This has made me check my spam folder, and see that two of the three messages there aren't spam at all! I get v little spam, happily.
Articles I read lately say that it's much better to configure your own spam parameters. I, personally, use Eudora and the "junk mail" function. You send e-mails to the junk mailbox, and anything that looks similar to that e-mail gets put into the junk mailbox. Eudora then empties e-mails that're 30 days old from that box. It does generally cut down on the junk mail, provides a satisfying "screw you, spammers" and keeps the accidently putting friends e-mail into the spam box to a minimum.
Yeah, I've noticed some stuff like Slashdot "Comment Moderation" notices being labeled as Spam.
I'm not sure but I think Gmail "learns" a bit from what you label as spam...and the downside to label your own spam to train a filter is if you accidentally mislabel something it might start getting routed to the spambin...you really need to check it.
Sometimes I think I should stop by promiscuous forwarding, and just use one email address at one domain, but it's so hard to get everyone to switch to a new address...
So first we knock believers as know-it-alls; then we knock their humble recognition of mystery as a "cop-out"? Come on, man, which way is it going to be?
As for giving it the "old college try," what, eaxactly, do you think all these great theologians have been doing all these centuries?
FdS, you aren't going to force me to oversimplify the situation....the idea of "mystery" seems to be "well, we can't know this, partially because the answer is supernatural, and maybe God will reveal it, or not." Science says "these things are tough to find out, but they probably follow rules that maybe we can figure out, and they rules are likely consistent within our system (i.e. not supernatural) and let me see if I can come up with a testable and repeatable way of confirming or denying my best guess".
The "old college try" -- I think there's something much more subjective in what those great theologians have been doing that science struggles to free itself from.
Yes, I am probably suffering (but trying to get over) an over-reaction to "God said it, I believe it, That settles it" type thinking that I saw a lot of in my youth (from my church though not so much my minister parents.)
I welcome you to continue this dialog using the "Comments" link for any future day once this day's link has fallen from the frontpage, just so I don't miss your response. Just preface it with somthing like "Re: the previous discussion on religion vs science"