You are missing my point though, I know that I don't have a soul and no amount of BS from anyone is useful on me, I don't care what anyone thinks, I don't argue with people who want to tell me that I have a soul, I don't need to.
While doctor may or may not be qualified to have opinions, priests are definitely not qualified to have opinions on me. So no, your argument doesn't work, priest to me is nobody, he is definitely no more qualified than anyone else and again, I am the most qualified person to call it whether I have a soul or not, and I don't.
Not true, while you may believe that you have a soul and you may believe that others do, you can't prove that I do and since I don't believe in it I am definitely more qualified to call it whether I do or don't and I don't !
not forgetting how to get and to be there and building new tech to do things more efficiently. Oh, and also having an outpost to greet space invaders quicker.
You seem to be upset about something, why is that?
Money is just a short form for exchanging people's time, time that they have to live, and you know, lives are short. Back to the point. Money is not created in vacuum or for the sake of money. Accumulation of money is accumulation of other people's time investment. Obviously money is only meaningful when it can be actually exchanged for actual people's time and goods and services produced in that time.
Corporations only exist to make money for their investors. Producing goods and services is a side effect of that goal, but nevertheless goods and services are produced, because time that goes into production is the only meaningful thing that can be exchanged for money.
Money doesn't appear from vacuum, thus corporations have to get that money from people who are willing to exchange their money for something that corporations will produce. Thus there will be goods and services. Maybe to you this seems like a soulless view of the world (whatever that means), but this is the real view of the world.
Nope, companies are there for offering goods and services
- how is it, leaving in the dream world? Companies exist to make money for the investors. Everything else is secondary, it's just the means to the end goal - money.
1. I don't know if RMS has ever stopped anyone from anything physically, but he talks tough. (see the section on Non Free Software) He says if you create proprietary software you must stop and do something else instead. I am not arguing that he is physically forcing anything, however I can see how he would if he were a dictator and he certainly has a mindset of one. That's my main point of contention with this person.
2.
* Every single one of us is going to end up dead. If you have something that you believe in, -especially something that doesn't hurt others- don't you owe it to yourself to spend the time that you have in service of that belief? You're never going to get to try again. Ever.
- hey, go for it, do whatever you want, preach whatever you want, just don't expect others to follow you into that perfect world you have created in your head.
Then that's an indication that software patents are broken, no?
- no. Most software has nothing innovative to patent.
The copyright and patent systems exist to ensure that beneficial knowledge and technological advancements are created, and are not lost forever, respectively. You know... that whole "Advancement and Promotion of The Arts" thing that some folks prattle on about.
- and this has nothing to do with software source being available.
Ultimately, organizations like the FSF, the NSF, and -in spirit- the USPTO are dedicated to advancing the human condition.
- where is the rational argument that I was asking you for?
Perhaps you're just out to make a buck. *shrug* Whatever.
- absolutely. When I want to give away free code, I do so. Do you contribute?
Please keep in mind that there are folks who simultaneously: * Understand that we all have to make a living. and * Want to make the world a better place for everyone. You may be one of those people. I don't know. RMS and Co. are certainly "those people".
- where is the rational argument for forcing people to stop creating software that is distributed without source code?
There is no rational argument to force people from distributing software with license of their choice. The choice to use or not to use any kind of software is with the end customer. What, you don't like freedom of choice?
again, drawing straws. Most software is not patented, and even when it is patented, the source is not included. Algorithm description may be included, source is not.
Maybe not, but that is not the point. People don't die if they don't see ingredients on the package, but they can use that information to make better choices.
- you may be able to read a formula on a label, but not the process describing the making of the medicine. You can also take a piece of code distributed in binary and open it in your preferred editor, run it in a debugger. That's the formula. The process that created the formula is the source, that's not given away with the proprietary distribution. That's the choice, with proprietary code you cannot examine the source, with Free code you can. Pick your poison.
Speaking as someone who has worked in the medical imaging field, I can say, sure, why not.
- Excellent. Do you know how much more the proprietary code would cost and what this would do to Free software if it was absolutely necessary to give guarantees backed by strictly regulated licensing/certifying system? I'd make more money than I could ever imagine. And even then the source code would not be a requirement. Where do you see food and medicine creation processes described on labels?
Nothing would change from source code point of view, it would only make code production more expensive, would deny many people who contribute to Free/Open source from making such contributions etc., etc., etc..
You are obviously wrong about trying to treat software applications as if they were some product provided by licensed merchants - licensed doctors, licensed engineers, licensed anything. Applications are really cheap to make, the production only takes time. The tools of production are very cheap compared to other tools. Software is commodity and in such saturated market there are niches for all kinds of players, proprietary and Free and / or free etc.
RMS has ideology but not a real rational argument, what is it that you have?
Why should we remove the option of food without ingredients listed? Why should we remove the option of medicine without warning labels? Why should we remove the option of buying products without consumer protection laws?
- nice move, comparing software to food and medicine ingredients.
The difference is nobody dies if they run MS Office instead of Open Office.
Are you suggesting that software developers should be held to the same standards of regulation as food and health industry? Because if that is what you are suggesting, all developers will have to get those certificates, which will create an interesting new barrier to entry into the field and effectively will force costs to be higher.
Your analogy is flawed in yet another way: certainly the ingredients on foods are wonderful and such, however the label does not list the process of preparation of the said food in any detail at all and it is considered a 'trade secret'.
Certainly there is regulation to make sure that medicine that is sold fulfills certain promise and is safe, but again, the processes that go into creation of the medicine may be a trade secrete and definitely is not listed on any label.
The software that is bought normally states that it is not fit for any particular purpose at all, thus it cannot be held accountable for anything at all basically. You want some purpose, get someone to do it for you for hire. Otherwise no warranties ( I am yet to see a piece of software that guarantees anything, including fitness for any purpose.) As such, any software, proprietary or Free/free is basically a crap-shoot, no normal user reads through Open Office code base to figure out if the code will not delete his/her files.
As for the analysis that it would be possible to show evidence that religions are products of human nature and human history, I must disagree. To prove that religion is merely natural rather than supernatural using natural evidence is a logical impossibility for *exactly* the same reasons why no one can answer the infinite train of whys.
- wow there, Sherlock. People have created so many religions, time after time after time, that it would make a very long read about all of the players and circumstances involved. From magic wind, fire, water, birds, animals, fish and insects, Aten (the Sun god), Ahura Mazda, to Osiris, Seth, Cronus, Uranus, Zeus, Poseidon, Hyperion, Eros, Hermes, Artemis, Apollo, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Pan, Alexander the Great (who also believed himself to be the son of god), Shiva, Vishu, Odin, Brahman, Hanuman, Lakshmi, Kali, Wicca, Dryghten, and then the Trinity, Norse AEsir, Vanir, Yoruba Orisha, Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Jah, Waheguru.....
In fact it is very fitting that we, as humans, evolve our gods with us, from winds and fire and sun to animals to something reminding us of people mixed with animals, like the Egyptian gods, to people like Zeus and actual Jesus and such. It only makes sense that the latest religions imply that gods are aliens from other star systems and so on.
No, gods and religions are definitely human inventions.
Except that the bible is a fiction story, it's no more based in reality than The Lord of the Rings or Ender's Game. You know, with magic creatures and mind reading snakes and such.
For those who must say that God does not exist, try this: your position is just as unprovable as theirs, and yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs. There is no arguing with religion.
- can't prove that something doesn't exist without iterating through every single existing thing, that's true. However, since people came up with the notion of god without any verifiable information at all, I don't see a reason even to consider existence of any god to be real. It's no more real than the ether that fills the voids of space or the elfs or goblins or other mystical creatures from the Tolkien trilogy.
Stallman has been very clear over the years that he has no issue with people monetizing software, making money off of programming, or even selling software. He merely emphasizes that anyone who obtains software must have access to code.
- that's where I disagree with RMS. It is up to me to decide how I distribute my software. The user has a choice and he may chose something else if it exists. My GPLed software comes with source. My proprietary software does not. Don't like it, don't use it. Do you have a problem with it? RMS does, but it's his problem.
It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?
- my believe is that it is totally my business how I want to distribute my software. I distribute some free. I distribute some as proprietary. It's up to the end users to use it or not, but it is not up to RMS to tell me what I should do with my time.
RMS is being a dick when he tells developers to do other things rather than writing software that is proprietary (Non-free software section).
Yes, it is nice to have ability to do all those things you wish with the stuff that you have on your machine, however it is not up to you to decide how others want to provide their services.
If someone wants to provide free software - great, I do it too. However if someone wants to provide proprietary software not licensed freely (GPL or whatever) it is only for the end user to decide whether he wants that piece of work on his computer or not.
It is none of goddamn RMSs business how people want to distribute their stuff. Don't like it? Don't use it.
Richard Stallman: Any development of non-free software is harmful and unfortunate, whether it uses GNU tools or other tools....
JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?
Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.
So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
My reply to that article was exactly the same as the reply of the GP here.
Because you don't understand it, there can't possibly be any truth to it.
- you use that word 'truth', and I don't think you understand what it means. To a religious person truth is based on his faith. To a non-religious person there is no such absolute concept. To me 'truth' is just a word that sometimes may imply a basic fact (like for example it is a basic fact that the mass of proton is approximated at 1.67262158 × 10-27 kilograms) and sometimes is a word that describes a situation with relation to circumstances. It is true that many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11 because Bush told them it was so. Of-course they were all wrong and Bush simply wanted to get his way in Iraq, but that is a different 'truth'.
Truth is a meaningless word, only facts are meaningful. Your truth is based on faith and as such it is not my truth.
This, of course, implies that you know everything there is to be known, which is the pinnacle of arrogance.
- This of-cours implies no such thing. Your second statement does not logically follow from your first statement.
Just as you claim there isn't any proof that god/God exists, there can also be no proof that God doesn't exist.
- I am not required to prove that god does not exist because I am not making any outlandish statements. You on the other hand believe that a god exists, but you can't prove it to anyone, you can only believe it, that's why it's faith and not at all anything that can be actually studied in any way except as a lesson in human psychology.
I love how some atheists will argue logic and science 'til they're blue in the face, but as soon as it comes to whether God exists, they'll throw their own logic out the window, claiming that there is no God.
- I don't claim any such thing. I claim that no one has any proof of existence of god and thus the claim that god exists is not based in reality. You can have your faith but that means that by definition you cannot make your faith into anything other than that. You cannot turn your faith into knowledge because scientific principles and methods cannot be applied to turn irrational believes into testable knowledge.
Anybody with any sense at all knows that you can't prove the non-existence of something, so even if you were to prove evolution and the big bang theory, and all the rest of it beyond a shadow of a doubt (which we're a long way from, by the way) you still cannot use any of that to prove that God doesn't exist.
- You are assuming that I am trying to do so but I am not. Nothing can prove existence of god short of god himself coming over.
So don't give me this "suspending their intelligence" crap. Maybe they knew something you didn't. Let's leave it at that.
- Lets put it this way: Newton organized our basic knowledge of mechanics and optics (among other things), he was the kind of guy who wanted to leave a legacy. He also wrote many scripts on the subject of religion and god, he was into some pretty weirs shit though, including occult studies of the philosopher's stone, end of the world by 2060, astrology, chronology and such. He left the scripts for everyone to see, had he known something that was actually groundbreaking in terms of faith and god it would have been known.
However it is a very simple fact that having faith does not require having any extraordinary intelligence at all. Faith is easy to have, it is actual understanding of facts that is difficult. Otherwise intelligent people have their faith, which also means that intelligence is not an obstacle at all for having faith. However it is understood by the intelligent that religious faith by definition cannot become knowledge. Well, at least not in this life ( and I don't believe it reincarnation either;)
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You are missing my point though, I know that I don't have a soul and no amount of BS from anyone is useful on me, I don't care what anyone thinks, I don't argue with people who want to tell me that I have a soul, I don't need to.
While doctor may or may not be qualified to have opinions, priests are definitely not qualified to have opinions on me. So no, your argument doesn't work, priest to me is nobody, he is definitely no more qualified than anyone else and again, I am the most qualified person to call it whether I have a soul or not, and I don't.
Not true, while you may believe that you have a soul and you may believe that others do, you can't prove that I do and since I don't believe in it I am definitely more qualified to call it whether I do or don't and I don't !
So tell me, am I not a machine then or is your statement incorrect, when you imply that all of us have souls?
Because I know I don't have a soul, YMMV.
not forgetting how to get and to be there and building new tech to do things more efficiently. Oh, and also having an outpost to greet space invaders quicker.
You seem to be upset about something, why is that?
Money is just a short form for exchanging people's time, time that they have to live, and you know, lives are short. Back to the point. Money is not created in vacuum or for the sake of money. Accumulation of money is accumulation of other people's time investment. Obviously money is only meaningful when it can be actually exchanged for actual people's time and goods and services produced in that time.
Corporations only exist to make money for their investors. Producing goods and services is a side effect of that goal, but nevertheless goods and services are produced, because time that goes into production is the only meaningful thing that can be exchanged for money.
Money doesn't appear from vacuum, thus corporations have to get that money from people who are willing to exchange their money for something that corporations will produce. Thus there will be goods and services. Maybe to you this seems like a soulless view of the world (whatever that means), but this is the real view of the world.
Nope, companies are there for offering goods and services
- how is it, leaving in the dream world? Companies exist to make money for the investors. Everything else is secondary, it's just the means to the end goal - money.
1. I don't know if RMS has ever stopped anyone from anything physically, but he talks tough. (see the section on Non Free Software) He says if you create proprietary software you must stop and do something else instead. I am not arguing that he is physically forcing anything, however I can see how he would if he were a dictator and he certainly has a mindset of one. That's my main point of contention with this person.
2.
* Every single one of us is going to end up dead. If you have something that you believe in, -especially something that doesn't hurt others- don't you owe it to yourself to spend the time that you have in service of that belief? You're never going to get to try again. Ever.
- hey, go for it, do whatever you want, preach whatever you want, just don't expect others to follow you into that perfect world you have created in your head.
Then that's an indication that software patents are broken, no?
- no. Most software has nothing innovative to patent.
The copyright and patent systems exist to ensure that beneficial knowledge and technological advancements are created, and are not lost forever, respectively. You know... that whole "Advancement and Promotion of The Arts" thing that some folks prattle on about.
- and this has nothing to do with software source being available.
Ultimately, organizations like the FSF, the NSF, and -in spirit- the USPTO are dedicated to advancing the human condition.
- where is the rational argument that I was asking you for?
Perhaps you're just out to make a buck. *shrug* Whatever.
- absolutely. When I want to give away free code, I do so. Do you contribute?
Please keep in mind that there are folks who simultaneously:
* Understand that we all have to make a living.
and
* Want to make the world a better place for everyone.
You may be one of those people. I don't know. RMS and Co. are certainly "those people".
- where is the rational argument for forcing people to stop creating software that is distributed without source code?
There is no rational argument to force people from distributing software with license of their choice. The choice to use or not to use any kind of software is with the end customer. What, you don't like freedom of choice?
again, drawing straws. Most software is not patented, and even when it is patented, the source is not included. Algorithm description may be included, source is not.
"It has happened before, it will happen again!"
- this is from LEXX actually, but it found its way into BSG.
As master of the analogy, I think you.
- you think me?
Maybe not, but that is not the point. People don't die if they don't see ingredients on the package, but they can use that information to make better choices.
- you may be able to read a formula on a label, but not the process describing the making of the medicine. You can also take a piece of code distributed in binary and open it in your preferred editor, run it in a debugger. That's the formula. The process that created the formula is the source, that's not given away with the proprietary distribution. That's the choice, with proprietary code you cannot examine the source, with Free code you can. Pick your poison.
Speaking as someone who has worked in the medical imaging field, I can say, sure, why not.
- Excellent. Do you know how much more the proprietary code would cost and what this would do to Free software if it was absolutely necessary to give guarantees backed by strictly regulated licensing/certifying system? I'd make more money than I could ever imagine. And even then the source code would not be a requirement. Where do you see food and medicine creation processes described on labels?
Nothing would change from source code point of view, it would only make code production more expensive, would deny many people who contribute to Free/Open source from making such contributions etc., etc., etc..
You are obviously wrong about trying to treat software applications as if they were some product provided by licensed merchants - licensed doctors, licensed engineers, licensed anything. Applications are really cheap to make, the production only takes time. The tools of production are very cheap compared to other tools. Software is commodity and in such saturated market there are niches for all kinds of players, proprietary and Free and / or free etc.
RMS has ideology but not a real rational argument, what is it that you have?
Why should we remove the option of food without ingredients listed? Why should we remove the option of medicine without warning labels? Why should we remove the option of buying products without consumer protection laws?
- nice move, comparing software to food and medicine ingredients.
The difference is nobody dies if they run MS Office instead of Open Office.
Are you suggesting that software developers should be held to the same standards of regulation as food and health industry? Because if that is what you are suggesting, all developers will have to get those certificates, which will create an interesting new barrier to entry into the field and effectively will force costs to be higher.
Your analogy is flawed in yet another way: certainly the ingredients on foods are wonderful and such, however the label does not list the process of preparation of the said food in any detail at all and it is considered a 'trade secret'.
Certainly there is regulation to make sure that medicine that is sold fulfills certain promise and is safe, but again, the processes that go into creation of the medicine may be a trade secrete and definitely is not listed on any label.
The software that is bought normally states that it is not fit for any particular purpose at all, thus it cannot be held accountable for anything at all basically. You want some purpose, get someone to do it for you for hire. Otherwise no warranties ( I am yet to see a piece of software that guarantees anything, including fitness for any purpose.) As such, any software, proprietary or Free/free is basically a crap-shoot, no normal user reads through Open Office code base to figure out if the code will not delete his/her files.
You are drawing straws.
sure, people chose to use and not to use things every day. Open Office vs MS Office, Gimp vs Photoshop, IE vs FireFox etc.
Why should we remove the option of using proprietary software?
As for the analysis that it would be possible to show evidence that religions are products of human nature and human history, I must disagree. To prove that religion is merely natural rather than supernatural using natural evidence is a logical impossibility for *exactly* the same reasons why no one can answer the infinite train of whys.
- wow there, Sherlock. People have created so many religions, time after time after time, that it would make a very long read about all of the players and circumstances involved. From magic wind, fire, water, birds, animals, fish and insects, Aten (the Sun god), Ahura Mazda, to Osiris, Seth, Cronus, Uranus, Zeus, Poseidon, Hyperion, Eros, Hermes, Artemis, Apollo, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Pan, Alexander the Great (who also believed himself to be the son of god), Shiva, Vishu, Odin, Brahman, Hanuman, Lakshmi, Kali, Wicca, Dryghten, and then the Trinity, Norse AEsir, Vanir, Yoruba Orisha, Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Jah, Waheguru .....
In fact it is very fitting that we, as humans, evolve our gods with us, from winds and fire and sun to animals to something reminding us of people mixed with animals, like the Egyptian gods, to people like Zeus and actual Jesus and such. It only makes sense that the latest religions imply that gods are aliens from other star systems and so on.
No, gods and religions are definitely human inventions.
Except that the bible is a fiction story, it's no more based in reality than The Lord of the Rings or Ender's Game. You know, with magic creatures and mind reading snakes and such.
For those who must say that God does not exist, try this: your position is just as unprovable as theirs, and yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs. There is no arguing with religion.
- can't prove that something doesn't exist without iterating through every single existing thing, that's true. However, since people came up with the notion of god without any verifiable information at all, I don't see a reason even to consider existence of any god to be real. It's no more real than the ether that fills the voids of space or the elfs or goblins or other mystical creatures from the Tolkien trilogy.
Stallman has been very clear over the years that he has no issue with people monetizing software, making money off of programming, or even selling software. He merely emphasizes that anyone who obtains software must have access to code.
- that's where I disagree with RMS. It is up to me to decide how I distribute my software. The user has a choice and he may chose something else if it exists. My GPLed software comes with source. My proprietary software does not. Don't like it, don't use it. Do you have a problem with it? RMS does, but it's his problem.
It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?
- my believe is that it is totally my business how I want to distribute my software. I distribute some free. I distribute some as proprietary. It's up to the end users to use it or not, but it is not up to RMS to tell me what I should do with my time.
The link to the article where RMS says that developers must not develop proprietary software as a matter of idealism and go do something else instead.
(Non-free software section).
RMS is being a dick when he tells developers to do other things rather than writing software that is proprietary (Non-free software section).
Yes, it is nice to have ability to do all those things you wish with the stuff that you have on your machine, however it is not up to you to decide how others want to provide their services.
If someone wants to provide free software - great, I do it too. However if someone wants to provide proprietary software not licensed freely (GPL or whatever) it is only for the end user to decide whether he wants that piece of work on his computer or not.
It is none of goddamn RMSs business how people want to distribute their stuff. Don't like it? Don't use it.
Killing someone to get stuff done by Friday? Hmmmmm, I'll think about that... it's a tough one...
Ok, I figured it out. It's OK as long as I don't go to jail for it.
He does no such thing. You are free to develop, market, and sell your own code however you like.
- ORLY?!
Richard Stallman: Any development of non-free software is harmful and unfortunate, whether it uses GNU tools or other tools. ...
JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?
Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.
So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
My reply to that article was exactly the same as the reply of the GP here.
Maybe the Toy Yoda company is doing this on purpose to generate buzz and sell more cars now, that people are buying less?
Because you don't understand it, there can't possibly be any truth to it.
- you use that word 'truth', and I don't think you understand what it means. To a religious person truth is based on his faith. To a non-religious person there is no such absolute concept. To me 'truth' is just a word that sometimes may imply a basic fact (like for example it is a basic fact that the mass of proton is approximated at 1.67262158 × 10-27 kilograms) and sometimes is a word that describes a situation with relation to circumstances. It is true that many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11 because Bush told them it was so. Of-course they were all wrong and Bush simply wanted to get his way in Iraq, but that is a different 'truth'.
Truth is a meaningless word, only facts are meaningful. Your truth is based on faith and as such it is not my truth.
This, of course, implies that you know everything there is to be known, which is the pinnacle of arrogance.
- This of-cours implies no such thing. Your second statement does not logically follow from your first statement.
Just as you claim there isn't any proof that god/God exists, there can also be no proof that God doesn't exist.
- I am not required to prove that god does not exist because I am not making any outlandish statements. You on the other hand believe that a god exists, but you can't prove it to anyone, you can only believe it, that's why it's faith and not at all anything that can be actually studied in any way except as a lesson in human psychology.
I love how some atheists will argue logic and science 'til they're blue in the face, but as soon as it comes to whether God exists, they'll throw their own logic out the window, claiming that there is no God.
- I don't claim any such thing. I claim that no one has any proof of existence of god and thus the claim that god exists is not based in reality. You can have your faith but that means that by definition you cannot make your faith into anything other than that. You cannot turn your faith into knowledge because scientific principles and methods cannot be applied to turn irrational believes into testable knowledge.
Anybody with any sense at all knows that you can't prove the non-existence of something, so even if you were to prove evolution and the big bang theory, and all the rest of it beyond a shadow of a doubt (which we're a long way from, by the way) you still cannot use any of that to prove that God doesn't exist.
- You are assuming that I am trying to do so but I am not. Nothing can prove existence of god short of god himself coming over.
So don't give me this "suspending their intelligence" crap. Maybe they knew something you didn't. Let's leave it at that.
- Lets put it this way: Newton organized our basic knowledge of mechanics and optics (among other things), he was the kind of guy who wanted to leave a legacy. He also wrote many scripts on the subject of religion and god, he was into some pretty weirs shit though, including occult studies of the philosopher's stone, end of the world by 2060, astrology, chronology and such. He left the scripts for everyone to see, had he known something that was actually groundbreaking in terms of faith and god it would have been known.
However it is a very simple fact that having faith does not require having any extraordinary intelligence at all. Faith is easy to have, it is actual understanding of facts that is difficult. Otherwise intelligent people have their faith, which also means that intelligence is not an obstacle at all for having faith. However it is understood by the intelligent that religious faith by definition cannot become knowledge. Well, at least not in this life ( and I don't believe it reincarnation either ;)