Ak-47's are cheaper and easier to maintain.

I guess my point is that in an area not under the control of the Catholic church, science progressed at a higher rate. But, of course, as you pointed out you have to take into account the utter collapse of civilized (for Roman definitons of civilized) society in Europe. It is, however, a wonder that it took them a couple hundred years to get back to something resembling the civilized society they had before the collapse.

Well if the 'time' clock is defined by God, his version of, 'time' may be so drastically different in magnitude than ours that billions of millenia here is but a mere eye-blink to him, and, thus, peta-bytes of data generated may not be that large from his perspective. Again, mind you, I am not advocating this point of view, but it is an interesting thing to think about...

Fair enough. I typically just try to hammer on the inconsistencies of the points that Biblical advocates take for granted because, well, if they can't justify why they take something for granted...

Anyways, I get what you are saying about the pedantics of the whole Bible being a lot of, "he-said-she-said." Typically, however, Bible advocates tend to wave their hand and say that whatever versions of the Bible we have today are they way they are and say what they say because they are precisely how God meant them to be right now...or something along those lines.

It reminds me of the blind optimism Voltaire satirized in Candide.

Please don't. This is an interesting scientific topic and I would rather not have it threadjacked over some damn holy war, no matter what side of the science/debate/politics/religion/controversy you are on.

If there is a Mod listening, please flag this as off-topic, even if it is a joke.

Yeah, but at least we can give him credit for being poor but not going into debt. That's more sense than most poor folk have.

See, The Dunning-Kruger effect.

Claiming that parents taking an interest in their child's education will solve the education problems of the United States is pretty much the same kind of arguement that says the solution to increasing STD rates and teenage pregnancies is massive, self-imposed abstinence.

It's a great idea, but in the face of reality it fails. We have a few decades worth of evidence that suggests while people should be interested in their childen's education, the mass majority of them are not. We need to design a solution to account for this problem as well.

That kind of attitude, while militant and progressive (for very liberal definitions of progressive) is a very good way to convince religious folk that scientists are condescending, evangelistic assholes that are no better than the ancient Crusaders whom they choose to denounce.

Maybe God just wrote some high level equations from which all of the physical happenings in the universe flow. Think of God like a computer programmer. He writes down some relativity equations, maybe some quantum mechancs, adds in a random number generator here or there, wraps it all up in an infinite while loop, compiles it, runs it, and ka-pow universe as we know it.

I'm not saying that's how it happened, but that's how I've heard various religious folk that are also highly educated scientists describe it all.

What makes the fact that Jesus said something imply that thing is the most important bit in the Bible true?

Lots of people say lots of stuff in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. What empirical evidence is there to suggest that anything spoken by Jesus should be taken as higher authority than anything spoken by anyone else?

Your argument basically amounts to:

1) Everything Jesus says must be considered truth.
2) Jesus says there are two commandments that are more important than all others.
3) Those two commandments are "Love God. Love other human beings"
4) Therefore, "Love God, and love other human beings." are the most important bits within the Bible.

I guess what I am getting at is that your argument is a bit circular. Christ tells us what the most important things are to believe, and those must be considered the most important things to beleive because Christ tells us so.

So what? What makes Christ special? And how do you know Jesus is always right, or, more pedantically, how do you know he is right on this topic?

And as I understand it, during the Dark Ages, there was even more scientific progress and advancement occuring in the Middle East and in places like Turkey, where the church didn't have a stranglehold on information. In fact, the various documentaries I've watched and books that I've read, made it pretty explicitly clear that much of the scientific and cultural advances of the Roman Empire only survived through to the Renaissance because they were held and maintained by Persian culture. So....yeah.

Huh? You're going to have to explain that one a bit more. Are you seriously arguing that empirical evidence suggests man is bad, and the only redemption he can find is by believing the teachings in a 2,000 year old book that has been the cause of more wars than I care to count? Or that his only redemption is through faith in some sort of God? How do you explain societies that evolved and survived just fine without Christianity like, I don't know, Japan, or China? Was every member of those cultures implicitly immoral and incapable of redemption?

And are you honestly arguing that there is no empirical evidence that science can fix flaws? I don't even know where to start picking that argument apart. What about when science showed that all humans, regardless of race, descended from one set of common ancestors, thus providing a pretty compelling scientific arguement for ending racism? Does that not count for some reason?

I mean, seriously, how can you make a claim like the one you made and keep a straight face?

I'm expecting the DIY microcontroller community to get cracked down on eventually. The Makers have flown under ther radar for now, but eventually someone will use an Arduino to build a motion detecing mine or something like that and it will all go downhill from there.

As a citizen of the United States of America I have a duty to defend the principles that this nation once stood for until I no longer draw breath. Lying down and giving up may be how AC's do things in your neck of the woods, but the way I was raised forbids me from giving up on this great land that I call my home as long as I have the health and some shred of resources left to fight for it.

I can take 10 minutes out of my day to sign a damned online petition. Whether it is futile or not is irrelevant. At least I will go to bed at the end of my life saying I tried. What will you have to show for your apathy? "I told you so?" Yeah, that's something to be proud of.

We have to do something, if for no other reason than to say that we tried everything else before we resulted to torches, pitchforks, and AK-47's.