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Tsunami Satellite Images
JakeisBland writes "Here is a collection of before/after satellite pictures of the devastation in Asia due to the tsunami/earthquake."
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This really puts the disaster into perspective, im shocked.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Even Cisco has posted Earthquake and Tsunami Relief on their main page. I guess a good chunk of their CCIEs are affected by this :)
This is simply amazing. I think that every so often Mother Nature decides she needs to show everyone who's boss, a sort of bitchslap to bring the nations of the world together; if only for a little while.
it's worth noting that the pictures show Kalutara, a town about 25 miles south of Colombo, and situated on the west coast of Sri Lanka, which pretty much escaped major damage and loss of life compared to the the south and eastern coastlines.
Flooding caused at least 40 deaths in Kalutara, though...
wow, tsunamis are totally antihammer --;
Yep.
I'm a bit confused by the Kalutara series, it appears to show a LOT more beach, but no damage to the buildings. Could this be in that few minutes when the water level dropped before the tsunami hit?
Or is Kalutara not in the direct path and this is after-effect on non-direct impact sites?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=16774Verye s/images.php3Devastating
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImag
If you donated to lokitorrent but not this, I don't know what to say to you...
It's almost disgusting to see how much the color of the water changed... it's bad enough they have hundred upon hundreds of bodies lying around rotting, but the water looks disgusting even from the sky... just imagine the smell. I wonder how long it will take, with all the flooding and then the following withdrawl of the water, before it's a nice, clean blue ocean beach again?
From the CIA world book on Sri Lanka;
Buddhist 70%, Hindu 15%, Christian 8%, Muslim 7% (1999)
I can see why you wouldn't, but continue to play your banjo...
Here you can find videos of the tsunami captured by tourists.
Here you can find torrents of said videos in case the original site dies under the load.
Here some Emule/Edonkey Links to private videos of this destater... You want to beat these people either for:
u y.WMV
tsunami_sri_lanka_db_2004.12.26.wmv
tsunami-indonesia12-2004.qt
- just standing there and taping when the wave is approaching instead of running for their life.
- just standing there on a safe spot and taping not helping people crying for help in the water
gigant.tsunami.tidal.waves.in asia.recorded.on.koh.lanta.thailand.by.a.danish.g
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
I do believe that the pictures are 50/50 of Aceh and Sri Lanka.
o k/geos/ ce.html#People
Aceh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceh
Est. 4.2M population
Sri Lanka
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo
19.9M population
So the facts?
The Canadian one, at least, is a fast online credit-card donation. You can print out your tax receipt right away. (hey, before midnight gets it in for this tax year, right?)
Or, there are plenty of other organizations that would be happy to receive a donation.
Well, as far as I can tell, the main problem is one that you've already pointed out: people in a disaster area may not think of reporting in first. Also, major disasters like these tend to knock out communications for several days, if not much longer.
Not to mention that not everyone is net-savvy...
I also don't really see how it would significantly improve matters, or at least enough to justify the cost of bandwidth, keeping it all up to date and accurate, or whatever. Normally by the time information can be posted on such, the situation would be a bit moot.
!sig
Well, speaking for the significant number of people who believe in some form of free will, either with a god in the picture or without one: your response is totally vapid Philosophy 101 bullshit. I'm not looking for a philosophical argument regarding free will; I'm pointing out that the cause does matter when considering the importance of an event.
I believe you're full of shit and looking for an argument. Now, argue my point on the merits of the point, not on free will, or fuck off and troll elsewhere.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Quickly! We need to de-emotionalize this disaster fast before we go declare war on somebody.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
we can do nothing to prevent, only to try to mitigate.
or send a warning early enough. With 15-minute warning (easy for science/engineering, harder for bureaucracy/business) the casualities could have been halved
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I agree; I was idly pointing out the implications of two common beliefs: 1: that there is no such thing as free will, which implies that human actions are no different from "natural" actions or disasters, and 2: that there is a god, in which case there again is no difference becase in both the human and natural cases god is equally culpable for letting it happen.
Personally I believe in free will and not in gods, so it really was idle speculation and "Philosophy 101". Given what I belive, I agree totally with your post but it did occur to me that ours is simply one view point and there are others. I'm not quite sure why that wound you up so much but I wasn't trolling.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My friend, you are off-topic, since I was merely comparing these two events from an arts perspective. Which event was "worse" or "greater" or "zui niubi" doesn't matter when we are dealing with color, composition and originality.
Of course, they can't possibly be making huge amounts of private donations, can they?
We have no control over our government these days. If you haven't figured that out in the past 20 years, welcome to the next 200.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
1: I'm not at all convinced that's a common belief these days, but yes, if you believe there's no such thing as free will, then the two are directly comparable.
2: If there is a God, and he gave us free will, he isn't culpable for our actions: the act of giving us free will made us responsible for our own actions. If you assume he maintained any right to overrule our actions if he sufficiently dislikes them, you actually don't believe in free will - you believe in determinism with the ability for God "not to care" about some things. As such, someone who truly believes in both God and free will can assign blame for the natural disaster to God (assuming that he presets non-thinking things) but not for the human disaster, assuming we have free will.
And I say again: the other viewpoints are bullshit. I don't really care about the views of people who don't believe in free will, because they believe I absolutely must be the way I am whether or not I want to be. As such, if they're right I'm obligated to bitch them out by determinism, and if they're wrong I'm obligated to bitch them out because they're wrong.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Are there any figures available for private U.S donations? The UK figure currently stands at GBP 32million and is rising rapidly - pretty astonishing for a country with a population of around 60million.
Really?
So a hypothetical photorealistic painting of an item isn't any different than the (indistinguishable) photograph of that item, despite it having required far more technique, time, and intent? Is it any different than your memory of the original item? Intent matters in art as well.
Even better, let's take two blank white canvases, side by side. One is blank because the artist hasn't gotten around to painting it. The other is blank because its Kasimir Malevich's "White Square on White", on loan from MOMA. Which is better?
Intent MATTERS.
Intent matters in art, just like anywhere else.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Currently the UK goverments contribution is at £50 million, which is about USD$90 million. The public has given more that £30 million at last count. And we have about a 5th of the US population.
The story seems quite similar accross Europe.
That would fall under mitigation. In fact, that would be the definition of mitigation - to lessen the severity of some event or force.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
The indian ocean tectonic plates are historically very active. Look at the major earthquakes and a lot are in/round Java. Ditto volcano eruptions: Tambora 1813?? and Krakatau 1883 Just one of those things - it will happen again in due course when the plates move again. There were apparently three plate shifts - one of them almost immediately off the Andaman isalnds, but the first was down near Aceh.
I couldn't find any figures for even a rough total of US private donations, but, as of 12/29, American donations to the Red Cross *alone* stood at USD18 million. That does not count donations to other charities or the last day and a half of donations. Pfizer alone (corporations count as private to me) donated 10 million, plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
It was caused by a really big earthquake on the ocean floor....
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Speaking as an Indian, a big heartfelt THANKS for all of you who've empathised with the tragedy and have helped the rescue efforts. It's in trying times like these that one's faith in humanity is restored.
Thankfully, in spite of Indian bureacracy being well Indian bureaucracy, rescue and rehabilitation efforts are going on VERY effectively. An enormous number of people in India, be it the government, armed forces, or even the common woman/man is pitching in. Most companies here have setup collection boxes and at the very least, we're donating medicines, soaps, toothbrushes, disinfectants, clothes, utensils, non-perishable food items etc. There's also an army of volunteers who's landed in the disaster struck areas with truckloads of donated stuff and are distributing it to the needy.
Strangely enough, it seems that too many clothes are being donated! A friend of mine is physically helping out with the rescue efforts and he tells me that there's piles and piles of clothes lying around but of little use to anybody. Well, i guess too much help is always better than too little help.
Another thing that amazes me is the resilience of the common man or woman. Here are people living on the edge of poverty, getting hammered everyday with issues like eking out an existence. Perhaps they've scrounged and saved enough to get their daughters married, hidden a few hundred rupees in a hole in the wall. Perhaps they've just bought a shiny new radio or a bicycle. What do they wake up to? A tsunami that takes away their children, their friends, and everything they own. What do they do? Shrug it off eventually and mark it off as karma, god's will, or god's punishment depending on their religion (no, most poor Indians cannot afford the luxuries of athesim or agnosticism). Then, they take it one day at a time and slowly start rebuilding their lives.
You want to see miracles, mental strength, and the answer to life, the universe, and everything? You don't have to look far in times like these.
Not only a fith the population, but considerably lower GDP per capita and a considerably higher cost of living (including tax burden).
It's good to see the rich making such big effort and sacrifice! Oh, wait a moment.
...President Bush and his International coalition (of which the next largest nation is contributing half of what we are) has just added Mother Nature to his axis of evil, saying that she is helping terrorists, as well as committing terrorist acts herself. Bush has given Mother Nature an ultimatum, telling her to leave this planet within the next 24 hours or we will declare war on her. It is expected that Mother Nature will stay and fight, but looks as if this will be another victory by the Bush administration.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
And also, my reply was to the person replying to you, not so much to your post. And my reply to him was very much on topic.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
The scale in the pictures is different - at first glance, it looks like the water in the later picture is quite a bit more to the right, but further investigation shows that it's in EXCTLY the same spot, with some flooding in the interior. Match up the landmarks - the buildings in the earlier picture are smaller because the scale is smaller. The later picture shows exactly the same buildings, slightly larger, but with the waterline in the same spot. Anyway, everything is still there.
paintball
All the major cities and most of the citizens in Finland have decided not to fire any rockets this New Year's eve. They will all donate the money to help out these people instead. There's a good example to America!
While there there has been an International Tsunami Warning system in place since 1965, the affected countries were not part of that system and had no mechanism in place to allow for early warning.
NPR has a few good reports on the problem.
Cringely has a rather interesting solution that does not rely on governmental action, though with a serious flaw. It only relies on earthquake data, which isn't necessarily conclusive, nor the only cause of Tsunami's.
The reason people post pictures on buildings is because they are DESPERATE. It's a waste of time, but it's the only thing they can do other than nothing, and nobody wants to just admit that there's nothing they can do.
Governments maintain a list of people who are missing, and people check in as they are found. If people can't call their own family (either because they're lazy or they're injured or they're dead), there's really nothing you can do to accelerate the process: If they're lazy, there's no way for you to find them other than them finally checking in, and if they're injured or dead, you're not going to know they're injured or dead until they get to a hospital or you find the body (or part) and match them to someone on the missing list.
The bottleneck isn't tracking who is missing/found. The bottleneck is reaching/finding, identifying, and being able to communicate who is found. A database isn't goign to get soemone to call their mother or help you find a body.
paintball
You sir, Mr.Grandparent poster, are a moron. Why are all the forums on the internet filled with fucking asshats like you? Why do you think it matters whether more people died now or in 2001? Can you not see that regardless of how many people died in which disaster, sympathy and help is required now, as it was required then? Will you fucking grow up and be human?
There is no sense in comparing disasters.
PS. I do not mean to insult you personally, just the idea you are putting forward.
Most (all?) of the official New Year celebrations and fireworks have been cancelled. The money will be given to aid helping those who suffered from the tsunami.
At the moment there are more than 200 Finns and over 2000 Swedes missing and most likely all of them are dead. To see things in perspective: Finland has a population of 5.2 million, Sweden around 9 million. Everyone with basic math skills can calculate what that would mean if it had happened for tourists from US.
But surely any such god's power and ability to protect the victims, who did not choose to die or suffer the loss of their family and are not responsible for the actions of the terrorists, carries a responsibility to use that power? Why should innocents be bunched in with terrorists when dealing with the consequences of free will under a deity? There is such a thing as culpability for inaction; would such power carry not a "right to overrule our actions", but in fact a duty?
Just because we have a police force doesn't mean we're living under 'determinism with the ability for [the police] "not to care"'. If police stand by and watch a crime take place that they could prevent, are they not partly culpable? Hell, anyone - police or not? Yet gods seem to get away with that sort of amoral behaviour all the time.
Human nature, eh?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My quality social news site.com.
40,000+ people die in car accidents every year. Thousands are killed in floods every few years. Millions die every year from famine.
Death, and to a lesser extent, death from natural disasters, is pretty common. A lot of death from a natural disaster is less newsworthy than a little death from a terrorist attack.
There's also an information problem - it was a lot easier to get information out of new york on 9/11 than it is to get information out of a devastated remote area in Thailand.
paintball
As bad as this is and the amount of life loss, I'm very curios to see if anyone got this on film as it happened wither it is still pictures or home camcorder.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Where have you been? The fourth largest earthquake in recorded history, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale caused a 1000km long stretch of seabed along a fault line to be lifted by 10m in a matter of seconds. This displaced many cubic kilometers of water, which caused devastating tsunami's on the surrounding coastline. The tsunami's caused massive devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Even in Somalia, 5000km from the epicentre of the earthquake more than 100 perished. The death toll currently is estimated at 125.000 but not all bodies have been counted yet and many never will be found.
In terms of damage and casualties this could well be considered the largest disaster in recent history. If you have some of your christmas bonus to spare, donating it to the Red Cross or another NGO would be a good idea.
WWI: 16-18 million.
WWII: 40 million.
On a single day in the American Civil War, approximately 30,000 men were killed.
Feel free to dispute those figures, they vary from source to source. You'll not escape the orders of magnitude.
That's what war is like in the age of modern machinery. 9/11 was murder, not war.
...or make poor tsunami jokes when there were no pictures that showed the magnitude of the tragedy.
Seeing the BBC report that showed the young coupld silently carrying their two dead children and seeing the picture of the beach covered with debris -- and then realizing the "debris" consisted of human bodies -- brings the point home that real humans suffered a real tragedy halfway across the world.
Damn, I'm getting tears in my eyes just remembering those pictures.
Because if God overrules free will, even once, he's made the entire thing meaningless. If he, even once, says "Hey, humans, I'll save you from the consequences of your collective choices", he's just made free will meaningless, because its no longer free - its free 'to a point'. By giving us free will, God inherently relinquishes both his right and his duty to overrule our actions.
Trying to make a valid philosophical argument by comparing police to God is bunk, man. The police aren't omnipotent, omniscient, and they aren't the ones who have the ability to decide whether or not we get free will. Of course, anyone who stands by is partly culpable. However, if God intervenes, he destroys the idea of free will. The only way to maintain free will is to stay out of it; as such, by rigorously asserting free will, God becomes non-culpable - he has, in essence, said "I will not interfere, because the consequence of interfering once is to mean that I must take responsibility for all of your actions that I allow to occur." It is, in an odd sort of way, similar to the search engine DMCA exemption - software that indexes material is legal and non-culpable, even if it indexes illegal material, except if it ever filters out some undesirable material on basis of copyright or legality, at which point it immediately becomes culpable for all such infringing material found on the service.
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
In addition to that, Oxfam is looking to raise AUD$5M in aid during the new years celebrations by sending volunteers around with collection buckets and such, and as of ~10PM reached 500K in Sydney alone iirc.
Not sure if similar things are being done elsewhere, but this is a pretty good indicator of how much we're trying to chip in.
% mkdir
% ls -dF
The sattelite images show the extent of damage, but remains impersonal. This picture graphically shows the actual devastation and number of deaths..
i ita4ft.jpg
http://img145.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img145&image=ruum
Points to a well-written editorial at nytimes (bugmenot.com is your friend, I used cpunk89/asdfasdf) about US aid to the relief effort. Worth a read.
This event is much, much worse. The death toll is much bigger, the destroyed areas are much bigger, the affected countries are much poorer, more infrastructure is destroyed. Any rational comparison tells you that this is a bigger disaster.
If casualties of the wars that followed 9/11 are counted in, the comparison is not as simple. Also, the political consequences of 9/11 were greater, 9/11 will be a more important date in the history books of the future. But measured in human suffering, it is not.
This is news for nerds.
Or do you think no geeks were living in asia, or holidaying on the beach?
Nobody is left untouched by this disaster, whether its friends, relatives or enemies. As you know, many lives have been lost, and we are only just beginning to see the problems that lie ahead.
Linux, sco or microsoft aren't mentioned directly, but even they are effected.
liqbase
Something like this would be usefull for centralizing hospital lists and traking foreign nationals.
But the fact remains: (almost) no one wanted this to happen, and even the crazies who claim they did probably didn't really want it to occur. Further, no one did, or even could have done, anything to cause it to occur.
9/11 was caused. That's a major difference, and as such trying to directly compare them is meaningless. Compare it to Krakatoa, to Columbia (the volcano), to Tang Shan. But don't try to compare it to WW2, 9/11, Auschwitz, or Pearl Harbor. The comparison is meaningless.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Denmark: 300M DKR (USD$55M) at a population of 5.4M .. that's $10,14 per capita .. .. that's $0,15 per capita
USA: USD$45M at a population of 293M
both theese sets of numbers are what the Government provides, not what is collected privately. (no taxreductions are given for donations in Denmark)
I guess that every country will give what it can.
It's also referred to as the "problem of natural evil".
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
As the image formed on the top of my screen, you first notice the smashed buildings. As as I scrolled down I though 'are those bodies ?' and I scrolled further I realised yes there are bodies in there. Eventually you reach the bottom of the screen and the true horror of the situation is shown.
Lots of images and video of the tsunami and aftermath at http://www.waveofdestruction.org/.
Speak truth to power.
What about the money US privite companies are giving? Goverment is not the only way to send aid! I will put the $$ given by US citizins and companies vs any company....
I don't think that is a relevant distinction. You asked which event was worse. Whether it was caused by humans or not, the death toll and suffering is greater here compared with 9/11.
Is there a cholera epidemy going on there? Unless there is some source of contamination, sewage wouldn't be particularly dangerous in that respect. OTOH, can't say the same about some intestinal parasites that are more or less endemic in most tropical regions. That's why one of the major items being sent by disaster relief organizations is water-purifying tablets.
That doesn't really have to be a problem. For this purpose, a fairly low-bandwidth connection, like a satellite uplink, could provide a reliable connection. I think it would help the various organisations and agencies in the distaster area, by providing a way to enter en query information about missing persons and casualties across a larger area. Also, it would be fairly easy to make this information available to others over the internet, because now, several days later, many people outside the disaster areas still don't know if there relatives / friends / loved ones are still alive.
I do think, however, that there would have to be some sort of system to indicate the reliability of the information in the system. Exacly where did this information come from, who reported it (was it a coroner, or someone who thinks they saw someone they know?), how many people reported it, exacly when and where it was reported, what method of identification was used?
Also, I'm not sure about the usefulness of a missing persons tracking system; I think a reported persons (any status, okay, injured or dead) would be more useful, because if someone is not on the missing persons list, it does not necesarily mean that they're accounted for. On the other hand, in this case, the remains of many missing persons will probably never be recovered, and therefor, a missing persons register may be useful. I guess it would be best to make "missing" a possible status for an individual. If someone is reported missing, and they turn up, they know the person who has reported them missing is okay. At the same time, it would enable people outside the disaster area to report people as missing. At this time, it is still unclear how many tourists were in the disaster areas other than those traveling with a tour operator. Anyone who just bought plane tickets is much more difficult to track. Also, officials could import local citizens records and hotel reservations into the system as missing persons, whose status could be changed when they report in.
I think your humour is ill conceived, however you do hint at something I find even more distastefull.
Insurance companies are already trying to evade paying out to the survivors by calling this an act of god.
I saw the entire thing first hand. The sattelite images do not really show the damage. Try www.haveeru.com.mv for some good photos.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
No, I didn't. I explicitly said that you can't ask that question. I asked it as a rhetorical device, and then promptly followed by calling it an apples-to-oranges question.
And intent is absolutely a relevant distinction; trying to compare an intentional action to an unavoidable event is an unfair comparison. We shouldn't be comparing the two, because no valid comparison is possible. 9/11 was an awful event, caused by awful people. This is also an awful event. However, trying to say "This is so much worse than 9/11" ignores intent. It's more (directly) damaging than 9/11, the death toll is higher, the infrastructure hit is greater... but comparison of the events as a whole is meaningless, due to the origin of the events being so different.
Again: is a single hiker being murdered worse than 40 being killed in a landslide?
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
here
Maybe you should restate your syllogism. I don't see where you made any argument that leads to that conclusion.
Googling for
ethics "hard command" "soft command"
results in 0 pages found. I don't know if that's because there are no pages on the Web on the topic, because you used the wrong terms, or because there is no such thing. I find the first option pretty unlikely, so can you either correct your terms or give a short essay on what "hard vs soft command" means?
I'm also interested in how ethics point to the non-existence of God via contraction. I've read some pretty convincing material arguing exactly the opposite; that ethics necessarily come about via morality grounded in a belief in deity, but I've *never* heard and am having trouble imagining an argument that ethics points to the non-existence of God. Maybe what you mean to say is that your ethics are at odds with the nature you assume for God?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I don't agree, but well... lets just agree to disagree.
measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale
According to Wikpedia it's not 9.0 on the Richter scale, but on the moment magnitude scale.
In the end, the American government will contribute more money by far than any other country for relief efforts. We always have and always will.
Article regarding US spending on international aid efforts: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/28/stingy.a mericans.ap/
Just because America doesn't throw money at it right away doesn't mean we don't care. I'd rather see the money used wisely for maximum effect and that can take time.
I was going to post this as anonyymous but wtf, Slashdot-USA centric?? you arrogant, ignorant buffoon. Where do you think "Slashdot-internet-and most new good shit is invented/implemented??? The fuckin moon.?? Get off your USA bashing horse you fuckin twit and take your stupid comments and post them someplace where the sun never shines.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
mod me down as flamebait/troll if you want, but I would like to compare the media's attitude now and during 9/11. When 9/11 happened, western media refrained from showing gory scenes out of respect for the dead. But when it came to this disaster, they had no-holds-barred coverage - showing people's arms and legs and devastation. Is it not double standards? According to an article in Indian Express, a CNN executive Chris Cramer justified by saying that they showed no images of 9/11 because there were no images to show. The bodies had been incinerated. Lame excuse, if there ever was one, don't you think? PS: I have submitted an article to slashdot on the same, but it was rejected.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
It isn't a subtle troll.
It's been about 6 years since I took a course in ethics and morality (being that I'm an engineer, we don't exactly take a lot of them), but those were the names I recalled off the top of my head. Turns out I had confused two terms into one. The correct terms, going back to textbooks, are divine command morality and the variant terms strong and weak (not hard and soft) dependence. I will use ethics and moral interchangeable here. Strong dependence is the argument that all morals are moral because God said they are. Weak dependence argues that morals are moral in and of themselves, and God is simply trying to lead humans to those morals.
The basic argument requires the assumption of non-interfering free will. As I've said in prior posts, anyone who truly believes we have free will has to believe God will never interfere, as interference makes free will meaningless. Without that assumption, the arguments don't hold.
Argument against strong dependence:
God is omnipotent and omniscient, unlimited.
The murder of an innocent person can never be a moral/ethical obligation.
If God's desires are the sole arbiter of morality/ethics (divine command), then it would be possible for this to be true.
Thus, God is not the source of morality/ethics.
That's a very, very trimmed down version of the rebuttal of DCM/strong dependence. For a full version, see Sagi/Statman's "Religion and Morality".
The rebuttal for weak dependence is, if the morals exist independent of God and we have unrestrained (non-interfering) free will, there is no requirement for God at all. He cannot interfere to drive us toward morality, and he cannot be the source of morality; he is unneeded in the theory. Ockham's Razor implies that if something is unneeded to explain a theory, it is probably not part of the theory. As such, weak dependence combined with unrestrained free will yields a weak proof of non-existence.
That's the basic argument, but it's been 6 years since I've had to deliver it in earnest, so it's a bit rusty. Now, if you had asked me about the argument principle applied to the Nyquist plot for stability analysis, I could go into serious detail.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:04:31 -0200
From: Futurepower [futurepower_usa (-AT-) yahoo.com.br]
To: "U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center" [sedas (-AT-) neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Subject: NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?
Question:
I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.
Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis?
The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning?
Michael
_____________
Reply:
Michael,
Phone calls were placed to the State Department operations center, the White House situation room, the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, as well as several other organizations within 90 minutes of the occurrance of this earthquake.
The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace.
Stuart Sipkin
USGS/NEIC
_____________
Stuart,
I have a suggestion for a local tsunami warning system. There continues to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity in the area around Indonesia. It seems likely that there will be another big earthquake. Next time there is an earthquake that is likely to cause a tsunami, call me, any time of night or day. I will promise to call at least 30 hotels within 2 hours. I will promise to get 10 friends involved. They will promise to call 30 hotels each, also. We would each take a different country.
My suggestion is that we would use Google to find hotels, for example in Sri Lanka. This is one of the hotels I found there, a 5-star hotel with more than 400 rooms:
Galadari Hotel
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel: 94-1-544544
Fax: 94-1-449875
E-Mail: galadari (-AT-) sri.lanka.net
"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."
Big hotels answer their phones 24 hours a day. Presumably there is a staff of at least 200 at that hotel, for three shifts. I think if one person were told, everyone else would know soon. They don't want their family and friends and neighbors near the water to die, and they know how to reach them, even if they have to ride a motorbike to those who don't have phones.
There are two easy ways to prove that a call about an earthquake is not a hoax. I would tell the person who answered the phone that it is an emergency and I need to talk to a manager. I would tell the manager to check the USGS web site at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access. I would also tell the manager that, if the water at the beach receded, people had only a few minutes to get to safety. I would ask the manager to get staff members to call radio and TV stations in their area.
You said in your message, "The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace."
It seems to me that this is a workable plan for a local tsunami warning system. It wouldn't cost much. Using Skype, a two minute call to any land line phone in Sri Lanka is about 40 U.S. cents, for example. Using iConnectHere's most expensive service, a two minute call is 80 cents.
Fair enough.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
That's why it puzzles me why no earthquake advance warning systems has ever been setup in the region. I understand how poor the affected countries are, yet the foreign investment that owned the hotels on the beachfront, etc could easily have paid for such a system.
Mea Culpa, you are right. The Richter scale flats out for earthquakes larger than about 7 because it's based on the actual movements of a seismometer.
Slashdot-internet-and most new good shit is invented/implemented??? The fuckin moon.??
Japan, EU come to my mind.
Before we go any further, can you clarify whether by "this" in P3 you refer to P2?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
CNN.com has a few of these pictures, as well as one from Maldive which shows the only international airport pretty much completely swamped.
-jls
Techno-pagan
in the last seven days here. The Andaman and Nicobar islands has experienced more than 60 aftershocks ! ..
In related news, the tsunami split one of the islands in Andaman & Nicobar into two. Here is what one of the officials say
Another island, Trinkat, appears to have been split in two, said S.B. Deol, inspector-general of Andaman and Nicobar. "Part of the island has been submerged, while one half is visible," he said.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
By your own statistics,
Foreign aid
The USA comes bottom of the graph in terms of giving as a percentage of GNI/GDP. (page 25)
And considering the percentage of this aid going to Israel, let alone Iraq. Your generosity does not seem so shiny.
what the pictures also show is that areas with many trees look less damaged than areas with few trees.
I have looked at the problem of slow/limited comms before when I was out workinging in some wilder places. The solution that evolved was to use centralised servers and dialup connections from the outstations, which would synchronise at various points during the day. This technique was used by shops in the early days for stock control so it is well known but the issue of throughput is a problem.
Inmarsat terminals are extremely useful as they can give you 64Kb/s, but the bandwidth will be expensive.
As far as the DB is concerned, I agree, you need to have a 'confidence' indicator on all reports.
Note that IIRC, many of the countries have immigration registration systems to track foreigners coming in, but these systems are typically quite primitive, and tourists move around. Other sources of information such as the town for residents and police for foreigners may have been destroyed (i.e. Banda Aceh, completely) or in other places, it may be at least partially intact.
I am aware that some simple systems already exist for missing persons tracking, which have been used with refugees and others, but they just wouldn't work for something as big as this and they can't cope for where there is a large transient population (i.e., tourists) where reports are coming from other countries.
See my journal, I write things there
that poverty prevented people from:
Building numerous and sturdy roads.
Collecting to form an effective local government to help them prioratize projects and pool reasources.
Hell, I guess God must have magic'd the West industrialized. Because if you've always got to remain poor if you start poor, and by our standards hunter-gatherers are poor, no one can become wealthy without divine intervention.
Maybe it's the handouts that hurt. Maybe it's the poor infrastucture despite continuous habitation by humans for millenia. Maybe it's governments that while democratic, are generally concerned with the perpetuation of oppression of segments of their populations. Maybe their populations are still hobbled by deeply ingrained xenophobia that prevents a strong and deeply rooted national identity. Maybe institutionalized corruption is a massive drag on their government preventing a judicious use of resources. Maybe an over-reliance on handouts, whether from a country across a sea, or a magic guy in the sky, encourage an ask first - do later mentality.
There are a lot of reasons why this was as catastrophic as it was. "Because I bought my Nikes on sale" was at the bottom of the list below "Jesus hates poor children."
Here's a good rule of thumb for you. Where there is serfdom, there is fuedalism. It's that archaic system of familial alliances and bribes, combined with rampant xenophobia and a deep belief in magic that's causing the pain. By helping only after the fact, we practically insure each disaster will be catastrophic, saving just enough people to make the next one a great deal worse.
Good roads, good education, good communications, a good quality of life, and a stable effective local government are what is needed to help save people when there is this kind of devestating event. It's not something that rich nations can just gift unto them. It's something they have to want, believe in, and provide for themselves. It's made up of them. It says something that Japan and Korea each made the switch in decades, and much of the region in question is into their second century of effort.
And if it weren't for capitalism there wouldn't be surplus food or medical supplies to send them. If our economies were like their economies we'd be in a perpetual shortage ourselves.
But apparently that video was shot in a place where the tsunami wave wasn't that severe. According to this MSNBC article, entire towns were completely wiped out in some parts of Indonesia. An Indonesian ambassador says that the death toll in just one Indonesian province could exceed 400,000.
That's just.... unbelievable. This is probably going to be the biggest natural disaster in human history.
SMS usually works - it was the only means of communication I was able to use successfully when:
/m
1 - I needed to find out what was going on in Jamaica during hurricane Ivan (my old folks live there)
2 - I needed to find out about colleagues working in the twin towers during 9/11
Also, yeah - sure, this is what governments are supposed to do, but having grown up in the third world I dont expect government in many countries to even start thinking about dealing with disasters of this magnitude. Some countries dont even have any governments and some governments are active participants in creating disasters.
I've used SMS across borders between asia, europe and the Americas - the only problem I've experienced occurred when trying to send an sms to Thailand from South Africa using a mobile with a South African subscription.
So basically - A solution based on using an SMS gateway would probably be extremely useful.
I've been thinking about building one myself (before the Tsunami struck) but havent had time to do anything about it..
Anyways.. just my 2c
Our government gives more money and help to other countries than it gives us! They gave Israel money for healthcare but they couldn't do anything for us here at home.
Alright, I think I have it figured out. Kalutara did NOT get the primary impact of the tsunami, it's off on the west end of the island, while the tsunami hit the east.
No doubt the area got major flooding, and the pictures we're seeing of kalutara are all the water draining from the land back out to the beach.
As for the person who claimed that an entire section of the houses was gone, look closer, the houses are all still standing and th pictures are not exactly on the same scale.
The area got flooding, but no direct 'wall of water' impact, like the opposite side of the island or northern thailand.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
is located here. I don't run this blog either...I've just found it to be a helpful resource.
Also, there's some amazing footage there in these torrents: 1) tsuanmi hits Kenya
2) ABC Australia reports
3) Part 1/4 of CH9 Australia | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
An American life is worth more that Sri Lankian life or any other life in the eyes of the US Government and Media.
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
I guess we'll find out the truth when we are dead.
Happy New Year.
-- $G
It's always a bit difficult for me to judge numbers like that, since I'm more used to budgets on the scale of a single household than on the scale of governments....
From googling around a bit, it looks like current estimates of the economic damage are in the low 10's of billions, and expected cost of the aid effort is in the billions. (Sounds about right for emergency food, shelter, and medical care to millions of people.)
So donations in the 10's of millions are significant but not huge. Given a relatively wealthy population of about 300 million, they also don't seem to me like that high an expense.
--Bruce Fields
Not an aerial map, but still related to tsunami event. link.
Warning: Very gross and disturbing!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Well - I live in Europe and my guess is that the media will soon find a way to blame:
0. Bush (he's gotta have something to do with this, right?)
1. Global warming (since its clearly happening much more often now compared to last year; 1 tsunami compared to 0 during last year).
Come on now, don't be so one-sided and misleading. In the same document you reference, look at page 24 (the page before the graph you point out). The total dollar amount given by the USA has ranked first for most of the last several decades. In 2002, the USA gave more than twice what other nations gave (besides Japan). And this does not count private contributions, which are quite common in the USA. I am an American and have donated to the aid efforts for the Tsunami.
The images look a lot more powerful when you stack two in layers and set the top layer transparency to around 80%. You can really see all the homes under water. I put some together here
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
There really were very few bodies produced by 9/11, the way the buildings imploded/collapsed shredded pretty much everything.
I had friends down there in the neighborhood who said the most they saw were dust-covered finger-sized chunks of flesh, there weren't many 'bodies' at all.
Also, it's not really a malicious double standard to show gore in the far corners of the world while reserving yourself for homeland gore, it's human nature. I'll be flat-out honest and say that I care slightly more about local lives than I do for foreigners, not to say that I don't feel absolutely horrible for those affected by this.
Anyway, it's not time to point fingers and bitch about the media, they seem to do a decent-enough job of covering this. I think the BBC is doing a fantastic job, making sure to cover all the affected areas and to keep the news flowing. Local news placed it in the top story, but they are sort of obligated to switch topics every thirty seconds.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Any magnitude 9 earthquake 10 KM under the sea, as was the one that did the damage, must be presumed to cause a tsunami. Remember that a magnitude 9 earthquake is 10 times more powerful than a magnitude 8 earthquake.
Your point number 2 was already answered. Have a manager look at the USGS web site to verify that there was a huge earthquake.
If you are one of the people on the tsunami warning team, you would probably select your hotels in advance, and get to know the managers. You would teach them how to verify the size of an earthquake, and its location. Even my own friends are impressed when I call them from another country. It might go like this:
"Hi, Sandeep, remember me, it's Michael from the United States. Remember last year we talked about earthquakes? Well, there's been another one. If you don't have your notes, the site to check is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Remember we discussed the fact that all
After more than 100,000 people have been killed, I think the people still alive would take a tsunami warning seriously. It should not be imagined that people outside your own country are irresponsible and have no education.
What did you do? Post as AC on Slashdot? How helpful.
Do try to remember there are ugly people everywhere, not just in the U.S.A., and conversely there are GOOD people everywhere, even in the U.S.A.
Maybe when you are a little older you will understand. It's your brand of hatred and bigotry that fuels things like, oh, the Iraq war, the attack on Spain's trains, etc.
You're only taking into account government foreign aid in your % of GDP analysis. Perhaps I shouldn't call it analysis since you aren't thinking or analyzing anything, just looking for another way to bash America.
In the CNN article I originally linked, you can quite clearly see that if you total US government aid as well as private organization and individual aid, America is a very giving country. If you total all those, I'd be willing to bet that America is or very near tops in charitable giving per person.
And make no mention of the fact in in absolute dollars, we give more than anybody else, and if you added up private, corporate, religious charities, the US basically wipes the floor with the rest of the world.
American generosity is simply far and away the greatest in the history of the world. That is FACT.
While I am impressed by your use of uppercase letters, how about some numbers to back up your claim.
"The basic argument requires the assumption of non-interfering free will" The Biblical case for free will, as I understand it, does not meet this criteria. My guess is your liberated profs prefered straw man arguments that are easy enough to win by logic. Now, sadly, your mind is made up and closed! (or so it sounds).
As far as the long-tern economic damage, we really have no clue yet. These are matitime economies, depending on fishing and the import of essentials and exports of commodoties for their incomes. In many of the hardest hit areas, especially Indonesia, the fishing fleets are wrecked and beached far inland, the fisherman are dead, the the port facilities are also wrecked and the people needed to run and repair them are also dead. In addition, the underwater topography of many of the shipping channels has probably also changed, requiring redredging. Getting these areas back on their economic feet will require a couple years and sustained technical assistance. Many areas, Aceh especially, may never really recover due to the immense loss of life.
This is not just a matter of money: nothing can really replace the loss of human capital. Indonesia especially may never really recover, but will be handicapped for decades. If I was a betting man, I would not be laying money on the long-term viability of the current Indonesian government.
The amount of money donanted after 9/11 was large in relation to the need. That seems to be less likely with this disaster.
I'm continually dismayed by the extent to which blatant anti-Semitism has become socially acceptable these days.
It's a damn shame how quickly we forget what that kind of thing leads to.
A little light on the depth here (Biblically) can be seen gained from Calvin's thoughts. I am not a strict Calvinist but this is good background: from: www.gracebible.org.au/church/sermons/data/60-003.h tm
"[One cannot simply import a nonbiblical assumption about the nature of human freedom and then denounce Calvinism as incapable of meeting that (nonbiblical) criterion (cf. Ibid., p. 344n54).
Whatis clear biblically (last week): we cannot make a choice for God until we have a desire to please Him - a desire which no unregenerate man has!
[Now, all may have a desire to escape eternal punishment, or to long to be reunited with departed loved ones. But there can be no holy motivation to believe in Christ where there is no desire for the honour, beauty, and glory of Christ!]
Second, why "bother" if the end has been declared from the beginning? [moral]
This is where Calvinism shows itself to be so different from 'fatalistic determinism.'
Why bother, if God has already ordained things?
This question is like asking, "if God has decided I will live through Tuesday, why breathe on Monday?"[4]
KEY: "One must not assume that the end (our faith) has been decreed to occur apart from the means (our preaching)."[5]
In short, God ordains the means as well as the end!
Calvin himself said:
"Now it is very clear what our duty is: Thus, if the Lord has committed to us the protection of our life, our duty is to protect it; if he offers helps to us, to use them; if he forewarns us of dangers, not to plunge headlong; if he make remedies available, not to neglect them. 'But no danger will hurt us,' say they, 'unless it is fatal and in this case it is beyond remedies.' But what if the dangers are not fatal, because the Lord has provided you with remedies for repulsing and overcoming them?"
Thus, Calvin did not and Calvinism does not deny real choices, real cause-and-effect, real responsibility, i.e., biblical free will.
Note: not even Arminians can live with an unlimited free will, as one prominent Arminian commentator confesses,
"Prayer also influences men....The wills of men can thus be affected by prayer or else we would not pray for them. To believe in prayer is thus to believe in some kind of limitation of human freedom, and in some kind of incomprehensible influence upon the wills of men."
]"
Unlikely. We'll be dead. We won't have any cognitive abilities remaining to appreciate that fact.
....from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite truly says it all in regards to ENORMOUS scale of this tragedy without needing to show the pictures of the massive number of dead piled up.
:-(
It looks like the tsunami pretty much scoured the town of Banda Acheh completely clean--it leaves you totally speechless.
If you're looking to the skies for a sign, you should have been paying more attention to the plague of locusts that has been spreading across the middle east.
Given the precarious nature of the volcano off the Canary Islands, as discussed here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/2 9/1910241&tid=14
...could a group with an agenda muster enough energy to "intentionally trigger" that volcano's landslide and thus trigger the Mega-Tsunami?
(I'm going to try to say this politely)
It is not unthinkable that certain groups who suffered loss of their own, including their own religious edifices, might wonder if they could CAUSE the same loss to other religious groups, nationalities, and their religious and governmental edifices and establishments, many many of which are located on The East Coast.
Starglider29a
"I'm not saying what I'm saying.
I'm not saying what I'm thinking.
Hell, I'm not even THINKING what I'm thinking."
-- Capt. John Sheridan, Babylon 5
Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.
More than mere navel gazing.
Probably fewer than claim to be. I have spoken up on Slashdot about such things. I didn't see the Discovery Channel show. What's your question?
I'm not a huge fan of Bush by any stretch of the imagination (I voted against him in November), but I can't fault the US government's behavior so far. They authorized a small amount of money to begin with, to help with the most urgent needs (sending food, clearing bodies, and so forth), and over the next few weeks and months will continue to increase the commitment as the specific needs of the countries who have been hurt are ascertained.
The world rallied around the US after 9/11, irrespective of past tensions and difficulties, and I don't think anyone here has forgotten that. We'll do everything within our power to help rebuild those countries devastated by the tsunami, just give us time to get through the bureaucracy, and to make sure our money is going to the right place (someone earlier posted about how in India, so many donations of clothing have been recieved that there are piles of stuff no one wants to wear just lying around. Imagine if the US sent over $100 MILLION of unnecessary clothing).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
This report, backs up the factual statement that Israel has been the biggest recipiant of US $ than any nation since 1976, and has recived, by far, the largest total amount of any nation.
Oh, and also that Jews are planning to take over the world via Hollywood.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Why can't we get these images from Fallujah?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
hello, its me again.
you'd think after the flaming i got for my last post, i would have quit by now.
just for the record, i stand by much of what i said (in fact i have put a whole post about that below my last post) but i will say this. i AM saddened by all the innocents who died. the ones who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
i would like to thank all of you who have given so much. not just to sri lanka but to the many who have suffered. but unfortunately in sri lanka at least, things are getting bad.
please note these are based on anecdotal evidence.
1. the ltte has grabbed some of the relief supplies going to the north. presumably to distribute themselves. or maybe to distribute among themselves.
2. an aunt of mine went to a refugee camp down south. what she had to say was disturbing. apparently the entire camp is now run by thugs. she took 500 lunch packets with her, but was not allowed to distribute them by the thugs who demanded that she hand the food supplies to them, and they would take care of the distribution. please note, these were not people in charge of the administration of the camp but thugs from the area who had taken over.
3. she also took some plastic toothpaste packets (the 10 rupee good for one week plastic sachet.) even the shopkeeper had given them to her at cost because they were going to the refugees. the first thing she had been asked by the people was "aren't you giving the big ones?"
4. the thugs in the area have got themselves registered as "refugees" even if they live far inland and have lost nothing. their families are inside, waiting for the food and the supplies and most of all the money. they have already registered themselves for disaster compensation.
5. in a church run camp it is the same. the local people have taken over, making sure they get all the supplies while the real refugees get the leftovers.
6. another friend of the family was taking lunch packets to the camps when they were stopped by the cops who had demanded 5 packets for themselves.
many of the stories are corroborated by people who have been living in the camps.
there are also reports of corpse looting and cases of rape in the refugee camps.
it is sad that even in this time, (or especially in this time) man's baser instincts come to the fore.
i am a cold hearted realist, but i i personally think that the old punishment for looting should be brought back. summary execution of a few looters would have a prophylactic effect.
atb
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Learn more here.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
As a Christian Libertarian... I half agree with you and halfway don't.
My faith says that yes, we should help our brother in time of need, however my political philosophy says the government shouldn't be the ones to do it.
Legally, internationally, politically we are under NO obligation or responsibility to do such - nor should we be. However since we do have an abundence of wealth, I don't see a problem with the government having am emergency aid fund, or even low interest loans for foreign countries in times of crisis. But this should be used rarely and saved for large scale disasters such as this.
I don't think that the US Gov should dispense money to anyone out there who has a papercut however. The country shouldn't be overly philantropic.
As a Christian, yes I feel obligated to help anyone who needs help when they do - it is just the right thing to do. I would rather give my money to a private fund that I know, respect, and trust to properly distribute my donations. The government is usually the LAST place to trust in terms of spreading goodwill.
Libertas in infinitum
I don't think it's wrong to count my government's generosity as partly my generosity. It is OUR government, so it's OUR giving (or otherwise), but don't let's confuse and kid ourselves by calling ourselves the most generation nation on earth. If 1000 people band together and donate $1000 and another 10 people band together to donate $500 I think it's obvious that the 10 have been more generous. And if the a millionaire gives $100 and a pauper gives $20 it's clear who's sacrificed more (and sacrifice is the soul of all generosity).
So let's not break our arms patting each other on the back. This nation is as rich as it is BECAUSE other nations are as poor as they are and if people choose to be blind to their social responsibilities then we've simply got further to travel before we finally live the truth that The Real Welfare Of Man Is The Real Welfare Of Men.
Excuse my gender specificity. I quoted it as I heard it...
are talking about FOUR HUNDRED 9/11s here.
"It will be like 9/11 times a hundred. Yes, 91,100."
Kekekeke ^___^
Sorry, dont mean to sound insensitive, but the way you phrased that totally reminded me of Team America. Humor is a good way to ease the pain, remember.
Joseph?
AFTER being chastized by the world, AFTER it became known that Bush's 2nd inaugural party was going to cost $40 million (yes, 2nd party). Raising the amount isn't being done out of true charity for the hundreds of thousands of people who died or for the millions who lost everything, it's being done as damage control. That's whats so sad about it.
You need to make a distinction between the American Red Cross and the International Red Cross. The IRC has a good mechanism in place for allocating resources where they are needed or the designated destination. The complex of ad hoc task forces for immediate high-level relief during the first 72 hours and first 30 days is pretty good, although there is never enough resources to completely resolve the problems.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Please visit:
:-)
http://dec.org.uk/
And put your money where your mouth is
also checkout http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/ covering an equally important issue
thanks
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
You know, I have a lot of problems with this country in general and this government in particular, and I wanted to see a Bush defeat probably even more than the next guy, but really, if you thought that $35 million was all we were going to give I really don't think you're giving us enough credit.
Or maybe an accidental "weapon".
George Bush and some the other selfish Americans.
He brings up a valid point. If we're to take everything seriously, we'd really be a constantly depressed bunch of people. When you can't affect something yourself, one of the best things to do, in my experience, is laugh it off and try to forget about it. It sounds heartless, but the world doesn't stop every time something bad happens. It just wouldn't make sense.
(However, in this situation, if you could aid the victims of this disaster, I would encourage you to do so, but that doesn't mean weep daily for them. You need to go about your lives.)
Unlikely. We'll be dead. We won't have any cognitive abilities remaining to appreciate that fact.
I'll tell you what - look me up after we're both dead if you are wrong about that no God thing. If you are right, you will have no cognitive ability to say I told you so.
-- $G
Not exactly. The RedCross responds to ALL disasters and many more places where relief is needed. The only error was that many people expected their donations to go directly to 9/11 only.
5 -02.html 0 5dsfunds.html
In response the Red Cross changed their donation policies and guidelines to better reflect what actually happens with the money.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/redcross_06-0
http://www.redcross.org/press/disaster/ds_pr/0206
Basically now, if you give to the "Disaster Relief Fund" they use it wherever they see fit, and if you give to the "International Response Fund" if you want the funds to go exclusively to the tsunami relief efforts.
In addition they have all sorts of other areas you can "designate" such as Military efforts, Local chapters, Vaccination efforts, etc etc.
When it comes to charities - the Red Cross and Red Crescent(American and International) are about as real and helpful as you get. They help everyone everywhere.
If you are worried that your donations won't reach the right people then consider donating to CARE. They seem to have some of the lowest administration costs among relief agencies. Over 90% goes to affected victims.
I guess we'll find out the truth when we are dead.
Bad guess. If there is no afterlife, when you die, you'll simply cease to exist, and won't find anything out.
Or.. Maybe it's God's wrath against Muslims?
Look at the earthquake in Bam, Iran. Islamic state.
The tsunami. Worst afflicted? Islamic states.
West African locusts. Worst afflicted? Islamic states.
The tsunami occurred right after Christmas, so Christians in a giving spirit could swoop in and 'save the day'. Then again, I suppose it's never the wrong time of year to indulge in impotent rage.
This crackpot theory makes at least as much sense as your paranoid rant.
*shrugs*... In the past, I'd have liked to have believed that you were right. The idea of living after death just strikes me as a silly construct of the human ego which seems convinced that humans are vastly more important than we really are: "We can't possibly cease to exist! That's just silly! Look how intelligent and wonderful we are!"
Talk about cocky and completely unjustified pride.
Now that I've thought about it for several years, after feeling personally that Christianity was far too specific and complex a model (in some ways, and ridiculously simple in others) for the universe, I've rationalized the fact that I believe that we'll simply not exist one day. Honestly, I find that thought rather refreshing actually - the notion of living forever seems mighty tedious to me.
You want to start a pissing contest, there's plenty of documented instances where the US has provided more assistance, forgiven more debt, than any country on this planet.
Yes our government has done some really shady shit, a lot of it for no reason but to empower themselves even more, but when it comes to helping people, on the whole, we give 120% and are still chastised for the skeletons in our closet.
No sig for you!!
Once again, the rush to post by the Slashdot community has revealed that geeks can be just as irrational as others.
The images presented here are nearly useless for before/after analysis. Here are some of the things that are necessary for proper analysis:
(1) Images for comparison should be taken with the sun in approximately the same position. Changes in shadow and illumination can exaggerate or obscure local effects. A brightly reflecting roof in the before image can appear so dark in the after image that is looks like the building has been destroyed. This is the case in many of these image sets, since they have been obtained up to twelve hours apart. Compare the shadows to see this effect.
(2) Ideally, satellite images for comparison shall be obtained from approximately the same angle. Many of these are not, with the result that walls exposed by the lower angle of the before image and shining brightly in the sun appear to be missing entirely in the after image. In fact, they are missing, but not because of destruction; these walls are simply covered by roof overhangs. Their absence does make the difference between before and after seem more extreme, however.
(3) Satellite images for comparison should ideally be cropped identically. These images are cropped in such a way that a casual comparison between them would suggest that entire coastal areas have been inundated when, in fact, they are not. In most cases, the coastlines remain, but because of the cropping it looks like they are under water.
(4) Georeferencing is not essential, but it is highly desireable. The absence of latitute, longitude or scale markers on these images makes them unfit for serious analysis. At the very least, Slashdotters should perform their own georeferencing with a GIS program before commenting, lest they be mislead.
Naturally, no one will read this post since it was the result of sober reflection rather than a foaming, irrational outburst written within minutes of the appearance of the article.
We're looking at Page 25, Figure 12
(starts at ZERO, full scale is 1%):.
AstroDab, nice concept. I've corrected the allignment and posted results here.
You're welcome to post these to your own site, crediting DigitalGlobe (as you should your own work) and myself.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
People complain that we lost 1000+ American soldiers in iraq. What shocks me, is that our soldiers death is valued more than 100,000 people's lives. In a week, most Americans would have forgotten about this.
The rebuttal for weak dependence is, if the morals exist independent of God and we have unrestrained (non-interfering) free will, there is no requirement for God at all. He cannot interfere to drive us toward morality, and he cannot be the source of morality; he is unneeded in the theory. Ockham's Razor implies that if something is unneeded to explain a theory, it is probably not part of the theory. As such, weak dependence combined with unrestrained free will yields a weak proof of non-existence.
The trouble is that Ockham's Razor is a principle involving the scientific method with regard to physical studies. Since God is a meta-physical being (or concept, if you wish), Ockham's Razor doesn't apply. As a matter of fact, no scientific principle can prove or disprove any meta-physical concept because we lack the means to verifiably experiment on such matters.
Furthermore, the debunking of Devine Command Theory doesn't automatically lend itself to the assertion that God doesn't exist. All it establishes is that the standards of morality exist independently of God or His commands. This, despite the fact that God AND His commands may be coincidently be classified as undeniably good.
The establishment of Free Will doesn't prevent God from ever "interfering." Many events (like the recent Tsunami) occur as a result of circumstances completely out of human control/choice. What prevents God from acting on events outside of human choice? Also, we know from psychology that things such as music, smells, colors, and so on can have power effects upon the disposition and mood of people. Even with Free Will established what prevents God from doing influencing human affairs in a subtle way such as this?
There's a problem of vantage point when we attempt to establish moral principles like the one you did above ("The murder of an innocent person can never be a moral/ethical obligation.") and apply them to a higher being. First of all, we don't know what happens after we die. Perhaps there is some sort of compensation for those slain by acts of God. We don't know. Secondly, our approach to morality and justice is limited by our lack of understanding with regard to the future and all possible permutations resulting from any given decision. It's easy for us to condemn the death of an innocent person as a categorically evil event, and yet, we have no way of measuring how "good" the reverse might have been. What if the recent Tsunami awakens in us, the people of the world, a spirit of common humanity that transcends cultures, and ultimately starts the process towards ending all wars worldwide--having a net-beneficial effect upon innocent people of the future? If this were the case (for the sake of the discussion), wouldn't then such an intuitively terrible event be for the better? Regardless, we don't know the future. Therefore, any system of ethics we can devise MUST condemn such events as terrible. However, that doesn't mean a meta-physical being such as God has that same, limited perspective AND resulting moral principles. In fact, given your definition (omnipotent, omniscient, etc.), God's vantage point is nothing like ours, making any attempt at applying our systems of ethics to God inherently flawed.
-Grym
"There's a problem of vantage point when we attempt to establish moral principles like the one you did above ("The murder of an innocent person can never be a moral/ethical obligation.") and apply them to a higher being."
God, understood as omniscient, omnipotent, etc and GOOD.... might be doing someone a good deed taking them early given what He knows is in the future. Interestingly, the Bible says no one stops to consider this point!
any one feel like a surfing safari?
"Whatever you do, don't donate to the Red Cross. When 9/11 occurred they took donations intended to help victims of 9/11 and used it elsewhere."
More accurately, they used it *everywhere* it was needed. Don't frame it as if a bunch of "Red Cross Executives" bought themselves new Porsches and Hawaiian beachfront property with it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
it is worth complaining that we are loosing troops. It is a valid complaint.
That doesn't mean we don't feel for the victims of the tsunami.
We relate to the soldiers, it is harder to relate to the victims of the tsunami.
Thats not bad, thats the way it is. If you feel every tradgied around the world personal, you owuld be unable to function.
This is no diffrent then any country in our position.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
thank are donantion giving overlords...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the US has always been generous.
The money was in motion before the 40 million inaugural party was spread around the internet.
This is npt damage control, this is giving and caring.
I pitty those of you who can not see it for what it is.
and yes, I voted against Bush.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've converted the videos to Flash Video (FLV) (my blog).
Bad guess. If there is no afterlife, when you die, you'll simply cease to exist, and won't find anything out.
How is my guess any worse than anyone elses guess when there is 100% certainty that none of us can possibly know the answer until we die. And then we can't tell anyone what the answer is.
-- $G
DigitalGlobe is allowing use of its images "with credit to DigitalGlobe". So I'm tagging the images themselves, which should cut it. I suspect they're happy for the exposure. Could say the same for myself ;-)
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Can't do anything for us here at home?
Medicaid costs states and the Fed $300 billion a year and serves 53 millions people. On average, it is responsible for about 1/5th of state spending.
There is also Medicare, and in my state, Basic Health.
Your definition of "can't do anything" is very different than mine.
Since the visualisation was such a good one, I went and did some really rough rectification using GIMP.
Banda Aceh
Orindarily, I'd set up Ground Control Points (GCPs) and use those to calculate a transformation, but I just fudged it by eyes. I clipped out the part of the image where my transofrm started getting really poor. Even then, the bottom left is significantly off. Note the strip of "before" on the bottom right as it demonstrates the degree of rotation that was required.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I was listening to a charity worker (Red Cross, I think) on the local radio recently. She was stressing that apart from the headache that non-monetary donations cause, one of the major reasons that they prefer money is that they can then use it to help the long term economy in the affected areas.
If a company or person donates lots of blankets, for instance, it may help in the immediate future if the blankets can be transported and so on. If money is donated, it can be used to purchase blankets locally to the disaster, whenever it's possible to do so. Beyond the immediate term, buying locally also helps to revive the economy after a disaster. It helps businesses to get re-established, but even after that the money often stays local, near the disaster, and is recycled again and again. If the agency brings in goods and services from overseas, whatever money is involved goes to an economy that doesn't need it as urgently. Unlike local purchases, the money is also gone as soon as it's spent.
> plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.
this may not be the generous philanthropic gesture that it, at first glance, appears to be.
pharmaceutical companies have often "donated" old, past use-by-date, or banned drugs and other medical supplies to third world nations in need. by doing so, they get a tax write-off AND they pass on the cost of disposing of these unusable medications to someone else (proper disposal can cost millions)
Not really.However but a couple of things to mention. Most of Revelation is in signs. The first part deals with the the needs of the seven congragations (or churchs) in Asia Minor. The next part lists events that are to happen in the Lord's Day. That is when the Kingdom of God will take over man's rule.(Rev 11:18) The end describes the (Rev 21:4)conditions of the earth under God's rulership. Again, this is a very basic outline. I am sure lots of papers have been written on the subject and of course they will be a flood of rebuttals to this short summary.
So your god was unable to stop those men?
Yes, 10 times in amplitude, far more in energy, but in this case it is the amplitude that counts.
It was easy for anyone connected with earthquake science to know that there was a devastating tsunami. They could just check with populated areas near where the earthquake occurred, such as Aceh Province. There is an Airport near there with a phone. English is the standard language in aviation.
Knowing that there was a significant tsunami, it was easy to know that other areas, still an hour or more away, would have huge waves also.
To me, it's shocking that no one in the government did anything effectual to warn people.
Hmm, the donation difference between the US and the UK could be because most Americans that donate any amount of money donate it to religious orgs (churches, temples, etc).
...that we are not collectively obligated as a culture, people, nation, country, etc to help anyone.
;-)
'Simple human ethics' don't really exist and are NOT universal. 4000 years ago if another country had a disaster such as this, one might think it would be a great time to invade, pillage, plunder, and conquer while the their chips were down. During that time period no one would've thought of that act of invasion as unethical - it was called a 'strategic advantage'.
I guess my point is that we are not collectively responsible for anyone else, nor are we personally responsible for anyone else either. However you are right that most faiths (various flavors of Xianity at least) call on individuals to help others in time of need. Based on the concept of free will, we can do whatever we want and ignore those in need if we should so choose. Therefore it is an option and not mandatory
This is kind of like the yellow speed limit signs on exit ramps here in the US. We really should follow them because we are to assume they are the safest speeds, however they are completely optional and for our own discretion. Sorry for the lame analogy but its 4:17am at my location on NYE and Ive had some drinks
I know it sounded contradictory and I apologize for not explaining things clearly. I did want to point out that there is a difference however.
If you would like to learn more about Christian Libertarianism visit this URL:
http://www.theadvocates.org/christian
Libertas in infinitum
This is why people hate reading slashdot, because there are some people that try to make everything political. Our response should be a positive one, like how much money can slashdotters raise to help the tsunami victims; not "Why is Bush a prick?","The UN blows", or the like.
Jonathan B.
With the EUCD (EU's DMCA) and DRM in place laws of this type don't make any sense.
The Sandinistas overthrew the corrupt, repressive, nun-killing, on-camera newsreporter-killing, martial law rule of the democratically elected Anastasio Somoza in 1979. Junta rule lasted until 1984, when free elections were held with no assistance from the United States. Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega received a majority of the popular vote.
Democracy expert Ronald Reagan denounced these elections as "not free" for three reasons:
- Minimum voting age was 17 (this in a country were the average life expectancy was 35), skewing the vote toward the Sandinistas
- Military were allowed to vote (right, good thing we don't allow that in the United States), skewing the vote toward the Sandinistas
- Third reason forgotten, sorry it's been a while. If someone remembers, please fill me in (I'm confident it was pathetic tho).
Reagan's government dealt with this purported travesty by (illegally) backing (and then lying to Congress about doing so) (then covertly selling arms to Iran to raise off-ledger funding -- you've heard all this, right?) the "Contras", a mercenary-supplemented team of Somoza partisans.As the Contras never picked up much popular support -- they were unsavory fascist thugs, PR nightmare all around, and anyway the general populace had few fond memories of Samoza -- they stuck to tearing down whatever the Sandinista government built up, blowing up health clinics, schools, and basicly any improvements the Ortega government implemented. What trolls would (but for lack of CIA training) do to weblogs, the Contras did to Nicaragua. They are also said to have killed a few american pro-Sandinista volunteers, tho apparently not any nuns or reporters.
While Ortega's government enjoyed tremendous popularity in their initial years (someone at Mother Jones mag got in trouble for calling this period "Leninist", meaning the people/proletariat had become the revolutionary vanguard, so to speak, and worked rather selflessly to improve the country), the citizens of Nicaragua voted them out in 1990, mostly over the lack of progress. Ortega, while understandably not happy with the unlucky deal of having Sandinista initiatives sabotaged for 5 years, left the official mansion more peacefully than did Nancy Reagan. Ortega remained the leader of Nicaragua's Sandinista political party.
I notice you are being rather quiet about Iraq. And spinning (to put it politely) the CIA-backed coup against Allende. Come on already. If neoconservatives so strongly favor this kind of intervention, why are they so sheepish about admitting it has occurred?(I'll leave how Afghanistan is being handed to warlords for someone else to go off on.)
null
Libertas in infinitum
"More men were killed or wounded at Antietam on September 17, 1862, than on any other single day of the Civil War. Federal [Northern] losses were 12,410 men and Confederate losses 10,700 men. What you most dont understand is that More died in the Civil War(amoung ourselves) Then ALL OTHER WARS WE HAVE FOUGHT IN COMBINED!!! Fighting among ourselves is the only way America can be defeated.It was starting Before the election, and got realy heated, however im glad to see things have cooled down.And John Kerrys name hasnt been said or heard since Nov.2 Communism almost snuck in the door, well its nicer word Socialism, due to things that had NOTHING TO DO WITH HERE!!! Most people accualy voted on the war in iraq, or Micheal Moores GREAT EDITING JOB fim 9/11. What most sickened me about learning about americans the most lately was that NOT ONE Person in the media called out 9/11 as a MOVIE not a DOCUMENTRY.. A documentry is based on facts, not a persons opinion.Re-watch the movie, and tell me that you SEE M.M. standing in the same FOOTAGE asking the ? with the person answering the ? I know i didnt, and that is called editing.Alot of people fell for that shiz.Some things may hold meritt, however the majority was M.M asking a ?, and finding the best footage (already on tape) that made Bush look retarded with his answer.. Now watch this drive!!! The war in iraq ISNT Illegal.. As posted before, Saddam violated santions placed on him from 92 on a day to day basis with no punishment for over 12 years.WHY?? Cause 2 of the 4 VETO powers in the U.N have energy contracts with iraq.Two in ? are France and Germany.Its just not in their best intrest for us to be in iraq.U see now WHY( cost of oil went up) So there heating and cooling cost more.However ive said this before, 30 countries are in iraq.I personaly dont care if you send One or 30,000.U know its a hostile situation, and that its possible for your people to be killed.Therefor you believe in my cause to send ANYONE! Now we all know Terr. isnt a country thing, its world wide.Now Iraq was OUR issue, wouldnt be intelegent to KEEP the majority of your troops at HOME to protect YOUR HOME??? Thats what all these other countries are doing, they send what they can, however protecting the home front is still their priority.They believe in our cause, however must do whats right for its people!!! GOd some of you are so slow! As for Iraq! Its a battlezone for the war on Terr.. Is it right??? Not realy , however i still understand that over 40 million people cant get 40,000 under control, and that is pathetic to me!! U know why the U.S. doesnt need troops in the streets??? Do i need to answer that?? I have a Class 3 weapons licence, and have nice Norenco for any who come with hostile intentions.Most of you who post on here had to be about 12 when the first gulf war was on.You were in Little League and watching the tracers on the first night of bombings thinking oh that looks kol.. Well war isnt kool,people die and the more better the Tech. the more that die in shorter time.Kennetic Energy weapons and Ray guns are the way of the future but thats another topic. Something i want you to think about.Look at all the wars fought in history in the last 100 years.They are all fought for one thing.. Democracy Vs Communism.. It might not be U.S.S.R vs USA, however the faces are the same.. Its the same in Iraq, Dictatorship is alot like communism, why you think in Vietnam they had Mac-10s and Aks? Why in Korea Aks and Migs? Why in Iraq RPGs and Aks.. One day in our lifetime there will come a time when the U.S.S.R and USA will be at it again.They would be as nieve to let themselves be fooled into an armsrace again and backrupt their country, however im sure we will out smart them again.. Besides 1000s of years passed over there with no light.. Ben Franklin comes over here and lo and behold invents electricity... Then comes along the MODERN day assembly line, and The United States was on the rise.Now we teach the world our ways.. WE DONT FORCE! We Teach, leaving them with choices to make change.. People in
The whole point of disproving DCM is to detach God from morality; that lays the foundation for using principles of logic (the Razor, which is quite applicable to non-physical situations - its simply the principle that things tend towards the simplest explanation) to remove the necessity of God as source or influence on morals. If God can neither act nor affect, then he is unnecessary and most likely doesn't exist.
Assumption: God is omnipotent/omniscient. This means that he knows what my response to subtle stimulus will be. Thus, if he provides that stimulus to me, he has effectively negated my free will. Under the assumption of true free will, which is significantly more rigorous than many people treat it as, he can't do that. Since just about every event (sole exception: events unwitnessed and unwitnessable by man) is going to have a known effect (remember: omniscient) on humans, if God truly wants to leave us free will, he *cannot* interfere. If you assert free will rigorously in combination with an omnipotent and omniscient God, you run into this contradiction which prevents him from acting.
Also, you missed how that proof is constructed: the moral doesn't apply to God. The point is, as moral humans, we cannot conceive of a world which allows the murder of innocents to be a moral obligation (we don't have advanced knowledge to say "This will be Hitler"). However, under DCM, such a world is possible. If an omnipotent being is the sole source of morals, that world will always be possible. Therefore, DCM cannot be true, if we live in a world where certain baseline morals are held to be.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
My prof for that course was a Conservative rabbi. Read the work I cited, and then you can comment about his argument construction; I'm not going to try to condense a 200 page philosophical treatise + footnotes into a 2 paragraph slashdot post.
The disproof of DCM comes from him, and does not require the assumption; using the disproof of DCM and the concurrent disproof of weak dependence to eliminate the need for (and therefore, by Ockham, presence of) God does require the assumption.
However, although my definition of free will is not the Biblical one, it's one that I believe in, because I believe anything less rigorous isn't actually free will.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
"This" in P3 refers back to P2, yes.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
(boortz.com) Well, what a difference a week makes. After the initial charge that the United States of America was being stingy with its response to the tsunami disaster, the glare of scrutiny has been focused elsewhere: Arab countries. First up, Kuwait. Kuwait has pledged $10 million, up from an earlier pledge of $2 million. Some are pointing out that's not much, when you consider how wealthy that country is. The price of oil has roughly doubled, and Kuwait now has a $10 billion budget surplus. They've got the cash. So how's come the figure is so low? More on that in a minute. Other wealthy Muslim countries have contributed as follows: Qatar - $10 million, Saudi Arabia - $10 million and The United Arab Emirates, $20 million. So what's the problem? Well, there really isn't one, since money apparently isn't the problem right now anyway. What's interesting to note here is that these wealthy Muslim countries are not jumping at the change to help their fellow worshipers of Islam. Indonesia, the most affected country, is the most populous Muslim nation. Yet, countries with enormous sums of money aren't really putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to helping their people. Some believe that the earthquake and tsunami were the work of Allah, punishing Thailand, for example, for prostitution. These Muslim nations sure can whine about the way Muslims are treated around the world, but when it comes time for them to step forward and show how much they really care, they're out to lunch somewhere. That's okay, though....as always, the United States, who has freed more Muslims from tyranny than any other power, will be there to pick up the slack.
Bear with me. It's also been a long time since I was actively engaged with formal logic and philosophy.
I'm not sure what P1 contributes, and I can't see how P2 and P3 lead to C. P3 states merely that it would be possible for P2 to be true, but it is also equally possible for P2 to be false, however distasteful such an idea is to us. The only conclusion I can ferret out is that God cannot be the source of what you have chosen to accept as morality/ethics.
I frequently run up against this sort of thing when people claim to have proofs of anything related to divine nature (whether their conclusions be pro or con). Basically, it seems that people set out to prove that the definition of God they choose to work with can or cannot exist, and then derive the arguments, a triviality when you set up the initial conditions yourself.
I like to imagine God as the consciousness that gets a great laugh out of watching us go through this exercise.
BTW, you could make a case for at least one of the major world religions that noone is innocent using the doctrine of Original Sin. Let's not pursue this mental monkeywrench, though, as it leads surely into even less productive doctrinal squabble.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I'm happy to bear with you - please do me the same favor, as I've also been away from doing this formally for quite a while.
Let me first restate P3, since the way you wrote it above is possibly imprecise.
P3: "If God's desires are the sole arbiter of morality/ethics, then it would be possible for the act identified in P2 as impossible to become a moral obligation, to be a moral obligation, contradicting P2."
P1 is required, since it creates the necessary condition for P3 to possibly violate P2 - if God is not omnipotent, he might not be able to create such a world. It could be reduced to "God is the sole arbiter and source of ethics", which would make the proof more of a classic proof via contradiction, or it could be recast as an axiomatic statement. I'll go with the latter, and call it A1.
P2 is a statement of ethics; it could be more generally stated as "There are certain things that can never be a moral/ethical obligation.", and might well be less confusing that way. Again, it should probably be cast as an axiom (which I will do - A2). Those who choose not to accept it as such can reject the argument, at the cost of assuming that it is possible for torturing the innocent or other horrible acts to be moral obligations - not just acts that aren't wrong, but acts that it is in and of itself *good* to do.
For that matter, I wonder how the construction works if P2 is "Being immoral is a moral obligation.", a contradiction in and of itself. But that's a digression, and fairly uninteresting at that.
Further, this proof has *nothing* to do with the existence of God - it is solely a disproof of the notion that God is the sole and arbitrary source of morals, without recourse to any intrinsic good. Thus, given A1 and A2, P1 (nee P3) causes a possible contradiction of one of our axioms, leading to the conclusion that P1 (nee P3) cannot possibly be true. Disproving God as the sole source of morals is used to set up the next bit, wherein a God who can neither act nor affect is made unnecessary and therefore most probably non-existent. If God were the sole source of morals, a God forbidden from direct interference would still affect us by setting the goals we strive towards - he could make our actions good or bad without actually exerting any influence on us, again making the concept of free will meaningless by making it impossible to determine if we are acting properly. It is possibly not necessary, but it does make the ideas clearer, at least to me.
The whole construction of the proof is a reduction of the necessity of God, and then using that lack of necessity as a structure to say "If he's not needed, why would he exist?" The first proof, against DCM, disproves him as the source of morality, while the second eliminates him as the source of any possible action. If he can't act, can't influence, and can't affect us by changing the moral signpost, why is he necessary at all?
(For what it's worth, I'm more agnostic than atheist, and I like to imagine 'God' as the initial force that created a state of possibility out of a heat death of sameness, and then sat back to watch us become 'good' moral beings by using our own moral compasses to move towards a better state. So, your God is probably laughing his ass off at me. That's alright, though, as I think causing joy is a moral good, and if I can make *God* smile, I must be doing something right.)
(Other issues with DCM are that accepting it requires us to accept God as an arbitrary and irrational being, and to renounce any concept of God as a 'good' being. If the only arbiter for morals is an unlimited God, then his determination of morals becomes arbitrary, without appeal to any reason. If you claim that God reasons out his desires, then you must reject DCM, as he must have drawn these morals from some external intellectual source in the course of his reasonsing. Thus, DCM requires an irrational/arbitrary God. The rejection of a 'good' God is inherent in the concept - if God alone determines what
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Starting where you left off, I'm also grateful for the exchange. The banal things we (speaking of the community) usually get worked up on this board about seem pale and dusty compared to this sort of thing.
I've recently read some stuff about DCM (although it wasn't labelled as such) in Jewish sources. I wager these sources were considerably less heady than the one you cite, amounting basically to "Judaism for Goys" but the notion of morality requiring God was a big theme in them. I'll have to look up the book you mention and read a little more thorough treatment of the topic.
I find the issue of arbitrariness vs necessity a fascinating one. It seems to be that a truly omnipetent being would necessarily be arbitrary, because it would not be bound by any law of goodness external to itself?!
Re, the sinless Christ: I've also been long fascinated by this question. It was necessary to torture and kill Him in order to bring about His divine sacrifice (though no lamb on a Jewish altar ever suffered so). Judas, the villian of that story, is just as critical to its fulfillment as Jesus. In other words, by betraying Christ, he did much more to save the earth than any evangelist who's come along since! It makes the head spin...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.