It's not as though all the minds contemplating the Bible simply skipped over that, and all of a sudden someone on slashdot points it out and "disproves" the Bible.
Actually, it kind of is. For a long time nobody had the chance to ever read the Bible. The populations were illiterate and the Bibles were in Latin. The church leaders who had access to the Bible certainly had no motivation to investigate the seeming inconsistencies in the Bible, as long as the money kept rolling in.
Once people started reading and questioning the Bible and the churches teachings, the church started burning the questioners alive.
Even after the Reformation, people who questioned the inconsistencies in the Bible too much were shunned from society.
It is only VERY recently in history that people started openly questioning the Bible in a serious way. http://www.evilbible.com/ has not been around all that long.
In many mostly-arab countries, you still get punished for questioning the Bible (version 3.0).
What I'm saying is: one of my pet peves is people who claim that widespread questioning of the Bible has been happening for a very long time. In reality, it actually is a new phenomenon (at the scale happening today).
Huh. So if I write the control code for a robot, and I program it to select it's actions based on several sensor readings AND a random number reading, it has free will. Cool, I'm a God.
Example of no free will:
if (batterylevel < 10%):
self.direction = charger
self.speed = 7
No, I have not changed my position. I'm talking about the OPPORTUNITY COST of spending resources on religion vs. spending those same resources on other things (education, therapy, etc.).
There are lots of harmful religions out there, even in the US. Just turn on a TV station that specializes in the apocalypse and faith healers. Two of the six OTA stations in my area are of this type.
Do I know religions people? Well, my brother is a pastor, so... yeah, I do. He is in a benign-to-somewhat-beneficial sect of Christianity. That is NOT to say his religion is a good use of resources! I'm talking opportunity costs.
Also, I just don't understand how you can dismiss empirically-minded people like Dennett and Edge contributors. Perhaps this is a fundamental philosophical point that can't be reconciled--but people who base their decisions and reason on evidence should always be taken more seriously than those who do not, even if evidence-free thinking is more prevalent.
right behind me were Indian's and Chinese. Why was that? Because they worked at it.
The Indian guys I knew in college who were working on their BS CIS degrees were a very closely-knit bunch. They studied together all the time. When I was on group project with some of the guys from that group, I found out what they did while they studied: They cheated. Not just a little, either. A lot. They had this whole network of getting (graded) tests and homework assignments from older Indians and passing them to the younger group. It was expected that they kept all their assignments and contributed to this little Indian CIS student cheating mafia.
In contrast, I witnessed very little cheating from US-born CIS students, and I NEVER saw the organized cheating of the Indians in other groups.
So, unless you actually infiltrated these groups of foreign students who you assume were studying so diligently, my experience suggests that their study sessions were merely academic misconduct orgies.
I dated a nurse a while ago. She said that if you are willing to work on holidays, weekends, and late shifts, you make $60/hr. I told her, in that case, she's buying dinner.
We are talking about software, not a cure for AIDS.
I work in a software company, and I can assure you that we would be writing just as much software if there were no software patents.
Also, we have NEVER wondered how to write a particular algorithm, then found the solution in some patent disclosure document. Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
There is a difference between "getting calls" and getting called by telemarketers.
Also, the high school kids who work at call centers have boring jobs. If they get someone who rants and raves like a crazy person, sometimes they flag the number for redial--just to share the fun with the person working next to them.
Calmly saying "don't call this number again" would be effective. Just FYI.
Getting on the "do not call" list was only marginally successful; most of the telemarketers who kept calling claimed they were exempt for some reason or another.
Charities, political calls, and research are exempt.
Nobody selling for profit is exempt.
I highly doubt you received many telemarketing calls if you were on the list. Be honest.
Vonage has a feature called "simulcall." I have it set up so that if someone calls my vonage number, both my vonage phone and my mobile phone ring. This way, I only have to give out one phone number.
Virgin Mobile is 18c/minute, no contract and no special terms. Vonage is $20 for Landlines and cell phone contracts are for suckers!
I have a surplus of old checks with my previous address on them. If Microsoft does find me in violation of their patents to the tune of, say, $300, I am going to send them three-hundred checks for the amount of $1, just to be a pain.
Then I will move my software business outside of the USA to avoid America's unconstitutional patent system.
I mean, for Christ's sake, people. Is there a limit to how ridiculous you can get?
The supernatural claims of Scientology are actually less ridiculous than those of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the Hindu religion, and probably many more religions. It doesn't take a scientific degree to realize that you can't fit two of every animal on to a boat, for example.
Their supernatural claims center around space travel and some sort of funky idea about consciousness. We know space travel is somewhat possible and we don't fully understand consciousness, so their for of magic really is easier to swallow than most other religions.
Their practices are certainly more questionable, I'll give you that.
I don't mean to imply that priests and pastors are uneducated. I was talking about the devout followers--the ones who spend huge amounts of time on religious activities.
I'm sure that Methodists, ELCA Lutherans, and others sometimes refer people with serious depression to actual shrinks. That is NOT the treatment the mentally ill get from much of the Souther Baptist and Catholic world.
Actually, no, it isn't. No serious intellectual or academic circle would waste their time with something so pointless.
In Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell," he makes a very strong case for evaluating the social costs and benefits of religion via scientific means. He is a serious academic and is highly-regarded in academic circles. He also points out that, in the past, academics did not take the study of religion and its effects seriously, and that mentioning that you are a philosopher focused on religion would garner an eye roll from the other Ph.Ds at the university. But that is changing now.
So until we have actual scientific evidence on the costs/benefits of religion to society, your claim that it is a 'net good' is just as well supported as other claims that it is a 'net bad.' Your dismissal of claims contrary to yours, with no evidence and a 'grow up, kid,' is cheap shot and is unsupported. Both opinions deserver fair treatment in the/. moderation system and in the media as a whole... at least until they have been addressed empirically.
So going back to the beginning: the mormon church requires money to fully take part, and you can't even know the full details of the religion without paying ("what happens there stays there"...must pay to get there).
Thinking from a secular standpoint: that is similar in principle to scientology, but to a lesser degree.
Thinking from a prodestant standpoint: Requiring money to fully take part in a religion is appalling. If an essential part of your funeral service (dressing your dead sister or whatever) can only take place in temple, and you can't enter temple without paying big bucks, most christians would view that as seriously cruel.
As to histories and other documents: The PBS documentary said the church has an official library which is off limits to the public. It said the church historian was going through it a few years ago, and read things that challenged the "official" church history, so the church leaders closed off the library to EVERYONE, even the historian.
As for making $100k: That is average pay for a programmer in the SF Bay area. I'm sure a large percentage of people on slashdot make that much or more.
And, at the risk of sounding like a jerk: Any smart fellow in the mormon church could easily have learned enough to make that kind of cash if he had spent his church time on education and not religion. The mormons interviewed for the PBS show said "being mormon is like having two full-time jobs."
the majority religions still provide useful and positive services to their members.
Do you realize how much resources societies spend on religions? It seems large numbers of the devout, especially the fundamentalist and evangelical types, have serious psychological and emotional problems (other than delusion). If all the resources spent on this religious "folk psychology" were instead used to hire REAL psychological help, or to better educate these desperate religious followers so that they can rise out of poverty, the world may just be much better off.
Lots of these people need medicine! Giving their money away to some guy who claims to be an expert on magic, and who tells them that they have depression because they are sinners or don't have enough faith will not cure them.
Listen, old man. Your gray beard gives you no special powers over younger people. Try using arguments instead of insults.
The idea that religion benefits people enough to justify its high cost in terms of time and money is being called into serious question in intellectual and academic circles today.
And don't get me started on the ability of religion to get scoundrels into political office...
What I know of Mormonism comes mostly from a PBS documentary or from South Park (dum-du-dum dum dum!) So, perhaps you can help me understand things better.
The 10% is called "tithe" and it's in the Bible (which most people, even "Christians" don't read anymore apparently).
You made your first mistake right there. Church services usually have a part where they read from the Bible. They just only read the happy parts, not the evil parts (where God commands the Israelites to commit genocide on a rival tribe, etc.). Do you read your bible? There are 613 commands from God in the Old Testament. Who are you to pick and chose which ones to follow? I've never seen a Mormon doing a fertility ritual.
It is true that you cannot attend the temple if you are not a full tithe payer.
What good is Temple to a church if it doesn't teach you doctrine? My understanding was that some of the church histories and other important documents are kept in a temple and not allowed to leave the temple walls...
Seriously-what good is a "temple recommend" that it would be worth $10,000 per year to get it? Maybe you could count the time spent answering my question toward your mandatory annoy-everyone-into-becoming-mormon time?
Buying vulnerability info from a third party is just outsourcing your QA. It's just buying testing + bug reporting.
If a third party demands money to keep QUIET about a vulnerability, that's extortion.
Much of the animosity here is that many security researchers specialize in breaking things--they haven't ever worked on engineering a large, complex system. They just don't understand how much time is required to test code before it is released. Also, the legal teams for many companies just don't understand that alienating security researchers by filing law suits is only going to make their situation worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever someone captures a web-pirate, they demand web-parle.
Well, it's really more of a guideline than a rule...
Once people started reading and questioning the Bible and the churches teachings, the church started burning the questioners alive.
Even after the Reformation, people who questioned the inconsistencies in the Bible too much were shunned from society.
It is only VERY recently in history that people started openly questioning the Bible in a serious way. http://www.evilbible.com/ has not been around all that long.
In many mostly-arab countries, you still get punished for questioning the Bible (version 3.0).
What I'm saying is: one of my pet peves is people who claim that widespread questioning of the Bible has been happening for a very long time. In reality, it actually is a new phenomenon (at the scale happening today).
Example of no free will: Example of free will: It's so simple! All you need is a sufficiently random source of entropy!
I am financially stable, mentally stable, law abiding, and creative.
According to you, I don't exist. Neat.
No, I have not changed my position. I'm talking about the OPPORTUNITY COST of spending resources on religion vs. spending those same resources on other things (education, therapy, etc.).
There are lots of harmful religions out there, even in the US. Just turn on a TV station that specializes in the apocalypse and faith healers. Two of the six OTA stations in my area are of this type.
Do I know religions people? Well, my brother is a pastor, so... yeah, I do. He is in a benign-to-somewhat-beneficial sect of Christianity. That is NOT to say his religion is a good use of resources! I'm talking opportunity costs.
Also, I just don't understand how you can dismiss empirically-minded people like Dennett and Edge contributors. Perhaps this is a fundamental philosophical point that can't be reconciled--but people who base their decisions and reason on evidence should always be taken more seriously than those who do not, even if evidence-free thinking is more prevalent.
In contrast, I witnessed very little cheating from US-born CIS students, and I NEVER saw the organized cheating of the Indians in other groups.
So, unless you actually infiltrated these groups of foreign students who you assume were studying so diligently, my experience suggests that their study sessions were merely academic misconduct orgies.
We are talking about software, not a cure for AIDS.
I work in a software company, and I can assure you that we would be writing just as much software if there were no software patents.
Also, we have NEVER wondered how to write a particular algorithm, then found the solution in some patent disclosure document. Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
Can someone please explain to me how software patents "promote science and the useful arts?"
Wouldn't a patent law which does NOT promote science and arts be unconstitutional? Or am I misreading the constitution?
You got tang out of the space program? I haven't even had a date since before Sputnik :-(
There is a difference between "getting calls" and getting called by telemarketers.
Also, the high school kids who work at call centers have boring jobs. If they get someone who rants and raves like a crazy person, sometimes they flag the number for redial--just to share the fun with the person working next to them.
Calmly saying "don't call this number again" would be effective. Just FYI.
Your babysitter already has her own cell phone, dumbass.
Also, you can get cell phones for $20 (with no contract!) at Wal-Mart. Your claim of "hundreds" is bogus.
If you have a cell phone and a VOIP phone, you are going to have better reliability than if you just have a land phone.
If you compare VOIP+cell to land+cell, both have reliability figures close enough to 100% to be indistinguishable.
Charities, political calls, and research are exempt.
Nobody selling for profit is exempt.
I highly doubt you received many telemarketing calls if you were on the list. Be honest.
Vonage + Virgin Mobile Pre-pay phones.
Vonage has a feature called "simulcall." I have it set up so that if someone calls my vonage number, both my vonage phone and my mobile phone ring. This way, I only have to give out one phone number.
Virgin Mobile is 18c/minute, no contract and no special terms. Vonage is $20 for Landlines and cell phone contracts are for suckers!
Thank you, sir. Your suggestion demonstrates the sort of evil I spend my life trying to obtain.
I have a surplus of old checks with my previous address on them. If Microsoft does find me in violation of their patents to the tune of, say, $300, I am going to send them three-hundred checks for the amount of $1, just to be a pain.
Then I will move my software business outside of the USA to avoid America's unconstitutional patent system.
Their supernatural claims center around space travel and some sort of funky idea about consciousness. We know space travel is somewhat possible and we don't fully understand consciousness, so their for of magic really is easier to swallow than most other religions.
Their practices are certainly more questionable, I'll give you that.
I'm sure that Methodists, ELCA Lutherans, and others sometimes refer people with serious depression to actual shrinks. That is NOT the treatment the mentally ill get from much of the Souther Baptist and Catholic world.Serious academic circle? Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett. Serious intellectual circles? Here you go: http://edge.org/.
In Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell," he makes a very strong case for evaluating the social costs and benefits of religion via scientific means. He is a serious academic and is highly-regarded in academic circles. He also points out that, in the past, academics did not take the study of religion and its effects seriously, and that mentioning that you are a philosopher focused on religion would garner an eye roll from the other Ph.Ds at the university. But that is changing now.
So until we have actual scientific evidence on the costs/benefits of religion to society, your claim that it is a 'net good' is just as well supported as other claims that it is a 'net bad.' Your dismissal of claims contrary to yours, with no evidence and a 'grow up, kid,' is cheap shot and is unsupported. Both opinions deserver fair treatment in the
apparently i fail at making an absurdist joke...
So going back to the beginning: the mormon church requires money to fully take part, and you can't even know the full details of the religion without paying ("what happens there stays there"...must pay to get there).
Thinking from a secular standpoint: that is similar in principle to scientology, but to a lesser degree.
Thinking from a prodestant standpoint: Requiring money to fully take part in a religion is appalling. If an essential part of your funeral service (dressing your dead sister or whatever) can only take place in temple, and you can't enter temple without paying big bucks, most christians would view that as seriously cruel.
As to histories and other documents: The PBS documentary said the church has an official library which is off limits to the public. It said the church historian was going through it a few years ago, and read things that challenged the "official" church history, so the church leaders closed off the library to EVERYONE, even the historian.
As for making $100k: That is average pay for a programmer in the SF Bay area. I'm sure a large percentage of people on slashdot make that much or more.
And, at the risk of sounding like a jerk: Any smart fellow in the mormon church could easily have learned enough to make that kind of cash if he had spent his church time on education and not religion. The mormons interviewed for the PBS show said "being mormon is like having two full-time jobs."
Lots of these people need medicine! Giving their money away to some guy who claims to be an expert on magic, and who tells them that they have depression because they are sinners or don't have enough faith will not cure them.
Listen, old man. Your gray beard gives you no special powers over younger people. Try using arguments instead of insults.
The idea that religion benefits people enough to justify its high cost in terms of time and money is being called into serious question in intellectual and academic circles today.
And don't get me started on the ability of religion to get scoundrels into political office...
Seriously-what good is a "temple recommend" that it would be worth $10,000 per year to get it? Maybe you could count the time spent answering my question toward your mandatory annoy-everyone-into-becoming-mormon time?
Buying vulnerability info from a third party is just outsourcing your QA. It's just buying testing + bug reporting.
If a third party demands money to keep QUIET about a vulnerability, that's extortion.
Much of the animosity here is that many security researchers specialize in breaking things--they haven't ever worked on engineering a large, complex system. They just don't understand how much time is required to test code before it is released. Also, the legal teams for many companies just don't understand that alienating security researchers by filing law suits is only going to make their situation worse.