Jim Henderson wrote:
> Assuming the soul does exist,

Of course it does. Just not as something that God has to deal with.

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   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Grassblade wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I believe Jesus disagrees with you as well, when he says not to suffer a
>> witch to live. Why would he instruct you to execute those who can
>> perform miracles (such as flying on brooms and cursing fig trees), if
>> all miracles come from JHVH?
> He said WHAT????!!! I would check my facts, if I were you. Seriously.

Sorry. Old testament. My bad.

In any case, JHVH disagrees, which was my point.

Of course, Jesus said "It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away 
than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid," 
so I assume he supported that too. Or he was lying. Or just being 
naturally inconsistent.

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   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
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Grassblade wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> I have never met an theist who could give a single example of anything
>>> that would convince him *his* religion is wrong.
>> And here's an example of that, too:
>>
>> Say you go to hawaii, and you find this group of people who, by praying
>> to Pele (the volcano goddess), can *actually* regenerate amputated
>> limbs. No scientific explanation is forthcoming, but anyone who has lost
>> a limb can go there, get three people to pray in a circle, and his limb
>> will grow back all by itself within a month.
>>
>> Show this to a faithful Christian. What is he going to say?  "Gee, maybe
>> Pele really exists, and answers prayers better than JHVH does?" Or is it
>> going to be interpreted as a conspiracy by Satan to lure faithful
>> Christians away from their One True Religion?

> The latter obviously. As I'm sure you know.

Right. That's my point. Even if there's someone worshiping some *other* 
God who is doing miracles for them, you wouldn't believe it. Right in 
front of your eyes, a different God is performing miracles!

Hence, I'm actually *more* willing to change my faith by merely asking 
for miracles than you are.

So don't give me crap about how egotistical I am for asking for miracles 
in order to judge God, when you won't even accept miracles as proof.

So far, no Christian I've ever spoken to has admitted that if some 
*other* god personally revealed herself as the one and true God, that 
they'd accept that. I'm willing to do that. Now who is more close-minded?

You're no better than Pharoh, who at least had the excuse that JHVH 
didn't want him changing his mind.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Then you'll have an idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of
>> "spiritual" guidance that is unwelcome and unwanted.  Fair enough?
> 
> geez!  If you wanted to get a "fuck you!" instead of "bless you" you could've
> asked for it from the beginning.  what a fucked up world!

Would you be offended if you posted you were in a car accident and I 
promised to sacrifice a chicken to Satan for you?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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In article <475c48ed$1@news.povray.org>, nos### [at] nospamcom says...
> On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:08:46 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
> > In article <4758485d$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> >> Jim Henderson wrote:
> >> > Why does it have to be Christians, though?  How's about Buddhism?
> >> 
> >> That's fine. I don't think Buddhists are theists, tho. Or, at worst,
> >> they worship someone who said "don't worship me."  However, I'll
> >> happily admit I know very little about buddhism.
> >> 
> > I don't know a *lot* about it either, but strictly speaking there are
> > two reasons you don't see them as powerful as Christianity (though
> > technically Islam is at least twice as large as Christianity and more
> > cohesive, so...), or as prone to kill/conquer and/or convert people to
> > make them Buddhists.
> 
> Um, Islam and Buddhism are two entirely different things, Patrick...
> 
??? What are you on about? I mentioned Islam as a side point, saying 
that its was at lest twice as large as Christianity. The intent was to 
draw a parallel between Christianity and Islam, in that both are very 
large and powerful, and they ***got that way*** by being prone to 
kill/conquer and/or convert people, something Buddhists, by comparison 
are not. In fact, it doesn't make any sense imho, for you to interpret 
it otherwise, since if I was attempting to claim that Buddhism and Islam 
where the same, I would have to be arguing:

Islam > Christianity > Buddhism

*AND*

Islam = Buddhism

Which is just mathematically and logically impossible, given the former 
statement.

But yeah, strictly speaking, I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

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void main () {

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

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In article <475c486d$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Jim Henderson wrote:
> > Not saying I agree with that idea, but that's the counter argument that
 
> > I've run into in the past myself.
> 
> Sure, except that's factually incorrect. It's easy to do experiments to
 
> show it's pretty trivial to evolve something that does a rather 
> sophisticated function without actually designing how it does it, and 
> indeed with the result being difficult or impossible to analyze for how
 
> it works. In other words, no, the watch doesn't imply the watchmaker.
> 
Someone actually did this, though I don't remember the link, and sadly, 
it wasn't animated, just based on mathematical calculations. He had 
clocks that where accurate to within a few hundredths of a second, 
roughly similar to a real mechanical clock, within 14-20 generations, 
every single time. lol

> This is the same "I can't imagine how it could be anything else, so I 
> must be right."  The old "since my imagination is inadequate, I must be
 
> right" argument. They said the same thing about thunder too.
> 
Yep.


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void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
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    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <475c650d$1@news.povray.org>, nos### [at] nospamcom says...
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:52:40 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> 
> > Jim Henderson wrote:
> >> I think we could probably agree that a watch is unlikely to happen as
> >> the evolution of something geologic,
> > 
> > Any particular item is unlikely to happen at all. I don't think it's
> > that far-fetched to believe in something that keeps time based on
> > sunrise, sunset, or tides.
> 
> But something that keeps time accurately that you can wear on your 
> wrist?  Surely there aren't forests where those sorts of things grow on
 
> trees. :-)
> 
Hmm. Does it have to be human readable? lol Seriously, there is a fairly 
solid theory now that *most* of the behavior of insects is timing based. 
That, in essense, they have a lot of internal timers, which do 
everything, including providing a basic "clock" for movements, like 
flight direction, and that deciding to go left, instead of right, is, 
depending on circumstances, either a matter of interrupting the clock, 
or random glitches/permutations in the system. It might be a biological 
clock, and far more flexible in dealing with the unexpected, but for 
insects, there may not be a lot of "mind" there to start with, just a 
lot of purely statistical mechanics.

So, the questions really are: 1. Does it have to be human readable? and 
2. How accurate do you want it? After that, its just a matter to finding 
something, like a leech maybe, that will attach like a parasite, to feed 
itself, and whose "clocks" operate to generate some form of visible, 
easily read, timing. And, unless you get a mutant, it would probably be 
*way* more accurate, even in the dark, than any mechanical clock. ;)

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void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <web.475c5ee4922777eb22e9f4040@news.povray.org>, 
nomail@nomail says...
> > And even if you prove times and places, which it invariably fails at,
> > your argument that God was involved in it is based ***solely*** on the
> > presupposition that because a lot of people believe in your God, this
> > validates the idea that *he* was involved somehow. Its argument via
> > popularity, not evidence.
> Ever heard of peer review? It works on popularity among peers. Man, if yo
u're
> trying to take science out of the picture you're doing a good job. <_<
> 
Darren addresses most of your rather bent thinking quite well, and even 
this one, to some extent. But what he didn't say is that peer review is 
***intended*** to catch major mistakes, massive flaws, errors, etc., and 
point them out, so that the originator has the opportunity to a) rethink 
their results and/or b) correct their errors. Popularity has nothing to 
do with it. Well, maybe if you are publishing for Discovery Institute or 
you manage to bribe people to hand your paper over to someone who *will* 
judge it by how popular it will be to your audience (like happened with 
one idiotic rant published in some 16th rate magazine, and which was 
then trumpeted as evidence that ID *could* get real articles into a 
major publication...) Mind you, the publication in question would, for 
most scientists, be used as emergency toilet paper and the "reviewer" 
proven to be someone specifically chosen to do the review *because* he 
favored the whining rant in it. Which is precisely the point. Real 
publications will rip you to shreds if all you manage to send them is a 
list of complaints you have, or your logic, data and methods are 
garbage. Popularity is the "last" thing anyone considers when doing such 
reviews.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Hmm. Does it have to be human readable? lol Seriously, there is a fairly 
> solid theory now that *most* of the behavior of insects is timing based. 

I have noticed that many "insects", particularly spiders, seem to have 
two walking speeds: On and Off.  I always attributed it to a sparsity of 
neurons. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Then you'll have an idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of
>> "spiritual" guidance that is unwelcome and unwanted.  Fair enough?
> 
> geez!  If you wanted to get a "fuck you!" instead of "bless you" you could've
> asked for it from the beginning.  what a fucked up world!

Version two: "Gee, how Christian of you." ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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