HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: zafar@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Syed Zafar Kazmi)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Sneezing
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:52:18 GMT
	<1992Jul29.140244.18132@news.unomaha.edu>
Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University
In-reply-to: trajan@cwis.unomaha.edu's message of 29 Jul 92 14:02:44 GMT


>>>>> On 29 Jul 92 14:02:44 GMT, trajan@cwis.unomaha.edu (Stephen McIntyre) said:

Stephen> First of all, why would birds created by man (if and when they ever do make
Stephen> them) be artificial?  They could/would be living, breathing creatures,
Stephen> made up of the same atomic and molecular materials that go into presently
Stephen> existing creatures.  Think of it as the vitamin should be thought of:
Stephen>yes, vitamins occur naturally in many things (both plants and animals);
Stephen> however, man can make /exactly/ the same thing-- you would not be able
Stephen> to tell the difference, say, between vitamin C as produced in nature
Stephen> and vitamin C as produced by man.  So what makes one vitamin more
Stephen> artificial than the other?  Please explain (because I'm tending to
Stephen>believe that your faith in a god leads you to differentiate, when there
Stephen> is no difference).

Excuse my language. I didn't mean to imply any difference, I was just trying 
to classify between the ones *made* by nature and the ones *made* by men.

Stephen> Secondly, by saying "it is going to take someone to create Artificial Birds"
Stephen> does not imply the necessity of a god.  The way I see it, all that man
Stephen> is doing is manipulating molecules to come up with the same material
            ^^^^^
Stephen> and processes which nature has already "built".
Stephen>

Note the marked verb. and what if "nature" is god? As you have said 
nature made birds originally. And in a previous post you agreed that
all the occurings/laws and functions of nature are not haphazard but
bound by a very neat ecosystem. (if one thing goes wrong, other things
are affected). Forget about the consciousness of the efforts of
this god, but couldn't we agree that since nature (whatever it is) has
made all these things around us (and us as well) then this could be
called god.

Regards

Zafar Kazmi
From: tpe36878@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Mr. Mensa )
Subject: Re: lighten up, people
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 04:19:10 GMT
Keywords: faith

mrl@st-andrews.ac.uk (  Michael Ladomery) writes:

	see my original post for the intro here....

>Just some friendly comments on the above:
>(i) Yes; God can be used as a palliative.
	No doubt, God (a God?) CAN be used as a palliative, but I
	cannot think of any Christian religion that believes in a
	God of this sort....can you?
>(ii) The alleged Flood is hardly a subtle way to do things;
>he doesn't zap non-believers but He allegedly condemns them
>to eternal damnation; strange thing for Love Himself to do;
	The alleged Flood, if it did happen (which most Christians do
	not believe it did, fyi), would not have been a subtle way of
	doing things. As for God condemning people to eternal
	damnation, it is not God who damns, but man himself. (Remember
	that I am speaking from a Catholic perspective here...if anyone 
	knows the beliefs of other Christian religions, feel free.)
	Now this is a paraphrase of how the comcept of eternal damnation
	has been explained to me:

		Because God loves man so much, He gave to us free
		will to do whatever we wish in life. There is no
		predestination--we have total free will.  Because He
		is omniscient, God knows full well what we will do
		with our free will, and yet He does not directly 
		intervene in our lives to change our actions. Further,
		because we have free will, we are also responsible
		for our actions, and when when we die, we will be sent
		either up escalator (to Heaven), down escalator (to Hell)
		or down the hall (to Limbo). Those in Heaven and Limbo, at
		the end of time, will all be raised up to spend all of
		eternity with their Creator...those in Hell are forever
		to stay there.

	Remember, this is a Catholic, and not necessarily all-encompassing
	Christian perspective.




			regards,
			thomas ehardt
			tpe36878@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
From: frazier@maxwell (Greg Frazier)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Sneezing
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:55:38 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

souissi@ec.ecn.purdue.edu (Ridha Souissi) writes:
: In article <graham.711589908@galois> graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews) writes:
: >Graham:
: >
: >A bird has higher complexity than an airplane?
: >
: 
: No doubt about it.  Wanna bet? even an insect is much more complex
: than a jumbo jet.  Man is able to construct an airplane, bute
: he cannot create a bird. He would fail miserably to do so.

A pretty sorry way to judge complexity, IMHO.  Yes, we are just now
achieving the technology necessary to manipulate genetics, but that
does not necessarily mean that the genetics itself is so much more
complicated.  I prefer the argument that the entire plans/schematics
for an airplain could be encoded within a single strand of bird
DNA as evidence of the bird's greater complexity.  If, indeed, the
schematics can be so encoded.  Of course, a bird can feed, repair
and reproduce itself, which a plane cannot, so there is good reason
for the extra complexity.

--


Greg Frazier	frazier@CS.UCLA.EDU	!{ucbvax,rutgers}!ucla-cs!frazier
From: silver@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (silver)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: 02/alt.atheism fre <cont>
Date: 25 Jul 92 22:27:10 GMT
Organization: The Tally Ho


>>In article <1992Jul23.035909.15984@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>>the universe contains some monstrously huge hidden computer, by monstrously
>>huge I mean each particle requires trillions of trillions of ... more
>>computing power than that available "inside" the universe.

>In article <39656@skye.dcs.ed.ac.uk> ss@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Scott Stuart) writes:
>Why do you think particles require such immense "computing power" to
>follow the rules of quantum physics?  Just because we require computational
>power to analyse what a system will do, does not mean that that system
>requires some sort of hidden computer telling it what it shoucd do next.
>I'll agree that it would be nice if the universe followed simple, elegant
>laws, but there is no guarantee that that is the case, and if you restrict
>the set plausible theories by that sort of unfounded and unnecessary 
>assumption, then you run the very real risk of being blind to the truth.

(a) It's true that it takes a great deal of mathematical complexity to describe
the behavior of quantum particles... but, then, they don't need the math to do
their thing... think of it outside of quantum mech for a moment, it requires
a lot of difficult differential equations to describe how gravity works...
pick something up, drop it... does nature do diff. eq. in real time? (not 
to mention all that real time ray tracing so you can see it)... no, it just
falls that way. (yah, this is just a paraphrase of part of what Scott said).

(b) who says quantum mechanical rules aren't simple? at the heart of things,
gravity is simple but requires a lot of math to work out... after reading
QED by Feynmann, I can't say I fully understand quantum mechanics, but I can
say that I have a grasp of some of the feeling behind how it works (rather,
how this theory describes how it works), and it's rather simple in operation,
just difficult in computation. 

--silver--                                     | "...Sloooow the plot down,
internet: silver@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu            | we'll scuttle the story
realitynet: silver Harloe@(512)/445-6087       | and run her aground..."
In the Village: Number Eight -- Be Seeing You! |        --MST3k/Mighty Jack



Newsgroups: alt.atheism,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.arabic
From: bes@cco.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Subject: Re: Words Feminists find Demeaning!
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:01:22 GMT


The idea of "one true belief" bothers Mr. Selim Guncer.  However,
from the firm and confident tone of his article it seemed that
he believed what he wrote to be one true belief.
From: ss@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Scott Stuart)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Existence of a god.
Summary: Natural selection works
Date: 23 Jul 92 09:19:42 GMT
Reply-To: ss@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Scott Stuart)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U

In article <1992Jul22.162708.3126@ducvax.auburn.edu> rezkmah@ducvax.auburn.edu writes:

>intervening at that point.  I can see the extremely high order and organization
>from the atomic level to that of the galaxy as pure and clearcut evidence for
>the existance of a creator.  They certainly do not suggest habhazardness, or
>do they ?!
>
>                                                             Thanks,
>                                                            M. A. Rezk
>
>N.B.  Looking for serious discussion, i.e., no sarcasm please.



There is not really a great deal of complexity on most levels.  
Atoms are reasonably simple, in fact, they are simple
enough that science attempts to analyse them in a strict mathematical way,
for really complex systems, that sort of mathematics becomes completely
intractable.  Nor is there a great deal of complexity in things like
crystals, or metal rods, or gases.  Sure, if you include the details of
the movements of all of the particles involved, things get quite 
complex, but that kind of detail does not have significant effects on the
outward behavior of the object.  Neither is there much complexity in a
solar system, just a bunch of balls orbiting around a big ball in the middle,
easy enough to deal with mathematically.  The real complexity comes into
play in living organisms.  It is certainly too much complexity to be
explained by randomness, or haphazardness.  It is not, however, to much
complexity to be accounted for by natural selection working for something
like 3 billion years.  The major problems people have in understanding
evolution (other than the ignorance thrust upon them my creationists in power
who fear the truth being taught) is that the brain is really designed to
comprehend immense spans of time which are necessary.  No one has ever found,
nor, I think, will they ever find, anything living which was too complex
to have reasonably evolved by the forces of natural selection.

scott
From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: contradictions ( was Re: Alt.Atheism Frequently Asked Questions
Keywords: FAQ, atheism
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 11:09:13 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

skinner@sp1.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner) writes:
> mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk> writes:
> >skinner@sp1.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner) writes:
> >> >But to get back to the point, am I to take it that you're claiming that
> >> >error-free transmission of God's word is incompatible with free will?
> >> No.  It's not incompatible, since everyone with free will could choose
> >> to transmit God's word error-free.  I claim that free will allows for
> >> the possibility of errors in the transmission.  We have the errors,
> >> and God's desire to preserve free will is an explanation for them.
> 
> >Sorry, bad phrasing.
> 
> >Are you claiming that if transmission of God's word is forced to be
> >error-free in any way, free will will be impossible?
> 
> No.  The claim quoted above is the claim I am making.

The claim quoted above concerns what is allowed by free will.  I'm asking you
what would be allowed given guaranteed accuracy of transmission of God's
word.  Your answer does not relate to my question.


mathew
-- 
Down, boy!  There's a good dogma.
From: che755v@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Interpreting the Qur'an (was Re: Words Feminists ...)
Date: 28 Jul 92 12:33:08 +1000
Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia

In article <graham.711939190@galois>
 graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews) writes:
>
>You are making a simple mistake here. To say that some
>interpretations stray from the true Islam and some don't is indeed
>true since if we have two interpretations of the same thing both
>cannot be right.

Is this necessarily true?  I can agree that only one of two CONTRADICTORY
interpretations is true but what about non-contradictory ones?

In article <1992Jul27.145725.8638@cco.caltech.edu>,
 bes@cco.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi) writes:
> You see, most of the Qur'an is easily understood by all or most Muslims
> in the same way.  The issue of different interpretations comes up with
> a fraction of the Qur'anic verses.  Your question is basically how can
> we tell which interpretation is correct.  The answer depends on which
> standard or method you use in arriving at the interpretation.  If the
> method is correct, then the interpretation is correct.  Then the question
> is how do you choose the method?  The answer is that there is a single
> criterion for choosing the standard or method:  The criterion is that the
> method is chosen in the way that satisfies the definition best, i.e. the
> method that allows us to understand what the true intention of the scripture
> is.  Now, obvisouly people will have different methods.  Some of them will
> be right and some of them will be wrong.

Graham is probably going to say this but you seem to have dug yourself the
same hole, just in a slightly different patch of ground.  It seems to me
that you now have something like:

true intention --> true definition --> true criterion --> true method
  --> true interpretation.

After all this you still have to be either God or Muhammed (sp?) to know
what the Qur'an teaches.

Peter D. Thomas
Centre for High Resolution Spectroscopy and Opto-Electronic Technology
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
From: denmckinnon@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Oh no, not again
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:21:34 GMT
Organization: Halls of Residence, Monash University

In article <1992Jul30.120707.5989@u.washington.edu> jeon@milton.u.washington.edu (Sangyong Jeon) writes:
  
(things deleted...)

>Think of A as an ultimate fortune teller.
>Let me ask this A whether I will go to hell or heaven.

>If A says either hell or heaven, my action has no influence on where I
>am going. Thus, even if I have free will, it is of no use.

>Suppose A says, that depends on your action now. Then, I should
>ask, what action will I take? If A says, there are several possible
>moves you can make, such, such and such.

>Then I should ask, well, do you know which one of those I'll make?

>Now suppose A says, no, I don't know which action you will take.
>Then A is not omniscient after all. If you can accept the free will
>plus the non-omniscient deity, fine. As long as free will is concerned,
>you are trouble free.

>To the also patient theists, would you now stop saying omniscinece and
>free will in the same sentence ?

>Jeon

I'm afraid that you haven't quite justified your position.  The theist still 
has recourse to the following:  he may deny that future propositions have a 
truth value NOW.  i.e. nothing is either true or false until it has happened.
Assuming that there is free will.  The fact that God cannot know a future 
free action (including his own) is not a restriction on his omnipotence, 
because he may still know everything that is logically possible to know.  
At any time, he knows the truth values of all propositions which actually 
have a truth value at that time.

So what you really need to show is that all future propositions must have 
a truth value now.

Neil.
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: ury@humus.cs.huji.ac.il (My Friend Of Misery)
Subject: Re: Existence of a god.
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 08:32:06 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.160354.198@doc.bmd.trw.com>, jbrown@doc.bmd.trw.com writes:

|> 
|> (Actually, it's not obvious that there isn't One.)
|> 

I think that is the religious ppl's problem. Similary, it's ain't obvious
that The Big Yello Tofsanoach is god. Or that earth was made by yello
cheese-made alians. It's not obvious that it's not true, isn't it?
maybe it's right? Maybe The Big Yello Tofsanoach created the world? Maybe
God exist? Maybe I win M$ in the lotto? Maybe. Being religious because of this
"Maybe"s is fool.
-- 
Ury Segal          | The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the 
ury@cs.huji.ac.il  | University or IBM, Digital, Apple, HP or anyone else.
Phone: 02-971187   | They are mine, LO MIN HAHEFKER, as Bialik once said.
From: danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR])
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Jesus Jokes
Date: 29 Jul 1992 23:56:31 GMT
Organization: 1-800-HAH-JOKE
NNTP-Posting-Host: earlybird

(John Dunkelberg) writes:

 Actually, the butterfly was jesus.  He was cruising around experiencing
 the lives of mortals when WHAM, he got cholorformed and stabbed with
 a mounting needle.  After discorporating and returning to the gates
 of heaven he met Peter, and his first words were:
 
 "Damn, crucified again!"

Which reminds me:

Anbody got any good jesus/religious jokes? All I can seem to remember
are some lame ones about jesus and moses at the golf course. . .


Dano
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: vdp@mayo.edu (Vinayak Dutt, Graduate Student (Biophysics), Med. Sci. 2-130, 4)
Subject: Re: Words Feminists find Demeaning!
Reply-To: vdp@mayo.edu
Organization: Mayo Foundation/Mayo Graduate School :Rochester, MN
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 12:40:45 GMT

In article 1618@cco.caltech.edu, bes@cco.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi) writes:
:In article <1992Jul27.145700.3200@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> locklin@henry.ece.cmu.edu (Scott Locklin) writes:

:
:One question I wondered about for some time was this:  Given the fact
:that women are opppressed in the U.S. as well (e.g. refer to statistics
:regarding rape, wife-beating, lack of equal pay for equal work, etc.), why
:is that Americans [and Westerners in general], shed rivers of crocodile
:tears for Muslim women while pushing the grave problems of women in their
:own countries under the rug?  I arrived at the conclusion that it is not
:the status of Muslim women that these people really care about.  They don't
:give a damn about Muslims, be they male or female.  All they care about
:is covering up their own problems and insecurities, easing their conscience
:about the miserable status of American (and Western) women, and making
:themselves feel better by putting down others. 

No I guess you are going overboard defending muslim states. The fact remains that
by *law* the women are equal in the western states. Where as in case of the
Islamic states they are not. Se for example in Pakistan, a woman's testimony is
not considered to be equal to that of a man  etc. Woman is Saudi Arabia are
*by law* not permitted to drive. And this is done in *the name of islam*. Even
though you might defend it claiming that is not *true* islam, its what seen to be
anyway.

Vinayak Dutt

Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews)
Subject: Re: Judgement
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 03:32:56 GMT

khan@davidsys.com writes:
>When a crime is committed, it must have violated
>one or both of the rights given below:
>1. The Rights of God over a human being.
>2. The Rights of other human beings over the said human being.
>...

How many times does it have to be said Khan, that we do not
want preaching here. Do we have to be more blunt?

graham

PS: can anyone tell me how to put Khan into my kill file (I
don't have one at present but ... )
--
Graham Matthews                 And it's true we are immune
Pure Math, Uni.Sydney, Oz       When fact is fiction and T.V. is reality
graham@maths.su.oz.au
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu (Gopal Agrawal)
Subject: Re: Words Feminists find Demeaning!
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 18:20:43 GMT

In article <1992Jul30.155352.21434@cco.caltech.edu> bes@cco.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi) writes:
>
>Another way in which it's wise for a woman to modify her lifestyle because
>of rape is the choice of dress.  Scanty dress might increase the likelihood
>of her being raped (depending on what the circumstances are).
>

I don't think scanty dress has anyhting to do with the high incidence of 
rape. Go to any beach here and you can see women lying around in Bikinis 
and rarely does anyone ogle at them. On the flip side of the coin, even 
a Burqa clad women is not safe from the street Romeos in India (& like 
wise I'm sure that applies to pakistan too). Its the mentality of the 
society that is responsible for the rapes. Most of the women here are 
raped on dates. I seriously doubt if women here go dating wearing only a 
bikini. Scanty dresses would definetely be a turn on back home since 
it is construed as 'she's asking for it' but not here in US. Rape incidence
here is high, but its not the dress code that's responsible. 

While I agree that women must take some steps to prevent themselves from
becoming too vulnerable, I would rather leave that choice to them than to
men as to how it should be done. Its rather like saying "Driving a car 
increases the probability of your dying earlier than if you remain a 
pedestrian. So you must not drive a car". However, we have all chosen 
to risk death and drive a car hoping at the same time that safer cars 
and roads will be invented. The same goes for most women here. They 
prefer the freedom to work/socialize/achieve their dreams etc. at the 
risk of increasing their chances of being molested hoping at the same 
time that safer males are one day produced in the society. 

Limiting womens freedoms has not helped improve the male mentality one
regards,

--   
   ______ ______ ______ ______ __  |\/\/\/|
    ____/  __  /  __  /  __  /  /  |  \  /|   LIFE'S COMPLEX - IT HAS 
   / __   /   /  /   /  /   /  /   | (o)(o)   REAL & IMAGINARY PARTS  
  /   /  /   /   ___/  __  /  /    C      _) 
_____/ _____/ __/   __/ __/ ______/ | \___|  
E-mail - gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu       |   /   All Std. Disclaimers apply.