At Oklahoma Christian University this summer, all faculty and all new students attending New Student Orientations will be issued new Apple MacBooks. Current students also will be given the opportunity to trade in their Windows PC laptop for an Apple MacBook. This MacBook mobile learning initiative and the reliable campus-wide wireless infrastructure will allow OC to continue to provide opportunities for anytime, anywhere access to media-rich distributed course content.
In addition to the Apple MacBooks, the University will offer students an option of either an Apple iPhone or iPod touch. The University is providing this option with the understanding that some students will not want to activate the iPhone with the associated service contract and costs, while others will prefer the iPhone and the added capabilities. The student will be responsible for the activation of the iPhone with the service provider.
More info here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oklahoma Christian University gives students opportunity, indeed.
My high school just re-did their entire tech. department with all new Mac Mini’s. The network is great, never breaks down (apple server), and everybody loves them! Before I went to school here, I wouldn’t have touched a mac with a 10-foot pole, but now I can’t STAND to be on a PC… I have now switched all our computers at my house out for Macs too!
Rather ironic really. On the one hand, the university is embracing cutting edge technology but on the other, they’ll be using it to tell the kids that the earth was made by some bloke in the sky just 6000 years ago, it was populated by two people and a talking snake and that later on, some guy built a boat and crammed two of every creature on it during a flood. And don’t even get me started on the physics of some guy coming back from the dead and floating up into the air.
Yeah, no kidding. Everyone knows we came out of a can of primordial bisque. We’re the highest evolved lentils in the universe.
Wow, some people…
Dirty Pierre, What’s your answer to where we all came from? And please, don’t tell me from monkeys or some “Big Bang”, millions of years ago, that is so foolish. I want concrete evidence of your beliefs and why we should trust you.
Ok. Before we start a flame war on evolution that has no relation to Macs on MDN, think on this.
In previous peevish postings, we have already more than amply demonstrated that Mac users/owners run the gamut from:
a) liberal to conservative
b) erudite to illiterate
c) wealthy to struggling
d) intelligent to moronic
No more evidence is required. So, please, let’s just drop this one and take it to some other web site.
Ok by me.
Kevin,
I don’t have the time or space to answer your questions here but pick up a copy of Richard Dawkin’s ‘The God Delusion’ and it’ll tell you all you need to know.
Students it is time to pray for forgiveness. Put your hand on the mighty mouse and say….
Just my $0.02
Using some good data, Dawkin’s writing otherwise misleads the reader and does not answer Kevin’s basic question from any rational position. While not agreeing with some of those who posit a “6,000” year old beginning, and not taking a stand one way or another on evolution, there can be no feasible alternative explanation for the beginnings of the universe without advancing that a God was responsible. The argument that, “I don’t know but it wasn’t God,” fully avoids the issue. As do most others, you fully avoided the crux of Kevin’s question.
MacLovin, good for you, best thing you could have ever done! Congrats
And as far as the other question, it all began with a spinning teapot. That’s all I know….
First Abilene Christian University
Then Oklahoma Christian
I’m sure Harding isn’t too far behind
(that was a shout out to both of the other CofC’ers reading this today.)
To Cleanup Pierre:
Then I have to ask: so who created God? And who created whoever created God? And who……… I think you get the picture.
Whenever this question is asked, an easy way out is usually taken i.e. “Well God is God – he has always existed”
If you you are going to put your faith in that sort of thinking you are better off believing in creation being an act of randomness – a big bang.
Dirty Pierre,
“Then I have to ask: so who created God? And who created whoever created God? And who……… I think you get the picture. “
I see a fundamental problem with that question. Why do you assume God had to be ‘created’? God is assumed to be outside the physical realm, so laws of Thermodynamics might or might not apply to Him.
To me, it’s Kelvin’s paradox that makes me believe in something outside of our universe. I can’t tell you that that something is God. But belief in Super-Strings, Oscillating Universes, and God all have the same single requirement -Belief in something you have no direct physical evidence of and will never have direct evidence of.
I for one choose to believe in God. Christians and Jesus make me happy.
I cannot argue with someone who freely admits that they have an unshakeable belief for something for which they also say they have no evidence. But consider this: when you use your Christian belief as an argument for the truth of your religion, does it ever occur to you that if you were born in India you would probably have an unshakeable belief in a very different religious mindset and would, in all probability, vehemently oppose the religious views you hold now.
As Mr Jobs and Apple have always urged us “Think different”
Dirty Pierre,
Actually it has occurred to me. If fact my life would be very different had I been born in India. Chances are I would probably also not be as big of a Macintosh fanboy nor would I have studied Physics in college nor would I hold to western philosophies about God and Science.
But for your information, I actually do not now vehemently oppose other world views. I do not vehemently oppose your world view, rather I respect it. I do however think you are just as delusional for your world view as you think I am for mine.
In answer to: “Then I have to ask: so who created God? And who created whoever created God?”, the only possible answer is that something or someone had to always exist. Something cannot otherwise be created out of nothing. The question is, what or who is that. Belief that non-intelligence or an inanimate object could begin creation of a universe requires even more of a leap of faith. For something to be able to happen randomly, you must assume that something is happening in the first place. Motion, for example. But there must be a First Cause in everything. An inanimate object or a Big Bang cannot be started without motion or a cause outside itself. There is no randomness when nothing is occurring. An intelligence would generally be required to set things in motion, even if it were to be starting a Big Bang. Logic dictates that God explains that far better than some always existing inanimate material. That God always existed is part of the definition of God. Some other religions don’t concern themselves with first things so discussion of such beliefs is on a later plane than is discussed here. The belief of such a God is not an exclusive Christian belief so other elements of Christianity are not involved in this basic premise. And an always existing God remains the only logical way to explain the origin of the universe. Randomly existing material, which you seem to propose as an alternative, does not.
Cleanup Pierre,
“But there must be a First Cause in everything”
I’m afraid we don’t know that. It seems logical, because our mind are designed to think in terms of cause and effect. (Why did that twig snap? Because there is a lion in the bushes.)
However, current physics has taught us that this is not actually the case. Rather Everything is actually random, and the best we can do is simply discuss things in terms of probability.
We the belief in God cannot be proven by “First Mover” theology. Quantum and Statistical Physics negates that theory.
To dallas and Cleanup Pierre-
We as humans must learn (or remember) that Time is a concept- an illusion and fabrication of man due to the observance of probabilities and the continual sequence of related and random events. Time doesn’t really exist. There is only now – forever.
Nothing happens in the past and nothing happens in the future – they don’t exist.
Man’s inability to grasp the infinite is cause for the idea of a “God being”. What if there is no beginning and no end – only the infinite?
Edge Over,
Uh, if time doesn’t really exist, how is it warped by gravity? Einstein settled the “Time is an illusion” debate quite a while ago.
Time is not an illusion. It is a real physical property just as length is, unless you think that length is also an illusion. If that is the case, I would again have to point out that both length and time are functions of velocity and energy.
Dallas, clearly you have access to information I don’t in Quantum and Statistical Physics. My deficiency in the proofs you suggest exist in those areas, if they are indeed proofs, does leave me with the logic that Random cannot happen on its own at the onset of a universe. Even behind a First Random, my deficiency would tell me, there must be a First Cause (or First Mover). I may agree that later in the existence of a universe, such may be possibilities as you suggest exist within Q&S;Physics. But it would appear to go against all logic that the very first event can be explained by principles of Physics. I would also suggest that such Q&S;Physics theories may not take into account such a First scenario. Naturally, I could be wrong and wish I could hear from you in a different forum since I would think that would be longer than may have here.
Edge Over, your brief summary of a concept of Time is succinct, well-said, and sensible. And, as you correctly point out, such is another “cause for the idea of a ‘God-being.'” On the other hand, to depart only slightly, I do remain open to alternate time or dimensional theories which may modify, but likely not invalidate, what you are saying.
“Time” is relative. There is no absolute time. There is only now and our relationship to predicted events that are happening now and what we believe will happen or has happened. Our measure of time is purely related to our relationship to observed, relative, predicted, probable or random events. That prediction is a concept – hence the idea of time.
I would also argue that the “time debate” is alive and kicking.
The existence of time would also indicate a beginning and end of existence – of which there is no proof of either.
Cleanup Pierre,
In quantum physics, the world can only be described in terms of Probability. We cannot know whether or not that particular carbon atom will decay, we can only say that it has a certain probability of decaying. Nothing ’causes’ the atom to decay. It just does.
Because we have that knowledge, we can no longer inductively assume that anything at all requires a First Mover. This would include a “Big Bang.”
Dallas, caught your response to Edge Over a bit late. Again, it is hard to discuss this on the plane you bring, but I will add my thought that, while Einstein did postulate Time manipulations, much of which has been supported by later events, it may not invalidate what Edge Over is saying, just modify it slightly. We are all still quite early in understanding of Time even taking into account Einstein’s work. I do think that your wording that Einstein “settled” the debate is overly broad and unscientific. Even if I agree that Time as an “illusion” may be better phrased, I understand Edge Over’s point nonetheless and believe it has validity. Even some future ability to manipulate Time, as an extension of Einstein’s theories, will likely not eliminate such thinking and support as further indication that God exists when taken as part of the whole. And, of course, a question must arise, especially if assuming Time is a physical property, as to who created Time. Or did Time always exist. All must still return to the concept that God remains the best answer.
Edge Over,
Time is certainly not a man made concept. If you travel 70 miles per hour for 1 hour, you will travel 70 miles. Period. There is no way to Perceive that in any other way. It doesn’t matter if you are a human, dog, or a proton. Time will continue on in the same way for everything. and it will slow down and speed up in the same way at the same place for everything. I don’t see how this is just a concept. Maybe in the vernacular sense, in that everything is a concept -“Peanut Butter” is a concept too. Time is just as real as Peanut Butter.
When you start into “who created time” you leave physics and enter philosophy or theology. That’s fine. I don’t know if time was created by God or if he is bound to it as well. Physics can’t say anything about that.
The point is, that time exists for us for sure. (Assuming there is no Descartian “Evil Genius” tricking us.)