Good point. But, it's the sort of thing that could quite possibly be buried in the depths of a EULA somewhere and done quietly in the background. Has anyone bothered to trawl through Apple's user agreements looking for such?
Why? I would almost be more surprised if they *didn't* check that kind of data. After all, in the information age, knowing what works and what doesn't is really key to success. Considering that places like this can find information on things like crashes, when people uninstall apps, etc (yes, they are using a specific piece of software for that), then I'd almost expect Apple themselves to be doing it. It would certainly make sense for their own apps at least - promote the ones that people use, drop the ones that don't get used (though the same metric applies to promoting things on their App Store, too).
Would 3D be easier to handle if film makers made sure that everything in shot had clarity of focus (thus preventing the "I can't focus on that" issues)? I remember with The Hobbit that I got a little bit annoyed when I wanted to look at something in the background and couldn't because the camera focus was set to a foreground object.
(And no, I don't really have suggestions on how to actually achieve this with a real camera... well, not any simple ones, anyway).
Did you see it in 48 frames per second? I have been wondering what effect this has on the "3D headaches" - personally, I found that the faster frame-rate made it much easier to watch, though my wife still came away with a low-level migraine, so probably the issue is the focus/convergence difference. Still curious though.
I know you're just going for the troll/humour angle on this (BTW, I'm not an American, so I'm going to spell "humour" with a "u"!), but while a programmer (this is/. after all) would say it must be outside the quotes, however older style guides put it inside the quotes...
But, this is typical of those sort of reviews - they don't know the rules they claim to enforce, so your example still works well!:-)
Yeah, we've had this - a story got one review, not from the many who bought it, but from someone who got it on a free promo and sounded decidedly like a shill (1-star copypasta-but-for-the-title reviews on all ebooks of ours that had been on a promo). We tried reporting it, but Amazon didn't do anything about it. Most of our ebooks survived this as they had other, better reviews, but one has wallowed as it's only ever had that one review.
Or, the one where someone tried to point out spelling mistakes, not bothering to check that there were two acceptable spellings of the word ("yoghurt" vs "yogurt") in America, with the one we used the only acceptable version everywhere else in the world...
There's not much you can do (sadly), but I wish you all the best with your other projects.
(From the side of ebook authoring): this is a good idea, but won't help much. I would say that the biggest problems with reviews on Amazon are:
(1) "Shills" or "sock puppeting" to promote one's own product. We'll often see a new author appear with a single book, hardly any sales, and five or six 5-star reviews. One particular example had five 5-star reviews from new reviewers (no other activity), all with the same poor level of English. Interestingly, that ebook hasn't shown up again. I do know of other 5-star reviews that were removed as they looked suspect, so it seems that Amazon at least do something here.
(2) Shills to sabotage rivals. Example: we had a few kids' ebooks in the top of their categories over Christmas, then in one day all of those that were on the first page get 2-star reviews, all from different reviewers who had not reviewed anything else, with suspiciously similar wording. This one is probably a bit harder to police, but I'd like to hope that Amazon have the sense to look for this sort of thing. It's quite tragic really to realise how nasty authors - children's authors! - can be.
(3) Stupid people who have no idea about the concept of objectivity. There isn't much one can do here, but most user reviews seem to be either something to the effect of "OMG, this was the best thing evar!" with 5-stars, or "My daughter wasn't interested [as if that's an objective measure], this is crap. Oh, I liked the illustrations and the story though" with 1 star, or the reviews "This is not what I expected", followed by comments that make it obvious they didn't read the description, the other reviews, or information like the number of pages... This is perhaps where a "reviewer rating" system would be good - and I think this needs to happen; New Zealand's TradeMe website's user rating would be the sort of thing I would suggest, with reviews weighted by the reviewer's rating - in summary, highlight suspect (new) accounts, and give more credence to someone who has done lots of reviews and has been frequently marked as "Helpful".
It has made me realise that the average star rating is irrelevant - you'd have to look at individual reviews, and their quality and sense (or lack thereof) and judge for yourself.
But, your suggestion of marking author accounts would help, even if it didn't completely do away with the first two. I think that the first filter I'd put in place against shills is something that checks against IP address, credit card details, etc. Amazon's idea of stopping authors from reviewing other books in their categories is useless (and counter-productive) unless they make a really good effort to deal with sock puppeting, as that's where the real problems lie. I would say they should let authors review others' work, but have something that marks this, exclude it from the calculation of the average, and have a good "report abuse" system, which can hurt the author if they abuse it (e.g. a "Not helpful" on an author's review counts as negative points in the ranking of all their own books).
Also, they need to make the calculation of star ratings more comprehensive, and design it to filter abuses - like what IMDb does.
Abiogenesis is probably the main point of argument from a scientific perspective (i.e. we reckon that it might have been possible with some lightning and luck to get amino acids, but that's still a very long way from a viable replicator, let alone a complex cell). The shared ancestry is probably the second "somewhat speculative" one (i.e. we don't have a direct line established - there are quite a few holes in the fossil record), but I would agree that it's probably the one where there is more contention (because of its implications).
As for abiogenesis, depending on who you talk to, the probabilities range from "well, if we be optimisitic enough with the numbers, it's pretty good", to "it's so far into the impossible that it could never, ever happen [by being pessimistic with the numbers]." The annoying thing I find is that there are two groups trying to run said numbers (which are kind of guesswork anyway, as we don't have any processes established that we could measure) are those who need to prove it (because otherwise the whole idea of a naturalistic worldview collapses) and those who need to disprove it (out of a need to prove that God's input is required). I think if you take the balance, abiogenesis is actually a fairly good case for a possible place where "God did it" (started life) because it is very unlikely (from our current understanding at least). Of course, this runs afoul of Occam's Razor, as you then have to presuppose God's existence, but most of those of faith that I've met have a good lot of personal experience to back up their belief in God (also, Occam's Razor doesn't actually prove anything, it's just a helpful filtering tool).
So, as for an alternative theory, one (the naturalist) says "this is very unlikely, but it had to happen somehow", i.e. faith in the natural processes, even when there is no evidence for one, nor any known process; the other (the creationist) says "this is very unlikely, therefore God must have done it", i.e. faith in a Creator. When you're dealing with total unknowns (the origin of the Universe itself is probably an even better example, as that's by definition meta-physical (for a strict, not a colloquial, meaing of "meta-physical")), then positing God's existence isn't really any less sensible than positing any other cause, as we simply don't know (and might not ever be able to know).
As for belief, having had discussions with a lot of people on this, I find most self-described atheists actually do have a "faith" in "science" (i.e. what other scientists have said, not in things they've tested themselves) not unlike a Christian's faith in God. Yes, there is a trust of the scientific method, which is different, and while it may (and often does) appear similar, I do understand that it's a reliance on evidence. However, if and when you start to find a point that genuinely challenges an atheist's non-belief in god, they can get very defensive, and unsurprisingly so, because if an atheist was presented with rock-solid proof of God, they have a very big problem with very big consequences for them personally. I have found that most atheists I've met have personal, non-rationally-derived reasons why they don't want to believe in God. (I'm certainly not saying that is the case for all atheists, but it has been the case for most that I have had decent conversations with, and I think is a reasonable question to ask oneself - what are the implications if I'm wrong?)
So, I think that you'll find that a person (anyone) likes to hold a belief system that supports their way of life, and will get quite upset at anyone trying to challenge it, because they don't want to be wrong and don't want to have to change. I think if more of us approached these debates with an understanding that we are treading on potentially upsetting territory, there'd perhaps be a little less angst... (Just winning the argument, even convincingly, is only the start as there will be a lot of re-structuring of thinking required).
Good point about that term being awkward - would "agnostic atheist" be better? (It's the slightest shade of meaning different, but probably closer than either term alone). You could call yourselves "AAs"... ok, maybe not.;-)
Perhaps it would be worth bringing another term into use then? Maybe we need to educate people about the difference between an "atheist" and an "anti-theist"? (Kind of like the difference between amoral and immoral). I guess the problem there though is that someone would meet the nasty kind of anti-theist who still called themselves an atheist, and forever be stuck with that meaning for the term, just as someone could meet the nasty kind of person who calls themselves a Christian and react whenever they met better, more fair-minded ones with the same label...
Is the answer then to not assume you understand someone simply from their label...?
Ok, agnostic atheist I can respect.:-) (By the way, you're less likely to get into arguments if you introduce yourself as that rather than as an "atheist" - just because the unqualified term can carry unintended connotations - such as the above, where I took it as meaning the assertive kind).
Faith in your own senses, faith that the people teaching your and who did experiments were trustworthy and not themselves misinformed, faith that the scientific method actually works and isn't illusory, faith that what you're testing is within the realm of what the scientific method can actually test (not everything is)... In some areas of science (psychology comes to mind), there is a fair amount of guesswork or "trying to prove that I'm right" among scientists, and I have come across the same in evolutionary biology, along with a peculiar tendency to avoid talking about known hoaxes (embyonic development looking like fish etc, the white/black moth thing as examples), along with quite a lot of trying to force things to fit the gaps in the evolutionary tree. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Sufficient to say that everything (even the scientific method) takes some degree of faith - even if only a little, and no more than it takes to function in everyday life.:-)
I do note, however, that this particular thread has been bouncing back-and-forth around the same point. So I might summarise: atheism, where it is an assertion that there is no god, is a meta-physical belief inseparable from religion and can therefore be treated as such, however agnostic atheism only asserts that it does not know, and, by extension, awaits a burden of proof from the theist before accepting their hypothesis, so isn't a religion per se, as it actually makes no assertion but to merely ask others to prove their assertions.
But, I would add that I think even agnostic atheism can become "religious" if and when it attempts to spread non-belief in the supernatural or to discourage another's religion. (Meaning that someone like Dawkins is sort of religious, in that he is encouraging others to believe in a particular interpretation of the metaphysical in favour of another - in his specific case, he substitutes belief in god with a belief in the multiverse, which is a similarly unproven concept at this point).
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others (or force it on people), and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others, and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
Wow, where are you from? Remind me not to go there.:-( I would have a few choice verses to show those people (along with perhaps a few other choice words...)
Just a comment though: while torment done to you makes inflicting insult on others understandable, it does not make it justifiable, as all you will do is inflame another generation of nastiness. It's a bit like the generations of infighting in certain African countries - someone sees oppression, so rises up and ousts the oppressors... but then become oppressors themselves when they get the power, as it's all they knew.
If you are wanting to be able to have peaceful interaction with those of belief, then being nasty on the internet isn't going to help any... At some point, someone has to act with humility, forgiveness and fair-mindedness. (My hope is that everyone would, but I guess I'm a bit of an optimist!)
Also, it is entirely possible that almost that whole list could be from the "well-intentioned but misled".:-/
You claim actual intellectual superiority, and yet the atheist is the one who asserts something that he cannot know, ever, without actually being omniscient (and therefore god, and therefore proving himself wrong). An agnostic could make the claim that their position is the default correct position, but not an atheist. (And, as an aside, the correct scientific approach is to be "agnostic" about what you are testing, not to assume knowledge either way as then you open yourself up to bias).
You make bold assertions about religion being bunk and god not existing, when in fact there is no way you could know that for certain - it's possible you are correct, perhaps even probable, but in no way certain. Your claim is hollow, your arrogance unfounded, and your point disproven by your very attempts to prove it.
Now, had you have answered with some humility, you might have been able to make some headway against the claim that atheists come across with a kind of intellectual superiority. But, by immediately saying that all supernatural beliefs are rubbish, you have made a claim about the nature of the meta-physical that is actually harder to prove than the theist's position (he at least, in theory, could have God show Himself one day - proof for is possible, even when proof against is not). But, by making that meta-physical claim so boldly, either: (a) you have perfect knowledge about the universe and are therefore yourself god, (b) you're significantly less intellectually superior to me, as I can see a gaping hole in your position. As your claim itself disputes point (a), I must therefore conclude point (b).:-)
So... "I'm an atheist who thinks religious people are silly, who has no problem insulting them, and don't see how anyone could find most atheists insulting."
Huh?
But, I do generally agree with your comment that most people on the internet are just consumers not contributors, but would also point out that you may not be the best judge of whether or not atheists tend to be insulting. Most atheists I've encountered (on- and off-line) do seem to take insulting religion as a kind of sport - often it's in jest, even if it doesn't always come across like that.
Context: specific instruction to one specific person (and that possibly only to prove a point). Still not "all his followers" giving away "all their things".
But, y'know, don't let something as trivial as audience and context get in the way of trying to find problems with the Bible. Sigh.
How is that a strawman? If I go and read something that is from a source written ~2k years ago in another language, I expect that culture, language, idiom and meaning will have changed, a lot, and I expect that I'm going to have to do some learning before I can make clear calls on what it's saying. Your comment about whether or not God is omnipotent with the translators is a lot more of a strawman than what you're challenging. (Consider: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of Kings to search out a matter" Prov 25:2 - God specifically says that He wants us to go digging, and not just take a trite answer - more below on why).
As a specific example, the word translated variously into English as "kill" or "murder" from Exodus there doesn't quite have an exact English equivalent - it's "kill", but with an intentionality approaching "murder", meaning that the latter is a better way to get the meaning across, though the former is slightly more complete (if possibly more misleading as it lacks the implication of the original Hebrew word).
One of the reasons that it's difficult to take a black-and-white answer on some of these is that God seems to understand context better than most of us and expects development in moral reasoning: to a juvenile culture that is just preparing to become a nation, He sets forth a bunch of principles that are easy to remember as a kind of framework (along with lots of specific minor laws, even down to things like hygiene, which was sort of unheard of back then). Having said that, it's only someone with a fairly immature moral framework (that's not an insult, by the way) who doesn't realise that rules have exceptions: e.g. "don't kill" may be superceded by "nasty men are going to kill you and your whole family unless you go fight them" (an invading army). In that context, killing an individual is still horrible, but the alternative is more horrible - it's not unlike Asimov's zeroth law, in some ways (do not cause harm to a human, except where failing to do so will result in greater harm coming to a greater number of humans).
Not quite sure though how you get from that to justifying Afghanistan etc though, unless it's an extension of the "protect our people from harm" bit? I don't have a lot to say on the legitimacy or not of invading Afghanistan/Iraq, except to say that I don't have sufficient information to comment on the motivations of those who decided it (and that Saddam had put himself on the line for international intervention as he'd already shown he was willing to invade a neighbouring country back in the early 90's, though not sure why he wasn't dealt with properly the first time around, nor if going back there was justified).
Just a small question: are you the same kind of person who likes to call out "god of the gaps"? If you know anything about history, you'd know that there are a lot of very big gaps in our knowledge, despite other bits being very well documented. Saying that just because something isn't recorded elsewhere means it did not happen is a little senseless, and certainly not proof.
As an example: Herod's infanticide was only in one town (Bethlehem), and not a very big town at that. Herod was known for being bloodthirsty, so yet another few killings wouldn't really have made headlines like they would today. Also, it would not at all surprise me if he decided to make sure it was kept quiet and "off the record", especially with the whole "future king" prophecies involved - it wouldn't have gone well for him to let something like that out.
Also, as for the parts of history that are well-documented, you name two minor possible missing bits of data and seem to neglect that we have more extant proof for Jesus' life than we do for say... Napoleon fighting at Waterloo. There are over a hundred first-generation copies of key books in the New Testament (an unparalleled amount), plus corroborations from Christian, Roman and Jewish historians...
But y'know, don't let any of that get in the way of your opinion.:-)
Consider why the stories were so powerful for you in the first place: it's how we (as humans) are wired to learn - from stories. Maybe there's no problem with using Jesus again, even if you don't completely agree with or even believe in Jesus. One of the reasons why there are so many stories of "moral courage" in religions (and elsewhere, in our fiction) are because these help us to identify our place in those stories and therefore our place in the world and how we are expected to behave. Certain morals actually don't have a lot of rational basis beyond "society would be horrible without them", or reasons that get into the meta-physical (i.e. in the context of the existence of god).
If you really have a problem with the Christian part of it (sounds like you don't, but I can't tell), then you can make up stories that your kids would understand. However, without some kind of tie-in to the past or to their lives specifically, I'm not sure if it would be as effective, though I guess you could try (or find other stories from other sources - history, fiction, etc).
It is one of the things that I have as a problem with people like Dawkins - he is suggesting a removal of religion's right to speak to our children, but is not suggesting a better alternative that will give them hope, morals, an ethical framework and teach them important things like forgiveness. Consequently I have no problem teaching my kids about Jesus, because it will probably have them end up as better individuals than if I didn't.
Repeat of one of my posts above, but relevant here: depends on what you mean by "evolution". The debate usually breaks down when one side is arguing against the particularly flimsy parts of abiogenesis and the other arguing for the very strongly-evidenced parts like selection within species. Certainly, deny the latter and you're a bit stupid, but the former? It's anyone's guess, really. (And, as an aside, I am yet to meet a Christian who denies selection within species when it's explained, though I don't doubt they exist... Also, I don't meet many who are pro-evolution who know how to pick the difference between that - a net decrease in genetic information - and processes that increase the complexity of genetic information, without trying to use one as proof for the opposite process).
As an interesting exercise, re-read that while considering someone who refuses to believe in God for any reason (as such people do exist).
Similarly, not all who have faith are nearly as irrational as you say: Newton is a good case study - he was both theistic, and made some of our most significant leaps ahead in rationalising the world around us into something we can use (I'm a civil engineer - almost everything we do is based on Newton's work).
From what I've seen (anecdotally), one's rationality does not specifically seem to be all that related to their faith or non-faith. Probably, starting at "hard faith", though "agnostic" to "hard atheist", the weight is probably to the right, but drops off again quite dramatically when you get to atheist proper, as they often seem to need some reason to support their position, rather than letting reason lead them to a position. The most reasonable people I've talked to are around the middle (from "reasoned faith" to "well-reasoned harder-end agnosticism, 'there is probably no god'" types.
Yes, and calling religion a "virus of the mind" was in reference to the mode of replication, not being a disease. But, he still called people's foundational beliefs a disease, whether he intended to or not.
But, having read some of Dawkin's work (his writing style is excellent), I find it extremely unconvincing to think that he would use words like that without understanding their meaning in the vernacular. If a word can have several meanings (both technical and common), and you put it in a title, you must assume that all meanings can and will be interpreted, and that the common will be taken as your meaning ahead of the technical.
If he really doesn't understand why people get offended at him, he would have to be a fool... or somehow deluded (using the vernacular meaning of the word, not the Bayesian one). Or, he's quite aware of how much his words deliberately cut at people and he's just dishonest and playing the victim. (I make no judgement which it is, but those are the options as I see them). Maybe it's just him (or his publishers) going for the controversy-popularity play, but then the offence is deliberate.
I would agree that not all views are equal, but would not a better metric than the provability be the quality of the society it produces? Considering that most religions use their stories to impart morality, a sense of one's place in the world, a sense of hope and an understanding of why it is that we must treat our fellow man with respect, dignity and charity, what are you proposing to replace those with? We can argue about the specifics, and whether or not certain stories are outdated, but humanity still needs some sort of source of meaning and guidance (go and talk to the average teenager if you want to know what a lack of identity looks like, and how it causes trouble). As humans, we're wired to learn from stories - what stories of moral courage do you have for us? (If it's Hollywood or television, then God help us all!;-)
I would be wary of this rush to too quickly deconstruct the things that have held our societies together unless we have something better to replace them (better here meaning better in its effect on society as a whole).
+5 Informative? Really? For that bile-filled rant?
Let me take a slightly-less one-sided view of religion (from the other side):
~90% of aid agencies are faith-based. People of faith support more development in the third world than probably any other group, and give the highest percentage to charity.
Bible-believing Christians have been found to be, as a group, the happiest people by a significant margin.
Countries who embraced the Reformation still have a higher standard of living than those that didn't.
If it weren't for courageous Bible-believers, we wouldn't have got rid of slavery, we perhaps wouldn't have established minimum safety levels for factories, we probably wouldn't have job agencies. Go and read about the early years of the Salvation Army sometime - they contributed to huge advances in social justice.
Also, Marxism has (under people like Stalin, and elsewhere) killed far more than the crusades, for the sake of an atheistic political will. (And, before you argue that it was political and not the atheist part, then discount from your own list anything mixed with political reasons - fair's fair).
I would argue that religion betters most of what it touches (with the exception of politics, but that's true of politics and most things).
You can dislike religion if you like, but don't force your very mis-informed view of it on others. Just because you've got an f'ed-up view of it doesn't really mean you should be telling others not to spread it, or asking people to listen to you. You can hold whatever misguided, biased view of religion you like, but don't expect others to do the same and not use it to try and better the world.
(Last paragraph there is harsh, but I'm hoping you catch some of how you sound).
As a slightly tangential point, this is one of the issues with the "evolution" debate: defining the term (which no one does before starting). Last I counted, I came up with maybe six different processes that could be called "evolution", ranging from selection within species (which is proven, and usually not contested, even by most fundamentalist Christians), right up to abiogenesis (which, as the GP pointed out, is very little more than speculation that we've put in place as a matter of necessity - there's plenty of ideas, but we are far from any convincing model of cell development).
Hence, what seems to happen is one side says "evolution isn't proven, you're a fool!", and the other says "yes it is, you're a fool!", when they're actually talking about different things under the umbrella of "evolution". But, neither side seem to care to clarify their positions and start with a common understanding. I think if more people recognised that "evolution" (in the common use at least) is a kind of catch-all term, it might not turn into shouting matches quite so quickly...
Also, your link is missing the "http://" (should have been this)
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. But, it's the sort of thing that could quite possibly be buried in the depths of a EULA somewhere and done quietly in the background. Has anyone bothered to trawl through Apple's user agreements looking for such?
Why? I would almost be more surprised if they *didn't* check that kind of data. After all, in the information age, knowing what works and what doesn't is really key to success. Considering that places like this can find information on things like crashes, when people uninstall apps, etc (yes, they are using a specific piece of software for that), then I'd almost expect Apple themselves to be doing it. It would certainly make sense for their own apps at least - promote the ones that people use, drop the ones that don't get used (though the same metric applies to promoting things on their App Store, too).
Would 3D be easier to handle if film makers made sure that everything in shot had clarity of focus (thus preventing the "I can't focus on that" issues)? I remember with The Hobbit that I got a little bit annoyed when I wanted to look at something in the background and couldn't because the camera focus was set to a foreground object.
(And no, I don't really have suggestions on how to actually achieve this with a real camera... well, not any simple ones, anyway).
Did you see it in 48 frames per second? I have been wondering what effect this has on the "3D headaches" - personally, I found that the faster frame-rate made it much easier to watch, though my wife still came away with a low-level migraine, so probably the issue is the focus/convergence difference. Still curious though.
I know you're just going for the troll/humour angle on this (BTW, I'm not an American, so I'm going to spell "humour" with a "u"!), but while a programmer (this is /. after all) would say it must be outside the quotes, however older style guides put it inside the quotes...
But, this is typical of those sort of reviews - they don't know the rules they claim to enforce, so your example still works well! :-)
Yeah, we've had this - a story got one review, not from the many who bought it, but from someone who got it on a free promo and sounded decidedly like a shill (1-star copypasta-but-for-the-title reviews on all ebooks of ours that had been on a promo). We tried reporting it, but Amazon didn't do anything about it. Most of our ebooks survived this as they had other, better reviews, but one has wallowed as it's only ever had that one review.
Or, the one where someone tried to point out spelling mistakes, not bothering to check that there were two acceptable spellings of the word ("yoghurt" vs "yogurt") in America, with the one we used the only acceptable version everywhere else in the world...
There's not much you can do (sadly), but I wish you all the best with your other projects.
(From the side of ebook authoring): this is a good idea, but won't help much. I would say that the biggest problems with reviews on Amazon are:
(1) "Shills" or "sock puppeting" to promote one's own product. We'll often see a new author appear with a single book, hardly any sales, and five or six 5-star reviews. One particular example had five 5-star reviews from new reviewers (no other activity), all with the same poor level of English. Interestingly, that ebook hasn't shown up again. I do know of other 5-star reviews that were removed as they looked suspect, so it seems that Amazon at least do something here.
(2) Shills to sabotage rivals. Example: we had a few kids' ebooks in the top of their categories over Christmas, then in one day all of those that were on the first page get 2-star reviews, all from different reviewers who had not reviewed anything else, with suspiciously similar wording. This one is probably a bit harder to police, but I'd like to hope that Amazon have the sense to look for this sort of thing. It's quite tragic really to realise how nasty authors - children's authors! - can be.
(3) Stupid people who have no idea about the concept of objectivity. There isn't much one can do here, but most user reviews seem to be either something to the effect of "OMG, this was the best thing evar!" with 5-stars, or "My daughter wasn't interested [as if that's an objective measure], this is crap. Oh, I liked the illustrations and the story though" with 1 star, or the reviews "This is not what I expected", followed by comments that make it obvious they didn't read the description, the other reviews, or information like the number of pages... This is perhaps where a "reviewer rating" system would be good - and I think this needs to happen; New Zealand's TradeMe website's user rating would be the sort of thing I would suggest, with reviews weighted by the reviewer's rating - in summary, highlight suspect (new) accounts, and give more credence to someone who has done lots of reviews and has been frequently marked as "Helpful".
It has made me realise that the average star rating is irrelevant - you'd have to look at individual reviews, and their quality and sense (or lack thereof) and judge for yourself.
But, your suggestion of marking author accounts would help, even if it didn't completely do away with the first two. I think that the first filter I'd put in place against shills is something that checks against IP address, credit card details, etc. Amazon's idea of stopping authors from reviewing other books in their categories is useless (and counter-productive) unless they make a really good effort to deal with sock puppeting, as that's where the real problems lie. I would say they should let authors review others' work, but have something that marks this, exclude it from the calculation of the average, and have a good "report abuse" system, which can hurt the author if they abuse it (e.g. a "Not helpful" on an author's review counts as negative points in the ranking of all their own books).
Also, they need to make the calculation of star ratings more comprehensive, and design it to filter abuses - like what IMDb does.
Abiogenesis is probably the main point of argument from a scientific perspective (i.e. we reckon that it might have been possible with some lightning and luck to get amino acids, but that's still a very long way from a viable replicator, let alone a complex cell). The shared ancestry is probably the second "somewhat speculative" one (i.e. we don't have a direct line established - there are quite a few holes in the fossil record), but I would agree that it's probably the one where there is more contention (because of its implications).
As for abiogenesis, depending on who you talk to, the probabilities range from "well, if we be optimisitic enough with the numbers, it's pretty good", to "it's so far into the impossible that it could never, ever happen [by being pessimistic with the numbers]." The annoying thing I find is that there are two groups trying to run said numbers (which are kind of guesswork anyway, as we don't have any processes established that we could measure) are those who need to prove it (because otherwise the whole idea of a naturalistic worldview collapses) and those who need to disprove it (out of a need to prove that God's input is required). I think if you take the balance, abiogenesis is actually a fairly good case for a possible place where "God did it" (started life) because it is very unlikely (from our current understanding at least). Of course, this runs afoul of Occam's Razor, as you then have to presuppose God's existence, but most of those of faith that I've met have a good lot of personal experience to back up their belief in God (also, Occam's Razor doesn't actually prove anything, it's just a helpful filtering tool).
So, as for an alternative theory, one (the naturalist) says "this is very unlikely, but it had to happen somehow", i.e. faith in the natural processes, even when there is no evidence for one, nor any known process; the other (the creationist) says "this is very unlikely, therefore God must have done it", i.e. faith in a Creator. When you're dealing with total unknowns (the origin of the Universe itself is probably an even better example, as that's by definition meta-physical (for a strict, not a colloquial, meaing of "meta-physical")), then positing God's existence isn't really any less sensible than positing any other cause, as we simply don't know (and might not ever be able to know).
As for belief, having had discussions with a lot of people on this, I find most self-described atheists actually do have a "faith" in "science" (i.e. what other scientists have said, not in things they've tested themselves) not unlike a Christian's faith in God. Yes, there is a trust of the scientific method, which is different, and while it may (and often does) appear similar, I do understand that it's a reliance on evidence. However, if and when you start to find a point that genuinely challenges an atheist's non-belief in god, they can get very defensive, and unsurprisingly so, because if an atheist was presented with rock-solid proof of God, they have a very big problem with very big consequences for them personally. I have found that most atheists I've met have personal, non-rationally-derived reasons why they don't want to believe in God. (I'm certainly not saying that is the case for all atheists, but it has been the case for most that I have had decent conversations with, and I think is a reasonable question to ask oneself - what are the implications if I'm wrong?)
So, I think that you'll find that a person (anyone) likes to hold a belief system that supports their way of life, and will get quite upset at anyone trying to challenge it, because they don't want to be wrong and don't want to have to change. I think if more of us approached these debates with an understanding that we are treading on potentially upsetting territory, there'd perhaps be a little less angst... (Just winning the argument, even convincingly, is only the start as there will be a lot of re-structuring of thinking required).
Apologies for the long post. :-)
Good point about that term being awkward - would "agnostic atheist" be better? (It's the slightest shade of meaning different, but probably closer than either term alone). You could call yourselves "AAs"... ok, maybe not. ;-)
Perhaps it would be worth bringing another term into use then? Maybe we need to educate people about the difference between an "atheist" and an "anti-theist"? (Kind of like the difference between amoral and immoral). I guess the problem there though is that someone would meet the nasty kind of anti-theist who still called themselves an atheist, and forever be stuck with that meaning for the term, just as someone could meet the nasty kind of person who calls themselves a Christian and react whenever they met better, more fair-minded ones with the same label...
Is the answer then to not assume you understand someone simply from their label...?
Ok, agnostic atheist I can respect. :-) (By the way, you're less likely to get into arguments if you introduce yourself as that rather than as an "atheist" - just because the unqualified term can carry unintended connotations - such as the above, where I took it as meaning the assertive kind).
Faith in your own senses, faith that the people teaching your and who did experiments were trustworthy and not themselves misinformed, faith that the scientific method actually works and isn't illusory, faith that what you're testing is within the realm of what the scientific method can actually test (not everything is)... In some areas of science (psychology comes to mind), there is a fair amount of guesswork or "trying to prove that I'm right" among scientists, and I have come across the same in evolutionary biology, along with a peculiar tendency to avoid talking about known hoaxes (embyonic development looking like fish etc, the white/black moth thing as examples), along with quite a lot of trying to force things to fit the gaps in the evolutionary tree. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Sufficient to say that everything (even the scientific method) takes some degree of faith - even if only a little, and no more than it takes to function in everyday life. :-)
I do note, however, that this particular thread has been bouncing back-and-forth around the same point. So I might summarise: atheism, where it is an assertion that there is no god, is a meta-physical belief inseparable from religion and can therefore be treated as such, however agnostic atheism only asserts that it does not know, and, by extension, awaits a burden of proof from the theist before accepting their hypothesis, so isn't a religion per se, as it actually makes no assertion but to merely ask others to prove their assertions.
But, I would add that I think even agnostic atheism can become "religious" if and when it attempts to spread non-belief in the supernatural or to discourage another's religion. (Meaning that someone like Dawkins is sort of religious, in that he is encouraging others to believe in a particular interpretation of the metaphysical in favour of another - in his specific case, he substitutes belief in god with a belief in the multiverse, which is a similarly unproven concept at this point).
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others (or force it on people), and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others, and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
Wow, where are you from? Remind me not to go there. :-( I would have a few choice verses to show those people (along with perhaps a few other choice words...)
Just a comment though: while torment done to you makes inflicting insult on others understandable, it does not make it justifiable, as all you will do is inflame another generation of nastiness. It's a bit like the generations of infighting in certain African countries - someone sees oppression, so rises up and ousts the oppressors... but then become oppressors themselves when they get the power, as it's all they knew.
If you are wanting to be able to have peaceful interaction with those of belief, then being nasty on the internet isn't going to help any... At some point, someone has to act with humility, forgiveness and fair-mindedness. (My hope is that everyone would, but I guess I'm a bit of an optimist!)
Also, it is entirely possible that almost that whole list could be from the "well-intentioned but misled". :-/
And thus, you prove your opponent's point.
You claim actual intellectual superiority, and yet the atheist is the one who asserts something that he cannot know, ever, without actually being omniscient (and therefore god, and therefore proving himself wrong). An agnostic could make the claim that their position is the default correct position, but not an atheist. (And, as an aside, the correct scientific approach is to be "agnostic" about what you are testing, not to assume knowledge either way as then you open yourself up to bias).
You make bold assertions about religion being bunk and god not existing, when in fact there is no way you could know that for certain - it's possible you are correct, perhaps even probable, but in no way certain. Your claim is hollow, your arrogance unfounded, and your point disproven by your very attempts to prove it.
Now, had you have answered with some humility, you might have been able to make some headway against the claim that atheists come across with a kind of intellectual superiority. But, by immediately saying that all supernatural beliefs are rubbish, you have made a claim about the nature of the meta-physical that is actually harder to prove than the theist's position (he at least, in theory, could have God show Himself one day - proof for is possible, even when proof against is not). But, by making that meta-physical claim so boldly, either: (a) you have perfect knowledge about the universe and are therefore yourself god, (b) you're significantly less intellectually superior to me, as I can see a gaping hole in your position. As your claim itself disputes point (a), I must therefore conclude point (b). :-)
So... "I'm an atheist who thinks religious people are silly, who has no problem insulting them, and don't see how anyone could find most atheists insulting."
Huh?
But, I do generally agree with your comment that most people on the internet are just consumers not contributors, but would also point out that you may not be the best judge of whether or not atheists tend to be insulting. Most atheists I've encountered (on- and off-line) do seem to take insulting religion as a kind of sport - often it's in jest, even if it doesn't always come across like that.
Definitely a secret evil atheist bit. ;-)
Context: specific instruction to one specific person (and that possibly only to prove a point). Still not "all his followers" giving away "all their things".
But, y'know, don't let something as trivial as audience and context get in the way of trying to find problems with the Bible. Sigh.
How is that a strawman? If I go and read something that is from a source written ~2k years ago in another language, I expect that culture, language, idiom and meaning will have changed, a lot, and I expect that I'm going to have to do some learning before I can make clear calls on what it's saying. Your comment about whether or not God is omnipotent with the translators is a lot more of a strawman than what you're challenging. (Consider: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of Kings to search out a matter" Prov 25:2 - God specifically says that He wants us to go digging, and not just take a trite answer - more below on why).
As a specific example, the word translated variously into English as "kill" or "murder" from Exodus there doesn't quite have an exact English equivalent - it's "kill", but with an intentionality approaching "murder", meaning that the latter is a better way to get the meaning across, though the former is slightly more complete (if possibly more misleading as it lacks the implication of the original Hebrew word).
One of the reasons that it's difficult to take a black-and-white answer on some of these is that God seems to understand context better than most of us and expects development in moral reasoning: to a juvenile culture that is just preparing to become a nation, He sets forth a bunch of principles that are easy to remember as a kind of framework (along with lots of specific minor laws, even down to things like hygiene, which was sort of unheard of back then). Having said that, it's only someone with a fairly immature moral framework (that's not an insult, by the way) who doesn't realise that rules have exceptions: e.g. "don't kill" may be superceded by "nasty men are going to kill you and your whole family unless you go fight them" (an invading army). In that context, killing an individual is still horrible, but the alternative is more horrible - it's not unlike Asimov's zeroth law, in some ways (do not cause harm to a human, except where failing to do so will result in greater harm coming to a greater number of humans).
Not quite sure though how you get from that to justifying Afghanistan etc though, unless it's an extension of the "protect our people from harm" bit? I don't have a lot to say on the legitimacy or not of invading Afghanistan/Iraq, except to say that I don't have sufficient information to comment on the motivations of those who decided it (and that Saddam had put himself on the line for international intervention as he'd already shown he was willing to invade a neighbouring country back in the early 90's, though not sure why he wasn't dealt with properly the first time around, nor if going back there was justified).
Just a small question: are you the same kind of person who likes to call out "god of the gaps"? If you know anything about history, you'd know that there are a lot of very big gaps in our knowledge, despite other bits being very well documented. Saying that just because something isn't recorded elsewhere means it did not happen is a little senseless, and certainly not proof.
As an example: Herod's infanticide was only in one town (Bethlehem), and not a very big town at that. Herod was known for being bloodthirsty, so yet another few killings wouldn't really have made headlines like they would today. Also, it would not at all surprise me if he decided to make sure it was kept quiet and "off the record", especially with the whole "future king" prophecies involved - it wouldn't have gone well for him to let something like that out.
Also, as for the parts of history that are well-documented, you name two minor possible missing bits of data and seem to neglect that we have more extant proof for Jesus' life than we do for say... Napoleon fighting at Waterloo. There are over a hundred first-generation copies of key books in the New Testament (an unparalleled amount), plus corroborations from Christian, Roman and Jewish historians...
But y'know, don't let any of that get in the way of your opinion. :-)
Consider why the stories were so powerful for you in the first place: it's how we (as humans) are wired to learn - from stories. Maybe there's no problem with using Jesus again, even if you don't completely agree with or even believe in Jesus. One of the reasons why there are so many stories of "moral courage" in religions (and elsewhere, in our fiction) are because these help us to identify our place in those stories and therefore our place in the world and how we are expected to behave. Certain morals actually don't have a lot of rational basis beyond "society would be horrible without them", or reasons that get into the meta-physical (i.e. in the context of the existence of god).
If you really have a problem with the Christian part of it (sounds like you don't, but I can't tell), then you can make up stories that your kids would understand. However, without some kind of tie-in to the past or to their lives specifically, I'm not sure if it would be as effective, though I guess you could try (or find other stories from other sources - history, fiction, etc).
It is one of the things that I have as a problem with people like Dawkins - he is suggesting a removal of religion's right to speak to our children, but is not suggesting a better alternative that will give them hope, morals, an ethical framework and teach them important things like forgiveness. Consequently I have no problem teaching my kids about Jesus, because it will probably have them end up as better individuals than if I didn't.
Repeat of one of my posts above, but relevant here: depends on what you mean by "evolution". The debate usually breaks down when one side is arguing against the particularly flimsy parts of abiogenesis and the other arguing for the very strongly-evidenced parts like selection within species. Certainly, deny the latter and you're a bit stupid, but the former? It's anyone's guess, really. (And, as an aside, I am yet to meet a Christian who denies selection within species when it's explained, though I don't doubt they exist... Also, I don't meet many who are pro-evolution who know how to pick the difference between that - a net decrease in genetic information - and processes that increase the complexity of genetic information, without trying to use one as proof for the opposite process).
As an interesting exercise, re-read that while considering someone who refuses to believe in God for any reason (as such people do exist).
Similarly, not all who have faith are nearly as irrational as you say: Newton is a good case study - he was both theistic, and made some of our most significant leaps ahead in rationalising the world around us into something we can use (I'm a civil engineer - almost everything we do is based on Newton's work).
From what I've seen (anecdotally), one's rationality does not specifically seem to be all that related to their faith or non-faith. Probably, starting at "hard faith", though "agnostic" to "hard atheist", the weight is probably to the right, but drops off again quite dramatically when you get to atheist proper, as they often seem to need some reason to support their position, rather than letting reason lead them to a position. The most reasonable people I've talked to are around the middle (from "reasoned faith" to "well-reasoned harder-end agnosticism, 'there is probably no god'" types.
Yes, and calling religion a "virus of the mind" was in reference to the mode of replication, not being a disease. But, he still called people's foundational beliefs a disease, whether he intended to or not.
But, having read some of Dawkin's work (his writing style is excellent), I find it extremely unconvincing to think that he would use words like that without understanding their meaning in the vernacular. If a word can have several meanings (both technical and common), and you put it in a title, you must assume that all meanings can and will be interpreted, and that the common will be taken as your meaning ahead of the technical.
If he really doesn't understand why people get offended at him, he would have to be a fool... or somehow deluded (using the vernacular meaning of the word, not the Bayesian one). Or, he's quite aware of how much his words deliberately cut at people and he's just dishonest and playing the victim. (I make no judgement which it is, but those are the options as I see them). Maybe it's just him (or his publishers) going for the controversy-popularity play, but then the offence is deliberate.
I would agree that not all views are equal, but would not a better metric than the provability be the quality of the society it produces? Considering that most religions use their stories to impart morality, a sense of one's place in the world, a sense of hope and an understanding of why it is that we must treat our fellow man with respect, dignity and charity, what are you proposing to replace those with? We can argue about the specifics, and whether or not certain stories are outdated, but humanity still needs some sort of source of meaning and guidance (go and talk to the average teenager if you want to know what a lack of identity looks like, and how it causes trouble). As humans, we're wired to learn from stories - what stories of moral courage do you have for us? (If it's Hollywood or television, then God help us all! ;-)
I would be wary of this rush to too quickly deconstruct the things that have held our societies together unless we have something better to replace them (better here meaning better in its effect on society as a whole).
+5 Informative? Really? For that bile-filled rant?
Let me take a slightly-less one-sided view of religion (from the other side):
~90% of aid agencies are faith-based. People of faith support more development in the third world than probably any other group, and give the highest percentage to charity.
Bible-believing Christians have been found to be, as a group, the happiest people by a significant margin.
Countries who embraced the Reformation still have a higher standard of living than those that didn't.
If it weren't for courageous Bible-believers, we wouldn't have got rid of slavery, we perhaps wouldn't have established minimum safety levels for factories, we probably wouldn't have job agencies. Go and read about the early years of the Salvation Army sometime - they contributed to huge advances in social justice.
Also, Marxism has (under people like Stalin, and elsewhere) killed far more than the crusades, for the sake of an atheistic political will. (And, before you argue that it was political and not the atheist part, then discount from your own list anything mixed with political reasons - fair's fair).
I would argue that religion betters most of what it touches (with the exception of politics, but that's true of politics and most things).
You can dislike religion if you like, but don't force your very mis-informed view of it on others. Just because you've got an f'ed-up view of it doesn't really mean you should be telling others not to spread it, or asking people to listen to you. You can hold whatever misguided, biased view of religion you like, but don't expect others to do the same and not use it to try and better the world.
(Last paragraph there is harsh, but I'm hoping you catch some of how you sound).
As a slightly tangential point, this is one of the issues with the "evolution" debate: defining the term (which no one does before starting). Last I counted, I came up with maybe six different processes that could be called "evolution", ranging from selection within species (which is proven, and usually not contested, even by most fundamentalist Christians), right up to abiogenesis (which, as the GP pointed out, is very little more than speculation that we've put in place as a matter of necessity - there's plenty of ideas, but we are far from any convincing model of cell development).
Hence, what seems to happen is one side says "evolution isn't proven, you're a fool!", and the other says "yes it is, you're a fool!", when they're actually talking about different things under the umbrella of "evolution". But, neither side seem to care to clarify their positions and start with a common understanding. I think if more people recognised that "evolution" (in the common use at least) is a kind of catch-all term, it might not turn into shouting matches quite so quickly...
Also, your link is missing the "http://" (should have been this)