Slashdot Mirror

Objectively morally wrong? No, there is no such thing as objective morality. Subjectively, I have my own personal morality, but 'sin' is a strictly religious concept with connotations that I absolutely do not recognize.

How can this be? Surely you won't mind if I say that because I have such awesome genes, it's my duty to help the species by spreading them, and I go and rape whomever I like, then. After all, it's not morally wrong according to me. (And if you say the babies may not appear or survive or be raised well, perhaps I should kidnap attractive women and keep them as concubines. Anyway, that's what ancient kings did, so it must be okay.)

I can appreciate if you have your own personal ethical code, but you have to be able to say there are certain actions that are wrong for anyone to do.

Original sin is bullshit. I am not responsible for the crimes of my ancestors.

Even ignoring the fact that half of the "catechism" of the Roman Catholic Church is a holdover from exploitative doctrines of the Dark Ages, original sin through Adam, as referenced in the Bible is used in parallel with original forgiveness through Jesus. It allows people to acknowledge the truth that humans are not inherently perfect creatures, and then supposes that this imperfection inherited through Adam. But if this imperfection could inherit to the physical descendants of Adam, then salvation could inherit through the adoptive children of God. Recognizing either original sin or universal eligibility for salvation, without recognizing the other, is incomplete. So no, you are not responsible for the crimes of your ancestors. You ought to be responsible for your inherent sinfulness, but God - who created the concept of sin - has himself absolved you of that responsibility. (Of course you are responsible for your own actual sins, but not for original sin.)

Sin places little or no emphasis on immo[r]al inactions. See the Isaac Asimov short story Little Lost Robot for details as to why this is an extremely bad thing.

I'm not sure why you say that. In the Bible there are plenty of examples of inaction being considered sin. The most obvious is the story of David lusting after Bathsheba, sending her husband Uriah into the forefront of the line, and ordering the commander not to aid him in order that he may be killed. Another is God killing the priest Eli as well as his sons because his sons (though not himself) were godless and desecrating the sacrifices. "I'm bringing judgment on his family for good. He knew what was going on, that his sons were desecrating God's name and God's place, and he did nothing to stop them." (1 Samuel 3:13, The Message translation). If there's a sin of omission, this is the perfect example.

Most Christians hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and created everything in existence. If this is true, then every sin ever committed is a direct foreseeable result of his actions, because he knew exactly what was going to happen with the fruit and the snake before he even bothered breathing life into Adam.

As you said, i'm not going to mention the "eternal mystery" phrase. Even the Presbyterian doctrine of the elect doesn't make much sense to me. (If you're elect, why should you want to do good? Either you will or you won't. And if there's no free will there's no responsibility for sin.) But imagine that you were creating, say, a video game with extremely advanced AI - sentient enough to understand that they are created AIs. Wouldn't you somewhat want them to know of your existence? And if you were so proud of your AIs, would you program them to acknowledge your existence, or hope that they (i.e., the sentient algorithm) would discover you themselves? If they're forced to acknowledge and worship you, then there's no honesty in the worship now, is there?

You

Free software is destroying american jobs. Why do you hate america?

Because America is known to harbor bears, godless killing machines without a soul that are a threat to free men everywhere. If you harbor bears you are bears.

Put a stop to America's bearrorism today.

I used Linux a lot from 1995-2002 and I was never able to find an email client that made me happy (vs Eudora). Considering how simple the email protocol is, and how it got started on unix, I was always surprised that unix had no decent front-end for email, and a lot of subtle incompatibilities between the ones they had. The default mail command was arcane, sendmail took some work, PINE was for dialup users, various GUIs (XMH for example) primitive. The closest I got was Netscape, but it was buggy and slow.

Then Eudora wiped 4 years of email archives and I became a godless heretic.

There are two major obstacles to my plan but I'll give my plan anyway. One can argue that stock trading is gambling. Also, Microsoft's headquarters are in Washington State. One can hope that Microsoft will be held criminally liable for gambling in Washington.

The two obstacles involve the amount of money that Microsoft has. Given sufficient funds, the entire commercial sector can effectively (and literally) burn down the law firm that proposes to illegalize stock trading. Also, given sufficient funds, Microsoft can buy immunity if stock trading is ruled to be gambling.

----

Read "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" to enlighten yourself.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong when massive wealth is consolidated in the hands of the few?

They would never, ever abuse that incredible disparity in power, right?

Only governments do that. Right On! Mod up!

Bill gates and other super rich often give lots to charity; that's great. If I had $50 billion I'd give a lot of it away too, why not, it's more than I could ever want to spend. But why should we be happy the the fate of the world's poor depends on the whims of a few super rich people and what THEY think is important? Why should we be happy that such massive consolidation of wealth and power was allowed to occur in the first place? That is a big threat to freedom right there.

So now instead of running his corporate empire, he can run his humanitarian empire. Hopefully he doesn't suddenly decide that, oh I don' t know, that the Christian Coalition needs help fighting us godless heathens or something. Cause I'll have to move.

We all got bias pal, especially those who claim not to....

Good post, and I try hard to stay clear of any argument concerning the enlightenment and how it was bad for western culture (gimme a break pat robertson).

I dunno how else to make my point which means I'm apparently doing a terrible job at it. I'll give some more drivel however: a little truth is in every heresy, good joke and ideology. Communism/Fascism were all of the above (well, ok, ideologies anyhow). Freud taught us there was no such thing as evil, and then Stalin & Hitler come along and remind us that, oh yes, there indeed is. To babble further: sure, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (sic?) & good ol' Bloody Mary (great drink btw) killed people too in the very name of religion, but I must say, to quote Eddie Izzard, "you killed millions? I say, you must get up very early in the morning...." Hitler & Stalin, them boys killed millions. And, indeed, they were, by nature of ideology, godless. Or, to help you out, they defined what religion & god meant. I mean, holy friggin crap. I just watched recently an hour special on the history channel that was covering the very subject of how Stalin destroyed religion & implanted himself in its place.

What a waste of time this is for me right now....

I'd like to see what a Godless society would be like too, but I don't think it would be any more utopian or advanced than what we have now.

There is no doubt that religion was a catalyst in creating civilization. For city-states to flourish 8000 years ago, people had to be united in a cause. Somebody had to organize and maintain control over all the necessary functions (agriculture, security, waste management, etc) that kept the city-state alive. A well organized city-state gave the more gifted people plenty of time to become artisans, craftsmen, and "scientists". In a time where knowledge was restricted to ancestral stories and individual experiences, the easiest way to gain unquestioned authority was to claim a relationship with the divine and convince people that you can communicate with the gods and ensure the prosperity of the city-state.

Religion was invented to support the city-state and explain the inexplicable. There may have been other ways to bring people together, but religion worked because we're all here discussing it in an advanced society. Priests and their followers frequently abused their powers, but that's an issue with human behavior and not the concept of religion.

One alternative to religion, of course, is education -- which was impossible 8000 years ago due to a very limited pool of information.

We know a lot more today, but educating people about religion's roots is still very difficult. How do you convince people to let go of simple yet powerful concepts when their lives are not in jeopardy and their TV signals aren't being interrupted? How do you do that when the alternative explanation involves more uncertainty?

Beliefs are fundamental to the wiring in our heads. If you remove religion, some other crazy concept (like M-Theory!) will replace it. Not to mention all the extra time people would spend thinking about that uncertainty or why God was replaced by vibrating strings.

If we all became philosophers nobody would get any work done.

I'm not a religious person, but religion is not the problem. The human emotions and behaviors that enabled us to adapt, survive, and build societies are at fault. The solution? Give yourself a lobotomy.

By the way, God doesn't care about any of this. He's an athiest anyway.

I can answer that question rather quickly. Dead. what you term "massive collective social fraud" -while colorful- is what has provided the basis for all civilization. The vast majority of the human race is well below the average slashdotter or digger in average intelligence. Not that slashdotters or diggers are smart, but quite the contrary, a large portion of the world is just that stupid. Since the dawn of time, the stupid have out numbered the smart and it is through that mechanism or "massive collective social fraud" ,as you like to say, that we have managed to advance to this point - otherwise, godless, souless, cannibals would have eaten all the smart people. Academics are so tender. Anyway, I hope that answers your question.

Because in our pride we might fly too close to the sun and be struck down. I'm not up on my sects of Christianity but I'd think that in general they'd want that to happen since it'd mean that Jesus would come down and take all the devout Christians to heaven and the rest of us godless pagans to hell. Of course, we're still infringing pretty heavily on His territory -- pretty much every aspect of our lives these days would be considered miraculous 2000 years ago.

we learned from Ann Coulter last night on Leno that global warming, recycling and *safe sex* are to be dismissed as part of the "church of godless liberalism". Someone please get some God in my life so I can stop having safe sex and open myself up to herpes, warts and aids!

If you can't see through these people you don't deserve to.

Bin Laden got his start fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Back then of course the Americans were helping him and the Taleban fight the godless commies. And bin Laden hates secular leaders in the Middle East, like Saddam, just as much. That's why it was so ludicrous when Bush's people claimed that Saddam was supporting al Qaeda; they're fighting now in Iraq not to restore the Baathists but to install their own theocracy.

America created all its current enemies in the Middle East. They supported, or installed, dictators in Iran and Iraq after WWII to keep them from nationalising their oil. They support the very repressive Saudi royals for the same reason, and that could implode any day.

You're trying to say that the inherent complexity in psychological processes - namely those involved in "complex circumstances" - lends purpose to them owing to the fact that they may not be directly related to instinct.

That's not what I'm trying to say, or actually saying. All emotional responses are complex in the sense that they involve a high-level processing of perception, comparison of the perceptions to a good/bad scorecard of sorts (built in part on lower-level threat/pack/relationship instincts, but expanded through experience as one grows and gains perspective and subtlety) and then the symphony of physiological signals that tend to get more intense as a function of the urgency of the circumstances. An emotional response to a well-written chapter of a good book is a pretty high-level thing. An emotional response to watching your child saved from falling out a window still requires lots of processing, but hits a more primitive piece of the brain.

The hopelessness of existensialism and similar lines of thought lies in the fact that you INSTINCTIVELY wish to survive, and so are trying to find reasons why that would be of some purpose...

Nope. One does not "find" meaning, one creates it. The difference is enormous.

And that is depressing, no?

And thus, no, it is not. The "brave" person (since you use that word) is the one that has the courage and clarity of thought to create meaning where there is none. The coward cannot find it in himself to do so (nor, perhaps, can someone with damaged or stunted cognitive skills), and either borrows it from someone else (and simply goes through the motions), or deals with the lack of meaning through irrational, and often self-destructive behavior.

I find your decision to use the word "agnostic," and your attempt to show me the ultimately unhappy consequences of living in a godless universe that doesn't paternally watch my actions and weigh them... to be, well, a pretty weak intro to some prostelatizing, methinks. Won't work!

Fear the Roomba!

Roomba: Godless killing machine. With automatic carpet pile height adjustment.

A tool of God almighty to work his will upon the earth.

Why do you hate America so much?

It's you Godless heathens who hate America. Why is it that you hate God and your country so much, yet love Satan and his suicide bombers so much?

Preventing fraud is anti-free markets and only supported by communists. Corporations are supposed to be allowed to fraud customers which can be fixed by the markets. Once done, the corporation would be punished by customers, not some large, godless, liberal government that only gives money to colored people over white people.

This was totally outrageous! Just as much of a newsworthy item as Janet's 'wardrobe malfunction'!(I couldn't sleep for 3 months after watching that one)!

It would be a crying shame that kids should be exposed to (Godless?) non-graphical but still titillating sex simulations.

It might detract from their training shooting hundreds of thousands of opponents, so that they can further be brainwashed into becoming our next batch of cannon fodder to send to Iraq or wherever else our glorious leaders will be "Bringing Freedom" to in the coming years.

The FTC is only performing its patriotic duty to keep kids in line for all the state-sanctioned killing they will have to do later on.

Although, as Dr Strangelove once pointed out, reproductive duties might also have to become state-sanctioned and even encouraged when population needs to be replenished due to a 'red button malfunction' in the Oval Orifice.

Z.

that would involve the "godless communism" of p2p combined with data mining to determine the download rates, collective licensing, and central revenue distribution societies (preferrably government controlled, where it may not be as efficient, but at least the proprietors will be slightly more accountable than in a privatized version)

At which point they will cease to be "IBM compatible PCs" and become "Microsoft compatible PCs". *shudders* All thanks to the godless commies at Levano.

It's an election year. There's really not much else to say; the President is posturing for an anti gay marriage amendment (again) even though there's no chance it will ever pass. He's doing so in order to appeal to the radical right. Democrats are posturing to the moderate center by trying not to look like "the godless party." It's all a bunch of he said she said ape-style beating on your chest.

God, sometimes I hate this town.

My grandfather spent the last ten years of his life as a crippled vegetable because the Purina Corporation was too fucking cheap to put a door on an elevator.

God bless OSHA, and you Godless Capitalists who don't give a rat's ass about the health and safety of the people who supply you with wealth can go straight to hell.

You, sir, are an evil man. I hate Purina and anybody who buys its stock, and now I hate you, too.