I used to be a preacher. I have studied various religions as part of my training to be a preacher. I changed my mind about my parental religion at great personal cost. I investigated other religious tenets (Christian and non-Christian) as various friends suggested they may be a 'better fit'.
If you're so wise, please tell me how religions are not trying to safeguard they're own individual collection of fables and myths?
Why does your life or anything at all have to have meaning? In the grand scheme of things, your 1-in-a-billion life form on a speck of dust in the middle of an average galaxy is insignificant. Absence of proof does not mean we can just instantiate a random object to explain things (Bertrand Russell's teapot).
You can devise a scientific test for love if you define what love is. Enjoyment is also relatively easy to explain in regards brain chemistry. You are free to believe what you want but what is the meaning of believing something you can never know for sure?
If you add them up together, they're total sum is 0, they don't come from anywhere and go nowhere. It's basic quantum mechanics. The entire summation of all energy within our Universe is 0.
Not really, the why is not philosophical at all, it is testable and provable that the universe is big enough that random stuff, however remote the possibilities, happens all the time. The why and the how are identical from a scientific viewpoint, that's how science works. Scientists ask the why question and give a how answer.
Time began with the Big Bang. There was no 'before' the Big Bang because time (as we know it) was not there (yet). Because the majority of people fails to understand the reasoning/math behind it doesn't make the theory invalid. We can measure this "mythical nothing", it's the same space between an atoms' nucleus and electron. There is a shit-ton of nothing, the majority of the Universe and everything that exists is "nothing". It may not make immediate sense to you but the Universe is not obligated to make something easier to comprehend, as long as the equations work out.
As a frequent user of the CentOS-6.5-x86_64-minimal.iso install image, I can see that its still not *as* thin as the author describes but none of the unnecessary bits are included and its super-easy to customize.
Except Liberals making fun of Democrats. Or haven't you noticed? I wonder if you say the same thing every time someone makes fun of Sarah Palin? Nahhh
"Actually, I've yet to see that come from anyone that's actually in the field of climate science."
Convenient Narrow Definition. I've yet to hear ANYONE that's actually in that field say anything.
Let me know when the AGW enthusiasts/scientists start correcting their spokesmen (like Al Gore, and various celebrities ) when they say stupid shit. I won't hold my breath.
No, the reason we don't accept "my/your god did it" is because if we did, we would still be in the stone age. If your god is just a variable to make a balance sheet work out, then there is no reason to keep looking for the cause of that variable. If we said today: God + evolution = life then we have no reason to look at the chemical processes behind abiogenesis because "god" did it and it fits the equation.
The god of the gaps is just that, as soon as we are able to fill the gaps, your god will be gone, heck your god has already gone from encompassing the entire universe, planets, stars etc to only being an entity to explain abiogenesis (we solved the origin of the universe a while ago if you didn't catch it yet). In the mean time you are an ignorant fool because "god did it" is easier for you to accept than "we don't know yet".
If you were truly honest, you would explain your god and how he is able to fill these gaps. If you can't explain god, if it is not falsifiable and testable, then it is invalid.
How is the process, why is the statistics. Why does our Universe exist? Because two particles chanced to meet. Why are we here? Because our species survived long enough for you to ask that question. And that is a better answer than a being that you cannot explain and is in itself contradictory. The Universe doesn't owe you an explanation and if there is no explanation, if it's just statistics, the why is just a pointless question. Fabricating a god because you are not satisfied that 'shit just happened to turn out well enough for you that you survived to ask the question' is disingenuous.
Why can't science touch it? Lawrence Krauss has a pretty good explanation on how something came from nothing. It is falsifiable and testable, if it is wrong, he will gladly accept that.
If you have blind faith that your god exists, then you have no reason to look any further for any of the answers. Gods stop all invention, curiosity and reason because if "god" did it (which one btw?) then that is all the reason you need. Even if we don't know right now, nature through science has a much better answer for us and that answer will be much more beautiful and reasonable than "god".
So why does the universe exist? Science tells us why (read an astrophysics text book) and it has very good reasoning and experimentation to back it up. Religions tell us 1000's of other answers which do not resemble either the scientific reason nor each other... so which one am I supposed to trust?
Even if all we had was a computer model that told us perhaps this is "why" the universe exists at all today, it's better than any religious answer I've ever heard. Religion is a business trying to safeguard a collection of fables and myths in order to sell you something that doesn't exist and won't help you in the slightest.
My last phone (Just upgraded) was a Galaxy S3, running the latest Android KitKat 4.4.4. While not supported by Samsung until recently, it was supported by 3rd Party ROM makers, something that Apple doesn't have. And the upgrades along the way made my phone better, smoother, better battery etc.
And it is amazing, the biggest "Pro Apple" response I have is "Consistency", meaning that Apple never really evolves. Then there is the greatest complaint about iOS8 is that it is "too different" and "Sluggish".
My newest phone was less than 1/2 the price of the iPhone6s, with better or comparable specs across the board, and has features that Android has had for two years (or more) that iOS is just now getting. Guess what, at that rate, I can have the one of the best Android phones, twice as often compared to if I bought Apple. If you spend $900 on a phone, you best be getting a very long life out of it, you almost have to.
Comparisons are a two way street. Which is why, when all else is said and done, Apples are equivalent to two year old Androids, and cost twice as much. But they have their walled garden .
In the 90's we (the tech-geeky people that had been on the Internet since the 80's) were telling everyone including the FCC that within a decade we would be streaming live and on-demand high-definition video over the Internet. At that point we were already doing it with audio (Net2Phone, SIP, MP3, Napster, Icecast,
The problem is that neither the FCC, Congress nor anyone that was able to put pressure on the ISP's made sure that the ISP's kept up with the advances in technology. I moved to where I live now almost a decade ago and I still have the same amount of bandwidth than I did back then. TWC/Comcast, AT&T and others haven't upgraded their base broadband speeds since the early 2000's. DSL in most of the US is stuck at ~2Mbps, Cable at 10Mbps. In the mean time the world has moved on to 100Mbps and 1Gbps being 'normal' for respectively DSL and Cable. Heck, these days I can get satellite at the same speeds and cost (longer delays though) than Cable and DSL.
This is actually why I like to drive a manual transmission, because it keeps me awake longer on a long-haul drive. This was something originally pointed out to me by a bus driver, who noted that the bus company refused to put automatic transmissions into their buses at the time explicitly to keep the minds of the drivers engaged in the operation of the vehicle instead of other distractions. I also find that a manual transmission give me both a better feel of the road conditions, and more options to apply when operating the vehicle too. The tactile feel of the gears in the transmission through the gear shift can actually give you quite a bit of information that an experienced driver can incorporate into their driving habits, something I definitely find missing in an automatic transmission.
As for the Google cars, the scary thing is that they are currently driving on the roads right now. Supposedly they've already racked up several million miles of travel on public roads. They have moved well past the test track stage. The main issues right now are legal and social, not engineering, although I agree with you that I'm not convinced they are ready for prime time yet.
Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags. -- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"
