Philosophical Question - Amiguing

[psxphill]

In 2013, AmigaDOS is vastly superior to MSDOS on Windoze XP and Windows7.
 
In 2013, AmigaDOS is vastly superior to Linux DOS, BSD DOS, Unix DOS, etc.

I'm not sure what exactly you're comparing, if it's shells you're talking about then PowerShell on Windows is superior to the Amiga shell.
 
The Amiga lost it's superiority in the mid 1990's. There were too many compromises made to make it fast on a 68000, which ultimately held it back. I switched from Amiga to PC when Windows XP came out.
 
A Raspberry PI is faster than an Amiga. Anyone programming an Amiga today is doing it purely for nostalgia or fear of moving on.

[psxphill]

why always the negativity?

It's not a negative view point, it's a neutral view point. It just doesn't tie up with the overly positive view point that people seem to have.
 

Many developers who are left are programming on Windows or for embedded platforms and have "no fear of moving on".

I don't believe anyone who suggests that AmigaDOS is superior to every other operating system is seriously programming on any other platform. But I don't believe there is anybody making a living from programming the Amiga.
 
I can understand people programming for fun & limiting yourself to an ancient architecture makes the challenge even harder. I just don't get people trying to justify it in logical terms.

[psxphill]

it does not make the "challenge harder" because the system might be more complex but you have much better development environments than on any amiga-platform.

I don't think you read what I wrote. I was saying that it's more challenging to write Amiga software. Anything you can do on an Amiga in assembler you can do in C# on a modern PC and it's much easier to write the code and debug it.
 

"Bloated" here means much more overhead and they were programmed for resource-rich environments whereas AmigaOS runs on even limited systems.

Instead of bloated, you should use "feature rich". A lot of the overhead comes from features that everyone wants in AmigaOS/AROS that would completely break every piece of Amiga software ever and make it run much slower.
 

You can see on AROS 68k how hard it is to get even near the efficiency of AmigaOS 68k.

AROS 68k is slow because nobody has spent the time to make it fast. It would have helped if they'd had x86 & 68k versions on day one. Microsoft went through the same pain with Windows on ARM, which means that Windows 8 on x86 is faster than previous versions.

[psxphill]

Suppose we do have "souls". Then we have to answer, how does that work then? Are souls automatons? Or does your soul have a soul as well? See also Homunculus argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument

souls and homunculus are different arguments.
 
homunculus argument is that there is a tiny person inside looking at a screen. You only need to change the tiny person to a part of your brain taking nerve impulses and you're back on track.
 
A soul isn't a tiny person, however my belief is that what is generally considered your soul is just another part of your brain & when you're dead it ceases to exist.
 
I don't believe in multi-verses either.
 
All these ideas were introduced because they thought it made it easier to explain, however the one thing they do all have in common is they actually make it harder. God creating he universe is also a much more unlikely situation than the big bang happening on it's own, you have to brush aside logic completely to believe in God (likely/unlikely of course has no bearing on what actually happened).

[psxphill]

http://www.al-islam.org/nahj/ Read Sermon 1

I like the bit about "treated contemptuously the creation of clay".
 
And a real world example of begging the question (unlike when people usually mean raises the question).
 
"Therefore, after observing all that exists in the world and the regulated system of the entire creation no one can help concluding that there is a Creator for this world of diversities because existence cannot come out of non-existence, nor can existence sprout forth from nothingness"
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

[psxphill]

For instance, there is no intermediate structure between hair and feathers.
You have one or the other.

I actually think this will turn out to not be true.
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19422430
 
Having one or the other is like people generally only having one hair colour.
 
While god might have triggered the big bang, none of the large organised religions have dared throw away all their theories about how the universe was created in light of scientific evidence. Instead they have spent a long time trying to disprove science to show that their god exists (which is a logical fallacy but hey).
 
Science cannot disprove the possibility of a god, it can only blow huge holes in religious texts written by man. As the writers god is supposed to have been heavily involved in the creation of those texts then they were either deluded, liars or their god is a practical joker. You could argue that there has been misinterpretation, but I cannot believe that a god that influenced the writing of religion texts would have allowed that to happen.
 
But there could be a god that hasn't influenced any religions that created the visible universe. However this opens up even more questions than it answers as you then have to consider what else is there outside the visible universe. So while god might be the actual answer, it's a rather farfetched and inconvenient one (unless you are into blind faith or you're the one manipulating the masses).

[psxphill]

I've discussed this subject in great detail in the past right here on this very forum and so have some of the other Muslim members, so I'm not about to repeat myself again but refer you to the search function if you actually are interested in having your ignorance of our beliefs corrected.

There is a difference between being ignorant of someone's beliefs and not believing in them.
 
Some people have reinterpreted the Quran based on scientific discoveries, but why were Gods revelations to Muhammad based on the incorrect scientific beliefs of the time it was written?

[psxphill]

God could simply have been revealing the revelations in terms comprehensible to the prophet.

But why? The revelations were supposed to be giving knowledge about facts, twisting the facts to make them understandable & never following it up when scientific knowledge has caught up seems a little strange.
 
People who have out of body experiences and swear that they float to the top of the room and were looking down on what is in the room can never tell you what is on the top of cupboards. They can only describe what is visible from their body. There are chemical imbalances that can make you feel like you're disassociated from your body though.
 
"As an example of the value of anecdotes in suggesting directions for research, Dr. Penny Sartori placed playing cards in obvious places on top of operating room cabinets at a hospital in Wales in 2001, while she was working as a nurse, as part of a supervised experiment. Although she's a believer in the afterlife, and documented fifteen cases of reported out-of-body experiences by patients during her research, not one person ever reported seeing the playing cards or even knowing they were there."
 
The spiritual feeling you get by praying or singing in a church can also replicated at a football match.

[psxphill]

Maybe it won't if you take the rest of my post into account.

Not really. The Quran says the universe was created in six days.
That information came from God & he was trying to give us information we didn't have. Whether he said it was a week, a year, a billion years would be irrelevant. He just needed to give the actual number.
 
Science has shown that it took a lot longer than six days, so people have redefined what God meant as a day.
 
http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_33.html
 
Assuming God speaks to us in our language (how else could we understand him?) one would also expect him to use the same time measurements. A day/hour etc is a time measurement that we invented, suggesting that there is a universe day/hour etc that God didn't bother to mention would seem like an oversight.
 
However, for arguments sake he did use universe days instead of earth days. What other things could have been misunderstood? Wouldn't God have realised any mistakes that were made?
 
The conclusion on that page "Science has once again confirmed a fact revealed in the Qur'an 1,400 years ago." is incorrect. The "fact" revealed in the Quran was the universe was created in six days. Science hasn't confirmed that. There are scientific theories on the age of the universe that haven't been proved that when adjusted with another theory is sort of close. Similar to how Nostrodamus predictions can only be understood when misinterpreting them after an event has happened. http://listverse.com/2007/09/14/top-10-prophecies-of-nostradamus-debunked/

[psxphill]

It is written many times in the Qur'an and also narrated in the traditions of Prophet Muhammad(pbuh&hf) and his legitimate successors (The 12 Imams) that man was placed on Earth purely as it's vice-regent with the sole task of taking care of it.

I think we have a moral obligation to take care of it, it is in our interest to keep the environment comfortable for ourselves. Religion is a good vehicle for applying moral values to people.
 
But I don't believe that man was placed on earth as our evolution was based on sexual partner selection of other species and god doesn't control what we do.
 
We've not been around for very long in comparison to the rest of the earth, other species have come and gone and others have survived. We're not even the most complex http://www.skeptical-science.com/science/paris-japonica-complex-dna/ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/02.10/onion.html
 
For anyone that doesn't believe in evolution, research into fruit flies (which share a lot of DNA with man) shows how quickly mutations can occur http://www.orkin.com/flies/fruit-fly/fruit-fly-genetics/ http://www.indiana.edu/~oso/lessons/Genetics/Drosophila.html
 

If you are going to talk about which is "better" you're going to have to apply some sort of value system, and unless that value system is somehow objective, you are just explaining your opinion, not arguing with any sort of factual basis.

The value system exists, we live in it. Eating bugs isn't going to get you laid, so you're not going to have children. Keeping your DNA going is the only mark of success.

[psxphill]

What makes you think Islam is at odds with natural selection?

Are you saying your god just kept tinkering until he got something that he liked the look of and then stopped?
i.e. killed off people that looked funny with a landslide or something until the correct couples mated?
 

The Hebrew Bible (the Jewish religion) says literally "6 time periods"

No it doesn't say that literally as it wasn't written in English. Someone may have translated the original text as "6 time periods". We weren't around at the time, so god must have told us. You'd have thought if he was going to tell us how long it took, he might actually tell us in a way that we could actually know what it meant. Otherwise, why bother?
 
The millennium falcon making the kessel run in 12 parsecs has at least been resolved, because the ship can fly a shorter route than anyone else (George Lucas never claimed that a parsec was a unit of time, people assumed he did). It's a pity God hasn't paid a visit lately to clear up a few things. He appeared a lot more when the only entertainment people had was sitting around a fire re-telling stories they had heard.

[psxphill]

I've already posted a link previously in this thread to the wiki entry on the Shi'a Scholar Nadir al-Din al-Tusi who "discovered" the theory of Natural Selection 800yrs before Darwin claimed it as his own.
 
You are blinded by your own ignorance and I really don't know why I'm bothering to carry on talking to you.

Throwing insults means you lose. Why be hateful? You know that I don't believe in any religion invented by man and never will, no matter how long it's been going on or what their religious texts say. I understand that I can't change your mind & I don't particularly want to. I think it's important to have things you believe in and I wouldn't want to take that from you even if I could. However I do enjoy finding out about other peoples viewpoints.
 
Saying who came up with the theory of evolution doesn't answer my question. How did God influence our natural selection, did he aim for us or were we a mistake & how does it tie up with the Quran? If you can't have a civil conversation then there is no point.
 
I found this http://thedistortedreligion.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/the-quranic-concept-of-evolution-part-i-natural-selection-or-divine-will/ which kinda actually says that while the Quran says that evolution happened, it wasn't natural selection as it was god that controlled the process. I don't know how accurate the site is (it appears to be written by an atheist anyway), but if it's true then I would like to know how god did that.

[psxphill]

There are times when I really don't feel like I can take all the credit for my own work, times when I really can't account for where an idea came from, or when I seemed to know something that I had no earthly right to know.

It comes from your imagination & no divine intervention is required for that. If my thoughts are guided by god then he seems to be doing something different with me than he is with his believers.
 
The brain is complex and regularly does things without us being aware of it and can't necessarily comprehend how it does it.
 
The Hensel conjoined twins are pretty good at volleyball, despite each of their brains only being able to control one half of their body.
 
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2012/08/abby-and-brittany-hensel-5-things-you-should-know-about-the-conjoined-twins-from-tlcs-new-show.html
 
Now I find that pretty amazing.

[psxphill]

Oh does it I'm glad you know everything.
 
So do tell me, where does my imagination get it from?

At a fundamental level it's chemical releases caused by pattern matching.
 
Ideas that feel right match patterns that trigger chemicals that hit the pleasure sensors.
 
If you want to know how the brain works then there is plenty of information from the scientific community, not so much from the religious community.
 

Our physical bodies certainly are, but is that all there's to it?

There is no proof either way, most religions do require you to believe there is more to it.
 
Science isn't as bold as religion in an answer to that question. A scientific answer would be, does there need to be anything more for the system to work? Is what we consider a soul just the configuration of neurons in the brain?
 
Science can't prove there isn't a soul, isn't a god or that god doesn't communicate directly with a soul. A scientist will only ever offer proof for an alternative explanation. Religion requires you to believe in things with no proof.
 
There is very little different in a theist and an atheist. An atheist disbelieves in all religions, a theist disbelieves in all but one religion. I don't know what makes someone believe in one religion over others, when none of them offer proof. It seems to me that people fall in love with religion the same way they fall in love with people.

[psxphill]

That doesn't follow. Damage to the brain would only have no effect on personality if the brain played absolutely no part in things beyond mechanical coordination, which I don't think most people who believe in a soul are claiming.

I was under the impression that souls were autonomous as they can carry on existing after we are dead. No religion has provided any explanation of that though, so it is possible that your brain and soul could work together and when your brain died your soul goes off in some form of emergency mode.
 

Again, though, the problem with that idea is that a "soul" that exists within a biologically-deterministic flesh-and-blood creature doesn't fit the general definition of a soul at all, because it's still (theoretically) bound by biochemical determinism.

There is no general definition of soul. I googled definition of soul and it came back with:
 
 
1. The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
2. A person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.
 
 
The visible effects of a person's "soul" are what everyone can agree to, where that comes from is what is up for debate. Religion's don't own the word soul.
 
I believe the human "soul" is deterministic, it's just currently too impossibly complex to model it. The idea of the soul being separate came because they couldn't comprehend that anything in the human body could do something that complex, they didn't have digital watches then either though.