I thought the identifier was the 15 or 16 digit number on the front of the card, and the authenticator was the three-to-four digit number on the back of the card (except in cases where a keypad is available, and then the identifier is the 15 or 16 digit number encoded on the mag strip and the authenticator is your 4 digit pin).

And that, actually, is a good point- that a successful religion *must* have some reason behind it. Observation and theorization based on human nature, is most of what theology really is. In a way it is misnamed. It isn't study of God. It is study of human reaction to God, and thus is a sub-branch of sociology to begin with.

It took a rational religion to create the scientific method. I'd suggest that it takes at least a reasonable religion to survive more than a few generations at all.

But I seem to have strayed from my original, which wasn't so much about religious theology being within the bounds of its own axioms, but science straying away from testable predictions and into fictional, non testable, conclusions. Others in this thread, however, have pointed out that's more "pop sci" than science, more media than actual experimentation. Including in the case of the original article, which was using the primary definition of a hologram (that is, an n+1 dimensional object encoded into n-dimensional space) as opposed to the popular definition of a hologram (a simulation of a n+1 dimensional object projected from an n-dimensional projector). Another good example of the later is Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene- complete science fiction analogy masquerading as science.

Consent was given by your mother when she had sex, except in cases of rape and incest.

Continuing consent is another issue. Say she decided not to consent to feeding you after birth, did she have a right to starve you?

I ask because I find many of the pro-choice arguments are not very well thought out.

So you'd agree with the current attempts to limit abortion to before 20 weeks, since that's scientifically proven pain-capable? Or maybe 8 weeks, which is detectable EEG and thus thought?

Likely because it would open a can of worms that would be hard to close. After all, I don't know anybody who skipped straight from conception to childhood, do you?

One of the more modern ones was the Roman Catholic Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae, which listed four specific predictions on what would happen in a culture that failed to respect life.

You may not accept the axioms, but the reasoning was sound, and within those axioms, all four items have indeed come true in the United States, at least.

I realize this example is a bit mundane, and really is no better than what many sociologists have also predicted, but I'm trying to point out that reason and religion are not necessarily enemies.

I had my mouse go bad on my old Amsterdam 1512C. It sucked because it used non standard ports for everything, keyboard, mouse, monitor... In order for me to fix the mouse to get Gem Desktop working again, I needed to solder the connection back together again.

I also had a really cheap $15.00 mouse on my 486 that had issues too. It used metal contact so they got bent out of place, I tried bending it back to normal, but it never quite worked the same.

My Sun Sparc Ultra 10, mouse (went to mechanical mouse, after a stint of optical mouse that needed a special mouse pad) Had some problem after 3 months. I got a replacement and it seemed to work fine after that.

After that I moved to optical mice/track pads.

We had an excuse to procrastinate before we had Wikipedia available.

FASCISM is to blame!

and just like calling a fetus not a person....

Isn't that precisely what modern pro-choicers also think? That different classes of persons should have different rights? The difference being that most aren't willing to call fetuses people....

Religions make accurate predictions within their axiomatic set- if they didn't, they wouldn't survive more than one generation (and in fact, many smaller cults *don't* survive the death of their founder, that's pretty much the difference between a cult of personality and an actual belief system- their predictions don't survive being tested). So I fail to see your difference. Science makes accurate predictions within its axiomatic set, and theories that don't make accurate predictions are thrown out. What is the difference between that, and the religious system that makes accurate predictions within its axiomatic set and calls inaccurate predictions heresy and throws them out?

Ah Ackbar, the true hero to end the empire.
Unlike Luke, who abandon his post and joined with the enemy.
Or Solo and Lieha who, just barely achieved their mission by turning a cloak and dagger mission to a full frontal assault, killing many civilians.

Ackbar, caught the trap quickly and professionally organized his troops to hold the line until he had the tactical advantage.