There is no such thing as a greyish tinge to light. In subtractive color theory, grey is made by adding black and white. In additive color theory, grey is just a dimmer white. It is not a tinge. If something seems grey, add more light.
There is no way for anything to have a "pinkish/yellowish tinge." It could be one or the other, or it could be orange. Pink is desaturated red. Red and yellow make orange. Pink and yellow makes light orange.
The problem I think you are encountering is not an actual color temperature issue, but a color accuracy issue. There are a lot of different ways of making colors that all look the same to a human eye. You could make orange by mixing red and green light, or by using an orange light. To the human eye it looks the same, to a spectrometer one "orange" looks like peaks in the red and green wavelengths, the other looks like a peak in the orange wavelengths.
Because phosphors only emit light in a very narrow band, CFLs use a combination of phosphors to approximate white light. But instead of a continuous spectrum of color mixed together to make white, you are getting just red, green and blue mixed together to make white. The light looks white to the human eye, because we only have red, green and blue receptors, but some other colors will look off because the light is not full-spectrum. There is no way to fix this with gels, either. There is nothing there for a gel to subtract.
Here's what wikipedia has to say about the quality of light in CFLs:
Quality of light: A phosphor emits light in a narrow frequency range, unlike an incandescent filament, which emits the full spectrum, though not all colors equally, of visible light. Mono-phosphor lamps emit poor quality light; colors look bad and inaccurate. The solution is to mix different phosphors, each emitting a different range of light. Properly mixed, a good approximation of daylight or incandescent light can be reached. However, every extra phosphor added to the coating mix causes a loss of efficiency and increased cost. Good-quality consumer CFLs use three or four phosphors--typically emitting light in the red, green and blue spectra--to achieve a "white" light with color rendering indexes (CRI) of around 80. (A CRI of 100 represents the most accurate reproduction of all colors; reference sources having a CRI of 100, such as the sun and tungsten bulbs, emit black body radiation.)
Hehe, nah. She actually is great. Not that I could tell her if she wasn't, she IS an actress. Telling an actress she is no good is like kicking a puppy, they don't tend to take it very well.
She was just in Agnes of God, playing Agnes, a young innocent nun who gets pregnant (we don't know if it's rape or not), hides it, then strangles the baby, leaves it in a garbage can, and gets arrested. Really, really heavy stuff. I saw it three times and she left me and most of the audience in tears every time.
Do I feel deceived Jennifer C.'s tears were fake? Hmmmmm.... had she "acted" them, what would have made them any more real?
It all depends on how good the digital effects artist is. Humans have very good emotional BS detectors. That is what made really good actors rare, it takes a very skilled individual to convincingly fake emotions. Now it takes a different kind of skilled individual. I haven't seen Blood Diamond so I have no idea if the tears looked fake or not. If they looked fake, they were fake. If they didn't, they were still "fake" but that's not the point.
My wife is an actress, and a very good one, and I can tell you she will NOT be happy about this. Fortunately, she is primarily a stage actress, so her skills can't be faked. I imagine people who could paint very realistic paintings were quite upset when cameras were invented. No one enjoys having one's skills made obsolete.
Oh, no, I have all those delusions and more. I just know they are delusions and I'm open to changing them. Being against people hurting themselves and others through delusional behavior is not narrow minded. Faith is believing something without proof. How is it odd to believe that definition of faith?
True, but sometimes people need a kick in the pants. I'm not making a judgement against them personally. It may be hard to hear, but there are times when it pays to not beat about the bush and worry too much about being PC or hurting someone's feelings. Your advice has been taken under consideration, but in this case, I think I did the right thing.
Empirical observation. The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe. So, if you believe in the Big Bang, you believe that the universe DOES have a beginning, no?
No, just the part of it we can see. There may have been something before.Or, converesely, the Big Bang may have eben the universe's act of self creation.
Acting in another's best interest is acting in your own best interst. All altruism is enlightened self interest. It took me a long time and a lot of soul searching to agree that this is correct, because it is a difficult position to accept. From an ego based point of view, it is much easier to say, "I'm doing this because I'm a good person" than it is to say, "I'm doing this because it is what I want to do."
Outside of the ego point of view, though, one realizes that any boundary one draws around one's self to define that self is arbitrary. There is no absolute and self-existing boundary that defines the self. In fact, all boundaries are arbitrary, but many are still useful as long as one knows the scope in which they are correct.
I'm not the smartest human on the planet, and I don't claim to have any final answers. I just have answers that work for me, here, today. I may have to modify them if more information comes in that contradicts them. I'm open to that.
You'll notice that sometimes I write in a very inflamatory manner. People think I'm trolling, and sometimes I am. But really, I want people to fight back. I want my ideas challenged and sometimes the best wy to get your ideas challenged forcefully is to put them out there forcefully.
The experiments I am refering to are economic experiemtns, played in developing countries with stakes on the order of three month's salary. Various types of games were played, and people tend not to act in their own rational self interest, but rather, most are motivated by fairness and reciprocity.
Let me put it simply: I reject the notion that morality is irrational. I reject the idea that one can not understand the reasons for acting in a moral fashion.
There is one morality based on logic and enlightened self interest. Anyone can arrive at the same correct moral choices through logic, as long as one really knows the rules on is playing by. These rules can be derived from observation. This type of morality tends to agree with the precepts of most major religions, minus the irrational bullshit parts that are only thrown into religion to get you not to trust your own judgement.
As a ratinoal being with imperfect knowledge and little individual power, I know that I may not be capable of handling many situations that nature throws at me. I want other free individuals to desire to help me when I need it. I know that freedom comes from a feeling of security, so I will do what I can to help others feel secure. I know that being a free rider weakens the whole system. People do not feel secure when others are mooching off them. If I take from them now, when I don't really need it, I am like the grasshopper foolishly playing the summer away while the ant saves food. Supporting and defending the freedom of others enables them to support and defend my freedom when I really need it.
I could be like the grasshopper, and count on the ant to feed me, but why weaken the ant's ability to help me when I don't need it? Why not help the ant, and then when either of us need it, we have a surplus? Given the random and capricious nature of the world, this makes the most sense to me. It seems to make the most sense to others, too. I don't need a moral authority to tell me this, and others don't either.
In fact, a moral authority cripples people. No authority is capable of laying out the proper response to every situation. By telling people that they can not figure out the right course for themselves, such systems cripple people's ability to respond in a moral and enlightened fashion to unforeseen circumstances.
Yes, and then there is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. There is no certain knowledge, we get it. I'd say that not everything is infinite regress, though. Most things boil down to circular reasoning, not infinite regress.
Aha, aha, ahahahaha. Hilarious. Pat yourself on the back all you like, you have added nothing of value to this discussion and you have refuted nothing. When I attempt to add subtlty and nuance to the discussion, you accuse me of backpedalling. I hope you like living in your black and white world, but personally, I like color and shades of gray.
Ah, you have a point. I was not considering the abstract sense of "harm," but rather the personal sense of being directly impacted in a negative fashion by religion. Meaning, I was never forced to profess belief in something I didn't really believe in, I wasn't molested by priests, I wasn't forced to sit through mind-numbing sermons, and so forth. In the abstract sense, yes, I have been harmed by the actions of religion, as has everyone, and that is why I speak out against it. I just thought it was important to state that I am not operating from a personal sense of hurt, and I do not want "revenge" against religion. I just want it to go away. Personal spirituality is so much more satisfying, and fun to talk about than organized religion anyway.
Thanks. You put that better than I could have. You understand the various levels of moral reasoning, and why a belief system is sub-optimal when it forces people to operate at the lowest level.
I have. With an open mind and heart, I have asked God for proof of his existence and gotten nothing in return. Fearing that I may not have asked the right God, as there seem to be thousands of them dependign on who you ask, I went through all of them that I knew and asked them each personally. Nothing. I did my test, and concluded that either there isn't a God, or It does not give a rat's ass whether I know It exists or not.
I hope you understand that I am serious, and that my test was done with serious intent. It was not frivolous, I really, really wanted to know, and I believed it was possible. I got nothing. When other people say they have had a personal experience of God, I have to wonder whether God just hates me, personally, or whether perhaps they are experiencing something that feels divine but has a mundane explanation. After all, scientists can tune an RF transmitter at your brain and make you feel as though you are directly experiencing the Divine. Who's to say that all these other people who claim to have experienced the Divine are simply experiencing a perfectly natural brain state that simply feels Divine?
You have defined our positions succinctly and dispassionately. My position is also based on the idea that, if the something as complex as the Divine can exist without a creator, then surely something as complex as the universe can also exist without a creator. My position is that, as a theory, a creator has no explananatory power, it merely moves the question back a step.
I'm not ruling it out. It just doesn't add much to the equation, even if true. And religion does not seem to come from the Divine, but from humanity. If it came from the Divine, it would be a little more persuasive, cohesive, and unified, I think.
It has been proven experimentally that people do most often choose the moral course. In fact, rather than selfishness, most people are motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity. I'm pointing out what would motivate me, and how I would act, as an example of why morality need not be authority based.
Authority based morality always fails, because there are so many authorities to choose from, and one always gets to pick and choose how one interprets one's chosen authority. Society is a support network, taking from society weakens my own support network. As a rational being, I know that if everyone does that, society will collapse, which I don't want. Therefore, I don't do things to weaken society.
What could an invisible man in the sky tell me to do that I don't already know and want to do?
I'm not as vehemently anti religious as I've made myself sound in this thread, either. I just think religious people need to be shaken up a bit now and then. Honestly, some of the best human beings I've known have been deeply religious. I myself am deeply spiritual. I guess I should say I am anti-organized religion, but pro humility, awe, and wonder. Not that I'm a paragon of humility, mind you, but I do wonder quite a bit and many people have said I am full of awe. Or was it awful?
You haven't thought this through. You're stuck on a very low level of moral reasoning. it's obvious from your focus on being caught, either by other people or by a higher power.
What prevents me from taking the money for myself? I want to live in a world where people behave in a fair and just fashion. One of the best ways to convince others to behave in ways you would like is to behave in those ways yourself. In addition, having orphans/uneducated people/sick people around is a negative externality. Certainly people can free-ride and not help pay to remove negative externalities, but that kind of thinking leads to no one doing it, and everyone will suffer. Therefore, I should return the money in order to help cover the costs of that negative externality, and to show people that cooperation to end those negative externalities works. I will also likely get more recognition from returning the money than from spending it, which may lead to more opportunites later. Finally, by bringing the money back, I am bragging to potential mates that I am so fit I can afford to give away advantages.
These are all reasons I thought up on the spur of the moment. You could perform similar feats yourself if your mind weren't so damaged by religion. Because it subsitutes an external authority for every human's innate ability to think for themselves and pick the most productive personal choice, which also not coincidentally happens to be the most moral choice, religion actually destroys people's inherent ability to reason on a moral level and do what is right on their own.
I don't take anything on faith. I have opinions. I entertain ideas, I don't believe them. I'm not even sure I believe the phrase "I'm not even sure I believe the phrase..." I talk about things in order to come to a fuller understanding. I talk so that I can find out if I am wrong. Just because I express an opinion, don't put me in the same camp as people who take religion, athieism, or anything else on faith. Opinions that I temporarily hold until something better comes along are in no way part of my identity. I am not my thoughts, I am not my opinions, I am not my feelings.
I can't prove anything, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to speculate.
I am fairly crazy myself. I think most human beings do not survive childhood undamaged. What's interesting is all the different ways we can be damaged and crazy, and still remain sane in other ways. Just because someone's mental abilities have been damaged by being forced to accept illogical, unproveable assumptions on faith does not mean they aren't still smarter than me. And just because I feel they are absolutely wrong about this one point does not mean they can't be right about others. Also, falling victim to a cleverly devised con does not necessarily make a person any less than someone who hasn't.
Einstein's quote expresses a faith that the laws of the universe are entirely comprehensible to reason. This is the very antithesis of what is conventionally called faith. It is a kind of faith, to be sure, but it is a pragmatic faith that the universe will behave in a sensible way. One must have that faith to be a good scientist, just as one must have faith that solid things will remain solid in order to walk.
Appeal to Ridicule and novelty, I'll give you. But calling an argument pathetic is not an example of ad hominem, it's just another appeal to ridicule. Sorry about that. I just hate rehashing arguments against ideas that have been shot down over and over and over again.
Buddhism makes no claims as to what happens after death. Buddha specifically reworked the Hindu idea of karma to remove the idea of resurection. Past/present/future lives in the Buddhist interpretation of karma refer to individual moments of judgement. All karma is, is your judgement of the present moment.
When I say "No self to perfect" I mean that nothing is a thing unto itself, that everything arises from conditions that support it and disappears when those conditions disappear. There is no difference, except one of perspective, between internal "self" and external "reality." The distinction is in fact arbitrary. What makes a self? The closer you look, the more exceptions you find to any rule that defines a self/non-self dichotomy.
Buddhism is absolutely not a religion by your definition. There is a famous incident where Buddha was asked a series of basic philosophical questions by a holy man from another tradition. He refused to answer, because all the questions such as "is there a creator god?" "is there a soul that survives death?" and so forth are utterly unimportant, meaningless questions that only arise from dualistic thinking. Do away with the dualism and the questions become moot.
Faith means accepting things without, or in fact despite any evidence. That is pretty much the definition of insanity. I'm being kind when I say it is damage, because I am assuming that people don't start out crazy, they have to have it beaten into them.
The Cosmological argument has been utterly and thoroughly defeated. It is old hat, philisophically speaking. The world has moved on. It starts from unwarranted assumptions and leads nowhere. Why must there be a first cause? Why must it, itself be uncaused? Even if there is an uncaused first cause, why must it bear any relation to "God?" Why can the universe itself not be considered the first cause? Just read the refutation in the article you link to.
This line of argument is pathetic. Your appeal to authority is equally pathetic, the last refuge of a person who's arguments have all been demolished. "But, but, but, these famous people didn't agree with you, therefore you must be not only wrong, but arrogant." Sigh. If you are religious, this all just proves my point. Religion damages a person's ability to think logically.
That claim requires no suspension of critical thinking. It can be verified through logic. The fact that you don't care to do so does not mean it can't be done, and Buddhism does not require you to take it on faith.
I would also call Taoism and Confucianism philosophy ratehr than religion because they don't operate on faith or require belief in the Divine. I'm not a Buddhist, but I know a fair amount about it. I know a fair amount about most major religions, too. I don't expect you to agree that my beliefs are better or more reasonable because of what I call them. I expect you to agree because you have thought things through and come to a rational conclusion based on observable facts.
The difference is that I know my ideas are only theories, and if I find evidence to the contrary, I can adjust my theories. People who take things on faith are not open to allowing any evidence to change their faith. What I am doing is sane. I make theories based on observations and I modify them as new observations come in. What religious people are doing is insane: denying reality in favor of belief.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no such thing as a greyish tinge to light. In subtractive color theory, grey is made by adding black and white. In additive color theory, grey is just a dimmer white. It is not a tinge. If something seems grey, add more light.
There is no way for anything to have a "pinkish/yellowish tinge." It could be one or the other, or it could be orange. Pink is desaturated red. Red and yellow make orange. Pink and yellow makes light orange.
The problem I think you are encountering is not an actual color temperature issue, but a color accuracy issue. There are a lot of different ways of making colors that all look the same to a human eye. You could make orange by mixing red and green light, or by using an orange light. To the human eye it looks the same, to a spectrometer one "orange" looks like peaks in the red and green wavelengths, the other looks like a peak in the orange wavelengths.
Because phosphors only emit light in a very narrow band, CFLs use a combination of phosphors to approximate white light. But instead of a continuous spectrum of color mixed together to make white, you are getting just red, green and blue mixed together to make white. The light looks white to the human eye, because we only have red, green and blue receptors, but some other colors will look off because the light is not full-spectrum. There is no way to fix this with gels, either. There is nothing there for a gel to subtract.
Here's what wikipedia has to say about the quality of light in CFLs:
Hehe, nah. She actually is great. Not that I could tell her if she wasn't, she IS an actress. Telling an actress she is no good is like kicking a puppy, they don't tend to take it very well.
She was just in Agnes of God , playing Agnes, a young innocent nun who gets pregnant (we don't know if it's rape or not), hides it, then strangles the baby, leaves it in a garbage can, and gets arrested. Really, really heavy stuff. I saw it three times and she left me and most of the audience in tears every time.
Do I feel deceived Jennifer C.'s tears were fake? Hmmmmm.... had she "acted" them, what would have made them any more real?
It all depends on how good the digital effects artist is. Humans have very good emotional BS detectors. That is what made really good actors rare, it takes a very skilled individual to convincingly fake emotions. Now it takes a different kind of skilled individual. I haven't seen Blood Diamond so I have no idea if the tears looked fake or not. If they looked fake, they were fake. If they didn't, they were still "fake" but that's not the point.
My wife is an actress, and a very good one, and I can tell you she will NOT be happy about this. Fortunately, she is primarily a stage actress, so her skills can't be faked. I imagine people who could paint very realistic paintings were quite upset when cameras were invented. No one enjoys having one's skills made obsolete.
Oh, no, I have all those delusions and more. I just know they are delusions and I'm open to changing them. Being against people hurting themselves and others through delusional behavior is not narrow minded. Faith is believing something without proof. How is it odd to believe that definition of faith?
True, but sometimes people need a kick in the pants. I'm not making a judgement against them personally. It may be hard to hear, but there are times when it pays to not beat about the bush and worry too much about being PC or hurting someone's feelings. Your advice has been taken under consideration, but in this case, I think I did the right thing.
Empirical observation. The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe. So, if you believe in the Big Bang, you believe that the universe DOES have a beginning, no?
No, just the part of it we can see. There may have been something before.Or, converesely, the Big Bang may have eben the universe's act of self creation.
Acting in another's best interest is acting in your own best interst. All altruism is enlightened self interest. It took me a long time and a lot of soul searching to agree that this is correct, because it is a difficult position to accept. From an ego based point of view, it is much easier to say, "I'm doing this because I'm a good person" than it is to say, "I'm doing this because it is what I want to do."
Outside of the ego point of view, though, one realizes that any boundary one draws around one's self to define that self is arbitrary. There is no absolute and self-existing boundary that defines the self. In fact, all boundaries are arbitrary, but many are still useful as long as one knows the scope in which they are correct.
I'm not the smartest human on the planet, and I don't claim to have any final answers. I just have answers that work for me, here, today. I may have to modify them if more information comes in that contradicts them. I'm open to that.
You'll notice that sometimes I write in a very inflamatory manner. People think I'm trolling, and sometimes I am. But really, I want people to fight back. I want my ideas challenged and sometimes the best wy to get your ideas challenged forcefully is to put them out there forcefully.
The experiments I am refering to are economic experiemtns, played in developing countries with stakes on the order of three month's salary. Various types of games were played, and people tend not to act in their own rational self interest, but rather, most are motivated by fairness and reciprocity.
Let me put it simply: I reject the notion that morality is irrational. I reject the idea that one can not understand the reasons for acting in a moral fashion.
There is one morality based on logic and enlightened self interest. Anyone can arrive at the same correct moral choices through logic, as long as one really knows the rules on is playing by. These rules can be derived from observation. This type of morality tends to agree with the precepts of most major religions, minus the irrational bullshit parts that are only thrown into religion to get you not to trust your own judgement.
As a ratinoal being with imperfect knowledge and little individual power, I know that I may not be capable of handling many situations that nature throws at me. I want other free individuals to desire to help me when I need it. I know that freedom comes from a feeling of security, so I will do what I can to help others feel secure. I know that being a free rider weakens the whole system. People do not feel secure when others are mooching off them. If I take from them now, when I don't really need it, I am like the grasshopper foolishly playing the summer away while the ant saves food. Supporting and defending the freedom of others enables them to support and defend my freedom when I really need it.
I could be like the grasshopper, and count on the ant to feed me, but why weaken the ant's ability to help me when I don't need it? Why not help the ant, and then when either of us need it, we have a surplus? Given the random and capricious nature of the world, this makes the most sense to me. It seems to make the most sense to others, too. I don't need a moral authority to tell me this, and others don't either.
In fact, a moral authority cripples people. No authority is capable of laying out the proper response to every situation. By telling people that they can not figure out the right course for themselves, such systems cripple people's ability to respond in a moral and enlightened fashion to unforeseen circumstances.
Yes, and then there is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. There is no certain knowledge, we get it. I'd say that not everything is infinite regress, though. Most things boil down to circular reasoning, not infinite regress.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Anonymous Coward.
Anonymous Coward who?
YOU'RE GOING TO HELL SPUN!
Aha, aha, ahahahaha. Hilarious. Pat yourself on the back all you like, you have added nothing of value to this discussion and you have refuted nothing. When I attempt to add subtlty and nuance to the discussion, you accuse me of backpedalling. I hope you like living in your black and white world, but personally, I like color and shades of gray.
Ah, you have a point. I was not considering the abstract sense of "harm," but rather the personal sense of being directly impacted in a negative fashion by religion. Meaning, I was never forced to profess belief in something I didn't really believe in, I wasn't molested by priests, I wasn't forced to sit through mind-numbing sermons, and so forth. In the abstract sense, yes, I have been harmed by the actions of religion, as has everyone, and that is why I speak out against it. I just thought it was important to state that I am not operating from a personal sense of hurt, and I do not want "revenge" against religion. I just want it to go away. Personal spirituality is so much more satisfying, and fun to talk about than organized religion anyway.
Thanks. You put that better than I could have. You understand the various levels of moral reasoning, and why a belief system is sub-optimal when it forces people to operate at the lowest level.
I have. With an open mind and heart, I have asked God for proof of his existence and gotten nothing in return. Fearing that I may not have asked the right God, as there seem to be thousands of them dependign on who you ask, I went through all of them that I knew and asked them each personally. Nothing. I did my test, and concluded that either there isn't a God, or It does not give a rat's ass whether I know It exists or not.
I hope you understand that I am serious, and that my test was done with serious intent. It was not frivolous, I really, really wanted to know, and I believed it was possible. I got nothing. When other people say they have had a personal experience of God, I have to wonder whether God just hates me, personally, or whether perhaps they are experiencing something that feels divine but has a mundane explanation. After all, scientists can tune an RF transmitter at your brain and make you feel as though you are directly experiencing the Divine. Who's to say that all these other people who claim to have experienced the Divine are simply experiencing a perfectly natural brain state that simply feels Divine?
You have defined our positions succinctly and dispassionately. My position is also based on the idea that, if the something as complex as the Divine can exist without a creator, then surely something as complex as the universe can also exist without a creator. My position is that, as a theory, a creator has no explananatory power, it merely moves the question back a step.
I'm not ruling it out. It just doesn't add much to the equation, even if true. And religion does not seem to come from the Divine, but from humanity. If it came from the Divine, it would be a little more persuasive, cohesive, and unified, I think.
It has been proven experimentally that people do most often choose the moral course. In fact, rather than selfishness, most people are motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity. I'm pointing out what would motivate me, and how I would act, as an example of why morality need not be authority based.
Authority based morality always fails, because there are so many authorities to choose from, and one always gets to pick and choose how one interprets one's chosen authority. Society is a support network, taking from society weakens my own support network. As a rational being, I know that if everyone does that, society will collapse, which I don't want. Therefore, I don't do things to weaken society.
What could an invisible man in the sky tell me to do that I don't already know and want to do?
I'm not as vehemently anti religious as I've made myself sound in this thread, either. I just think religious people need to be shaken up a bit now and then. Honestly, some of the best human beings I've known have been deeply religious. I myself am deeply spiritual. I guess I should say I am anti-organized religion, but pro humility, awe, and wonder. Not that I'm a paragon of humility, mind you, but I do wonder quite a bit and many people have said I am full of awe. Or was it awful?
You haven't thought this through. You're stuck on a very low level of moral reasoning. it's obvious from your focus on being caught, either by other people or by a higher power.
What prevents me from taking the money for myself? I want to live in a world where people behave in a fair and just fashion. One of the best ways to convince others to behave in ways you would like is to behave in those ways yourself. In addition, having orphans/uneducated people/sick people around is a negative externality. Certainly people can free-ride and not help pay to remove negative externalities, but that kind of thinking leads to no one doing it, and everyone will suffer. Therefore, I should return the money in order to help cover the costs of that negative externality, and to show people that cooperation to end those negative externalities works. I will also likely get more recognition from returning the money than from spending it, which may lead to more opportunites later. Finally, by bringing the money back, I am bragging to potential mates that I am so fit I can afford to give away advantages.
These are all reasons I thought up on the spur of the moment. You could perform similar feats yourself if your mind weren't so damaged by religion. Because it subsitutes an external authority for every human's innate ability to think for themselves and pick the most productive personal choice, which also not coincidentally happens to be the most moral choice, religion actually destroys people's inherent ability to reason on a moral level and do what is right on their own.
I don't take anything on faith. I have opinions. I entertain ideas, I don't believe them. I'm not even sure I believe the phrase "I'm not even sure I believe the phrase..." I talk about things in order to come to a fuller understanding. I talk so that I can find out if I am wrong. Just because I express an opinion, don't put me in the same camp as people who take religion, athieism, or anything else on faith. Opinions that I temporarily hold until something better comes along are in no way part of my identity. I am not my thoughts, I am not my opinions, I am not my feelings.
I can't prove anything, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to speculate.
I am fairly crazy myself. I think most human beings do not survive childhood undamaged. What's interesting is all the different ways we can be damaged and crazy, and still remain sane in other ways. Just because someone's mental abilities have been damaged by being forced to accept illogical, unproveable assumptions on faith does not mean they aren't still smarter than me. And just because I feel they are absolutely wrong about this one point does not mean they can't be right about others. Also, falling victim to a cleverly devised con does not necessarily make a person any less than someone who hasn't.
Einstein's quote expresses a faith that the laws of the universe are entirely comprehensible to reason. This is the very antithesis of what is conventionally called faith. It is a kind of faith, to be sure, but it is a pragmatic faith that the universe will behave in a sensible way. One must have that faith to be a good scientist, just as one must have faith that solid things will remain solid in order to walk.
Appeal to Ridicule and novelty, I'll give you. But calling an argument pathetic is not an example of ad hominem, it's just another appeal to ridicule. Sorry about that. I just hate rehashing arguments against ideas that have been shot down over and over and over again.
Buddhism makes no claims as to what happens after death. Buddha specifically reworked the Hindu idea of karma to remove the idea of resurection. Past/present/future lives in the Buddhist interpretation of karma refer to individual moments of judgement. All karma is, is your judgement of the present moment.
When I say "No self to perfect" I mean that nothing is a thing unto itself, that everything arises from conditions that support it and disappears when those conditions disappear. There is no difference, except one of perspective, between internal "self" and external "reality." The distinction is in fact arbitrary. What makes a self? The closer you look, the more exceptions you find to any rule that defines a self/non-self dichotomy.
Buddhism is absolutely not a religion by your definition. There is a famous incident where Buddha was asked a series of basic philosophical questions by a holy man from another tradition. He refused to answer, because all the questions such as "is there a creator god?" "is there a soul that survives death?" and so forth are utterly unimportant, meaningless questions that only arise from dualistic thinking. Do away with the dualism and the questions become moot.
Faith means accepting things without, or in fact despite any evidence. That is pretty much the definition of insanity. I'm being kind when I say it is damage, because I am assuming that people don't start out crazy, they have to have it beaten into them.
The Cosmological argument has been utterly and thoroughly defeated. It is old hat, philisophically speaking. The world has moved on. It starts from unwarranted assumptions and leads nowhere. Why must there be a first cause? Why must it, itself be uncaused? Even if there is an uncaused first cause, why must it bear any relation to "God?" Why can the universe itself not be considered the first cause? Just read the refutation in the article you link to.
This line of argument is pathetic. Your appeal to authority is equally pathetic, the last refuge of a person who's arguments have all been demolished. "But, but, but, these famous people didn't agree with you, therefore you must be not only wrong, but arrogant." Sigh. If you are religious, this all just proves my point. Religion damages a person's ability to think logically.
That claim requires no suspension of critical thinking. It can be verified through logic. The fact that you don't care to do so does not mean it can't be done, and Buddhism does not require you to take it on faith.
I would also call Taoism and Confucianism philosophy ratehr than religion because they don't operate on faith or require belief in the Divine. I'm not a Buddhist, but I know a fair amount about it. I know a fair amount about most major religions, too. I don't expect you to agree that my beliefs are better or more reasonable because of what I call them. I expect you to agree because you have thought things through and come to a rational conclusion based on observable facts.
Ugh. What a stinker that movie was. Unfortunately, this reminds me of something far, far worse.
The difference is that I know my ideas are only theories, and if I find evidence to the contrary, I can adjust my theories. People who take things on faith are not open to allowing any evidence to change their faith. What I am doing is sane. I make theories based on observations and I modify them as new observations come in. What religious people are doing is insane: denying reality in favor of belief.
True, but one virus benefits its host, while the other damages it. It's fairly obvious which should win, at least from the host's point of view.