A 2% increase isn't even really obscene, more like an adjustment for inflation. Of course, it would be better if the Republicans would direct their "starve the beast" fury at an agency deserving of it, rather than at agencies that advance scientific knowledge, feed the hungry, and care for the ill.
One party fought for public option health care. They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it, rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down. They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war. They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics. They fought against torture. They fought against teaching creationism in school. And despite your hand-waving dismissal, they fought for the rights of gays and women, who probably don't view themselves as minor issues. And that's just off the top of my head.
Saying the parties are the same is just the excuse of the lazy, trying to rationalize why they don't bother voting.
You have the exact same things to worry about as a theist. You believe you're right, they believe they're right. You'll both either be confident on your deathbed or not.
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That doesn't make much sense. Why would Catholics oppose pre-marital sex if the goal was the maximize the number of kids? Why oppose adultery even? Why not let priests marry, as surely their kids would be predisposed to the religion? And given that people aren't supposed to have sex outside of marriage, why tell them not to masturbate? Why oppose people divorcing and re-marrying, given that newly married couples are likely to make more kids than a couple that hates each other but can't get a divorce? And if the goal of opposing abortion is to get a kid for the church, then why allow adoption?
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That particular brand of religious people see God as a micromanager, where literally everything that happens is because God made it so. Feeling hungry? God made you feel that way. Breeze moves a blade of grass? God did it.
It may seem laughable, but it's actually an entirely logical conclusion when you give it some thought. If the universe is deterministic, and if God set the initial state of the universe, and if God is all-knowing, then it follows that God is responsible for absolutely everything, just as you're responsible for knocking down all the dominos even if you only hit the first one. An atheist could just as well attribute every single thing to the big bang or whatever. Of course, it's quite likely that the universe is non-deterministic, in which case the micromanaging God makes a lot less sense.
Oh, but for the bit about forcing rape victims to carry the child to term, that's no longer really about religion or God's will, as you could just as easily say getting an abortion is God's will (he could stop you if he wanted to, after all). The whole abortion crusade is just a well engineered wedge issue with a thin veneer of religion on top. Ditto the gay bashing.
If I owned a restaurant, I might not allow people to talk on cell phones in it. Yes, not everyone is offended by that behavior, but I have reason to believe that a lot of my customers might be, and that's not the atmosphere I wish to promote. If you really want to talk on your phone, you can go elsewhere, and if you really want to flip off anyone viewing your profile, you can go elsewhere. It's not like they're banning some arbitrary behavior. Surely you acknowledge that most people are offended by the gesture, and that indeed the whole point of the gesture is to offend.
Way to commit the EXACT fallacy that I just said you would commit. Hey, let's try it in the other direction... "If they can't disallow offensive content, then should they allow child porn?" It's no less absurd then thinking that disallowing the middle finger means they have to disallow all content.
And who cares what the global demographic is? What matters is the google+ demographic, which is predominantly American, with a bunch of Indians, Canadians, and British thrown in. The Muslim membership is miniscule. However, if there were an Iraqi version of the site in which the membership was predominantly Iraqi, it would make sense for them to allow middle fingers but disallow the soles of shoes.
The first knows that they're wrong (or at least thinks its likely) but makes money from the status quo. They don't really believe global warming is a left-wing conspiracy, but they know they can make a fortune by spreading that lie. If you're wondering why they'd risk hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives to afford that third yacht they've always wanted, then you don't understand the immense sense of entitlement that comes with being rich in America.
The second type are the useful idiots. They've been told that liberals are the great evil in the world, out to destroy the country. That gays and Muslims and blacks and immigrants and scientists and basically everyone else hates their freedom and wants to ruin their way of life. And they've been told this loudly, several times a day, for decades. The human brain can't withstand that amount of propaganda. So now the well has been poisoned, and they distrust anyone who isn't parroting the party line. You can't reason with them, because the instant you go against what they "know", you are the enemy.
You can't help the second group, so the only hope is to bring down the first. Once the propaganda stops, the second group will wake up on their own (though the detox period would likely take years).
(There's also a third catch-all group for the libertarians, the nihilists, the "truth-is-in-the-middle"-ers, etc... who either don't care, don't want the government to do anything, or want there to be a 100% consensus. They're not really deniers though.)
Right, we'll just pack up all the farmers whose lands have become inarable and ship them down to Antarctica to start their lives over, while simultaneously rebuilding every supply chain in the world. That'll certainly be less of an inconvenience than replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs!
They want profile pics to be inoffensive. The middle finger gesture is offensive, and intentionally so. They're not going to remove things that might offend specific foreigners because those foreigners make up a vanishingly small segment of their user base. To complain about this seeming contradiction is to commit a line drawing fallacy.
If you are going to remove >30% of their daily responsibilities then you'll need to work with leadership to help them understand how it allows the affected group to make the company more money with the same work (which will positively impact their bonuses).
You're kidding, right? These advances never let "the affected group make more money with the same work". They let the affected group make more money with fewer people and the same work. And the only bonuses that are positively affected are those of the executive staff.
I understand the need to move technology forward, but until the people at the top start understanding the need to give people a means of living, I see no reason to help them out any more than I'm obligated too.
So now pre-adamism is a central tenet of religion? Nevermind that most religions view the whole Adam and Eve thing as metaphor (as I've already told you, the Catholic church has supported evolution since before you were born), whether there was one or multiple "Adams" can hardly be said to be the foundation of Abrahamic religion.
And I don't even see where you're going with that "number of gods" bit. Of course there were other gods - false ones, according to monotheists. Aside from a few instances of what people might refer to as "the royal we", all those references are saying "Our God is better than all those false gods".
Besides, we're discussing your claim that "The corpus of scientific knowledge can provide clear and convincing proof that key tenets of Judeo-Christian belief systems are false." Neither of your examples had anything to do with scientific knowledge invalidating key tenets of the Abrahamic religions.
Frankly, you're grasping at straws. You made an indefensible statement. You don't need to admit it, if that's too embarrassing for you, but repeatedly doubling down isn't making your case any stronger.
Hey look, a perfect example of what I was talking about.
You said: "There are no good arguments in favor of the truth of religion, or there would be no atheists."
Now put on your big boy thinking cap, and try to see how blatantly wrong that statement is. It has, as an unstated premise, that all atheists are 100% informed and 100% rational. When has that ever been true of any group of people?
But for posting something that is obviously false, you get a +5 insightful, and I get modded troll. Slashdot moderation is a joke.
1) What atheists generally are is irrelevant. It's the offensive, arrogant, trollish atheists that dominate Slashdot that I'm speaking about. Would you like to claim that such people are not common? Please go ahead. Make me laugh.
2) Atheists are absolutely not knowledgeable about "many" religions, or even one. Briefly browsing the wikipedia page doesn't count. I have not once seen an atheist provide anything more than some tired old Philosophy 101 arguments, all of which have been refuted centuries ago by much smarter people. They're just as willfully ignorant as, well, most human beings.
You are falling into the all too common trap of thinking that the group you belong to is better and more rational and more open-minded than everyone else. Can you really not see that?
You know, you can just admit when you're wrong. It's not painful or anything. Shouting insults and running away is childish. So is pretending that you're just joking around when moments ago you were quite serious.
You made some outrageous and extreme statement. You couldn't back it up. Just accept it, move on, and next time remember: you're just as prone to idiocy as the people you love to insult:-)
The Catholic church has supported the big bang theory pretty much since its inception, and has supported evolution for longer than most of us have been alive. Young Earth creationism can hardly be considered a key tenet of any faith, and I make no excuses for the people who believe in it. But, as I've said, the Catholic church, which represents well over a billion people, does not hold to those beliefs, let alone as key tenets. Please come up with a real example.
Bullshit. Just look around this site. If you post an argument in favor of religion, it does not get discussed. It gets mocked and downmodded, while comments like "Seriously, anyone with half a brain will realise that the religion they once believed in is full of inconsistencies as soon as they develop critical thinking skills" are modded insightful.
There's nothing insightful there, just mockery of 98% of the world's population. Simply asserting everyone who disagrees with you is stupid doesn't make it so.
That old canard is idiotic, and embarrassing to even bring up. Of course, it will get modded up by chuckling atheists looking to stroke their own egos.
Here is the actual thinking on the differences between God and FSM-clones (not that you are likely to care, because odds are you made up your mind years ago, and to hell with critical thinking):
God is generally accepted as being "simple", meaning no parts, or physical manifestation, or in time and space. More like a cosmological constant than the bearded old white guy in the clouds that gets taught to children. Think like gravity, except that gravity is constrained to the physical universe whereas God wouldn't be. Essentially the Abrahamic God is a force which is responsible for the original creation of the universe and which influences the physical world for the better.
By contrast, spaghetti monsters or pink unicorns or whatever have physical forms: they're made of spaghetti, or are unicorns, etc. They have locations, too, such as hiding behind the moon. This makes them absurd (which is of course the point), because if they exist nearby in the physical universe, there should be evidence of that existence. If you apply the concept of divine simplicity to them, then they can't be made of spaghetti (for example) because that would be a physical property, and so you just end up with God by another name.
If you insist on being the loudmouthed variety of atheist, please at least educate yourself on millenia old lines of thought. Discussing the topic of religion without knowing this stuff is like discussing physics without knowing about gravity.
Oh, hey look, an arrogant atheist. How new and original!
I'm glad to see that you reasoned yourself into something. Which philosophers did you read during this process? Did you give actual consideration to the centuries of thought that very smart people on both sides have put into this question? Or, like so many others, did you read a few snarky posts on Slashdot, maybe flip through a mass market polemic by Dawkins or whomever, and decide that you were smarter than 98% of the world's population?
You can't reason yourself into a solid belief system any more than you can reason yourself into understanding neurology. Simply joining the cool kids in laughing at everyone else doesn't make you informed. If you want to actually have an intelligent and sound world view, you have to read, and learn, and THINK. If that leads you to atheism, then fine. But that's not how you got there, now is it?
If an all-power being exists, it could prove its own existence -- True! It has not done so -- Also true! Therefore we must make excuses for it -- Danger! Inflammatory phrasing aside, why must we invent excuses for it? I'm choosing not to give you my real name, even though it is within my power. Must you now invent excuses for me, or else conclude I don't have a name? Since when is absence of proof proof of absence?
When a religious person says no proof is possible, what they're really saying is... -- Complete non-sequitur. Strawman, putting words into others' mouths, flamebait.
Why is there an onus of proof at all? I am totally sympathetic to atheists not wanting creationism taught in schools, but for the most part religion is a philosophical matter. It deals with questions of evil and free will and morality. Can you prove with "infallible evidence" that your beliefs are right? Then why should I have to?
Obama ended DADT, dropped all federal support for DOMA -- not at war with gays.
Obama doesn't villainize Muslims the way the Republicans do. The fact that he uses drones to attack the Taliban is irrelevant, as they aren't true Muslims, just murderers and thugs using religion as an excuse. It is sad that innocent bystanders occasionally get killed, but if you think Obama is murdering those people, you're insane.
Obama ended torture, and would have closed Gitmo had not the Congressional Republicans blocked his every attempt. Thank the cowardice of the American people, refusing to let the big bad terrorist be locked up on our own soil for that one.
Obama has supported abortion rights and helped protect Planned Parenthood from going the way of ACORN. The fact that he didn't allow the morning after pill to be sold to minors without parental knowledge is something that only the most extreme left-wingers would fixate on. Remember this: if one more conservative gets appointed to the court, Roe v Wade will be overturned. If you care about reproductive rights, you have to vote Democratic for president every single time.
Yes, things aren't perfect. But they're a hell of a lot better. Burning down the country by putting the GOP in charge is the worst thing you could possibly do, and I can't help but think that groups like the one you keep citing are Republican plants intended to discourage liberals and get people to give up on democracy so that they can continue looting the country.
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A 2% increase isn't even really obscene, more like an adjustment for inflation. Of course, it would be better if the Republicans would direct their "starve the beast" fury at an agency deserving of it, rather than at agencies that advance scientific knowledge, feed the hungry, and care for the ill.
One party fought for public option health care. They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it, rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down. They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war. They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics. They fought against torture. They fought against teaching creationism in school. And despite your hand-waving dismissal, they fought for the rights of gays and women, who probably don't view themselves as minor issues. And that's just off the top of my head.
Saying the parties are the same is just the excuse of the lazy, trying to rationalize why they don't bother voting.
You have the exact same things to worry about as a theist. You believe you're right, they believe they're right. You'll both either be confident on your deathbed or not.
That doesn't make much sense. Why would Catholics oppose pre-marital sex if the goal was the maximize the number of kids? Why oppose adultery even? Why not let priests marry, as surely their kids would be predisposed to the religion? And given that people aren't supposed to have sex outside of marriage, why tell them not to masturbate? Why oppose people divorcing and re-marrying, given that newly married couples are likely to make more kids than a couple that hates each other but can't get a divorce? And if the goal of opposing abortion is to get a kid for the church, then why allow adoption?
That particular brand of religious people see God as a micromanager, where literally everything that happens is because God made it so. Feeling hungry? God made you feel that way. Breeze moves a blade of grass? God did it.
It may seem laughable, but it's actually an entirely logical conclusion when you give it some thought. If the universe is deterministic, and if God set the initial state of the universe, and if God is all-knowing, then it follows that God is responsible for absolutely everything, just as you're responsible for knocking down all the dominos even if you only hit the first one. An atheist could just as well attribute every single thing to the big bang or whatever. Of course, it's quite likely that the universe is non-deterministic, in which case the micromanaging God makes a lot less sense.
Oh, but for the bit about forcing rape victims to carry the child to term, that's no longer really about religion or God's will, as you could just as easily say getting an abortion is God's will (he could stop you if he wanted to, after all). The whole abortion crusade is just a well engineered wedge issue with a thin veneer of religion on top. Ditto the gay bashing.
It's Google's service.
If I owned a restaurant, I might not allow people to talk on cell phones in it. Yes, not everyone is offended by that behavior, but I have reason to believe that a lot of my customers might be, and that's not the atmosphere I wish to promote. If you really want to talk on your phone, you can go elsewhere, and if you really want to flip off anyone viewing your profile, you can go elsewhere. It's not like they're banning some arbitrary behavior. Surely you acknowledge that most people are offended by the gesture, and that indeed the whole point of the gesture is to offend.
Way to commit the EXACT fallacy that I just said you would commit. Hey, let's try it in the other direction... "If they can't disallow offensive content, then should they allow child porn?" It's no less absurd then thinking that disallowing the middle finger means they have to disallow all content.
And who cares what the global demographic is? What matters is the google+ demographic, which is predominantly American, with a bunch of Indians, Canadians, and British thrown in. The Muslim membership is miniscule. However, if there were an Iraqi version of the site in which the membership was predominantly Iraqi, it would make sense for them to allow middle fingers but disallow the soles of shoes.
There are two types of global warming deniers.
The first knows that they're wrong (or at least thinks its likely) but makes money from the status quo. They don't really believe global warming is a left-wing conspiracy, but they know they can make a fortune by spreading that lie. If you're wondering why they'd risk hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives to afford that third yacht they've always wanted, then you don't understand the immense sense of entitlement that comes with being rich in America.
The second type are the useful idiots. They've been told that liberals are the great evil in the world, out to destroy the country. That gays and Muslims and blacks and immigrants and scientists and basically everyone else hates their freedom and wants to ruin their way of life. And they've been told this loudly, several times a day, for decades. The human brain can't withstand that amount of propaganda. So now the well has been poisoned, and they distrust anyone who isn't parroting the party line. You can't reason with them, because the instant you go against what they "know", you are the enemy.
You can't help the second group, so the only hope is to bring down the first. Once the propaganda stops, the second group will wake up on their own (though the detox period would likely take years).
(There's also a third catch-all group for the libertarians, the nihilists, the "truth-is-in-the-middle"-ers, etc... who either don't care, don't want the government to do anything, or want there to be a 100% consensus. They're not really deniers though.)
Right, we'll just pack up all the farmers whose lands have become inarable and ship them down to Antarctica to start their lives over, while simultaneously rebuilding every supply chain in the world. That'll certainly be less of an inconvenience than replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs!
They want profile pics to be inoffensive. The middle finger gesture is offensive, and intentionally so. They're not going to remove things that might offend specific foreigners because those foreigners make up a vanishingly small segment of their user base. To complain about this seeming contradiction is to commit a line drawing fallacy.
If you are going to remove >30% of their daily responsibilities then you'll need to work with leadership to help them understand how it allows the affected group to make the company more money with the same work (which will positively impact their bonuses).
You're kidding, right? These advances never let "the affected group make more money with the same work". They let the affected group make more money with fewer people and the same work. And the only bonuses that are positively affected are those of the executive staff.
I understand the need to move technology forward, but until the people at the top start understanding the need to give people a means of living, I see no reason to help them out any more than I'm obligated too.
So now pre-adamism is a central tenet of religion? Nevermind that most religions view the whole Adam and Eve thing as metaphor (as I've already told you, the Catholic church has supported evolution since before you were born), whether there was one or multiple "Adams" can hardly be said to be the foundation of Abrahamic religion.
And I don't even see where you're going with that "number of gods" bit. Of course there were other gods - false ones, according to monotheists. Aside from a few instances of what people might refer to as "the royal we", all those references are saying "Our God is better than all those false gods".
Besides, we're discussing your claim that "The corpus of scientific knowledge can provide clear and convincing proof that key tenets of Judeo-Christian belief systems are false." Neither of your examples had anything to do with scientific knowledge invalidating key tenets of the Abrahamic religions.
Frankly, you're grasping at straws. You made an indefensible statement. You don't need to admit it, if that's too embarrassing for you, but repeatedly doubling down isn't making your case any stronger.
Hey look, a perfect example of what I was talking about.
You said: "There are no good arguments in favor of the truth of religion, or there would be no atheists."
Now put on your big boy thinking cap, and try to see how blatantly wrong that statement is. It has, as an unstated premise, that all atheists are 100% informed and 100% rational. When has that ever been true of any group of people?
But for posting something that is obviously false, you get a +5 insightful, and I get modded troll. Slashdot moderation is a joke.
Your life expectancy is probably around 80 years. If you get shot tomorrow, it's not the statisticians who are to blame.
When has this ever been true?
1) What atheists generally are is irrelevant. It's the offensive, arrogant, trollish atheists that dominate Slashdot that I'm speaking about. Would you like to claim that such people are not common? Please go ahead. Make me laugh.
2) Atheists are absolutely not knowledgeable about "many" religions, or even one. Briefly browsing the wikipedia page doesn't count. I have not once seen an atheist provide anything more than some tired old Philosophy 101 arguments, all of which have been refuted centuries ago by much smarter people. They're just as willfully ignorant as, well, most human beings.
You are falling into the all too common trap of thinking that the group you belong to is better and more rational and more open-minded than everyone else. Can you really not see that?
You know, you can just admit when you're wrong. It's not painful or anything. Shouting insults and running away is childish. So is pretending that you're just joking around when moments ago you were quite serious.
You made some outrageous and extreme statement. You couldn't back it up. Just accept it, move on, and next time remember: you're just as prone to idiocy as the people you love to insult :-)
The Catholic church has supported the big bang theory pretty much since its inception, and has supported evolution for longer than most of us have been alive. Young Earth creationism can hardly be considered a key tenet of any faith, and I make no excuses for the people who believe in it. But, as I've said, the Catholic church, which represents well over a billion people, does not hold to those beliefs, let alone as key tenets. Please come up with a real example.
You didn't provide anything for me to refute.... How am I supposed to refute your "clear and convincing proof" if I don't know what it is?
Bullshit. Just look around this site. If you post an argument in favor of religion, it does not get discussed. It gets mocked and downmodded, while comments like "Seriously, anyone with half a brain will realise that the religion they once believed in is full of inconsistencies as soon as they develop critical thinking skills" are modded insightful.
There's nothing insightful there, just mockery of 98% of the world's population. Simply asserting everyone who disagrees with you is stupid doesn't make it so.
It's 72%, not 93%. Still high though. Source.
That old canard is idiotic, and embarrassing to even bring up. Of course, it will get modded up by chuckling atheists looking to stroke their own egos.
Here is the actual thinking on the differences between God and FSM-clones (not that you are likely to care, because odds are you made up your mind years ago, and to hell with critical thinking):
God is generally accepted as being "simple", meaning no parts, or physical manifestation, or in time and space. More like a cosmological constant than the bearded old white guy in the clouds that gets taught to children. Think like gravity, except that gravity is constrained to the physical universe whereas God wouldn't be. Essentially the Abrahamic God is a force which is responsible for the original creation of the universe and which influences the physical world for the better.
By contrast, spaghetti monsters or pink unicorns or whatever have physical forms: they're made of spaghetti, or are unicorns, etc. They have locations, too, such as hiding behind the moon. This makes them absurd (which is of course the point), because if they exist nearby in the physical universe, there should be evidence of that existence. If you apply the concept of divine simplicity to them, then they can't be made of spaghetti (for example) because that would be a physical property, and so you just end up with God by another name.
If you insist on being the loudmouthed variety of atheist, please at least educate yourself on millenia old lines of thought. Discussing the topic of religion without knowing this stuff is like discussing physics without knowing about gravity.
Oh, hey look, an arrogant atheist. How new and original!
I'm glad to see that you reasoned yourself into something. Which philosophers did you read during this process? Did you give actual consideration to the centuries of thought that very smart people on both sides have put into this question? Or, like so many others, did you read a few snarky posts on Slashdot, maybe flip through a mass market polemic by Dawkins or whomever, and decide that you were smarter than 98% of the world's population?
You can't reason yourself into a solid belief system any more than you can reason yourself into understanding neurology. Simply joining the cool kids in laughing at everyone else doesn't make you informed. If you want to actually have an intelligent and sound world view, you have to read, and learn, and THINK. If that leads you to atheism, then fine. But that's not how you got there, now is it?
Let's take your post apart, shall we?
If an all-power being exists, it could prove its own existence -- True!
It has not done so -- Also true!
Therefore we must make excuses for it -- Danger! Inflammatory phrasing aside, why must we invent excuses for it? I'm choosing not to give you my real name, even though it is within my power. Must you now invent excuses for me, or else conclude I don't have a name? Since when is absence of proof proof of absence?
When a religious person says no proof is possible, what they're really saying is... -- Complete non-sequitur. Strawman, putting words into others' mouths, flamebait.
Why is there an onus of proof at all? I am totally sympathetic to atheists not wanting creationism taught in schools, but for the most part religion is a philosophical matter. It deals with questions of evil and free will and morality. Can you prove with "infallible evidence" that your beliefs are right? Then why should I have to?
Obama ended DADT, dropped all federal support for DOMA -- not at war with gays.
Obama doesn't villainize Muslims the way the Republicans do. The fact that he uses drones to attack the Taliban is irrelevant, as they aren't true Muslims, just murderers and thugs using religion as an excuse. It is sad that innocent bystanders occasionally get killed, but if you think Obama is murdering those people, you're insane.
Obama ended torture, and would have closed Gitmo had not the Congressional Republicans blocked his every attempt. Thank the cowardice of the American people, refusing to let the big bad terrorist be locked up on our own soil for that one.
Obama has supported abortion rights and helped protect Planned Parenthood from going the way of ACORN. The fact that he didn't allow the morning after pill to be sold to minors without parental knowledge is something that only the most extreme left-wingers would fixate on. Remember this: if one more conservative gets appointed to the court, Roe v Wade will be overturned. If you care about reproductive rights, you have to vote Democratic for president every single time.
Yes, things aren't perfect. But they're a hell of a lot better. Burning down the country by putting the GOP in charge is the worst thing you could possibly do, and I can't help but think that groups like the one you keep citing are Republican plants intended to discourage liberals and get people to give up on democracy so that they can continue looting the country.