Since when is the teacher's job to dispense justice? The teacher's job is to teach, which requires the maintenance of order. If two kids are fighting, regardless of who started it, both are guilty of disrupting class. Accordingly, both are punished.
So if you're the victim, you've got two choices: you can either rely on the system to protect you (i.e., get the teacher's attention and inform him that you've been mistreated by the bully), or you can fight back. Given that most bullies (in my experience) don't give a flip about institutional punishments, fighting back is far more likely to be effective. Getting an institutional punishment is usually a small price to pay to send the message that you're not an easy target.
A personal belief which has been thoroughly shown to have no merit whatsoever in a number of controlled tests. Or does your belief not take data into account?
Insofar as I believe myself to possess free will, I have responsibility for the reasonably forseeable outcomes of the choices I make. My choices are not merely the product of my environment, for others share the same environment and yet may make different choices. Nor are my choices merely a product of my genetics, for even identical twins may behave very differently. So unless you think a creating deity is necessary to possess free will, I see no reason why personal responsibility would be incompatible with atheism.
Miriam Webster's online says that 'Creationism' dates back to 1880 and was likely coined as a reaction against the Darwinian viewpoint of gradual evolution. While that might make it 'Christian,' it would hardly be 'recent.'
From the wikipedia article on creationism: "There are various creationist movements based in religious traditions other than Christianity...Creationism is not per se a Christian concept because Christians merely follow the earlier Jewish tradition of belief in creation by the single deity, and in many Christian countries today, evolution is accepted as the most likely explanation for then origins of life and not a literal interpretation of Genesis."
So it seems that you're a bit off in claiming that creationism is a uniquely Christian concept, as well. I guess you shouldn't correct people based on guesses you made from context. After all, language isn't a "no, you're wrong," guessing game.
This is such a moldy old canard that it amazes me that godheads still bother with it. No, logically speaking, science cannot PROVE with 100% certainty that evolution happens. However, we can say that there are mountains of evidence, gathered from completely disaparate fields of study, which very strongly support the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. We are as sure of evolution as it is possible to be.
I'm not going to try to tell you what to believe, but at least have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that this is an area in which science is relatively certain.
I find that most people who say they can't imagine doing bad things have never really thought about being in the kind of situation that would motivate them to do bad things. It's easy for me to sit in my warm and comfy office, still full from lunch, and think I'd never rob someone, but try imagining what it would be like to be on the street, hungry, and surrounded by people who don't give a damn about you one way or the other. See how much moral fiber you've got when the chips are really down.
People are capable of anything under the right circumstances.
There WAS a comment on the Wired site that if you could somehow force him to come to you, that would be just as valid as going to where you think he is. Just sayin.
"The fact that Jews, the same Jews that were despised by 99% of a barbaric world, still exist."
Yet I notice that when the Nazis starting exterminating them, it was soldiers on the ground that put a stop to it, and not a bolt of lightning, or a flood, or a plague of locusts.
"DNA -- the world's most complex, advanced operating system...blah blah blah"
I couldn't figure out how to build a microprocessor...does that mean my computer was produced by god? Or does it simply mean that we do not currently understand in perfect detail everything in the world which is understandable.
"Any holy book can be considered "evidence" -- though they stand as counter-evidence to one another on the details, they are at a consensus that our ancestors dealt with a creator."
Many books of nursery rhymes are also at the consensus that there was an old woman who lived in a shoe. Clearly this is evidence that mankind has encountered such a shoe woman in the past.
"A planet in our solar system supports life complex enough for people to actually debate on the internet whether this post was made by a random chemical reaction reacting obscurely to photons, or a conscious human being."
Of course, if this planet wasn't capable of supporting complex life, we wouldn't be here to discuss whether or not pigs can fly...but that doesn't mean they can fly, does it?
I did my undergrad work in molecular biology, so please, enlighten me. In what way does ID bring a new examination of facts to the questions in modern evolutionary biology? What are the major ID-centric hypotheses in, to take an example from you, the "evolutionary progression of DNA?" What experiments are the key minds in ID theory doing to test these hypotheses? Are there any peer-reviewed publications on major ID breakthroughs that you'd recommend I read?
Because, you see, without any of those things, I might conclude that intelligent design is nothing more than an attempt to bolster a religious worldview by identifying (or manufacturing) problems with the current theory, while offering nothing of substance to replace it. But you're going to set me straight, right?
You don't have a problem with Bibles in public school or prayer in town hall because we live in a country where we are for the most part protected from the worst excesses of religious belief intertwined with governmental authority. You don't need to look too far to see what can happen when such protections don't exist: contemporary examples can be found in any country where theocratic law justifies honor killing, or where homosexuality is outlawed as evil. Or think back to the times of the Inquisition, or various state-sponsored religious massacres.
This is why some of us 'have a bug up our asses' about religion in government. Why should the superstitions of ANY group be allowed as justification to take away or constrain the rights of others?
No, the reason a jail term is considered justice is because we, as a society, agree to abide by certain rules with the understanding that the protection afforded by those rules is offered to all members equally (though I don't need to point out that this is an ideal). If you don't like society's rules, either work to change them, or leave society.
If somebody wrongs me, I might want to punish them far beyond what society considers a just punishment, but if I expect the benefits of the justice system in the future, I'd better abide by it now. You don't get something for nothing.
"So any guess is equally likely/unlikely until there is more information. I think even a lot of the 'debris' they've found is probably not from the jet."
I don't think you really mean this. It's obvious prima facie that some explanations are more likely than others: regular old human error is more likely than a fatal meteorite strike is more likely than an attack by evil space aliens. It'd be more accurate to say that we lack the information to assign realistic probabilities to the different scenarios.
The thing to remember is that statistics speak to populations, not individuals. As you noted, the odds of an accident for a typical driver may be X, but if you drive safely, or very rarely, or only in optimal conditions, etc., then your personal risk will be less than X.
It should also be remembered, though, that people tend to underestimate the extent to which they match the statistics. Like that Garrison Keillor joke about Lake Wobegone, "where all the children are above average." I think I read once (no citation, sorry) that something like 80% of drivers believe they're above average in driving skill. They can't all be right!
Injecting the antibodies directly does neutralize the virus, but unfortunately, the body's immune system recognizes those antibodies as foreign and so mounts an immune response against them (an anti-antibody antibody, if you like), which clears them from the bloodstream. So you'd need regular injections of neutralizing antibodies to maintain a therapeutic concentration in your blood. To quote the paper: "Passive immunization schemes using neutralizing antibodies have protected monkeys from SIV or simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) challenge infections. Unfortunately, an injection of antibodies every few weeks is neither practical nor cost effective as a large-scale human vaccine approach."
The obvious problem here is that even if you could easily and reliably produce clones (and introduce enough genetic variation to ensure long-term viability), the same factors that doomed the species originally will probably make it impossible to reintroduce the clones into the wild. So while this advance may be suitable for producing zoo specimens, it's a far cry from restoring an extinct species to its natural state.
I don't see how this is a potential solution to the Fermi paradox. Presumably any civilization advanced enough to build something like the LHC will also build the kind of noisy signal emitters we can detect. The emissions from these civilizations will expanded outward into the universe even after the evil black holes from space devour the homeworld. So either nobody's close enough to observe in this manner, or we just haven't seen them yet.
Eh, you really didn't need to watch Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adeventures to follow the finale. Thank God, because Torchwood was horrifically awful and Sarah Jane looks even more juvenile than some of the most childish Doctor Who.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when is the teacher's job to dispense justice? The teacher's job is to teach, which requires the maintenance of order. If two kids are fighting, regardless of who started it, both are guilty of disrupting class. Accordingly, both are punished.
So if you're the victim, you've got two choices: you can either rely on the system to protect you (i.e., get the teacher's attention and inform him that you've been mistreated by the bully), or you can fight back. Given that most bullies (in my experience) don't give a flip about institutional punishments, fighting back is far more likely to be effective. Getting an institutional punishment is usually a small price to pay to send the message that you're not an easy target.
I think the first three steps would also qualify you to be a Batman villain.
A personal belief which has been thoroughly shown to have no merit whatsoever in a number of controlled tests. Or does your belief not take data into account?
Insofar as I believe myself to possess free will, I have responsibility for the reasonably forseeable outcomes of the choices I make. My choices are not merely the product of my environment, for others share the same environment and yet may make different choices. Nor are my choices merely a product of my genetics, for even identical twins may behave very differently. So unless you think a creating deity is necessary to possess free will, I see no reason why personal responsibility would be incompatible with atheism.
Ahem.
Miriam Webster's online says that 'Creationism' dates back to 1880 and was likely coined as a reaction against the Darwinian viewpoint of gradual evolution. While that might make it 'Christian,' it would hardly be 'recent.'
From the wikipedia article on creationism: "There are various creationist movements based in religious traditions other than Christianity...Creationism is not per se a Christian concept because Christians merely follow the earlier Jewish tradition of belief in creation by the single deity, and in many Christian countries today, evolution is accepted as the most likely explanation for then origins of life and not a literal interpretation of Genesis."
So it seems that you're a bit off in claiming that creationism is a uniquely Christian concept, as well. I guess you shouldn't correct people based on guesses you made from context. After all, language isn't a "no, you're wrong," guessing game.
This is such a moldy old canard that it amazes me that godheads still bother with it. No, logically speaking, science cannot PROVE with 100% certainty that evolution happens. However, we can say that there are mountains of evidence, gathered from completely disaparate fields of study, which very strongly support the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. We are as sure of evolution as it is possible to be.
I'm not going to try to tell you what to believe, but at least have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that this is an area in which science is relatively certain.
I find that most people who say they can't imagine doing bad things have never really thought about being in the kind of situation that would motivate them to do bad things. It's easy for me to sit in my warm and comfy office, still full from lunch, and think I'd never rob someone, but try imagining what it would be like to be on the street, hungry, and surrounded by people who don't give a damn about you one way or the other. See how much moral fiber you've got when the chips are really down.
People are capable of anything under the right circumstances.
There WAS a comment on the Wired site that if you could somehow force him to come to you, that would be just as valid as going to where you think he is. Just sayin.
"The fact that Jews, the same Jews that were despised by 99% of a barbaric world, still exist."
Yet I notice that when the Nazis starting exterminating them, it was soldiers on the ground that put a stop to it, and not a bolt of lightning, or a flood, or a plague of locusts.
"DNA -- the world's most complex, advanced operating system...blah blah blah"
I couldn't figure out how to build a microprocessor...does that mean my computer was produced by god? Or does it simply mean that we do not currently understand in perfect detail everything in the world which is understandable.
"Any holy book can be considered "evidence" -- though they stand as counter-evidence to one another on the details, they are at a consensus that our ancestors dealt with a creator."
Many books of nursery rhymes are also at the consensus that there was an old woman who lived in a shoe. Clearly this is evidence that mankind has encountered such a shoe woman in the past.
"A planet in our solar system supports life complex enough for people to actually debate on the internet whether this post was made by a random chemical reaction reacting obscurely to photons, or a conscious human being."
Of course, if this planet wasn't capable of supporting complex life, we wouldn't be here to discuss whether or not pigs can fly...but that doesn't mean they can fly, does it?
I did my undergrad work in molecular biology, so please, enlighten me. In what way does ID bring a new examination of facts to the questions in modern evolutionary biology? What are the major ID-centric hypotheses in, to take an example from you, the "evolutionary progression of DNA?" What experiments are the key minds in ID theory doing to test these hypotheses? Are there any peer-reviewed publications on major ID breakthroughs that you'd recommend I read?
Because, you see, without any of those things, I might conclude that intelligent design is nothing more than an attempt to bolster a religious worldview by identifying (or manufacturing) problems with the current theory, while offering nothing of substance to replace it. But you're going to set me straight, right?
Wyeth may have gotten caught, but don't kid yourself that every major pharma company isn't doing the exact same thing.
You don't have a problem with Bibles in public school or prayer in town hall because we live in a country where we are for the most part protected from the worst excesses of religious belief intertwined with governmental authority. You don't need to look too far to see what can happen when such protections don't exist: contemporary examples can be found in any country where theocratic law justifies honor killing, or where homosexuality is outlawed as evil. Or think back to the times of the Inquisition, or various state-sponsored religious massacres.
This is why some of us 'have a bug up our asses' about religion in government. Why should the superstitions of ANY group be allowed as justification to take away or constrain the rights of others?
Okay: on that note, how often do trained soldiers wipe out somebody they don't like simply because they've been conditioned to kill without remorse?
My money is on Al. After all, he's a tenth-level Vice President!
No, the reason a jail term is considered justice is because we, as a society, agree to abide by certain rules with the understanding that the protection afforded by those rules is offered to all members equally (though I don't need to point out that this is an ideal). If you don't like society's rules, either work to change them, or leave society.
If somebody wrongs me, I might want to punish them far beyond what society considers a just punishment, but if I expect the benefits of the justice system in the future, I'd better abide by it now. You don't get something for nothing.
You remind me of someone who natters on senselessly with almost no ability to make himself understood. I wonder why.
"So any guess is equally likely/unlikely until there is more information. I think even a lot of the 'debris' they've found is probably not from the jet."
I don't think you really mean this. It's obvious prima facie that some explanations are more likely than others: regular old human error is more likely than a fatal meteorite strike is more likely than an attack by evil space aliens. It'd be more accurate to say that we lack the information to assign realistic probabilities to the different scenarios.
Pedanticism thus ended.
The thing to remember is that statistics speak to populations, not individuals. As you noted, the odds of an accident for a typical driver may be X, but if you drive safely, or very rarely, or only in optimal conditions, etc., then your personal risk will be less than X.
It should also be remembered, though, that people tend to underestimate the extent to which they match the statistics. Like that Garrison Keillor joke about Lake Wobegone, "where all the children are above average." I think I read once (no citation, sorry) that something like 80% of drivers believe they're above average in driving skill. They can't all be right!
Injecting the antibodies directly does neutralize the virus, but unfortunately, the body's immune system recognizes those antibodies as foreign and so mounts an immune response against them (an anti-antibody antibody, if you like), which clears them from the bloodstream. So you'd need regular injections of neutralizing antibodies to maintain a therapeutic concentration in your blood. To quote the paper: "Passive immunization schemes using neutralizing antibodies have protected monkeys from SIV or simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) challenge infections. Unfortunately, an injection of antibodies every few weeks is neither practical nor cost effective as a large-scale human vaccine approach."
You said that much more nicely and with greater sophistication than I would have. Cheers.
i'm pretty sure red and blue make purple. Maroon would be red and brown. Just don't get your chocolate in my peanut butter.
The obvious problem here is that even if you could easily and reliably produce clones (and introduce enough genetic variation to ensure long-term viability), the same factors that doomed the species originally will probably make it impossible to reintroduce the clones into the wild. So while this advance may be suitable for producing zoo specimens, it's a far cry from restoring an extinct species to its natural state.
I don't see how this is a potential solution to the Fermi paradox. Presumably any civilization advanced enough to build something like the LHC will also build the kind of noisy signal emitters we can detect. The emissions from these civilizations will expanded outward into the universe even after the evil black holes from space devour the homeworld. So either nobody's close enough to observe in this manner, or we just haven't seen them yet.
I think you also need to have the 'lead belly' perk to flirt with a super mutant. Otherwise there'd be vomiting.
Eh, you really didn't need to watch Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adeventures to follow the finale. Thank God, because Torchwood was horrifically awful and Sarah Jane looks even more juvenile than some of the most childish Doctor Who.