to be possible
Oh, sure. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Teapot Orbiting Mars are all "logically possible". That doesn't mean anyone in his or her right mind will take them seriously for more than a nanosecond.
No scientific explanation of anything thus far has demanded the existence of a creator; therefore, it's up to those who assert such a thing exists to offer proof. It's not up to scientists to offer a disproof.
Creationism does benefit in a way by providing a logical end to the series of questions.
Not at all. Who created the Creator? After all, everything must have a creator.
On the other, you have the undeniable fact that most science is ... essentially no different than assuming the existence of gods
When I get on a comfortable modern airplane to visit my family across the continent, I'm happy in the knowledge that science and technology will get me there in one piece. Now you strap a couple of two-by-fours to a firecracker and leap off a cliff happy in the knowledge that your god will save your life. Go on, try it.
Science makes falsifiable, testable predictions. After a scientific theory has survived thousands of such falsifiable predictions, I'm willing to trust it with my life by getting into an airplane.
Religion can spout whatever unprovable nonsense it wants with no justification whatsoever. See the difference? That is "essentially different" from the scientific method, contrary to your claim.
There is evidence for the existence of a creator
Go on, then. I'll bite. Present the "evidence".
I run Asterisk at home. If a call comes in from outside my area code, and it's not one of a handful of whitelisted long-distance numbers belonging to friends and family, the dialplan directs the called to press 1 in order to ring my phones. Since most telemarketers and scammers use automatic dialling machines, the 1 is never pressed and my Asterisk box hangs up after about 10 seconds. My phones never ring.
I've gone from 3-6 telemarketing calls a week getting through to maybe one a month or so.
Beef is cheap in the US because they feed cattle corn instead of grass. Cattle are not designed to eat corn, so they get bloated and sick. They're also kept confined in small areas in conditions that promote the spread of disease, so they need antibiotics.
The environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of large-scale factory-farming is a major culprit in the abuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Sometime down the line, we're going to pay the true cost of the "cheap" food.
corn fields are cheap to operate
They also promote monoculture farming and depletion of soil, which in turn requires huge inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and also makes GMO attractive.
The US corn policy is exceedingly damaging to the economy, the environment, and public health.
Does anyone in the West actually believe anything coming out of the Iranian gov't? They'll say whatever needs to be said to avoid sanctions and then do whatever the hell they want in secret anyway.
Yes, but see the "Strongest Evidence" post above:
t's not just that he did these things – which were highly questionable, but might possibly have had some legitimate justification – but that he did them immediately before being placed on administrative leave, when he knew his employers wanted to relocate or fire him. The timing leaves little doubt of his intent.
That seems very fishy to me. I think he was trying to cause trouble.
The password is not the real issue here... it's a distraction. The real issue is that Terry Childs apparently deliberately caused a lot of unnecessary expense and hassle to his employer. It doesn't really matter whether he did it by withholding a password or going through the drop ceilings cutting ethernet cables... the net effect was the same.
I wonder if his insurance company will be hiking his premiums? Sounds like a risk-taker...
I'm running the 64-bit version now. I grabbed it from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/25.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/
Nobody cares about 64-bit Windows because Windows is a legacy OS.
You know what? If the British Police did indeed foil a Westgate-style attack, I would have to think long and hard about spying on citizens and whether or not I oppose it. We'll probably never know for sure, so we will never have definitive answers, but reflexive opposition to all forms of surveillance is just as wrong-headed as reflexive support. Reality is more nuanced.
Maybe Oracle has a larger quantity of documentation than PostgreSQL, but how's the quality? (I genuinely don't know, having last used Oracle as an intern on MS-DOS back in 1989...)
Claiming a religion and actually practising it are very different things.
This is a common politically-correct but meaningless response to religiously-motivated terrorism. Sorry, but religion does not get a free pass. If lots of people claim to be religiously inspired when they commit terrorist attacks, its time to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the religious philosophy itself is dangerous and needs reform or in the ideal world, to disappear completely.
In the specific case of Westgate, though, the Islamic terrorists specifically targeted non-Muslims. This has been widely reported.
The problem with religion is that it is practiced by imperfect people
No, that is not the problem with religion. The problem with religion is that it's based on the existence of a supernatural being that cannot be argued with or disagreed with. This leads weak-minded people into fundamentalist stances.
Back when the most up-to-date weapons were swords or rocks, religion did not pose a serous threat to civilization. Now that people can get their hands on highly-destructive weapons, religion is simply too dangerous. And it's up to all who oppose religion to speak out about its dangers and try nonviolently to convince religious followers of the danger.
Open-source documentation is like an insomniac cat. Theoretically it exists somewhere, but no one's ever seen it.
Don't over-generalize. The open-source PostgreSQL project has the best documentation of a software project that I have ever seen, open- or closed-source.
Other open-source projects with really good documentation: The Linux man pages (documenting the Linux API), Tcl/Tk and Perl. And as far as end-user docs go, LibreOffice is fairly decent, though not in the same league as PostgreSQL.
But how much of the routine clerical work that keeps your business afloat is routed through MS Office?
None. We have no Windows machines. I (and the non-technical people) do use LibreOffice writer for some things, and I have to admit I do like LibreOffice Calc for figuring out commission when doing payroll. (I own the company, so get to set the software standards.)
I've used Wordstar, Wordstar 2000 (or 3000?), WordPerfect, MS Word, and OpenOffice/LibreOffice writer and they all pretty much suck. Most people misuse them. They don't integrate well with other software. And they produce ugly results.
I wrote my master's thesis using FrameMaker which was quite a bit better. However, for my current document-production needs, I use LaTeX. I maintain the manuals for my company's software products and we have a great workflow for building the manuals. The same Makefile that builds the software also builds the manuals: PDF versions directly from the LaTeX and HTML versions using htlatex run on the LaTeX sources. Then a post-processor fixes things up so that our HTML documentation is linked context-sensitively from the web pages of our app, and special goodies like embedded training videos are placed in the HTML documentation at the right place.
The power and control we get from this workflow is unmatched.
The criminal justice system in the West is formed entirely from norms formed from its Judeo-Christian history.
I hate the term "Judeo-Christian". Judaism and Christianity are very different in many respects.
Anyway...
The so-called norms you're talking about prescribe death for homosexual behaviour. Thankfully, we in the West have evolved past those "norms" of morality. We are still saddled, however, with ridiculous Christian ideas about how sex is somehow "dirty." Gee, thanks for that, Great Judeo-Christian [sic] norms.
The cave man has no basis by which to consider any action better or worse ethically than any other action, and neither do you, today.
Total utter crap.
Here's the basis for ethical behavior: If something causes more harm than good, then it's unethical. Otherwise, it is not. And the origin for this rule is three billion years of evolution: In the long run, we will survive as a species if we can build cooperative and well-functioning societies.
There are some people who will always behave unethically and immorally; they're called psychopaths and they lack the gene for compassion. Society is justified in removing those people from society---the harm done to the psychopaths is outweighed by the good done to the rest of us.
You don't need to invoke some imaginary supernatural being to explain ethical behaviour. In fact, it's harmful to do so because it leads to fanaticism: To the true believe, no compromise against God's word is possible.
Religion is most emphatically not the source of ethical behaviour in humans.
There is no law in Islam that states that female testimony is not valid. Only that it takes 2 women's testimony to be counted as 1.
Oh, well. That settles it. Islam is totally fair to women, then.