Can you please tell me of any major religion that claims this?
It appears that setting up a straw man gets you modded "insightful" on Slashdot, provided you run with the mob's prejudices.
I can see a potential problem for religions that believe in reincarnation, in that they now have to explain why none seems to remember past lives on other planets, but the monotheistic religions are just fine.
Honestly, I highly doubt any atheist gives much serious thought to what Christians believe in regards to other terrestrial life-forms. Nor is the fact that it poses a problem for said monotheistic religions a strawman. All scientific revolutions that have demoted Man's importance were always steadfastly opposed by religious institutions, and will always be, because it contradicts essential tenets about humanity being images of the godhood. That is, if we are forced to conclude that, yes, human beings are about as important as some slime muck on another planet, it begs us to ask just how awesome this godhood is.
Most Christians, at least, expect God to have created other intelligent beings. There have been books published on the issue.
Are you atheists capable of arguing with what we really believe, or are your arguments so weak that they can only prevail against a straw man? People like you are rapidly convincing me of the latter.
"How is it, then, that you make a special exemption for your god? How do you reconcile the inherent illogic of religion with the rest of your life?"
Excuse me, but have you been watching the news recently? As a geek christian, who fits your profile- I ask you-
How is it, then, that you reconcile the inherent illogic of society around you with the rest of your life?
3.2.1... Did I guess right- Did you blame it on religion?
The "inherent illogic of religion" is the only thing that makes me think I'm sane in a world where George W Bush gets to be president for 2 full terms.
I was an atheist before 2000. Around the time of the PATRIOT act, I blamed christians for the end of freedom and liberty and decency in my country. It was only then, that I started studying the bible, with humility, to find out WTF was going on in the world that I couldn't comprehend. You see, as a geek, using the cop-out that "those religious people are irrational", just wasn't cutting it anymore.
I tell you brother (or sister)- if you keep on going through life, thinking that religious people are irrational, you are going to live a very sad and confused life. If however you suck up a little humility, and try to read the religious texts with an open mind that the people who cherish them, might _actually_ not be irrational, then you might soon discover that the world makes quite a bit more sense that you previously thought.
And one thing you'll never do, is think again that the religious texts sugar-coat the harsh *reality* of human social interaction.
The claim that believers are irrational will never die because faith itself is, by definition, irrational. Do you ever wonder why various intellectually dishonest scoundrels are trying to either create a double standard whereby personal anecdote is considered fine empirical evidence, or suggest that scientific inquiry has inherent limits on what it can answer? Because believers have only what constitutes really crappy evidence for their beliefs, and if they are going to convince others about their claims, they need it to be considered, by the public, as good evidence.
Let's consider the situation of a willful non-corporeal entity that is not directly observable. If it can influence the material world, we can study these influences in a scientific fashion, so right off the bat, science can study anything that influences the world, and so something that cannot be studied by science really has absolutely zero concern for us.
Case 0: The entity never influences the material world. Influence can mean move mountains, cause seizures, or intense mental states. Since it does not influence the world at all, this entity is moot to talk about as we can never know anything about it. It's on the same level as the invisible unicorn or Celestial Teapot (and, indeed, all deities humanity has conceived).
Case 1: If this entity acts in an entirely predictable way (i.e., you explode each time you say, "Ik, ak, thuk.") then we can very easily test the extent of this entity's influence on the material world, and build a model for its behavior. Essentially, it becomes a natural law and we dispense with caring that maybe it is an conscious, caring entity. We can never actually know it is an entity, just like we could never know whether gravity is a natural force or in fact the calculated moves of an immaterial frost giant.
Case 2: The willful entity actually makes use of its willfullness, i.e., it behaves in a non-entirely-predictable fashion. Aha, you might say, science certainly could not study that! Unfortunately, this is not the case. Suppose we thought this entity caused a tsunami. We then discover that, actually, the tsunami originated at precisely the same time as a deep sea earthquake that was, to the best predictive power of our models, bound to happen in that particular area. This is very solid evidence that this tsunami is entirely the result of natural forces, and not the random, willful act of an entity.
I tend to think that the whackos on the religious right has pushed the thinking person towards aethism, when a thinking person might had been a member of a fairly liberal faith or agnostic before.
I strongly doubt the rise of rationalism/skepticism/atheism has anything to do with religious fundies. More likely it has to do with the fact that in the last century scientific inquiry continually finds materialistic explanations for what once was thought entirely mysterious or preternatural.
Design sounds nice, until supposedly irreducible is reduced. Ghost in the Machine is fine, until you drastically alter someone's personality by messing with their brain. Astral Projection is great, until you find the area of the brain responsible and induce it in a lab.
What keeps (scientifically) educated, intelligent people clinging to faith is a problem of child psychology and inordinate amounts of personal incredulity.
Honestly, if you really dig into anti-materialist arguments, you find they are painfully lacking in substance. I remember B. Allan Wallace suggesting that neurological activity and subjective mental experiences might not be necessarily and sufficiently linked because of a time lag between the events that, by golly, just happened to correspond to about how much time it takes for neurons to fire.
It amazes me, as a rather staunch materialist (but also not emotionally attached to the idea, and open-minded to evidence), how non-materialists could ever appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the universe. If the explanation for consciousness, for instance, is that "A being created an unobservable, eternal spirit", that's just plain boring. But if it's an artifact of how our brain operates, how glorious it is in its complexity. The materialist is not dumbfounded or threatened by this complexity, but awestruck by it.
It isn't, per se, even if it's original intent was to be. It's not so much a liberal vs. conservative issue, but there are a lot of untenable conspiracy theories floating around. Almost anything that deals with Big (pharma, business, gov. etc.) is bound to be a crock of shit. Most conspiracy theorist don't recognize the extreme scales they are talking about (i.e., thousands of people being closed-lipped), nor do they recognize that half the time they are talking about a non-entity (i.e., Big Pharma doesn't even exist. It's just a bunch of independent companies and academic researchers).
Then throw in the fact that most agencies, be them government or business, have to be attributed with extreme evil genius to carry out their plots, yet on the other must be so simple minded and prone to errors that "Some Dude" can see through their schemes.
Really, conspiracy theorists are just histrionic megalomaniacs. Rather myopic ones at that.
Anyway, I say the whole broadcast TV thing needs to just die anyway. Seriously, how many people do you know personally who don't have satellite or cable? I know of one person, but that's it.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone on slashdot advocating the elimination of the FREE option and requiring people to pay money for something. I would advocate the hypothetical elimination of freely distributed crack-cocaine to pre-teens. Television isn't much better;)
Well not quite. Using a trademark's appeal to deceive customers, pretending: "this product is from this manufacturer" when it's not is definitely wrong and it has nothing to do with regulation.
Patents and copyright in their current form are indeed regulation and should be abolished. Definitely wrong? Let's look at your initial presumptions. It assumes that a trademark has inherent value, which is debatable. Then you assume that the parent company losing money to fake products is wrong, which assumes there is a value of initial innovation and creation. Then there is the assumption that consumers should be protected.
No, the GP is entirely right. Everything he mentioned is a regulation. There are no absolute morals in the market. Our task is to decide how much and which ones will benefit society the most.
In modern society, we have a thing called "decency." Part of it is that we have enough self-respect so as not to debase ourselves with needless profanity. It's pretty much the same reason that we tend to use more formal language in formal writing - we similarly don't consider our everyday conversation so uncouth as to warrant whatever curses we can think of.
We choose not to profane our conversation. You're assuming the existence of an absolute morality. Clearly, certain words tend to be associated with negatives or insults, but it always takes two parties for this to happen. Namely, one person to say a word (which at this point is devoid of meaning) and another person to place some value on this word.
The perfect example is "taking the Lord's name in vain." When I say, "Jesus fucking Christ", "Goddamnit!" or "Holy shit" these words pack about as much punch as "Oh man!", at least to me. This is because Jesus/God is not my Lord, and so of course to me to suggest I'm taking a non-entity's name in vain is somewhat silly. The true-believer, however, will hear these words and attach some offensive qualities to them.
Censoring of any sort always boils down to one party imposing their morals on a myriad other parties that do not share their beliefs. Sure, these groups (anti-abortionists, creation scientist, and those of their ilk) tend to argue that their position is no different than anyone else's, and ergo you just have to choose your poison, so to speak. This is patently absurd with a moment's thought, because it takes a positive belief in order for something to be offensive, and ergo the baseline will always rest with those who do not find something offensive.
Unless, of course, you always for absolute moralities. This is why groups who have no real ground to stand on always turn to this antiquated idea.
Let me say that most of the Greens I've talked to are not in favor of vote-swapping, for several reasons.
1. As you say, it's not enforceable. You might trust your cousin in another state to trade with you, but that doesn't scale, certainly not via an anonymous website.
2. It defeats the purpose of voting: to cast your ballot for what you believe in. There's an argument that vote-swapping could bring you closer to what you want in the long run, but picture trying to swap votes in different races with different people in assorted districts in your state -- the calculations get out of hand very quickly.
3. This is a distraction from the structural flaws in our voting system, such as prohibitive ballot-access laws, first-past-the-post, and the Electoral College. Items 2 and 3 are somewhat self-contradictory. Never, under the Constitution, has the US ever had a system where your vote was more than a token symbolic gesture. A lot of the times the state delegates don't even have to vote according to the popular state vote. You sure as hell aren't going to fix problems in item 3 via the naive method of "voting for what you believe."
Politicians should have uncompromising beliefs and ideologies, and the people should vote for or against them accordingly.
Anything less is mercenary. The politician you vote for is not the politician you inaugurate. Bush voters know what this means; and soon Hillary voters will, too. Anything less is called "representative democracy."
Ever wonder why there are so many global warming deniers? It's because of the attitude taken by fanatic, self-righteous global warming alarmists. Maybe. Or more likely, it's that most people have no idea how the scientific process works, or what "scientific consensus" means. It's the same logic that allows people to brush aside one of the best verified theories we have (i.e., evolution) because there are gaps in our knowledge.
More importantly, does anyone actually drink any of those high fructose corn syrup blends? I always thought it was a big urban legend, like people putting their wet dogs in the microwave to dry out.
As others have pointed out, there is absolutely no reason to believe such a vaccination would not be developed or released if it was developed. This is true for a few reasons.
Basically, conspiracies regarding "Big Pharma" are what we call grand conspiracies. These are the ones like 9/11 conspiracies. They require so many people and such careful planning and manipulation that they essentially collapse under their own weight. Big pharma conspiracies require that every pharma is in cahoots, which is simply not true, and that every independent academic researcher is being paid off by big pharma. This latter one is obviously not true to anyone who works in medicine. Medicine is not a monolithic construct or industry. No one really controls what a researcher does or thinks. Not the AMA, the university, or companies. Sure, there are pawns and whores out there, but they are minorities.
It's naive to discount the fame the company who developed a cure for HIV or cancer would get. HIV and cancer conspiracies are basically isomoprhic, and so let us travel down the cancer conspiracy road a bit. A cure for cancer is worth billions and billions, if not trillions, of dollars. ANY pharma company would jump through the roof if they had a cure for cancer. To think otherwise is to have a questionable grasp of the economics in question.
I am willing to bet that if you went up to any pharma company and presented them with a drug that cured cancer they would without hesitation and with great happiness drop all of their previous infrastructure, start from scratch, and exclusively cure cancer. That's how lucrative it is.
All this aside, why is there this pervasive belief that the only people doing research are those working for big pharma? This shows a pitiful lack of understanding of how basic science is carried out, and again I point out how academics are not typically beholden to much besides their own interests. Sure, it does happen that funds are tight for certain research avenues, but there isn't this giant overseer that dictates exactly who gets what funds.
Any academic research who found a cure for cancer or AIDS would have their career made. The incentive is gigantic.
So while some pharma companies do deal in underhanded tactics, it's quite a leap to assume such a grand conspiracy such as repression of cancer or HIV research/medicines.
Ahem--if embryonic stem cell research is promising all the private pharmaceutical firms (and big-time investors like Warren Buffett and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) would put up lots of money without government help to fund such research. As such, it appears adult stem cell research has shown major promise (some 80+ therapies based on adult stem cell research are now in serious development), while embryonic stem cell research has pretty much come up "squadoosh." I'm not sure from what Neo-con news source you're getting your information, but that's absurd. It is true that there have been some impressive advances in adult stem cell technology. But do you know what those were? Inducing pluripotency in skin cells (in mice). That's right, making adult stem cells more like embryonic stem cells.
Despite all the good, cheery values social conservatives claim to protect, their draconian policies will always be the number one enemy of progress and enlightenment. It's a wonder that such antiquarian busybodiness still festers in otherwise evolved nation states. Mayhap it is not such a wonder when the ultimate form of veracity is considered to be peridolia, anecdote, pseudoscience, intuition, and hynagogic visions.
The idea the generalizations are wrong is so pervasive in our society it's a true shame. Just another example of how PC-mongering has taken a good idea (avoiding stereotypes) and turned it on it's head.
Generalizations are great. Perhaps they are not always correct, but they offer fairly decent probabilities.
Take people who hold a naturalistic fallacy (i.e., anything from nature is good for you, whereas synthetic things are bad). You can bet your ass that almost anything they say regarding health which is also non-standard is based in pseudoscience. They are the same type of people who buy into homeopathy, ion-shooting salt lamps, reflexology, chiropractic, fluoride=bad, vaccinations=autism, an the list goes on. If someone comes to you with one weird belief steeped in naturalism I would wager they have a few other wonky beliefs, and probably engage in conspiracy-type thinking.
On the other hand, there is no randomness like quantum randomness. So if you believe their bit-stream faithfully represents the source, then in this case you can feel pretty good about it.
How about mathematical randomness? Let's face it, natural sciences are just the ugly red-headed step-daughter of mathematics;).
I think you have a misconstrued view of people who spoil plots, deface art, etc. Most the time the people have little emotional investment in what they are defacing, and do it primarily for entertainment value rather than any deep reasons. Think about drunk frat boys. The guy who shot Lennon was a friggin sociopath.
Sure, defacers are douchebags, and vandals need a good punch to the back of the head, but the people with the real problem are those who get overly worked up about art in the first place.
Exposing Uri Geller's spoon bending as fake is like exposing Pamela Anderson's breasts as fake. What's the point? It spoils the fun, and those who still think it's real aren't going to be convinced anyway. You can't stop the good fight of skepticism.
It doesn't even take thousands of years. Look at Mormonism. The entire Book of Mormon is forced into the realm of utter nonsense via simple DNA testing.
Unfortunately religious canon is like prophetic quatrains. Just say some vague things and interpret them post facto, or says very specific things but deny they were meant to be so specific. Then forget all the blatantly false.
Are you kidding me? You expect these people, who are the low-paid,
bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different
from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies?
Don't kid yourself.
All persons should aspire to live their lives ethically. Rather than have those who do be the exception, it ought to be that those that don't are the exception. While it's nice to be an armchair philosopher, human nature does not subscribe to any real set of ethics. Look at things like Christianity, which is a complete and utter failure as a moral guidance system. You should expect people in certain to positions to behave certain ways. Ergo, humans should strive not to live totally ethical lives, but intelligent lives.
Where is the breach in acquiring someone's porn? Frankly, I think it's disgraceful that a person would leave easy to access pornography on their computer.
You have to understand something about people. Not everyone things the same. In the U.S., if your child trips on a crack in the road and breaks his face you immediately are outraged at city for having such a detestable street. In, say, Sweden, the individual is culpable for their own actions.
You shouldn't expect people to behave entirely ethically all the time because that's just contrary to our natures.
Why should a virtual not be beholden to the laws of a specific nation? Frankly, the game is a service put out by a company and they should be, like every business, subject to the laws of the particular nation they operate out of.
What really irks me is people who try and make the case that the internet is its own reality.
Your laser analogy is apt. If our models for the universe completely describe it and could predict everything, but the universe really behaves under some different set of principals, does it matter? The two structures are isomorphic, and indeed, our model effectively BECOMES reality. Similar questions exist in the philosophy of mathematics.
The suggestion that science requires faith is the canonical true believer response, and is simply not true. For one, it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the scientific method. Secondly, it belies what true believers really want: some justification for their beliefs other than faith. It might not seem like this is the case, because it's often takes the appearance of changing science so it can deal with the supernatural.
I'll admit I'm not entirely sure I understand the complete thinking of the true believer who says science requires faith. It's certainly not faith in my peers who do research. If I wanted I could train myself in that area and verify their results. It's not faith in the machines that carry out the measurements, because I too could verify that if I wanted. Of course, I stick to my area of interest and trust my peers are not lying, and trust that there are enough independent verifiers out there such that I don't have to duplicate every experiment I read about.
Faith in the language that much science is spoken in (mathematics)? Nope, you can verify all of that, and it's pretty easy since it's axiomatic!
Where is the faith? Ah, here it is. It's faith in materialism. Now the real issue unfurls itself. The scientist, the atheist, and skeptic are all usually materialist. The problem is, the scientific method makes no a prior assumption of a materialistic universe. Science is a investigatory tool. So many people treat it as if it were a set of beliefs. Materialism is certainly a natural out growth from applying this tool, for good reason. If we could test for deities, we would. If some supernatural force had an effect upon the world, we could measure it, and at that point it's no longer supernatural. The problem is, anti-science folk want science to measure their pet beliefs which are inherently outside the realm of science because these things never manifest themselves. Science can say nothing about the existence of an invisible pink elephant that never influences the world in any way. It's up to the rational thinker to therefor conclude either the elephant does not exist or it does not matter.
Suggesting that the masses require faith in science is a straw man in of itself. By faith we must assume one means the same type of faith as the religious. But just as the scientist themselves has a trust in his comrades, the masses are in the same boat. If they were driven enough they could understand everything. They could replicate experiments. But with religions, what do you have? What objective means do I have to see Krishna?
Well you open up your heart and then you will experience it. Are you kidding me? An experience, even a personal one, is not evidence for anything. The human mind conjures all kinds of fears, emotions, and sometimes even visual images when it is in different states. I have no doubt that I too walked around in the desert and fasted and smoked peyote I'd experience some apparently pretty supernatural things. But as an informed individual I'd also know that a number of supernatural things are wholly natural. Astral projection, for instance, or out of body experiences, can be induced in the laboratory.
What it really boils down to is that I, a believer, couldn't take a well informed skeptic out and show them the things I have faith in existing. You can do that with anything scientific, but you might have to spend a few years starting with the basics.
Faith itself boils down to believing something without sufficient evidence for it, or being confused about what evidence is. A lot of people have had mystical experiences. You drop some psychedelic mushrooms and you suddenly feel completely connected to all reality and ergo draw the conclusion that everything is connected by some penetrating, malleable energy. But if you knew enough how the brain works all you'd realize is that's just how psilocybin is affecting it. Or again, if you didn't know th
Even the most fantastical of the comic books contains truths of human nature that we face every day.
I'm certainly not going to disagree that comic books are valid expressions of art, but most art falls terribly short of portraying anything close to human nature. Art usually highly romanticizes rather mundane happenings, pushes the manic-depressive as normal, and more or less manufactures and self-perpetuates nearly every single malady it purports to reveal.
Ever wonder why so many people feel like losers with a life that just isn't going anywhere despite their material success? Could it have anything to do with the fact that virtually all media (art, i.e., novels, television, film, etc.) portrays people living these fascinatingly desperate or fantastic lives, full of adventure, intrigue, love, etc? Then you get a film about some douchebag getting depressed and doing nothing with his life, and so the guy doing nothing with his life assumes he has to be depressed. Then you get a car commercial (especially in America) that shows how free and awesome life will be if you just get this high-powered sport utility vehicle. When you get it though, you're still the same loser as before. Let's not forget those commercials that show how wonderfully joyous it is to just washing the damn dishes. And you wonder why the stay-at-home mother is a pill popper. Let's not even get started on how art shoves the idea of a one and true soul-mate down our collective throats. I could go on for hours.
Never, ever, discount the power of art and media to influence the population's emotion. Do you want to know what human nature is? Read a biology text. Take a shit, go eat some food. That's about the extent of human nature. Everything else is a human construction. Why did art originate? Probably because we got bored. We have that wonderful mix of a shitload of freetime (even the hard-worker) combined with a very active mind that gets inculcated with near Byronic tendencies from early age. That is what art portrays: itself.
It doesn't take too much to be content in life. Of course, if you bought the whole salvation thing you probably don't give a damn about living a fulfilled life as it is, but if you're pretty sure this is the only chance you have, it's best to figure out how to live it well. You just need to come to terms with the fact that life is really about the little things. It's about going for a walk in the park and observing what's around you, fixing a bicycle, supporting your friends and family. If you change your basic attitude, then doing the mundane suddenly becomes quite fulfilling, and you stop searching for that thing that will grant you salvation, joy, success, whatever.
The Constitution itself was a coup d'eta. Go and read the Articles of Confederation and you'll see a document that gives a lot more power to the common man. Gotta love all that "greatest democracy on Earth" rhetoric.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that setting up a straw man gets you modded "insightful" on Slashdot, provided you run with the mob's prejudices.
I can see a potential problem for religions that believe in reincarnation, in that they now have to explain why none seems to remember past lives on other planets, but the monotheistic religions are just fine.
Honestly, I highly doubt any atheist gives much serious thought to what Christians believe in regards to other terrestrial life-forms. Nor is the fact that it poses a problem for said monotheistic religions a strawman. All scientific revolutions that have demoted Man's importance were always steadfastly opposed by religious institutions, and will always be, because it contradicts essential tenets about humanity being images of the godhood. That is, if we are forced to conclude that, yes, human beings are about as important as some slime muck on another planet, it begs us to ask just how awesome this godhood is.Most Christians, at least, expect God to have created other intelligent beings. There have been books published on the issue.
Are you atheists capable of arguing with what we really believe, or are your arguments so weak that they can only prevail against a straw man? People like you are rapidly convincing me of the latter.
"How is it, then, that you make a special exemption for your god? How do you reconcile the inherent illogic of religion with the rest of your life?" Excuse me, but have you been watching the news recently? As a geek christian, who fits your profile- I ask you- How is it, then, that you reconcile the inherent illogic of society around you with the rest of your life? 3.2.1... Did I guess right- Did you blame it on religion? The "inherent illogic of religion" is the only thing that makes me think I'm sane in a world where George W Bush gets to be president for 2 full terms. I was an atheist before 2000. Around the time of the PATRIOT act, I blamed christians for the end of freedom and liberty and decency in my country. It was only then, that I started studying the bible, with humility, to find out WTF was going on in the world that I couldn't comprehend. You see, as a geek, using the cop-out that "those religious people are irrational", just wasn't cutting it anymore. I tell you brother (or sister)- if you keep on going through life, thinking that religious people are irrational, you are going to live a very sad and confused life. If however you suck up a little humility, and try to read the religious texts with an open mind that the people who cherish them, might _actually_ not be irrational, then you might soon discover that the world makes quite a bit more sense that you previously thought. And one thing you'll never do, is think again that the religious texts sugar-coat the harsh *reality* of human social interaction.
The claim that believers are irrational will never die because faith itself is, by definition, irrational. Do you ever wonder why various intellectually dishonest scoundrels are trying to either create a double standard whereby personal anecdote is considered fine empirical evidence, or suggest that scientific inquiry has inherent limits on what it can answer? Because believers have only what constitutes really crappy evidence for their beliefs, and if they are going to convince others about their claims, they need it to be considered, by the public, as good evidence.
Let's consider the situation of a willful non-corporeal entity that is not directly observable. If it can influence the material world, we can study these influences in a scientific fashion, so right off the bat, science can study anything that influences the world, and so something that cannot be studied by science really has absolutely zero concern for us.
Case 0: The entity never influences the material world. Influence can mean move mountains, cause seizures, or intense mental states. Since it does not influence the world at all, this entity is moot to talk about as we can never know anything about it. It's on the same level as the invisible unicorn or Celestial Teapot (and, indeed, all deities humanity has conceived).
Case 1: If this entity acts in an entirely predictable way (i.e., you explode each time you say, "Ik, ak, thuk.") then we can very easily test the extent of this entity's influence on the material world, and build a model for its behavior. Essentially, it becomes a natural law and we dispense with caring that maybe it is an conscious, caring entity. We can never actually know it is an entity, just like we could never know whether gravity is a natural force or in fact the calculated moves of an immaterial frost giant.
Case 2: The willful entity actually makes use of its willfullness, i.e., it behaves in a non-entirely-predictable fashion. Aha, you might say, science certainly could not study that! Unfortunately, this is not the case. Suppose we thought this entity caused a tsunami. We then discover that, actually, the tsunami originated at precisely the same time as a deep sea earthquake that was, to the best predictive power of our models, bound to happen in that particular area. This is very solid evidence that this tsunami is entirely the result of natural forces, and not the random, willful act of an entity.
Those same tool
I strongly doubt the rise of rationalism/skepticism/atheism has anything to do with religious fundies. More likely it has to do with the fact that in the last century scientific inquiry continually finds materialistic explanations for what once was thought entirely mysterious or preternatural.
Design sounds nice, until supposedly irreducible is reduced. Ghost in the Machine is fine, until you drastically alter someone's personality by messing with their brain. Astral Projection is great, until you find the area of the brain responsible and induce it in a lab.
What keeps (scientifically) educated, intelligent people clinging to faith is a problem of child psychology and inordinate amounts of personal incredulity.
Honestly, if you really dig into anti-materialist arguments, you find they are painfully lacking in substance. I remember B. Allan Wallace suggesting that neurological activity and subjective mental experiences might not be necessarily and sufficiently linked because of a time lag between the events that, by golly, just happened to correspond to about how much time it takes for neurons to fire.
It amazes me, as a rather staunch materialist (but also not emotionally attached to the idea, and open-minded to evidence), how non-materialists could ever appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the universe. If the explanation for consciousness, for instance, is that "A being created an unobservable, eternal spirit", that's just plain boring. But if it's an artifact of how our brain operates, how glorious it is in its complexity. The materialist is not dumbfounded or threatened by this complexity, but awestruck by it.
It isn't, per se, even if it's original intent was to be. It's not so much a liberal vs. conservative issue, but there are a lot of untenable conspiracy theories floating around. Almost anything that deals with Big (pharma, business, gov. etc.) is bound to be a crock of shit. Most conspiracy theorist don't recognize the extreme scales they are talking about (i.e., thousands of people being closed-lipped), nor do they recognize that half the time they are talking about a non-entity (i.e., Big Pharma doesn't even exist. It's just a bunch of independent companies and academic researchers).
Then throw in the fact that most agencies, be them government or business, have to be attributed with extreme evil genius to carry out their plots, yet on the other must be so simple minded and prone to errors that "Some Dude" can see through their schemes.
Really, conspiracy theorists are just histrionic megalomaniacs. Rather myopic ones at that.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone on slashdot advocating the elimination of the FREE option and requiring people to pay money for something. I would advocate the hypothetical elimination of freely distributed crack-cocaine to pre-teens. Television isn't much better
Patents and copyright in their current form are indeed regulation and should be abolished. Definitely wrong? Let's look at your initial presumptions. It assumes that a trademark has inherent value, which is debatable. Then you assume that the parent company losing money to fake products is wrong, which assumes there is a value of initial innovation and creation. Then there is the assumption that consumers should be protected.
No, the GP is entirely right. Everything he mentioned is a regulation. There are no absolute morals in the market. Our task is to decide how much and which ones will benefit society the most.
We choose not to profane our conversation. You're assuming the existence of an absolute morality. Clearly, certain words tend to be associated with negatives or insults, but it always takes two parties for this to happen. Namely, one person to say a word (which at this point is devoid of meaning) and another person to place some value on this word.
The perfect example is "taking the Lord's name in vain." When I say, "Jesus fucking Christ", "Goddamnit!" or "Holy shit" these words pack about as much punch as "Oh man!", at least to me. This is because Jesus/God is not my Lord, and so of course to me to suggest I'm taking a non-entity's name in vain is somewhat silly. The true-believer, however, will hear these words and attach some offensive qualities to them.
Censoring of any sort always boils down to one party imposing their morals on a myriad other parties that do not share their beliefs. Sure, these groups (anti-abortionists, creation scientist, and those of their ilk) tend to argue that their position is no different than anyone else's, and ergo you just have to choose your poison, so to speak. This is patently absurd with a moment's thought, because it takes a positive belief in order for something to be offensive, and ergo the baseline will always rest with those who do not find something offensive.
Unless, of course, you always for absolute moralities. This is why groups who have no real ground to stand on always turn to this antiquated idea.
1. As you say, it's not enforceable. You might trust your cousin in another state to trade with you, but that doesn't scale, certainly not via an anonymous website.
2. It defeats the purpose of voting: to cast your ballot for what you believe in. There's an argument that vote-swapping could bring you closer to what you want in the long run, but picture trying to swap votes in different races with different people in assorted districts in your state -- the calculations get out of hand very quickly.
3. This is a distraction from the structural flaws in our voting system, such as prohibitive ballot-access laws, first-past-the-post, and the Electoral College. Items 2 and 3 are somewhat self-contradictory. Never, under the Constitution, has the US ever had a system where your vote was more than a token symbolic gesture. A lot of the times the state delegates don't even have to vote according to the popular state vote. You sure as hell aren't going to fix problems in item 3 via the naive method of "voting for what you believe."
Anything less is mercenary. The politician you vote for is not the politician you inaugurate. Bush voters know what this means; and soon Hillary voters will, too. Anything less is called "representative democracy."
More importantly, does anyone actually drink any of those high fructose corn syrup blends? I always thought it was a big urban legend, like people putting their wet dogs in the microwave to dry out.
As others have pointed out, there is absolutely no reason to believe such a vaccination would not be developed or released if it was developed. This is true for a few reasons.
Basically, conspiracies regarding "Big Pharma" are what we call grand conspiracies. These are the ones like 9/11 conspiracies. They require so many people and such careful planning and manipulation that they essentially collapse under their own weight. Big pharma conspiracies require that every pharma is in cahoots, which is simply not true, and that every independent academic researcher is being paid off by big pharma. This latter one is obviously not true to anyone who works in medicine. Medicine is not a monolithic construct or industry. No one really controls what a researcher does or thinks. Not the AMA, the university, or companies. Sure, there are pawns and whores out there, but they are minorities.
It's naive to discount the fame the company who developed a cure for HIV or cancer would get. HIV and cancer conspiracies are basically isomoprhic, and so let us travel down the cancer conspiracy road a bit. A cure for cancer is worth billions and billions, if not trillions, of dollars. ANY pharma company would jump through the roof if they had a cure for cancer. To think otherwise is to have a questionable grasp of the economics in question.
I am willing to bet that if you went up to any pharma company and presented them with a drug that cured cancer they would without hesitation and with great happiness drop all of their previous infrastructure, start from scratch, and exclusively cure cancer. That's how lucrative it is.
All this aside, why is there this pervasive belief that the only people doing research are those working for big pharma? This shows a pitiful lack of understanding of how basic science is carried out, and again I point out how academics are not typically beholden to much besides their own interests. Sure, it does happen that funds are tight for certain research avenues, but there isn't this giant overseer that dictates exactly who gets what funds.
Any academic research who found a cure for cancer or AIDS would have their career made. The incentive is gigantic.
So while some pharma companies do deal in underhanded tactics, it's quite a leap to assume such a grand conspiracy such as repression of cancer or HIV research/medicines.
Ahem--if embryonic stem cell research is promising all the private pharmaceutical firms (and big-time investors like Warren Buffett and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) would put up lots of money without government help to fund such research. As such, it appears adult stem cell research has shown major promise (some 80+ therapies based on adult stem cell research are now in serious development), while embryonic stem cell research has pretty much come up "squadoosh." I'm not sure from what Neo-con news source you're getting your information, but that's absurd. It is true that there have been some impressive advances in adult stem cell technology. But do you know what those were? Inducing pluripotency in skin cells (in mice). That's right, making adult stem cells more like embryonic stem cells.
Despite all the good, cheery values social conservatives claim to protect, their draconian policies will always be the number one enemy of progress and enlightenment. It's a wonder that such antiquarian busybodiness still festers in otherwise evolved nation states. Mayhap it is not such a wonder when the ultimate form of veracity is considered to be peridolia, anecdote, pseudoscience, intuition, and hynagogic visions.
The idea the generalizations are wrong is so pervasive in our society it's a true shame. Just another example of how PC-mongering has taken a good idea (avoiding stereotypes) and turned it on it's head.
Generalizations are great. Perhaps they are not always correct, but they offer fairly decent probabilities.
Take people who hold a naturalistic fallacy (i.e., anything from nature is good for you, whereas synthetic things are bad). You can bet your ass that almost anything they say regarding health which is also non-standard is based in pseudoscience. They are the same type of people who buy into homeopathy, ion-shooting salt lamps, reflexology, chiropractic, fluoride=bad, vaccinations=autism, an the list goes on. If someone comes to you with one weird belief steeped in naturalism I would wager they have a few other wonky beliefs, and probably engage in conspiracy-type thinking.
How about mathematical randomness? Let's face it, natural sciences are just the ugly red-headed step-daughter of mathematics
I think you have a misconstrued view of people who spoil plots, deface art, etc. Most the time the people have little emotional investment in what they are defacing, and do it primarily for entertainment value rather than any deep reasons. Think about drunk frat boys. The guy who shot Lennon was a friggin sociopath.
Sure, defacers are douchebags, and vandals need a good punch to the back of the head, but the people with the real problem are those who get overly worked up about art in the first place.
It doesn't even take thousands of years. Look at Mormonism. The entire Book of Mormon is forced into the realm of utter nonsense via simple DNA testing.
Unfortunately religious canon is like prophetic quatrains. Just say some vague things and interpret them post facto, or says very specific things but deny they were meant to be so specific. Then forget all the blatantly false.
All persons should aspire to live their lives ethically. Rather than have those who do be the exception, it ought to be that those that don't are the exception. While it's nice to be an armchair philosopher, human nature does not subscribe to any real set of ethics. Look at things like Christianity, which is a complete and utter failure as a moral guidance system. You should expect people in certain to positions to behave certain ways. Ergo, humans should strive not to live totally ethical lives, but intelligent lives.
Where is the breach in acquiring someone's porn? Frankly, I think it's disgraceful that a person would leave easy to access pornography on their computer.
You have to understand something about people. Not everyone things the same. In the U.S., if your child trips on a crack in the road and breaks his face you immediately are outraged at city for having such a detestable street. In, say, Sweden, the individual is culpable for their own actions.
You shouldn't expect people to behave entirely ethically all the time because that's just contrary to our natures.
Why should a virtual not be beholden to the laws of a specific nation? Frankly, the game is a service put out by a company and they should be, like every business, subject to the laws of the particular nation they operate out of.
What really irks me is people who try and make the case that the internet is its own reality.
Your laser analogy is apt. If our models for the universe completely describe it and could predict everything, but the universe really behaves under some different set of principals, does it matter? The two structures are isomorphic, and indeed, our model effectively BECOMES reality. Similar questions exist in the philosophy of mathematics.
The suggestion that science requires faith is the canonical true believer response, and is simply not true. For one, it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the scientific method. Secondly, it belies what true believers really want: some justification for their beliefs other than faith. It might not seem like this is the case, because it's often takes the appearance of changing science so it can deal with the supernatural.
I'll admit I'm not entirely sure I understand the complete thinking of the true believer who says science requires faith. It's certainly not faith in my peers who do research. If I wanted I could train myself in that area and verify their results. It's not faith in the machines that carry out the measurements, because I too could verify that if I wanted. Of course, I stick to my area of interest and trust my peers are not lying, and trust that there are enough independent verifiers out there such that I don't have to duplicate every experiment I read about.
Faith in the language that much science is spoken in (mathematics)? Nope, you can verify all of that, and it's pretty easy since it's axiomatic!
Where is the faith? Ah, here it is. It's faith in materialism. Now the real issue unfurls itself. The scientist, the atheist, and skeptic are all usually materialist. The problem is, the scientific method makes no a prior assumption of a materialistic universe. Science is a investigatory tool. So many people treat it as if it were a set of beliefs. Materialism is certainly a natural out growth from applying this tool, for good reason. If we could test for deities, we would. If some supernatural force had an effect upon the world, we could measure it, and at that point it's no longer supernatural. The problem is, anti-science folk want science to measure their pet beliefs which are inherently outside the realm of science because these things never manifest themselves. Science can say nothing about the existence of an invisible pink elephant that never influences the world in any way. It's up to the rational thinker to therefor conclude either the elephant does not exist or it does not matter.
Suggesting that the masses require faith in science is a straw man in of itself. By faith we must assume one means the same type of faith as the religious. But just as the scientist themselves has a trust in his comrades, the masses are in the same boat. If they were driven enough they could understand everything. They could replicate experiments. But with religions, what do you have? What objective means do I have to see Krishna?
Well you open up your heart and then you will experience it. Are you kidding me? An experience, even a personal one, is not evidence for anything. The human mind conjures all kinds of fears, emotions, and sometimes even visual images when it is in different states. I have no doubt that I too walked around in the desert and fasted and smoked peyote I'd experience some apparently pretty supernatural things. But as an informed individual I'd also know that a number of supernatural things are wholly natural. Astral projection, for instance, or out of body experiences, can be induced in the laboratory.
What it really boils down to is that I, a believer, couldn't take a well informed skeptic out and show them the things I have faith in existing. You can do that with anything scientific, but you might have to spend a few years starting with the basics.
Faith itself boils down to believing something without sufficient evidence for it, or being confused about what evidence is. A lot of people have had mystical experiences. You drop some psychedelic mushrooms and you suddenly feel completely connected to all reality and ergo draw the conclusion that everything is connected by some penetrating, malleable energy. But if you knew enough how the brain works all you'd realize is that's just how psilocybin is affecting it. Or again, if you didn't know th
Even the most fantastical of the comic books contains truths of human nature that we face every day.
I'm certainly not going to disagree that comic books are valid expressions of art, but most art falls terribly short of portraying anything close to human nature. Art usually highly romanticizes rather mundane happenings, pushes the manic-depressive as normal, and more or less manufactures and self-perpetuates nearly every single malady it purports to reveal.
Ever wonder why so many people feel like losers with a life that just isn't going anywhere despite their material success? Could it have anything to do with the fact that virtually all media (art, i.e., novels, television, film, etc.) portrays people living these fascinatingly desperate or fantastic lives, full of adventure, intrigue, love, etc? Then you get a film about some douchebag getting depressed and doing nothing with his life, and so the guy doing nothing with his life assumes he has to be depressed. Then you get a car commercial (especially in America) that shows how free and awesome life will be if you just get this high-powered sport utility vehicle. When you get it though, you're still the same loser as before. Let's not forget those commercials that show how wonderfully joyous it is to just washing the damn dishes. And you wonder why the stay-at-home mother is a pill popper. Let's not even get started on how art shoves the idea of a one and true soul-mate down our collective throats. I could go on for hours.
Never, ever, discount the power of art and media to influence the population's emotion. Do you want to know what human nature is? Read a biology text. Take a shit, go eat some food. That's about the extent of human nature. Everything else is a human construction. Why did art originate? Probably because we got bored. We have that wonderful mix of a shitload of freetime (even the hard-worker) combined with a very active mind that gets inculcated with near Byronic tendencies from early age. That is what art portrays: itself.
It doesn't take too much to be content in life. Of course, if you bought the whole salvation thing you probably don't give a damn about living a fulfilled life as it is, but if you're pretty sure this is the only chance you have, it's best to figure out how to live it well. You just need to come to terms with the fact that life is really about the little things. It's about going for a walk in the park and observing what's around you, fixing a bicycle, supporting your friends and family. If you change your basic attitude, then doing the mundane suddenly becomes quite fulfilling, and you stop searching for that thing that will grant you salvation, joy, success, whatever.
The Constitution itself was a coup d'eta. Go and read the Articles of Confederation and you'll see a document that gives a lot more power to the common man. Gotta love all that "greatest democracy on Earth" rhetoric.