The major parties have the election system pretty well locked down. It's damn difficult for anyone to make a decent showing as a third party candidate. This is due to a number of roadblocks put in place by the parties, including much higher requirements to get on a ballot, districts drawn to be safe for incumbents, plurality voting system (i.e. perceived wasted vote risk), access to campaign funding to get media exposure, the focus of the media on money as an indicator of the seriousness and plausibility of a candidate, the lack of accountability for lying, the ability of corporations to fund smear campaigns anonymously, the failure of the mainstream media to do even basic fact-checking in most cases, etc.
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll think of more after I send this. We have a lot of problems that need fixing, and until people start demanding changes in the election system, we're going to be mostly stuck with the two parties along with any third party celebrity type candidates. Basically the status quo.
There are thoughts that Hillary Clinton is able to knock off Obama. So, this time around it'll be the face-off of last time's losers: Romney vs Clinton.
Maybe, but I thought we were talking about better options here. Not just "other options".
I never voted for him (nor for McSame), but Obama in my mind really shows how stupid voters are, though the final and real test will be if they re-nominate him in 2012.
Who else are they gonna nominate? It's pretty much Obama by default because there's nobody worth voting for that's gonna run.
I have no good grasp of the statistical breakdown amongst atheists between those that understand and those that don't, so I cannot refute you. My point was that at least some atheists exist (and possibly this correlates positively with how vocal and aggressive these atheists are in trying to refute theism) who don't understand this. In fact, several of the atheists who posted opinions in this discussion seemed to me to not have a good understanding of this issue.
I guess that most vocal atheists are just referring to the positions taken by vocal theists when they discuss these matters. The rest are just below the radar and generally not a matter for debate.
You didn't read the links above? They let you discriminate between cult and mainstream religion.
No, they present traits or practices that may be exhibited to some degree. They don't present a way to measure that degree along with the descriptions.
Fuzzy logic is indeed the answer - but it is rather silly to say that because hot and cold are on the same spectrum of temperature, that hot and cold are the same thing.
I don't know of any religion that would hit the "not a cult" end of the spectrum, and I suspect it would not be considered a religion if it did. So we're looking at degrees of exhibiting various traits, but we have no way to really measure these traits, so no way to really classify something as one or the other.
As others have noted, there can be a lot of variability even within a given sect as to what traits will be exhibited by subgroups and individuals. Maybe some subgroups or individuals discourage associations with friends and families while others don't. Maybe the discouragement is subtle rather than a command or requirement. This can often be a better way to drive wedges than by using outright threats of expulsion from the group. It would be quite difficult to classify entire religions unless they are quite small. That's probably one of the reasons why larger religions are harder to classify as cults than smaller religions.
Take Conservative Judaism, for example. My friends who identify with this religious group tell me that in most congregations, only the rabbi and the cantor actually keep the Sabbath, follow the rules for kosher food, and all of the other formal rules which the Conservative movement espouses. The vast majority of the people who identify with this sect do not follow many of the rules which they are "supposed" to follow --- and only the FSM knows what they actually believe in. If you believe my friends, most of them go to the synagogue or belong to a congregation only for social reasons.
I understand that completely, as I experienced it myself growing up. I'm saying that most atheists that will debate the subject understand this too. Beliefs are individual. That's part of what makes religion so difficult to fathom. Everyone believes something different, and most all of them believe they're correct in their beliefs.
Did you see how I rated the Campus Crusade for Christ as cult-light? I would put it in the middle of the spectrum between religion on one side and the People's Church on the other.
Arbitrary, given that you have no measurement standard. Still just an example of how most religions behave in a cult-ish way to at least some degree. So we essentially have some cults that are better than others.
Fuzzy boundaries exist everywhere in real life outside of the hard sciences, and are always the answer to answers like these (even the Sorites Paradox which you referred to above, but doesn't apply here, as it is not a size matter).
The Sorites Paradox doesn't require that it be a size matter. If you can apply a value to it, and there is a spectrum of such values possible, then Sorites applies. Fuzzy boundaries are certainly the answer here as well, but that's basically my point. Most religions fall between "definitely a cult" and "slightly a cult", but they are almost all cult-ish to some degree greater than "not a cult", as they all exhibit at least some of the behaviors and traits of cults.
You're still ignoring the gray areas and focusing only on the extreme examples. So, as long as it doesn't force you to cut off all contact and move away from friends and family, it's not a cult?
I would guess that variations exist as a byproduct of natural mutation, back to Darwin and random mutations.
If genetic differences can explain why we like some things differently from others, then descent from a common ancestor should also explain why we find many commonalities in our sense of beauty. I don't see the need for design in this.
I imagine it must make you sad to find out that cults and religions are actually and measurably different, but the facts are what they are.
No, it doesn't make me sad. It makes me interested though, and as I said, there is no standard of measurement presented, so I don't know what you're referring to when you say they're measurably different. Even if there is some standard for measurement, then you still have the heap problem to overcome, namely at what point does a cult become a religion, or vice versa?
It just seems sensible to me that the order and logic that is inherent in nature alludes to some type of intelligence directing things. It's almost as if science IS the religion, while at the same time leaving open the possibility of ID.
If our sense of beauty was designed, then wouldn't we all find the same things beautiful, and to the same degree? Why would there be any significant variation?
Well now you're very heavily weighting that list, even though many, if not most of those things can be attributed to most religions. Religions, as you seem to define them, just end up being on the less insanely controlling end of the cult spectrum. But they still do many of those same things, albeit less stridently.
Elrond did it to build a multinational business. Jesus commanded his disciples to own no possessions, take no money, and rely on handouts from the people they spoke to.
I think that sort of speaks for itself.
By that argument, there are damn few actual Christians in the world. So who are all the rest of these people claiming to be Christians? Are they just cultists? Nutjobs? What?
Except that most people who convert to a religion does so because they are persuaded by the evidence (there are a few who do so in order to marry the person of their choice or some such, but I reckon those are a minority). What the debate really comes down to is (a) a confusion between "evidence" and "proof", and (b) an argument over what comprises valid evidence (an argument which is going on between scientists, never mind between militant atheists and religionists.)
What it is is confirmation bias among those who are looking for evidence to support their belief. Scientists fall prey to this as well, but at least science has mechanisms for correcting those issues.
That ICSA checklist uses lots of weasel words, making most differences between cults and religions only a matter of degree, and presents no objective way to measure those degrees. Most things in that checklist seem to be characteristic of most forms of Christianity and other major religions. Any good cultist could easily argue that they're a religion according to that list.
That is, if someone says to a vocal atheist "I am a Christian", the vocal atheist immediate thinks he knows what that person believes, because he equates "Christianity" to "a set of beliefs" --- when the person actually only meant "I identify with a social group called Christians", and in many cases doesn't believe in "Christian canon" in a particular stereotypical way.
That's ridiculous. If there's one thing that's readily apparent about Christianity, it's that it has a huge number of different sects and sets of beliefs. Any informed atheist certainly knows that. I'm sure there are some that are just as uninformed as many theists are, but as the studies presented by the GP show, atheists are more likely to be informed. This is probably pretty obvious even to the less informed folks.
Just means that the last mod (or mods) applied to it was -1 Overrated, after someone else had rated it +1 Interesting. The Over/Underrated mods don't replace the descriptors for mods like Troll or Insightful.
Ok, just checked myself on this one. Forgot about the closing of the airbase there. From what I understand though, we still have a military presence there, it's just a lot more low-profile now, and the big hardware has been moved to other nearby countries.
You can fault Osama's ethics, but not his logic. 9/11 got the US out of Saudi, and into Afghanistan where they are heading for the same financial fate as the Soviet Union. Osama succeeded beyond his dreams. That would justify the civilian casualties to them. Collateral Damage, as the Americans say.
Since when are we out of Saudi? We've already done a lot better in Afghanistan than the Soviets did. I still personally don't think it's truly a salvageable situation for us, but it's hardly the same thing. Had we not taken our eye off the ball for several years to mount that insane invasion of Iraq, I think things could have turned out significantly better.
Collateral damage and intentionally targeting civilians are definitely not the same thing. When the enemy fighters intermingle themselves in the civilian population, there's inevitably going to be civilian casualties. That doesn't mean we don't try to minimize those casualties, if not just on principle, then also because they are very counter-productive for us.
Agreed a show trial would be pointless, but you are swallowing the propaganda a bit there. Osama had concrete aims, such as expelling US troops from Saudi Arabia. He was callous to the deaths, but hardly killing for its own sake. If body count was all that mattered, they could have killed far, far more.
You also hear how they "want to destroy America". What nonsense, as if Osama could have been so deluded.
What propaganda? What aims did he have that justify the targeting of civilians? What evidence do you have that they could have killed far, far more? They launched many more attacks and attempted attacks. Some succeeded, others didn't.
As for destroying America, I don't know that he's ever actually used those words. I don't think it really matters. Whether he wants to destroy America completely or not, his crimes remain the same.
According to the news, the White House admitted that Bin Laden was unarmed. He was shot because he was resisting arrest. That made me wonder, what kind of unarmed resistance is too tough for Navy Seals to handle? Aren't they supposed to be really tough guys?
Later, Bin Laden 12 year old daughter tells that he was captured and then executed. Not unlikely, from that still considers non-Americans as sub human, even if the source isn't the most trustworthy.
Now, who do we trust? The guy who claims that Navy Seals are a bunch of wussies, or the girl who claims these guys did what they set out to do?
He didn't surrender. They couldn't really know whether he was armed or not until afterwards. He could have had a detonator or other weapon on him and they wouldn't know until it was too late. I certainly wouldn't want them putting themselves at any additional risk in an attempt to take him alive. He had ample opportunity to surrender and he chose not to. He sealed his own fate.
Historically, it has been a part of the image of "good civilized guys" (which I hope we're still trying to project) that even the most vile scum is only put to death after a trial. If that courtesy was extended to the perpetrators of the Holocaust, I don't see why it shouldn't be applicable to Osama. The end result is the same, but symbolically it does make a big difference.
Like I said in my other post. If he wanted a trial, he should have surrendered. The Germans surrendered. They got trials. I wouldn't ask the men who raided the compound to take even slightly more risk to save his life just so we can kill him later. Having any one of them die because of that would be beyond tragic.
So, in other words, you do not think Justicia should be blind and provide _everyone_ with the same rights -- that the right to a fair trial can be waived if the commander in chief says so?
Had he surrendered, then sure, give him a trial. Maybe a military tribunal. But they were in a long firefight in a dangerous place, and he didn't surrender. If he wanted to be captured and wanted a trial, then he should have surrendered. I'm not going to ask that those guys put themselves at any more risk than necessary, and I'm not going to ask that they put a more priority on capturing rather than killing him if he isn't going to surrender. Better him dying than any one of them.
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The major parties have the election system pretty well locked down. It's damn difficult for anyone to make a decent showing as a third party candidate. This is due to a number of roadblocks put in place by the parties, including much higher requirements to get on a ballot, districts drawn to be safe for incumbents, plurality voting system (i.e. perceived wasted vote risk), access to campaign funding to get media exposure, the focus of the media on money as an indicator of the seriousness and plausibility of a candidate, the lack of accountability for lying, the ability of corporations to fund smear campaigns anonymously, the failure of the mainstream media to do even basic fact-checking in most cases, etc.
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll think of more after I send this. We have a lot of problems that need fixing, and until people start demanding changes in the election system, we're going to be mostly stuck with the two parties along with any third party celebrity type candidates. Basically the status quo.
There are thoughts that Hillary Clinton is able to knock off Obama. So, this time around it'll be the face-off of last time's losers: Romney vs Clinton.
Maybe, but I thought we were talking about better options here. Not just "other options".
By the time anyone actually gets nominated and elected, they are in the pocket of corporations. If they aren't, they don't get nominated or elected.
I never voted for him (nor for McSame), but Obama in my mind really shows how stupid voters are, though the final and real test will be if they re-nominate him in 2012.
Who else are they gonna nominate? It's pretty much Obama by default because there's nobody worth voting for that's gonna run.
I have no good grasp of the statistical breakdown amongst atheists between those that understand and those that don't, so I cannot refute you. My point was that at least some atheists exist (and possibly this correlates positively with how vocal and aggressive these atheists are in trying to refute theism) who don't understand this. In fact, several of the atheists who posted opinions in this discussion seemed to me to not have a good understanding of this issue.
I guess that most vocal atheists are just referring to the positions taken by vocal theists when they discuss these matters. The rest are just below the radar and generally not a matter for debate.
You didn't read the links above? They let you discriminate between cult and mainstream religion.
No, they present traits or practices that may be exhibited to some degree. They don't present a way to measure that degree along with the descriptions.
Fuzzy logic is indeed the answer - but it is rather silly to say that because hot and cold are on the same spectrum of temperature, that hot and cold are the same thing.
I don't know of any religion that would hit the "not a cult" end of the spectrum, and I suspect it would not be considered a religion if it did. So we're looking at degrees of exhibiting various traits, but we have no way to really measure these traits, so no way to really classify something as one or the other.
As others have noted, there can be a lot of variability even within a given sect as to what traits will be exhibited by subgroups and individuals. Maybe some subgroups or individuals discourage associations with friends and families while others don't. Maybe the discouragement is subtle rather than a command or requirement. This can often be a better way to drive wedges than by using outright threats of expulsion from the group. It would be quite difficult to classify entire religions unless they are quite small. That's probably one of the reasons why larger religions are harder to classify as cults than smaller religions.
Take Conservative Judaism, for example. My friends who identify with this religious group tell me that in most congregations, only the rabbi and the cantor actually keep the Sabbath, follow the rules for kosher food, and all of the other formal rules which the Conservative movement espouses. The vast majority of the people who identify with this sect do not follow many of the rules which they are "supposed" to follow --- and only the FSM knows what they actually believe in. If you believe my friends, most of them go to the synagogue or belong to a congregation only for social reasons.
I understand that completely, as I experienced it myself growing up. I'm saying that most atheists that will debate the subject understand this too. Beliefs are individual. That's part of what makes religion so difficult to fathom. Everyone believes something different, and most all of them believe they're correct in their beliefs.
Did you see how I rated the Campus Crusade for Christ as cult-light? I would put it in the middle of the spectrum between religion on one side and the People's Church on the other.
Arbitrary, given that you have no measurement standard. Still just an example of how most religions behave in a cult-ish way to at least some degree. So we essentially have some cults that are better than others.
Fuzzy boundaries exist everywhere in real life outside of the hard sciences, and are always the answer to answers like these (even the Sorites Paradox which you referred to above, but doesn't apply here, as it is not a size matter).
The Sorites Paradox doesn't require that it be a size matter. If you can apply a value to it, and there is a spectrum of such values possible, then Sorites applies. Fuzzy boundaries are certainly the answer here as well, but that's basically my point. Most religions fall between "definitely a cult" and "slightly a cult", but they are almost all cult-ish to some degree greater than "not a cult", as they all exhibit at least some of the behaviors and traits of cults.
You're still ignoring the gray areas and focusing only on the extreme examples. So, as long as it doesn't force you to cut off all contact and move away from friends and family, it's not a cult?
I would guess that variations exist as a byproduct of natural mutation, back to Darwin and random mutations.
If genetic differences can explain why we like some things differently from others, then descent from a common ancestor should also explain why we find many commonalities in our sense of beauty. I don't see the need for design in this.
I imagine it must make you sad to find out that cults and religions are actually and measurably different, but the facts are what they are.
No, it doesn't make me sad. It makes me interested though, and as I said, there is no standard of measurement presented, so I don't know what you're referring to when you say they're measurably different. Even if there is some standard for measurement, then you still have the heap problem to overcome, namely at what point does a cult become a religion, or vice versa?
It just seems sensible to me that the order and logic that is inherent in nature alludes to some type of intelligence directing things. It's almost as if science IS the religion, while at the same time leaving open the possibility of ID.
If our sense of beauty was designed, then wouldn't we all find the same things beautiful, and to the same degree? Why would there be any significant variation?
I don't think you're making whatever point you think you're making.
Well now you're very heavily weighting that list, even though many, if not most of those things can be attributed to most religions. Religions, as you seem to define them, just end up being on the less insanely controlling end of the cult spectrum. But they still do many of those same things, albeit less stridently.
Elrond did it to build a multinational business. Jesus commanded his disciples to own no possessions, take no money, and rely on handouts from the people they spoke to. I think that sort of speaks for itself.
By that argument, there are damn few actual Christians in the world. So who are all the rest of these people claiming to be Christians? Are they just cultists? Nutjobs? What?
Except that most people who convert to a religion does so because they are persuaded by the evidence (there are a few who do so in order to marry the person of their choice or some such, but I reckon those are a minority). What the debate really comes down to is (a) a confusion between "evidence" and "proof", and (b) an argument over what comprises valid evidence (an argument which is going on between scientists, never mind between militant atheists and religionists.)
What it is is confirmation bias among those who are looking for evidence to support their belief. Scientists fall prey to this as well, but at least science has mechanisms for correcting those issues.
The doctorates at the Institute for Cultic Studies disagrees with you. Characteristics of a cult:
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm or http://icsahome.com/infoserv_respond/info_clergy.asp?Subject=Religion+Versus+Cult
That ICSA checklist uses lots of weasel words, making most differences between cults and religions only a matter of degree, and presents no objective way to measure those degrees. Most things in that checklist seem to be characteristic of most forms of Christianity and other major religions. Any good cultist could easily argue that they're a religion according to that list.
That is, if someone says to a vocal atheist "I am a Christian", the vocal atheist immediate thinks he knows what that person believes, because he equates "Christianity" to "a set of beliefs" --- when the person actually only meant "I identify with a social group called Christians", and in many cases doesn't believe in "Christian canon" in a particular stereotypical way.
That's ridiculous. If there's one thing that's readily apparent about Christianity, it's that it has a huge number of different sects and sets of beliefs. Any informed atheist certainly knows that. I'm sure there are some that are just as uninformed as many theists are, but as the studies presented by the GP show, atheists are more likely to be informed. This is probably pretty obvious even to the less informed folks.
(Score:-1, Interesting)
That, in and of itself, is interesting.
Just means that the last mod (or mods) applied to it was -1 Overrated, after someone else had rated it +1 Interesting. The Over/Underrated mods don't replace the descriptors for mods like Troll or Insightful.
Ok, just checked myself on this one. Forgot about the closing of the airbase there. From what I understand though, we still have a military presence there, it's just a lot more low-profile now, and the big hardware has been moved to other nearby countries.
You can fault Osama's ethics, but not his logic. 9/11 got the US out of Saudi, and into Afghanistan where they are heading for the same financial fate as the Soviet Union. Osama succeeded beyond his dreams. That would justify the civilian casualties to them. Collateral Damage, as the Americans say.
Since when are we out of Saudi? We've already done a lot better in Afghanistan than the Soviets did. I still personally don't think it's truly a salvageable situation for us, but it's hardly the same thing. Had we not taken our eye off the ball for several years to mount that insane invasion of Iraq, I think things could have turned out significantly better.
Collateral damage and intentionally targeting civilians are definitely not the same thing. When the enemy fighters intermingle themselves in the civilian population, there's inevitably going to be civilian casualties. That doesn't mean we don't try to minimize those casualties, if not just on principle, then also because they are very counter-productive for us.
Agreed a show trial would be pointless, but you are swallowing the propaganda a bit there. Osama had concrete aims, such as expelling US troops from Saudi Arabia. He was callous to the deaths, but hardly killing for its own sake. If body count was all that mattered, they could have killed far, far more.
You also hear how they "want to destroy America". What nonsense, as if Osama could have been so deluded.
What propaganda? What aims did he have that justify the targeting of civilians? What evidence do you have that they could have killed far, far more? They launched many more attacks and attempted attacks. Some succeeded, others didn't.
As for destroying America, I don't know that he's ever actually used those words. I don't think it really matters. Whether he wants to destroy America completely or not, his crimes remain the same.
According to the news, the White House admitted that Bin Laden was unarmed. He was shot because he was resisting arrest. That made me wonder, what kind of unarmed resistance is too tough for Navy Seals to handle? Aren't they supposed to be really tough guys? Later, Bin Laden 12 year old daughter tells that he was captured and then executed. Not unlikely, from that still considers non-Americans as sub human, even if the source isn't the most trustworthy. Now, who do we trust? The guy who claims that Navy Seals are a bunch of wussies, or the girl who claims these guys did what they set out to do?
He didn't surrender. They couldn't really know whether he was armed or not until afterwards. He could have had a detonator or other weapon on him and they wouldn't know until it was too late. I certainly wouldn't want them putting themselves at any additional risk in an attempt to take him alive. He had ample opportunity to surrender and he chose not to. He sealed his own fate.
Historically, it has been a part of the image of "good civilized guys" (which I hope we're still trying to project) that even the most vile scum is only put to death after a trial. If that courtesy was extended to the perpetrators of the Holocaust, I don't see why it shouldn't be applicable to Osama. The end result is the same, but symbolically it does make a big difference.
Like I said in my other post. If he wanted a trial, he should have surrendered. The Germans surrendered. They got trials. I wouldn't ask the men who raided the compound to take even slightly more risk to save his life just so we can kill him later. Having any one of them die because of that would be beyond tragic.
So, in other words, you do not think Justicia should be blind and provide _everyone_ with the same rights -- that the right to a fair trial can be waived if the commander in chief says so?
Had he surrendered, then sure, give him a trial. Maybe a military tribunal. But they were in a long firefight in a dangerous place, and he didn't surrender. If he wanted to be captured and wanted a trial, then he should have surrendered. I'm not going to ask that those guys put themselves at any more risk than necessary, and I'm not going to ask that they put a more priority on capturing rather than killing him if he isn't going to surrender. Better him dying than any one of them.