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Farewell To the Floppy Disk
s31523 writes "Those of us who have been in the IT arena for a while remember installing our favorite OS, network client, power application, etc. by feeding the computer what seemed an endless supply of 5.25" soft floppy disks. We rejoiced when the hard 3.5" floppies came out, cutting our install media by 1/3. We practically did backflips when the data CD-ROM arrived and we declared: we will never need any other disk than this! It is with sadness that I report the beginning of the end for the floppy: computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out."
BSD is dead.
re:"Jesus Saves"
But Hersheld SCORES ON THE REBOUND!
I think your sig proved its point rather well in the responses. How intolerant can you get.
To answer the question it:
1) Partly an American thing, because Christain funadamentalism (mostly and American thing) and atheist fundamentalism breed off each other.
2) Partly a slashdot thing. Teenagers living in their parents basement tend to assume that anything they do not understand must be wrong.
3) A generalisation of 2). People do not know the reasons for a particular belief, so they assume it must be irrational. The tooth fairy comparisions prove that.
4) The need for scapegoats. If we could just wipe out X life would be fine. Pol Pot (among others) tried that (wiping out religions, money and anyone who looked like trouble).
5) An ignorance of history and society caused by 3) and making 4) seem plausible.
1)As I understand it "atheist fundamentalism" is a misnomer. You can't be fundamentalist about a lack of belief, it requires a positive proposition. Otherwise you have nothing to be fundamental about.
2)Saying things like "teenagers living in their parents basement" does not help an argument. You can put you hands over your ears and believe that that the entirety of your opponents belong to this demographic if you wish. The 'argument' in that statement is that "[they] do not understand [therefore they think it] must be wrong."
Fine. Make me understand. I'm all ears. I understand fairly complex aspects of science, art, literature and the rest of life's rich tapestry, if religion has anything to offer me, i'm yet to hear it, and i've been looking at it pretty hard.
3) A generalisation of 2) Again, tell me the reasons. Tell me why society should embrace religion. Fundamentally, it IS irrational. You cannot come to religion by rationality, if you can, please feel free to prove it to me. That's what rationality is.
As for the 'tooth fairy' comment, Bertrand Russell was a Rationalist and he compared God to a chocolate teapot. Make of that what you will, I'm sure you'll have a difficult time convincing anyone who understands rationality to be religious.
4) Criticising religions and wanting to wipe them out are not one and the same. It's a common tactic in arguments to paint the other side as the extreme extension of what they are saying.
5) This is only plausible to psychopathic dictators.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
Simple: if you experience something it is rational to conclude it exists. What is wrong with that. I see the sun, I think it exists. I "see" (for want of a better word) God, I think God exists.
4) Yes but there are people who want to wipe out religions.
5) This is supposed to be rational argument. I am not a dictator, rational or other wise. The point is that a lot of things that relions are blamed for rae not religious - e.g. a lot of "religious" wars have nationalist or ethnic roots.