You know how stupid, weak minded and contemptible you believe those religious fanatics are? Well, just imagine if the doctrine they followed didn't restrict them from killing you. THAT is the world without religion.
Wow, y our attitude is like something out of an Alan Moore dystopia.
Your dog's an atheist. How can you trust him not to eat your family alive the minute your back is turned? Gee, there must be some other basis for morality besides the wrath of an invisible sky daddy. Could it be... socialization?
If atheism is the default position, why are there so many people who believe in some sort of supreme being?
The current thinking is that it's an artifact of our evolutionary wiring as participants in a tribal or pack-oriented society. We seek out and follow our Gods for the same reason that wolves follow their alpha leaders.
Functional MRI studies have reinforced this notion by suggesting that there's a physical locus for what the Christians call agape. So much for "free will," huh?
And, WITHIN religions, there are plenty of people who do define things by consensus.
No, not really. Take two Christians from the same denomination -- heck, even the same physical church building, and put them two separate rooms. Then ask each of them in turn to tell you everything they know about their God. Their accounts will diverge rapidly.
It will soon become clear that they're describing something they've never seen, felt, heard, or understood. All they'll be able to agree on is that God hates the same people they do.
1. Agnostics don't feel they're avoiding a position. Their position is clear: conclusions cannot be drawn in the absence of evidence.
You're right, but you're not taking your own statement far enough. Conclusions cannot be drawn in the absence of evidence, and evidence cannot be found for something that has no definition. The only thing about "God(s)" that people can agree on is that the word, when written in English, has three letters, four if plural. If we can't define something by consensus, then we can reach no conclusions regarding its existence.
(Inevitably, the reply to this is, "But my idea of God is the omnipresent Creator of all space and time. I don't believe in any of that Jesus stuff." To which my response is, "Then we're clearly not talking about the same thing. Most peoples' God seems to be a lot more specific in His likes and dislikes than yours, and that's a problem for the rest of us.")
Any claim merits cognitive consideration (also known as thinking about it). Dismissing claims entirely outright because of the claimant specifically or the "arbitrary" appearance of such a claim would violate the fundamental aspects of the scientific method.
Life's too short to take the idea of leprechauns and unicorns seriously. Treating all claims as equally worthy of consideration is just plain silliness. Only when we exhaust the possibilities of the natural, will there be time to consider the supernatural.
'Agnostic' doesn't mean "I don't know whether to believe in the Christian god" (as your comment re: Zeus appears to imply). Agnosticism can mean either "I don't know whether there's a god or not" or "I believe it's unknowable whether there's a god or not".
Either way, guess what: nobody cares. Your distinction has zero practical relevance.
Not having heard any reasonable theory of the origin of the stuff in the universe, the space-time in which it sits, and the physical laws governing that stuff, I don't know where it comes from. I find it equally hard to believe that some entity outside of the bounds of physical laws created it or that it has no origin.
I find it equally hard to believe you've actually looked for such a theory. Call it experience, call it a hunch.
If it helps, don't think of agnosticism as a middle ground between the states we call "religion" and "atheism." Think of it as a middle ground between the processes of "reasoning" and "faith." As you go through the business of living, you have to stand on one side of the line or the other.
It's simply not meaningful to hide behind "agnosticism" as a position. It doesn't make you sound diplomatic, it only makes you sound cowardly and irresolute. As an example, are you agnostic about Zeus, too? No? You're pretty sure that the possibility of Zeus's existence shouldn't inform your decisions and actions in everyday life? Then you must feel the same way about whatever God(s) the religious people are trying to sell you at the moment.
All it takes for thumpers to get away with this crap is for good "agnostics" to do nothing. It's not useful to natter endlessly about the difference between gnostic and agnostic atheism. The debate is between plain old theism and plain old atheism. And it isn't being held in Internet forums, at lexicographers' conventions, or in comparative religion studies. It's being held in the legislatures, in the voting booths, and in our kids' science classes.
Seriously. It's time to pick a side and stand up for it.
Then you should be a big fan of the Planetary Society's efforts to spread awareness and raise funding for asteroid searches, because dying from an errant asteroid is a lot more likely than dying from a ruptured RTG.
It's all about balancing risk. Scientists are supposed to be able to do that.
He wasn't trolling, and Xilinx's move to FlexLM is a big deal. It's why I went with them over Altera in the first place. That reason is now gone.
With product activation, you have no idea if you'll be able to recover your toolchain several years from now when you need to bring a project out of cold storage. It is not OK to rely on critical software that runs only at the pleasure of its vendor, and I'm just flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and astonished that everybody in the entire technology industry seems to think otherwise.
10.1 is the last non-protected Webpack edition, and (to their credit) Xilinx has kept it available on their site.
The link I posted would be amusing if it weren't so dumb. Kaku spends paragraphs explaining in detail how the scientists and engineers designing RTG-equipped missions were a bunch of reckless morons, and how a launch accident with an RTG would bring a catastrophic civil disaster on the scale of those depicted in zombie movies. Then, at the height of the wharrgarbl, he tosses in the point that such world-ending accidents had already occurred several times. Um, OK, I guess the RTG encapsulation wasn't so flawed after all, seeing as how we're mostly still here.
As I recall, after President Clinton irresponsibly failed to step in and abort the Cassini launch, Kaku turned his attention and that of his PR agent towards warning us of the OMGWTFBBQ scenarios that would no doubt follow the probe's gravitational-boost flyby of Earth.
He may have done some good work in the past but this sort of lameness needs to be seen as a career-limiting move for a professional scientist. I'm all in favor of being really, really careful with radioactive stuff, but the fact is, it's not dignified for a PhD physicist to go full retard. What will the creationists think?
He tried his damnedest to kill the Cassini/Huygens mission that has given us knowledge about Saturn and Titan second only to the Voyager program. ("OMG teh evil Plutonium is going to be magically smushed up n an asplosion and kill us all!")
Never mind that the risks were virtually nonexistent, even if you didn't bother to weigh them against the knowledge we stood to gain. He's no different from the tin-foil hat crowd who tried to shut down the LHC with lawsuits because we might all get swallowed by a black hole.
Michio Kaku has little credibility in my book, because I have no idea whose side he's on... science's, or woo-woo Earth First nutcases.
The craptons of mercury spewed by the power plant can, in principle, be scrubbed and recaptured.
But hey, the craptons of mercury tossed into landfills by Joe Six-Pack can, in principle, be reclaimed when you end up drinking it. So it all works out in the end, I guess.
On the other hand, mercury is toxic forever. It never, ever, becomes safe, no matter how long you wait. When the glass breaks it'll poison you just as well in a million years as it does today.
No, no, you're missing the beauty of it. Instead of using normal mercury, there should be a mandate for light bulbs to use mercury-194, which has a half-life of 444 years. A perfectly-manageable timeframe for waste storage.
Another cool thing is that the bulb lights up without even being plugged in. It actually generates energy rather than consuming it.
But here's the really cool thing: according to Wikipedia, Hg-194 decays by electron capture into Au-194. That's right, in 400 years half of the mercury in your light bulb will have turned to gold. Replace all of your household lamps with Hg-194 compact fluorescents, and you won't even want to throw your burned-out light bulbs away in the first place!
It's amazing how many seemingly-intractable environmental problems would go away if people would just think outside the box a little.
Slashdot Mirror
You know how stupid, weak minded and contemptible you believe those religious fanatics are? Well, just imagine if the doctrine they followed didn't restrict them from killing you. THAT is the world without religion.
Wow, y our attitude is like something out of an Alan Moore dystopia.
Your dog's an atheist. How can you trust him not to eat your family alive the minute your back is turned? Gee, there must be some other basis for morality besides the wrath of an invisible sky daddy. Could it be... socialization?
If atheism is the default position, why are there so many people who believe in some sort of supreme being?
The current thinking is that it's an artifact of our evolutionary wiring as participants in a tribal or pack-oriented society. We seek out and follow our Gods for the same reason that wolves follow their alpha leaders.
Functional MRI studies have reinforced this notion by suggesting that there's a physical locus for what the Christians call agape. So much for "free will," huh?
And, WITHIN religions, there are plenty of people who do define things by consensus.
No, not really. Take two Christians from the same denomination -- heck, even the same physical church building, and put them two separate rooms. Then ask each of them in turn to tell you everything they know about their God. Their accounts will diverge rapidly.
It will soon become clear that they're describing something they've never seen, felt, heard, or understood. All they'll be able to agree on is that God hates the same people they do.
1. Agnostics don't feel they're avoiding a position. Their position is clear: conclusions cannot be drawn in the absence of evidence.
You're right, but you're not taking your own statement far enough. Conclusions cannot be drawn in the absence of evidence, and evidence cannot be found for something that has no definition. The only thing about "God(s)" that people can agree on is that the word, when written in English, has three letters, four if plural. If we can't define something by consensus, then we can reach no conclusions regarding its existence.
(Inevitably, the reply to this is, "But my idea of God is the omnipresent Creator of all space and time. I don't believe in any of that Jesus stuff." To which my response is, "Then we're clearly not talking about the same thing. Most peoples' God seems to be a lot more specific in His likes and dislikes than yours, and that's a problem for the rest of us.")
Any claim merits cognitive consideration (also known as thinking about it). Dismissing claims entirely outright because of the claimant specifically or the "arbitrary" appearance of such a claim would violate the fundamental aspects of the scientific method.
Life's too short to take the idea of leprechauns and unicorns seriously. Treating all claims as equally worthy of consideration is just plain silliness. Only when we exhaust the possibilities of the natural, will there be time to consider the supernatural.
Whatever. I'm not the one who's writing laws telling you what you can and cannot say.
Peikoff obviously does not know the first thing about agnosticism.
groan
'Agnostic' doesn't mean "I don't know whether to believe in the Christian god" (as your comment re: Zeus appears to imply). Agnosticism can mean either "I don't know whether there's a god or not" or "I believe it's unknowable whether there's a god or not".
Either way, guess what: nobody cares. Your distinction has zero practical relevance.
Not having heard any reasonable theory of the origin of the stuff in the universe, the space-time in which it sits, and the physical laws governing that stuff, I don't know where it comes from. I find it equally hard to believe that some entity outside of the bounds of physical laws created it or that it has no origin.
I find it equally hard to believe you've actually looked for such a theory. Call it experience, call it a hunch.
If it helps, don't think of agnosticism as a middle ground between the states we call "religion" and "atheism." Think of it as a middle ground between the processes of "reasoning" and "faith." As you go through the business of living, you have to stand on one side of the line or the other.
It's simply not meaningful to hide behind "agnosticism" as a position. It doesn't make you sound diplomatic, it only makes you sound cowardly and irresolute. As an example, are you agnostic about Zeus, too? No? You're pretty sure that the possibility of Zeus's existence shouldn't inform your decisions and actions in everyday life? Then you must feel the same way about whatever God(s) the religious people are trying to sell you at the moment.
All it takes for thumpers to get away with this crap is for good "agnostics" to do nothing. It's not useful to natter endlessly about the difference between gnostic and agnostic atheism. The debate is between plain old theism and plain old atheism. And it isn't being held in Internet forums, at lexicographers' conventions, or in comparative religion studies. It's being held in the legislatures, in the voting booths, and in our kids' science classes.
Seriously. It's time to pick a side and stand up for it.
Since they replaced their training manual with 1984 and their procedures manual with Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Then you should be a big fan of the Planetary Society's efforts to spread awareness and raise funding for asteroid searches, because dying from an errant asteroid is a lot more likely than dying from a ruptured RTG.
It's all about balancing risk. Scientists are supposed to be able to do that.
He wasn't trolling, and Xilinx's move to FlexLM is a big deal. It's why I went with them over Altera in the first place. That reason is now gone.
With product activation, you have no idea if you'll be able to recover your toolchain several years from now when you need to bring a project out of cold storage. It is not OK to rely on critical software that runs only at the pleasure of its vendor, and I'm just flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and astonished that everybody in the entire technology industry seems to think otherwise.
10.1 is the last non-protected Webpack edition, and (to their credit) Xilinx has kept it available on their site.
Seconded - the Nexys2 kicks ass. Best bargain in hardware, anywhere.
There are a couple of decent books by Richard Haskell that are written especially for users of the Nexys2/Basys boards.
That's right, I forgot, God created the integers. :-P
[Citation Please]
You're typing on it.
The link I posted would be amusing if it weren't so dumb. Kaku spends paragraphs explaining in detail how the scientists and engineers designing RTG-equipped missions were a bunch of reckless morons, and how a launch accident with an RTG would bring a catastrophic civil disaster on the scale of those depicted in zombie movies. Then, at the height of the wharrgarbl, he tosses in the point that such world-ending accidents had already occurred several times. Um, OK, I guess the RTG encapsulation wasn't so flawed after all, seeing as how we're mostly still here.
As I recall, after President Clinton irresponsibly failed to step in and abort the Cassini launch, Kaku turned his attention and that of his PR agent towards warning us of the OMGWTFBBQ scenarios that would no doubt follow the probe's gravitational-boost flyby of Earth.
He may have done some good work in the past but this sort of lameness needs to be seen as a career-limiting move for a professional scientist. I'm all in favor of being really, really careful with radioactive stuff, but the fact is, it's not dignified for a PhD physicist to go full retard. What will the creationists think?
Dude, religion and science are like two completely different answers which answer completely different questions.
Questions answered by science: 853,523,002
Questions answered by religion: 0
But hey, keep the faith.
Religion may be stupid to you, but it is the single factor that has influenced the majority of actions of humanity for as long as history can track.
Which was fine until we invented nuclear weapons. Now, it's time to start making decisions based on reality.
He tried his damnedest to kill the Cassini/Huygens mission that has given us knowledge about Saturn and Titan second only to the Voyager program. ("OMG teh evil Plutonium is going to be magically smushed up n an asplosion and kill us all!")
Never mind that the risks were virtually nonexistent, even if you didn't bother to weigh them against the knowledge we stood to gain. He's no different from the tin-foil hat crowd who tried to shut down the LHC with lawsuits because we might all get swallowed by a black hole.
Michio Kaku has little credibility in my book, because I have no idea whose side he's on... science's, or woo-woo Earth First nutcases.
Coal plants suck ass, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that the solution to pollution is sometimes concentration, rather than dilution.
I sure as hell don't know, and I'm the one that wrote it. <shudder>
The craptons of mercury spewed by the power plant can, in principle, be scrubbed and recaptured.
But hey, the craptons of mercury tossed into landfills by Joe Six-Pack can, in principle, be reclaimed when you end up drinking it. So it all works out in the end, I guess.
On the other hand, mercury is toxic forever. It never, ever, becomes safe, no matter how long you wait. When the glass breaks it'll poison you just as well in a million years as it does today.
No, no, you're missing the beauty of it. Instead of using normal mercury, there should be a mandate for light bulbs to use mercury-194, which has a half-life of 444 years. A perfectly-manageable timeframe for waste storage.
Another cool thing is that the bulb lights up without even being plugged in. It actually generates energy rather than consuming it.
But here's the really cool thing: according to Wikipedia, Hg-194 decays by electron capture into Au-194. That's right, in 400 years half of the mercury in your light bulb will have turned to gold. Replace all of your household lamps with Hg-194 compact fluorescents, and you won't even want to throw your burned-out light bulbs away in the first place!
It's amazing how many seemingly-intractable environmental problems would go away if people would just think outside the box a little.
The Brits has to fight an uphill battle when they tried to curtail freedoms.
ROFL. You people aren't even allowed to own pointy kitchen knives anymore.
Any more of this sort of "freedom" and you'll be swatting at bedbugs, swearing fealty to your Lords, and begging for alms outside the city walls.
For the same reason you wouldn't play a video game with no score, prestige, or other means of keeping track of your progress.
Usually, it comes down to the question of who has more guns.