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Idle: File-Sharing Is Not a Religion, Says Swedish Government
Dangerous_Minds writes "ZeroPaid is reporting on an attempt in Sweden to recognize filesharing as a religion. The religion's website calls this 'Kopimism' and says that sharing of knowledge is sacred. Apparently, Swedish authorities were not convinced. A recent report shows that the attempt failed to convince the authorities to recognize Kopimism as a religion."
Well asking for that is a bit of a catch 22. It's kind of like trying to be President of the USA and be an atheist. It's not that it can't happen, it's that the majority of people wont allow it to happen (or at least hasn't). A mental health professional who could make such a claim is likely to not be in the profession much longer.
However, I did come across a report somewhere a while back that did make such a claim. I wish I could recall the specifics or find a link for you to support that.
But when you really get down to it - is faith any different than believing in any other supernatural item? An adult who earnestly still believes in Santa is pretty much in the same boat. At least that was my thoughts on the idea of faith after I learned Santa wasn't real. If that could be fabricated on such a large scale - why not anything else?
Mind you - I'm not saying there is or isn't any higher being or whatnot. But I'm certainly in no position to claim any factual knowledge of the existence or lack thereof of such a being.
religion is a mockery of rational thought.
if you want to tell me about this jesus character, I'll tell you and equally bizzarre story. are you setting yourself up as JUDGE, here?
my, my. what WOULD your church elders say?
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A rational response in a religious debate by an AC - this cannot be the Slashdot I know.
Hah! But it's only a "rational response" to the degree that trying to avoid answering hard questions is a rational goal -- that is, if you don't have a good answer and are trying to lead the debate off in another direction entirely. To recap, OP asked:
But when you really get down to it - is faith any different than believing in any other supernatural item?
and AC replied:
The debate of belief and disbelief in God is a key part of the Western philosophical tradition.
This is kind of like answering the question "Did you steal that money?" with "People like having money." It's a dodge, a retreat into generality. I find it hard to believe that AC (or you, or anyone else in the discussion) doesn't have a pretty specific opinion on the answer to OP's question.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If you really, truly, genuinely believe that accepting the theory of relativity is equivalent to believing in the power of prayer, you are simply incapable of understanding or contributing to rational debate on this or any subject.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, then make a god for your religion. Call him The Pirate. And create your own holy scripture. It might begin like this:
1 In the beginning, The Pirate created the universe.
2 But there was no one The Pirate could share that universe with.
3 Therefore The Pirate said: "Let us create humans, so that the universe is shared." And so he did.
4 And The Pirate said to the humans: "I've created you to share.
5 I hereby order you to share all knowledge I give you, as well as all knowledge you get from others, unless that knowledge is of private nature."
6 And he said: "Multiply, and multiply your knowledge, so you have more knowledge to share.
7 You shall make images of things in the world and of things in your mind.
8 And you shall write texts both about reality and about things you imagine.
9 And you shall create all sorts of art.
10 And you shall share all this with others.
11 And you shall not demand any compensation for sharing, just as I don't demand that you pay for sharing the universe."
12 And the humans complied, and everything was well. This era was known as the paradise.
13 But the devil didn't like that, and he planted into the humans the sin of greed.
14 And he planted into their mind the shortsightedness, so they didn't see the advantage they got from everyone sharing.
15 And thus the humans said: "We have invested much work in our knowledge and in our art. We want to have an advantage.
16 And we don't want those who didn't invest that much work to not have that advantage."
17 And thus the humans stopped sharing their works for free, and demanded to be compensated.
18 And The Pirate got angry at the humans because they violated His orders.
19 And The Pirate said: "You have sinned. Therefore I will throw you out of the paradise.
20 And you shall not be left in again until you all return to the spirit of sharing."
21 And he created illnesses to punish the humans.
22 And he limited the natural growth of the plants humans could eat, and made many of the plants poisonous.
23 And he made the problem of surviving hard, so the humans would have an incentive to share their knowledge in order to fight those dangers.
24 But the devil's influence was strong, and therefore the humans didn't work together to solve their problems.
25 Instead they fought wars over the limited resources, and killed each other.
26 And those humans who found ways to increase those resources didn't share their knowledge, but hid it as well as they could, so only they would profit from it.
27 And they made laws to prevent others from sharing knowledge.
28 And eventually those who hoarded the knowledge ruled the world.
29 But the world was in a miserable state.
You of course need prophets of sharing (you may even borrow some from other religions and reinterpret them; this gives more "legitimacy" to your religion). And you need a cult (which ideally involves people meeting in person; part of that cult is of course the exchange of copies of files, but it may also have other aspects like mutual signing of PGP keys, and very important, preaching the religion of sharing).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Biases: Atheist, Ex-Christian, 12 years of denominational school, PhD philosopher father, many friends who are psychologists...
- Santa and Supernatural Jesus are both ridiculous since they make extraordinary claims without any evidence. The claim that I am a wizard would have equally ridiculous basis.
- Santa and God are not. There is equal empirical evidence that there was a creator of the universe as that there wasn't, which is to say 0 evidence. But in this case we know the universe exists and we know it came into being somehow so dividing it up into either "Random" or "Divinely Crafted" isn't a terribly ridiculous way to divide the two theories.
- It could, however, be logically and philosophically argued though that if there is a God that created our universe he's been proven to be an asshole and not a loving or caring all powerful entity.
- Mental Illness though is recognizing as abnormal human thought processes that are outside of normal reason and logic. It's not outside of normal reason and logic to find causation where none exists (Belief in the Supernatural). It's not mental illness to attribute meaning or purpose to actions which have none--in fact, quite the contrary, we're hardwired to find patterns in noise. If you find an abnormal number of patterns in noise to the degree that you ability to find real patterns in data through the noise of false-positives then you have a mental illness. The centuries of philosophical tradition prove that the notion of a divine being is within the normal threshold of an average 'healthy' human mind.
Now that's not to say that it's rational. You could also use the exact same argument to say that Racism is also not a mental illness (I would agree with that statement) based on the fact that it's a seemingly 'normal' part of the human condition. That's not to say it's a belief system that should be encouraged but it's also not a "disease" since it's within the design-spec of the experience.
Yes, I believe that supernatural beliefs are the product of irrational thought. But there is plenty of irrational thought in the average, well functioning individual. Similarly while it would be great if we all had 150+ IQs it doesn't lead to follow that everyone with a 100 IQ is mentally ill.
Also from my experience most Christians think they're using sound logic to found their beliefs. It's like solving a physics question with the wrong equation. You might be great at math, but if you think gravity is -8m/s^2 you're always going to come up with the wrong answer.
Religion isn't a defect of the mind, it's a defect of education. Proof being that your upbringing is by far the largest predictor of your religiosity. That goes to show it isn't mental illness, it's just bad parenting.