Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I'll just point out again that it wasn't the executive branch, but the 
>> congress, that declared a national day of prayer.
> 
>   The first words of the first amendment to your constitution somehow
> resonate in my head when I read that, causing a terrible pain...
> 

Yeah, me too.

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>>>> but maybe that's just because we haven't figured out yet what is
>>>> driving those events, so they just *appear* random to us.
>>>
>>> FWIW, the answer to this speculation is "no, we have proven that's not
>>> the case." :-)
>>
>> Really? How?
>
> Look up "Bell's Inequality." It has recently (in the last couple of
> years) gone on from there to prove that the problem is not non-local
> interactions.

But does that really prove that there is nothing else controlling what 
we are measuring?  If you liken our universe to a computer simulation, 
then outside of the simulation none of the limitations inside the 
simulation necessarily apply.

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scott wrote:
> But does that really prove that there is nothing else controlling what 
> we are measuring? 

It means that the value you are measuring is not determined until you 
measure it. Hence, as far as we will ever be able to know without divine(*) 
intervention, yes, it's random. It is unpredictable until measured, which 
is, by definition, random.

I.e., we're getting into semantics here. Does something really exist that 
has absolutely no affect on anything anywhere in the universe? If there's 
nothing at all you can do that will influence whether you know the result in 
advance, is that not random?

(*) Where "divine" includes the person running the simulation.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
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On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:49:02 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> >   Of course it is. It's an implicit encouragement from the government
>> >   for
>> > people to follow a religious custom.
> 
>> IF THEY BELIEVE IN IT.  It's not saying "even if you don't believe in
>> it, give it a try, you might like it".
> 
>   Yeah, like there were only two types of people: Those who firmly
>   believe
> and those who firmly don't believe. There is nothing in between. Like, I
> don't know, impressionable children? Yeah, they don't exist.

Stop putting words in my mouth.  I never said there were only two types 
of people in this regard.

>   It's not the place for the government to tell people, even indirectly,
> that a religion has a sound basis. There *are* impressionable people out
> there who will believe something more easily if a high authority
> promotes it. There is already enough misinformation out there. The
> government shouldn't be encouraging it.

And it isn't advocating for it.  It's simply saying "if you believe, do 
something about it".  Seems to me that if a large number of people 
believe in a giant blue fish in the sky, and that belief is *supposed* to 
make them more compassionate, then encouraging compassion in your fellow 
citizens is beneficial to society.

The way I see it, NDP is a day for people to reflect on their beliefs.  
Here in the US, many people put themselves forth as some form of 
"Christian", but they sure don't act like it.  This is a chance to remind 
people like that that they say they have a certain belief set, and to get 
them to reflect on the things they do that are inconsistent with that 
belief set.

I see that as a GOOD thing, even though I don't believe myself.

>> >> "Shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion" does
>> >> not mean that it prohibits people who work in government from ever
>> >> talking about religion.
>> > 
>> >   Of course they are free to do whatever they want, but not
>> >   officially
>> > on behalf of the government. The government has certain
>> > responsibilities and duties towards their citizens.
> 
>> Of course they do.  And encouraging people to practice their beliefs -
>> whatever those beliefs are - isn't advocating for a particular
>> religion.
> 
>   Ah, so you want to nitpick between "advocating for a *particular*
>   religion"
> vs. "advocating religion". The government can be as religious as they
> want as long as they don't advocate any particular religion.

Oh, FFS, it's not "nitpicking", it's a rather important distinction.  
Which you are failing to see.

>   No, and a thousand times no. It's not the place for the government to
> take any stance whatsoever on religion (or non-religion). It doesn't
> matter if they differentiate between religions or not. That's not the
> issue.
> 
>   If you ask a government official, in an official setting, "what's the
> government's position on religion?", the correct answer is "no comment".

Yes, absolutely.  But that's not what NDP is about, from all I've read.

>> It doesn't establish a state-sponsored religion at all.  It says "hey,
>> if you believe in this, practice it".  Simple.
> 
>   A "national day of prayer" is certainly not a neutral proclamation of
> religious freedom, "if you want to do something religious, just do it,
> we won't stop you".
> 
>   Just think about it like this: Why exactly do you need a "national day
> of prayer"? What's so special about that particular day? What purpose
> does it serve? Why does the government have to declare a special day for
> that?
> 
>   If you think about the answer, you'll see that the government is not
> being neutral and impartial in this matter, as they should.
> 
>>  Not advocating for Jesus,
>> not advocating for the Pope
> 
>   Advocating prayer. What's the difference, exactly?

If you don't see what the difference is, I'm not sure I can explain it to 
you.  You seem to be particularly closed-minded about it anyways, so even 
if I took the time to try to explain it, I'm sure you'd outright reject 
it without a second thought anyways.  One might say that your particular 
views on this subject are extremely *religious* (in that anything that 
contradicts it must be wrong or some sort of heresy.)

>> >   When the president speaks to the country on a televised official
>> >   ceremony,
>> > that's quite different from the president talking with a friend.
> 
>> Sure.  And saying "if you believe in this, here's an opportunity to
>> practice it" is different from saying "if you don't, we'll fine you or
>> lock your ass up in jail."
> 
>   You don't seem to understand the difference between promoting and
>   forcing.

I know the difference perfectly well.  You don't seem to want to 
understand what I'm saying.

>   You claim is "they are not promoting religion" and your argument for
>   that
> is "they are not forcing religion to be practiced". A fallacious
> argument if I ever saw one.

Nonsense.  That you aren't seeing the difference doesn't mean there isn't 
one.

Jim

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:54:55 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Warp wrote:
>>   Just think about it like this: Why exactly do you need a "national
>>   day
>> of prayer"? What's so special about that particular day? What purpose
>> does it serve? Why does the government have to declare a special day
>> for that?
> 
> One thing I've never settled on is the concept of "a moment of silence."
> If you're doing it to somehow respect an event (i.e., a moment of
> silence to respect the victims of this horrible tragedy), is it
> different from a moment of silence before we start doing business for
> the day? Does it imply anything religious, given that it's obviously
> intended that religious people pray?

Seems to me it's a moment of reflection, nothing more.  Whether it's 
prayer, meditation, or wondering who won the big game - what one does 
with the moment of silence is up to the individual.

Jim

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:01:50 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> I fail to see how telling
>> people "if you believe in something, practice it" comes even close to
>> establishing a state-sponsored religion
> 
>   For fair balance, shouldn't there be a "Nation Day of Atheism"? You
>   can
> make the exact same arguments: It's not promoting atheism nor forcing
> anybody to be atheist. You can be atheist if you want, but it's your
> choice.

Actually, there is one - and it's usually (now) held on the same day as 
the NDP IIRC.

Jim

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On 1/12/2011 2:40 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> This in fact happens. We can even, in many cases, parse out what those
>> *where*, sometimes by finding those extra structures still intact in
>> other species.
>
> More to the point, biological structures can *change purpose* too.
>
>> And you are dead wrong on the later, evolution **keeps**
>> masses of junk, whether it produces a benefit or not.
>
> That too. The human genome has half a dozen broken copies of the globin
> gene, for example. (Plus 4 (?) similar but not identical copies that
> actually work.)
>
>> The single cell do not, in general, contain mitochondria.
>
> False.
>
> Note carefully that "single-celled organisms" covers a vast variety of
> life forms, only some of which are closely related. Many of these
> contain mitochondria, and many do not. The fact that they are
> unicellular does not correlate particularly well with the presence of
> absence of mitochondria.
>
> The distinction you're looking for is between eukaryotes and
> non-eukaryotes.
>
Uh, yeah. Couldn't think of the proper term though. But, the rest is 
correct. If you don't have excess resources to waste on messing with 
extra baggage, you don't live long if you have it. If you do have the 
"power plants", you can afford to waste more space in the genome on 
things that don't work, duplicate results, etc.

>> Their genetics are often **far** more streamlined, because
>> they can't afford to carry junk around, which doesn't do anything, for
>> the reason you describe. It costs resources. Having a sort of "power
>> plant" in the cell, whose genetics are 100% geared at producing excess
>> amounts of energy, over what is absolutely needed by themselves, allows
>> the rest of the genome, in the main cell, to be very sloppy in its
>> operations, copying, cleanup, etc. Anything with such an internal power
>> plant can afford to keep lots of stuff that does nothing at all, and
>> only gets rid of things that are actively defective, usually not by
>> deletion, but just by shutting them off, so they do nothing. This allows
>> for what, in a single cell, would be egregious errors, such as making an
>> exact copy of a sequence, then later having that sequence get mangled
>> into a unique function. Its way harder to manage that if you can't
>> afford extra copies lying around, where your energy input is drastically
>> damaged, if you allow such a copy to happen.
>
> I'm not sure I actually agree with this assessment.
>
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/how_to_afford_a_big_sloppy_gen.php

As to the cite for prokaryotes not having as many copy errors, I think 
it would be more accurate to say, "They don't *preserve* as many." If 
they did, they would have way more junk DNA, which is precisely what 
they can't afford to have laying around in the first place. The actual 
number of such errors that happen is likely the same, but, when it comes 
to costs, if you can't afford them, you don't see those copied chunks 
sticking around long.

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On 1/11/2011 1:57 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:08:49 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> The problem with this is that its the **same** excuse that is used by
>> nearly every city council, and other government body, for ***actually***
>> violating the constitution, by having an opening prayer, then babbling
>> about how it just wasn't convenient for them to find a Buddhist that
>> day, or some such, to "flesh out" the roster and make it non-Christian
>> specific. Oh, and of course, they ***never ever*** open without it, so
>> it very much supports religion in general, even when they play lip
>> service to being "fair" about which one of the, maybe 3, they will
>> bother/allow to open the meeting.
>
> I don't entirely disagree with what you've said above.  Having a prayer
> of any sort during government proceedings is a problem for me.
>
> But that's not what we're talking about here.
>
>> Sorry, but Warp is dead right.
>
> I respectfully disagree.  But hey, we can do that.
>
>> The government promoting a day of prayer
>> does not **in any way** imply anything other than an endorsement of
>> religion in general,
>
> Which in and of itself does not violate the the constitution.
> Acknowledging that some people are religions is different from saying
> "You must pray on this day, and if you don't, you're going to jail".
>
>  From a historical context, that's what the founders were dealing with:
> In England, there was a state-sponsored religion, and practicing
> protestants were legally barred from practicing their own non-state-
> sanctioned religion.
>
>> and too often, given the words of those who do such
>> promotion, defend doing so, and get elected on the principle of the
>> "Christian nation" BS, a *specific* one. Its kind of like how federal
>> money gets spent on "faith based initiatives", yet, somehow, 99.9% of
>> all the initiatives getting funded are Christian ones, even when other
>> groups present alternatives, or worse, alternatives that are not "known"
>> to lie, cheat, steal, or fail to provide the things they claim they need
>> the money for (not that we would know, in many cases, since they are
>> often sub-groups of bigger groups, and only the "government" money needs
>> to be accounted for). The 0.1% is pure, 100%, lip service to the
>> principle, and mean jack shit with respect to the idea that the
>> government isn't "endorsing" something.
>
> And those things should be dealt with individually.  That doesn't
> inherently make the NDoP a bad thing or a violation of the US
> Constitution.  Again, this is something entirely different than the
> subject at hand.
>
> Jim
While this is, *technically* true, from a purely literal stance, there 
is often quoted a concept of "spirit of the law". And, I would, and many 
others have, that if you do not enforce the matter strictly, you lend 
yourself to a slow erosion of principle, in which the number of people 
trying to actively violate it, or find ways around it, or even 
repeal/change it, increases, as more and more succeed in finding such 
loopholes. We often have difficulty seeing this, for much the same 
reason the other side can't imagine every problem being solved from 
guns, or prayer, or capitalism, or what ever combination of notions they 
think are king of the hill at the time. That people might breach the 
spirit of the law, and, being allowed, then breach the law itself, isn't 
an easy thing to recognize, if your goal is to only apply it "loosely". 
The problem is, of course, we *do* see people crossing the line, such as 
one case in the last ten years where a Jewish family was hounded, after 
the city council member that belonged to it said, "Maybe its a bad idea 
to *specifically* open with a prayer to Jesus." In some areas, this is 
all too common, and the excuse is always a) we are allowed to have 
prayers, so the mere accident of who gets prayed to all the time is 
coincidence, b) we would (though not really, see above) allow someone 
else to do it, if we had anyone else around to do so, and c) the 
constitution only says you can't endorse religion, not that we can't 
shove it down everyone's throughts, as long as its "non-sectarian" 
(i.e., being allowed to avoid/not participate in/deal with it, is *not* 
protected, according to this argument).

Its like telling someone, "You need to use turn signals, but not on 
parking lots", pretty soon people are making jokes, like locally here, 
in the vein of, "When you move here they inject you with a virus, which 
makes you forget where the turn signals are." Enforcement *only* 
happens, as it is, if someone sues, and in many places, everything from 
homogenization of the assumption that there is nothing wrong with their 
purely sectarian support, to even fear of what would happen *if* someone 
protested, results in *no* enforcement. And, you can't take something on 
a "case by case" basis, if no one will recognize there *is* problem, 
admit it needs to be fixed, or actively do something about it.

If the rules was "never", this wouldn't be a problem. Instead, we have, 
"Well, you are not supposed to, but....", and a near infinite list of 
exclusions and exceptions. So, unless someone crosses a line by a 
provable amount, nothing happens, and even if they do, they pay a fine, 
maybe lose some government endorsement (unless they are the government), 
and next week the are doing the same thing again.

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void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
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On 1/12/2011 8:53 AM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>    Of course it is. It's an implicit encouragement from the government for
>>> people to follow a religious custom.
>
>> Does this mean Black History Month implies you should go out and be Black
>> for a few weeks?
>
>    How exactly does "Black History" imply "you should *be* black"?
>
>    It implies that people should study and consider the history of black
> people, doesn't it? So yes, it is quite a similar thing.
>
>    Likewise "national day of prayer" promotes prayer. Not all people are
> either firm believers or firm unbelievers. There *are* impressionable
> people who may follow authority in these matters, and it's certainly *not*
> the place for a secular government to promote religion.
>
Yes, this is precisely the point being missed by others. "Black History 
Month", doesn't imply you should examine Chinese Immigrants, American 
Indians, or some UFO nuts "Reptiloid aliens living in the center of the 
Earth.". It means they look at "Black History". Someone calls for a day 
of prayer, it doesn't mean, "How about buying a lot of lattes, watching 
more TV, going to dance clubs, nude bicycling, or 5 billion other things 
you might opt to do." It means, "We would like to encourage you to do 
something specifically religious, not not just religious, but specific 
to a specific 'set' of religions, since some don't." To me, this is a 
huge, Duh! I literally don't get why others can't see what is wrong with it.

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     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:54:12 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> And, I would, and many
> others have, that if you do not enforce the matter strictly, you lend
> yourself to a slow erosion of principle, in which the number of people
> trying to actively violate it, or find ways around it, or even
> repeal/change it, increases, as more and more succeed in finding such
> loopholes. We often have difficulty seeing this, for much the same
> reason the other side can't imagine every problem being solved from
> guns, or prayer, or capitalism, or what ever combination of notions they
> think are king of the hill at the time.

My word, that's a very long run-on sentence. ;-)

But it boils down to the "slippery slope" argument, and while I have been 
guilty of using it myself in the past, in more recent times, I've not 
really been convinced of it.

Both ideologies use the argument when it suits them.

I'm not really sure what the rest of what you wrote was, because it was 
so difficult to read.  Sorry.

Jim

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