Reaper

Yeah, ok, I realize that I overreacted, fair enough. ================================= To be honest, I did actually think about standing in line for it to see what would happen if I asked questions that they would never be able to answer (such as what is the cure for cancer) .

Aren't you guys here kinda over-reacting a bit? As silly as the resolution is, it otherwise seems to me that the statements in there are just that, a bunch of statements. One intended to endorse the millions of Christians out there. So what? And for the record, the first amendment states that the government shall not make a LAW respecting the establishment of a religion: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Politicians, senators, representatives, presidents, and regular people for that matter can make any statement they want about it. Whether the comments are positive or negative makes no difference, and whether this is a bad or good thing is entirely subjective. Indeed, this sort of thing happens all the time where ever you go and on all sides of the political spectrum, and not all of them are directed toward Christians. I agree. The wording on that point isn't that great and does have the potential to being used for manipulation. But I'm pretty certain that most people out there don't really mind. ============================================================================================= Now back to my earlier stance: Tell me, would you guys still be offended if they had made a statement intended to endorse all the Atheists rather than Christians out there?

Thanks for being more clear then. I think the answer to this is one of those "it depends" sort of thing. While submission to the group does obviously bring in some advantages (such as protection from predators), I'm not so sure if it was the predominant trait. To me, its a bit like asking whether if red hair or blonde hair yields a better reproductive success. I'm pretty certain that rationality did play a huge part in our evolution. After all, certain basic technologies such as fire manipulation and stone tools predate modern humans by hundreds of thousands of years. I think it has much more to do with the fact that most people out there don't have the capability to distinguish B.S. from sound science (or their skills are otherwise inadequate), along with the other reasons that I listed much earlier in post 23. That, and the human brain is very gullible. You should watch this video, it offers some good insight as to why people believe in crazy things: And, it does include a talk about cognitive biases and how they affect our thinking, even if they are unintentional....

Nebula are mostly gray or black if you look at it with the naked eye, and some are invisible. For example, try looking at the Orion Nebula, which is gray to the naked eye. But yes, you are right that the "colors" are just artificial, so that we can detect or analyse them much better. If we were to fly in one, it depends on the color of it. I suspect it will probably be pitch black (to our eyes anyway) if you go in too deep, unless you go near a collapsing mass.

This assumes that religion is inherently irrational though. While today's dominant religions may be more or less far removed from reality, prehistoric religions were much different. Paleontological and anthropological studies indicate that in the distant past the religions were much more animalistic and/or related to the environment around them. Indeed, you can see this in the beliefs of indiginous populations all around the world, ranging from the tribes in Africa to Alborigines to Native Americans. So its easy to see how they could have developed in the distant past. And second, diverging from the group wouldn't have led to an instant dead end. If the person in question was clever enough he could move up the ranks and become one of the elite, knocking out the current tribal leader and therefore increasing his/her own reproductive success. Likewise, those who diverged from the group might have developed followers, or found like-minded people in neighboring tribes in more densely populated areas. This behavior is observed in other primates and some other social animals. Or, if their creative and rational thinking did lead to some benefit for the tribe, even if it doesn't diverge from the ideals of the group, it would have boosted their reproductive success. And even if rationality and creativity and critical thinking offered only a slight advantage, that still would have been enough to wipe out anyone else who didn't have that in a very short amount of time. So to answer your question, it would seem that rationality is indeed more successful even though it may have only offered a slight advantage. As time progressed, creativity and rationality of course became more and more important. In today's world, rationality and critical thinking is vital if our species is to survive at all.... No, read the above post. Just because it was done in groups doesn't mean that rationality and the ability to use valid data is non-existent or were suspended. After all, many of our projects, such as ecological restoration or the International Space Station are done in groups. Very large ones at that. But none of those projects are religious in nature, nor were the groupings, and both require the group to have creativity and be much more insightful. The same principle can be applied to hunting or tribal alliances too, if speaking in the context of prehistoric times. Well, I do agree with some of this, that it was partly of our tendancy toward social grouping. But I never disputed that though. But, as I pointed out before, disassociating from the group did not necessarily lead to decreased chances of offspring. Well, yes I did say that, but again read the above about rational data. I wasn't necessarily attacking your creativity in general, but if you felt that way then I apologize. I was just saying not to flatter yourself. Given your additude with religious beliefs in general, what I was saying is that, that sort of hypothesis was...predictable. To be creative means to develop a unique or a uncommon idea. For example, the ideas in special and general relativity can be considered creative because the principles behind it were created by people who were taught about ether and the idea of a clockwork, absolute universe. Your hypothesis however appears to be based on your (unsubstantiated) beliefs about religion or people who are religious. Not that its a bad thing, but its something that wasn't that uncommon by like minded individuals, religious or otherwise. Well, I'm sure that people who get lamblasted on American Idol felt the same way too>.

I wonder if atomikpsycho has epilepsy (SEIZURE WARNING!)?

Not so sure about that. I'm pretty sure that those who did actually pursue valid data had a better chance at survival than those who did not. Otherwise, how could we have developed agriculture and astronomy back in the stone ages. Or technological advances for that matter (e.g. Better spears, planning, construction, etc). I think religion evolved directly out of the need to feel connected to the natural world, and to more easily give themselves the belief that they had some significance to the universe around them. Those who believed that would most certainly have a much better chance of survival than groups who did not. Also, religion and spirituality can serve as a powerful motivation and a way to help people to cooperate much more and bind them into groups. That, and combined with the fact that back in the hunter gatherer days they knew so little about the world (and information transfer was virtually non-existent), so it is not inherently irrational. Well, not to upset you or anything, but given your additude around religious beliefs I don't think that post had much creativity in it. It sounds a little bit more like cognitive dissonance.

Fred, will you just drop it and cut out all of the "does such and such have a purpose/religious rant/nonsense"? The conclusions are all subjective, not a lot of people want to argue about it, and in all honesty nobody really cares. Also, you don't seem to know what you are talking about, and you keep redefining definitions.

Well, actually, I don't know how many people went there in total. So you really can't draw that particular conclusion, which is part of my concern. Second, the fact that they invested resources and time in the first place. All I saw was a large line at any given point in time the event was taking place. Maybe, but then surveys or observations of any kind only sample a small portion of a population (whether by town, nation, school, ecosystem, etc). By your logic you would have to discredit them too. Now that's not quite a valid conclusion to come to . If anything, what it does a good job doing is showing how much are likely to believe in BS. The entire population doesn't necessarily have to be involved. =================================================== Call it a rant if you will, but the reason I posted it up here is because it seems to me that it validates the statistics I've read about regarding belief in BS.

I don't know about that. I'm perfectly aware that more than half the student body are only in these universities just because they have lots of money. yeah, I'm beginning to find that out . First semester alone and I'm already beginning to see a fair number of dropouts, alcoholics and crack-addicts. I'm pretty certain that some of them just did it for entertainment value, but still, seeing a large line for it was quite unsettling.

Well, no, I don't think so. My custom GUI I made with Object Desktop does much more than Vista. I just don't find Vista impressive, thats all. Not only that, I can disable features anytime I want if it starts to become a drain on resources. ================================ Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Most of the complaints usually come from people who regularly download crap and/or play lots of video games, so there you go. They don't seem to value the use of, or know how to properly use, an external hard-drive either.

I had assumed otherwise. ==================================== Vista is functional if you only use it for basic stuff such as Microsoft office or just playing CD's, I'm just speaking from a different perspective. For what I have to do with my computer for both work and play (and no, not just games), Vista is not optimal. Which boxes were you looking at, mine uses less than 32.

I understand that, that's why I don't play video games unless it is docked. What I mean by "doing less for more" is that it consumes more resources without adding to functionality, sorry if it wasn't clear. I guess, technically, yes, adding better graphics makes it do more, but it doesn't add to functionality.

You only need to look at the hardware. It has, as they say, the latest and the greatest stuff. And his battery is about 56W/hrs. Of course, it is a little difficult to monitor their computer habits, but even when you set the screen lighting to its lowest setting you can still only get about 2 hrs on it, depending on the laptop. I know of some people who bought their laptops and replaced Vista with XP and their laptop lasts quite a bit longer. But, they still can't beat mine though:cool:, mine can last more than 4 hours. ===================================== And besides, Vista is just slower in general because it requires so much memory to operate, and about 40 different processes going on at any one time. And I hear that its security features can be quite annoying. He doesn't know because he doesn't own Vista. Anyways, this is Vista in a nutshell: It's slower, has lots of bugs, uses up a lot of memory, a lot of RAM (about 1 GB for optimal performance, but some of my friends tell me that you really need 2), a lot of video card space, battery power, and system processes. It's harder to use than XP because the UI isn't nearly as intuitive (aside from being buggy and annoying at times since it asks you "are you sure" EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to do something useful with it). Its security system is rather annoying. And anything else that can go wrong with it actually does. Basically, it does a bunch of things that are either detrimental, wasteful, or just otherwise unnecessary to do basic functions. It looks nice, but I'd rather have one that works properly than one that has sacrifices some of its functionality for gimmicks. And, for all the memory it uses up, its features and graphics just aren't really that impressive. My custom UI does a lot more (including making it look really cool) for far less resources and memory. In short, its total crap. I, and a bunch of people here, don't recommend Vista. Just use XP until they come out with (hopefully) a better OS in 2010. Just having it sit idly consumes more resources than playing a FPS game.

One example: it uses up substantially more space on your video card for the sake of graphics and aesthetics. You also need a high end video card to even run Vista. On the other hand, one can order Object Desktop (which I have), which gives the UI and the OS itself MORE features than vista comes with, and it doesn't take up nearly as much memory on your hard drive AND your video card. Example 2: I have a friend who has vista on his laptop, and from the looks of it, Vista also eats up battery power rather quickly (my laptop can last on batteries more than twice as long as his can, while at the same time my laptop is much older and his battery can store more power).

Ok, but vegetable oil isn't that much better. Especially since its hydrogenated and wide open to any pathogens.

You guys might find this article interesting, its about recent findings in early brain development for autistic children, by neuron.org. Pretty much, they mapped the brain in early stages of development and compared them to adults: http://www.neuron.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0896627307007775

Ok, so, supposedly I go to a university that is specifically geared for science and technology and whatnot. Mind you, it is one of the best ones in the nation for it, ranked among the top 100. Well, anyways, today they had some winter festival or something, and they did have some good stuff like games, etc. But, it was in there where I saw the abomination: A psychic. Yes, that's right, for this event they actually wasted their money on having a psychic come to a university that specializes science and technology. And even worse, there was a big line for this quack. While I'm pretty sure there were some people that just went to him just so they could poke some fun, I can't help but feel that the majority of them were actually there to get him to predict the future, to get advice, and do all other sorts of nonsense. Can you believe that?!!! What on Earth were these people thinking!!?? I had believed that most people here in this particular school (given that it is ranked in the top 100 universities and is very selective) were at least knowledgeable in the art of baloney detection and had some ability at rational thought, but I think this validates the horrifying statistics that I've read about that were conducted on undergrad students and the general public (e.g. some 25-35% believe in witches if I remember correctly). This event was organized by a group of students rather than faculty, so this abomination can be forgiven, at least for now. But sometimes it makes me wonder, just how many well educated, or moderately educated people believe in total nonsense??? How could they have sunk so low as to do that??? To waste school funds that could have been used on, well, more worthwhile things such as science. Or, why was this even approved?? What is this world coming to, where in even prestigious universities and tech schools you see them infested with the likes of astrologers, psychics, and other pseudo-scientific nonsense...

Thanks for your help

I hate idioms. Period

Only in the later chapters and verses, and even then its quite a bit of a stretch. The bible is just simply too vague to be used as a historical apparatus. It is usually only used to analyse the viewpoints of early Christian persecution, and some specific details of Roman society. And a large part of the old testament (especially the Genesis) was ripped right off of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology.

I hear that there was more meat in french fries than in the burger itself.... McDonalds is disgusting. Yes, initially it tastes good but it doesn't really give you a good feeling afterwards... Why anybody likes to eat low grade meat and food dipped in inadaquately sanitized factory sludge is beyond me....

Well, if you really want to get a mess, the thing to ask yourself before is, was that really your choice. I hear that corporations often require marketing advertisers to be quite knowledgeable in psychology. It's the same with politics, on both spectrums. You may not like it, but, well, were they really giving you 'free" choice, or were they abusing theirs to sell their rather unhealthy and/or hazardous mechandise?....

What is it with you political types and the insistence that there are only 2 sides? Why not three, or four, or better yet none at all?

Define "well". Doing well in high school nowadays doesn't necessarily require you to actually learn anything ...... Most everything I had learned did not come from high school. I agree with iNow. pretty much our school system is a little more than a giant cookie cutter factory, so to speak. All that was demanded of me was to remember lots of things, and then quickly forget them afterwards.