Apple's 'Bliss' e-textbook project inspired by Al Gore's 'Our Choice' - Page 2

That is your opinion and I respect it as such although I disagree with it. This is the story of someone who was on the evolutionary side of things and did his own "thinking for himself" and found that there was scientific evidence that points to a creator. He saw it after he took the blinders off. But as I said earlier, if one's definition of science precludes the existence of a creator then no amount of evidence would convince such a person.

To me it's not that complicated. Look around. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that my car was designed by an engineer, even though I may not know anything about that engineer. Likewise there are too many moving parts that mesh together in creation for it to have been an accident or random occurance and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

Yeah I was equally surprised. Who'd av thunk it.

Pages can export to ePub but the results are not pretty, at least not for the book I designed. It was basically shredded beyond recognition. I'm looking for a tighter integration with Pages that cues you into how a document can be set up to work with the ePub format.

But once again we find that AI is really a political forum for Apple owners.

A rocket scientist would not just jump to a conclusion based on a hypothesis. I do not disagree that there are many wonders of the universe that 'could' be explained by the existence of a creator. The bible just doesn't happen to be one of them. Creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive.

If a creator wanted people to believe in the existace of a deity, inspiring humans to write the bible would have been at the very bottom of the list. It doesn't even take high school dropout to see that it is completely unbelievable except for the occasional verifiable anthropology record of early civilization.

Although completely boiler plate, the fact that your argument fails to mention any of the more ridiculous claims of the religious right, leads me to speculate that you are not all that convinced either. Otherwise you might be considered leaning towards blasphemy as you appear to be worshiping the creation rather than the creator.

Gore's book was released last year. There are 5 year-old videos of Steve Jobs railing against the textbook system.

I think what AI is thinking is that the tech specs of Gore's book perhaps influenced the project designers.

It will be a shame if the media runs with this. Apple's role in fixing education tomorrow is part of Steve's legacy.

Huh? Worshiping the creation rather than the creator? You lost me there and I don't even know how you reach that conclusion unless I don't fit your stereotype of what a Creationist should be. Although I do believe in the Bible, I'm not bringing it into the discussion at this point because I don't need a Bible to tell me that there was an intelligence that brought us and the world we live in into existence. As a matter of fact even the Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God and that his creation testifies to all people that he is, so again we should be able to get that much by simple observation. I can understand how people would question various religious systems in this world but I fail to see how anyone can take a look at all that is around us and say that there was nobody that was behind it all. It seems to me that we should all be able to at least agree on that point even if we may disagree on who the creator is or what he is like.

Blasphemy? No Blasphemy here. I don't think the folks on the "Religious Right" are wound nearly as tight as you make them out to be.

Correct.


I'm guessing this is not the place to discuss the scientific proof or otherwise of a currently popular mythology.

However if you seriously believe that the whole question of biological evolution can be solved by appealing to the rise of drug resistance in pathogens, then you have no idea of the complexities involved and the issues that many scientists (creation believing or otherwise) have with macroevolution. Antibiotic resistance was noted in bacteria just a few years after the discovery of penicillin and I know of no biological scientist (creation believing or otherwise) who is unaware of this. You need to find out what people believe if you are going to argue against them. Otherwise this amounts to little more than a straw man argument.


Funny, because your statement "pretty obvious" suggests that you think this is self-evident and needs no more support? There are many people that would disagree with you, myself included. I see much in the world about me that is consistent with a biblical view, and less that isn't. For myself more research is needed in particular areas but I'd never dismiss it out of hand as pretty obviously inconsistent with what's there.


I'm presuming that you would characterize yourself as knowing enough about creation and evolution to state that they are not mutually exclusive? This is a point of view held by some yes, but hardly one to be stated as a fact without some qualification that there are both many christians and non-christians who find that creation as outlined in the bible and biological macroevolution to be mutually exclusive in their estimation. In fact this is often a key point where many on both sides can agree.


Why would inspiring humans to write the bible have been at the very bottom of the list? Maybe just for you perhaps? For the many millions of bible-believing christians out there it was clearly enough....

And this is where if one wanted to, they could say you're becoming insulting and irrational using words like "high school dropout" (granted, many don't believe the bible), and sweeping generalizations such as "completely unbelievable". To say that the bible amounts to an "occasional verifiable anthropology record of early civilization" is not consistent with the reality where many university-educated archaeologists and scientists regard it as a very reliable historical tool, even some who would not call themselves christians. You're not arguing anymore - certainly not from a rational point of view anyway.


And what are you trying to say? It sounds like you're wanting to introduce the words "ridiculous claims of the religious right" for your own agenda, even though as you admit - his argument fails to mention them... Why do you mention them then? Since this is, as you say "speculation", it would have been better to have been left unsaid. Otherwise you could be accused of attempting to marginalize him through guilt by association and not sticking to the points at hand. It may well be that he believes those claims (maybe I do too but you haven't defined what they are so I wouldn't know). Either way it does nothing to advance your argument and is irrelevant if he hasn't mentioned them.

Why not bring it into the discussion? I want to hear you defend the talking snake and talking donkey, the parting of the Red Sea, the stoning to death of disobedient children and the raising of the dead, not to mention the resurrection of the messiah. That's all believable right?

Because I'm looking at the lowest common denominator of what people ought to be able to ascertain on their own. I know that not everybody believes the Bible and my point is that even if you take the Bible out of the picture that your own common sense ought to tell you that this world is no accident.

As incredible as the stories are that you referred to from the Bible, I've got one that tops those. There are supposedly enlightened and educated people who want me to believe that living organisms and a environment, thats workings go beyond our ability to comprehend, could have somehow come about on its own out of nothing. What is the likelihood that the computer that you are currently using could have happened on its own out of nothing? Creation is much more complex than a computer could possibly be. We understand computers but we don't understand all of creation. It's obvious to me that someone greater than we are put it here. Even the founders of this country used this argument, "We hold these truths to be "self-evident" that all men were created equal..." The truth is in front of you and is self-evident if you will let it speak to you.

You are a hieratic. The lowest common denominator has always been that you are a sinner and Jesus is your savior, offering everlasting life. If you try any other tact to evangelize the unbeliever you are outside of the approved doctrine. You need to visit your indoctrination representative for reprogramming.

And you are a bad speller.

You're obfuscating the difference between science and religion. Science clearly shows that things happen for a reason. Cause and effect. This is the result of man's inability to accept change and/or lose a pinnacle position of power on an issue. There are rules that govern psychical actions. Science doesn't know everything, and many hypothesis are wrong, but the goal is to find answers, not simply saying this must be so without the ability to question it.

Organized religion takes the easy way by claiming there is an intelligent design to what we don't understand. There are unverifiable stories that are passed from generation to generation that explain basic right and wrong, and general rules about keeping societies functioning, but they also come with a lot of what seems like filler material of magical things that go against the known laws of the universe. That doesn't mean that anything within a religion is wrong but it's not scientific in nature. It's designed to ignore what you know and instead to base the core of your existence on faith.

Often science is vilified because things that were canon are now undeniably in opposition to religion. The thing is real scientists don't care about how it affects a religion they care about the truth, and most scientists throughout history do seem to have a core faith.

Now do you really think that organisms can't and don't change despite the very real efforts by man in agriculture, animal husbandry and mapping of genomes. We understand these things quite well which is why evolution as a theory — not a hypothesis — is as undeniable a truth as the sun will rise tomorrow morning from the same side of the sky.

Ok my excuse is I am typing on an iPad but as a rebuttal is well ... You need to come up with something more substantive.

I don't know that resurrection is believable - but I and many other educated and non-educated people believe it happened.

Mate, there are many times in the gospels where the very people who follow Jesus, the disciples themselves, find it hard to believe that he rose from the dead.

The disciples wont believe Mary Magdalene when she tells them (Mark 16:11).
Thomas wont believe the other disciples when they tell him (John 20:24-25)

Thomas even says that, unless he sees the nail wounds in Jesus' hands and where the spear pierced his side he will never believe....

And when Jesus finally leaves them again after spending more than a month after rising from the dead with them (after the above incidents), some of the 11 disciples (so not just Thomas now, but more of them) still doubt (Matthew 28:17).

Say what you like about the writers of the gospels but at least they're honest in this respect.

You'll find little disagreement about whether miraculous events are "unbelievable" or otherwise from Christians. But whether something is believable or not has little to do with whether the event has actually occurred in the first place. So defending it is not going to make it any more believable for you....

How is any of that honest? I'm not saying it's dishonest but you have presented nothing that proves the writers were honest.

Your characterization of evangelism is ridiculous and I was answering one ridiculous point with another.

But I really don't need to say anything more, because I've already told you what I believe to be true. If you don't agree with what I'm saying then that is your choice. I have no desire to argue with anybody to get them to go against their own will. God doesn't work that way so I certainly shouldn't.

Curious how no one ever photographs any miracles now that we have cameras. Closest thing we have is a vague representation of jesus on a piece of toast. Is god on vacation because as much as he was involved with the biblical saints, he seems to have bailed on us in last few hundred years or so.

I mean honest as in being honest that these sort of events are hard to believe for people - even if they saw them with their own eyes. They don't try to portray the disciples as people who just accepted everything at face value and never doubted. No, they struggled with their doubts. Maybe there was a better word than "honest" to use but I wasn't saying more than that.

Does that make sense?

Oh, I know damned well what you were getting it. That's not being honest, that's writing. Fiction authors always have characters that have doubts and change their viewpoints. Change is part of a story. It adds drama. It's adds suspense. It endears the character to us because it makes them seem more human. That's not to say that what is written is not truthful but it is in no way proof of any honesty.

Yes that's an interesting thought. But you only have to look at all the explanations by people who disbelieve that the world trade centre bombings ever happened to realize that photographing or filming a miracle would not necessarily verify them for people who don't believe that they can occur in the first place....

Now I'm definitely not calling you one of those people. I just using it as an analogy that if you don't believe in something, sometimes no amount of evidence to the contrary can change that.

I'm guessing that both you and I know that the planes hit the world trade centre. I certainly saw the film and it seems pretty clear to my way of thinking but there are still those who wont believe and go into very technical details to explain how they could be faked. But seriously those guys are crackpots aren't they? I mean there are eyewitnesses who saw it.... There are people who lost family....

It's still instructional on just how far people are willing to go in their minds to disregard evidence.

I might be guilty of the same thing in being a Christian ha but I hope I'm not.

Ok, so you've brought up the wonderfully current idea that maybe the gospel writers were actually being devious in their writing. And given the amount of historical fiction around today it would appear plausible to a cursory glance.

But modern historical fiction is almost unheard of if you go back more than a few hundred years. It's essentially a modern invention. The idea of writing everyday incidents and meaningless details into an account just so you will be deceived into thinking its real and then accepting that someone turned water into wine or rose from the dead as a result is an idea that only we today can use to explain the gospels away.

There was a lot of spiritual writing and myth written down in the ancient world and the gospels don't fit that determination. Even luke says at the beginning of his gospel that he is essentially just collating various accounts so his mate can know the truth.... While you may disagree that the accounts are real, there is precious little evidence that these guys were attempting to appeal to people credulity on the basis that you are suggesting.

1) No I didn't.

2) No it's not.

Don't underestimate your iPad ... rick's argument looks pretty hieratic to me.

If it is that simple, perhaps you can explain where God's genetics lab is located and why he/she/it won't share his amazing knowledge and technologies with human geneticists who would just love to know how to cure the genetic diseases which your cruel 'intelligent designer' simply refuses to do. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I can certainly ask plenty of very inconvenient questions like this. So if you don't buzz off and leave this thread to the discussion of interactive textbooks, I will embarrass you with a few more similarly inconvenient questions.

Then,

1) what were you saying and why?

2) why not?

So you've never read Ovid?

No I haven't, and I'll admit that, being mainly science educated myself, if you are at all classically trained you will know far more than me in this area, however I did not say unheard of - I said almost unheard of, which I believe to be the case. I am seriously however open to instruction if you have a large list...

What makes you think that the vast majority of Christians are told to accept stuff without the ability to question it? Talk about obfuscation! This makes for a fine story for those who believe that being a Christian is akin to believing in fairy tales but has little bearing on reality. Not only that, but I have never heard a minister say you must accept something and never question it. And I have been to many churches and heard many sermons. Maybe you have heard them but this sounds like a myth to me. Can you back this up?


Such a paternalistic and patronizing view of organized religion. Again no doubt it's a helpful mantra to repeat for those who want nothing to do with that organized religion. Plus it's not the easy way out. You get abused as being unintelligent by others in western countries if you believe, and history is replete with people who have died for their belief in Jesus. The easy way would be to say that you can believe in whatever you want as long as it's true for you. Easy way indeed.
The idea that organized religion is the outworking of the primitive mind's response to the unknown doesn't square with what I've read in the Bible or the historical movement of Christianity.


I don't know what religion you're talking about but this isn't true for Christianity. The most you can say is that Christianity says that you can't always trust what you know and you should question your motives, but to say that it's "designed to ignore what you know" is false. Where did people get this idea that faith means leaving your brain at the doorstep? I don't get it. I've never seen this myself in all my years of being a Christian.



Often? Not in my experience. I am science trained - I am back at university after years of being a science teacher, studying further in bioinformatics, genetics and biochemistry and I have never been vilified by religion. I guess it may happen but not in my experience.


You sound very religious and absolute in your statement that evolution as a theory is undeniable truth And I'd be careful in using the intelligent efforts of man to back up a theory of unintelligent chance events.
Plus, no scientist christian or otherwise, denies that change occurs. You are obfuscating the difference between change due to mixing, matching, deleting (through mutation) and duplicating of information already present in a genome and change due to the build up of information from a place where there was none to begin with. These are two very different things. One has been observed to occur all the time. I'm yet to hear of the second occurring.

IMHO, "artists" who can't learn how to use what is currently the tools of their trade, be it stonecutting for cathedral-building or programming foriOS, need to be removed from the "art" field. Those "people" are suited to luxury salons talking, champagne drinking... not to serious creative processes.

I believe in a Da Vinci (not the code, the guy...) world where a great painter is also a chemist and an engineer (true of Rembrandt too...), where a great designer (think Steve Jobs) actually has an active hand in the patenting process of his company.

"I'm an artist, I wanna creaaaate from my guuuts, I'm not bothering with the tiny details of pigments, chemicals or code". Yeah, right. You mean you're a lazy ass.

"We still need the programmers/chemists/technicals". Yeah. Always will if you're a true creative, and actually need to understand the process. The Treaty of Color can only be written by Da Vinci or Goethe.

Taken to its logical extension, you are asserting that the creatives should be forced to render their art by putting together ones and zeros for the ARM and Intel processors -- or maybe designing and constructing the silicon chips, themselves.

I keep searching the MAS for iBooks, but it's not up yet (if it's going to be).

It's so refreshing to read a thread here about the almighty creator that isn't about Steve Jobs.

I saw it as humorous from the first few lines. I think if it got derailed it was by those that started bashing Gore because of the content of the book. After that there was only spotty talk about the merits of epub versus Push Pop's use of native Cocoa versus the difficulty of using web publishing tools (PHP, JS, CSS, Ajax, etc).

It was a joke -- clearly so with some looking for a fight anytime AlGore is mentioned. Like his views or not, believe his science quotes or not, the product that was produced was a fantastic approach to making publishing hit a higher mark in both production and consumption.

And, BTW I laughed my as off when I read it!

I didn't buzz off to avoid embarrassment but I do have to sleep some time. The thing that is simple is the truth that someone put this all here, there had to be a designer. That does not mean that life is simple or that there aren't problems. Maybe the problems are the results of the choices of people who were given free will to do good or evil. If we are given the freedom to choose then we will certainly reap the results of those choices and those results can be passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it's not the creator who is the one who is "cruel."

It isn't. iBooks Author is for OS X. iBooks is for iPad/iPhone and the textbooks are iPad-only.

I never said that things can not or should not be questioned, indeed they should. Even the Bible says that we should test all things and not just believe anything that comes down the pike. I don't believe God has a problem with honest questions. To me it's not a question of science or religion but of truth. If a thing is true then it is true whether it was discovered by science or revealed by God.

You point about cause and effect is what I'm saying about the world we live in. When you see design in something then logic would tell you that there must have been a designer. I realize that there are different ideas about how it all came about but I think the most plausible explanation is that there is someone who created it.

Wow what a load of ideological crap which lacks ANY scientific basis whatsoever! Are you suggesting that a benevolent 'designer' causes specific mutations leading to congenital genetic disease being propagated as punishment for specific sins of one's ancestors? Perhaps you have a table which says which sins cause which genetic disorders? Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders can be cured by specific acts, like prayer or giving all your money to some celebrity church leader? Perhaps you have a table which says which 'good acts' cure which genetic disorders?

What a con! What is the scientific evidence for this, and what is the suggested mechanism that causes acts of 'free will' to cause specific genetic mutations? And people like you get to decide who will be the next President of the USA? May your God, or any god for that matter, save the rest of the world from ignorant fools like you. Now go back to sleep!

I tried to limit my prior posts merely to the idea of the existence of God based on a cause and effect argument related to the complexity of the creation. But since you want to discuss the question of suffering then I'll need to go into some theology. Ultimatley all evil and disease came from the fall in the Garden of Eden because when sin entered the world it brought a curse on all humankind. Before the fall, the scripture says that all creation was very good, there was no suffering. When our first parents sinned then that affected all of their offspring, i.e. the whole race. This is what I was referring to when I talked about the problems coming from people who were given the choice to do good or evil. Humans by nature have been tainted ever since the fall in the garden, which means we have good and evil within us. We can choose to do good but none of us are without sin.

The result of all of that is that we now live in a world that is full of unjust suffering. Think about it. Is there starvation in the world because the earth can't produce enough food to sustain the population or is there starvation in the world because some people oppress others and keep them from the resources they need? Or refuse to help those in need? All of the genectic defects that you refer to, and even worse than that, are the result of sin entering the world through our first parents. However the problem is much deeper than genetics but strkes at the very heart of our essence which is our soul. The problem of evil and suffering will require something bigger than science to resolve. The core cause of evil and suffering lies in the heart (in the spiritual sense) of humans. We can not fix the evil that is within us by our own goodness, resolve, or scientific knowledge.

You say that God refuses to do anything about it but he has done something about it. God sent Christ died to redeem us from the curse brought about by the fall. That does not mean that those who believe in God will not suffer in this life, because eveybody suffers. But it does mean that he is with them through their sufferings and that they can begin to reverse the effects of sin by inviting God to live in them. They also have the hope of something better beyond this life.

God invites us all to get a new heart and a new life by putting our faith and trust in him. Science can not fix this problem. The problem I'm talking about is not just the physical diseases and such that we deal with in this world. Yes science has accomplished wonderful things in that realm. But the problem I'm talking about is the root of all human suffering; which was the unleashing of sin in this world and it's effects on the human soul. God is the only one who is able to give us the ultimate solution to the suffering in this life.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.

I just can't wait to see how this fiction gets presented in an interactive textbook, or interactive Bible! Particularly the bit where it explains how that event in the 'Garden of Eden' caused all the genetic mutations which now produce nasty diseases like cystic fibrosis and cancer, even in people who existed on other continents well before Adam was 'created' from dust and Eve was created from one of his ribs. By the way, that was a neat bit of chemistry and human genetics - DNA and proteins from silicon dioxide, and replacing all the Y-chromosomes in Adam's rib with extra X-chromosomes! That should be easy to explain with interactive graphics - pity it can't be explained with 21st Century science?

Perhaps the chapter on the creation of the universe in '7 days' will be equally illuminating? Or the one on Noah's flood will explain where all the water came from and then went to? Then maybe there will be the chapter on angels, the location of the gates of heaven, and the tooth fairy. And the one that explains how drug resistant bacteria get created by the sadistic (but intelligent) designer just to keep us all in fear and suffering, and believing in your religious propaganda. Is it any wonder that America now rates 32nd in the world on the basis of scientific knowledge, and has now almost completely lost credibility in an increasing well educated world?