Do you know of any FOSS PDF-to-PS converters? I have a significant number of PDF files that I'd like to not have to worry about.
[I haven't actually gone and Google'd the answer to my own question yet, so mod me down if you will, but I'll take personal advice any day over a blind Google search]
Blocking PDF exploits is a great first step, but is there a way to detect infected PDF files, and disinfect them? I have no problem leaving Foxit permanently in safe mode, but it would be nice to be able to trust a PDF file once in a while, and be able to turn the JavaScript/etc back on for files I trust.
Star Wars hit rock bottom with Episode I, and has been bouncing and skidding along in the gutter ever since. Then again, I haven't actually seen the Christmas special. But given how truly awful Episode I was, I can't imagine the Christmas Special could really be all that much worse. At this point, I'm guessing that even the Star Wars erotic fan fiction is, on average, of a higher caliber than any of the franchise's official releases.
I've written a couple different fake shells, but usually just as a practical joke. Such as:
C:\ > dir
WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format? y
Formatting 248.9 GB...3%
I've also written a BSOD screensaver, which was really fun. I also once hacked someone's existing screensaver to throw in an occasional subliminal message like "Do it." or "Kill him."
Oh, and don't forget the ol' replacing someone's desktop background with a screen-shot of their old desktop, and then deleting all the icons. That's always good for a few laughs.
Jeezus, are you still taking the bait? What the hell, man???
Listen, I don't normally troll. In fact, I never troll, but you couldn't just leave well enough alone, and I didn't feel like spending half my day debating the finer points of Slashdot etiquette, the importance of grammar, or what a god-awful film Independence Day is. So instead I trolled, hoping you'd get the point.
At no time was I actually trying to be funny, nor was your mockery lost on me.
My original point (which I thought was fairly obvious, and didn't feel like repeating) with the grammar thing was not merely to be a troll - although, at best, it borders on being such - it was that despite your protestations about "nerd rage", you clearly are a nerd just like the rest of us. Funny how many people on Slashdot try to elevate themselves above the unwashed nerd masses, yet really aren't any different than the rest. How much time have you wasted today trying to get one-up on "that stupid Slashdot troll"?
You take me to task for my grammar advice not being pertinent or helpful to these forums, yet your own "+5 Insightful" post wasn't particularly enlightening, and completely misses the point about why most nerds didn't like Independence Day. It's not merely "nerd rage" about how unrealistic it is. It's the "deus ex machina" that most nerds don't like. We don't expect every movie to be full of plausible-sounding science and make you think until your head hurts, but once in a while (even in a big "summer blockbuster"), we'd appreciate a plot that can move forward on its own steam, rather than resorting to cheap, lazy plot devices to propel it.
The word "queue", when used as a verb (in non-nerd terms), means to line up. The idiom you were thinking of is actually "cue the ____", which is derived from the use of the word cue in a studio and/or stage setting, where a cue is a signal for a performer to enter the scene.
My understanding is that in every single trial where someone has been prosecuted it was for uploading (due to the fact that copyright restricts the ability of one to create a copy which would be uploading) which is automatically done in P2P environments. When using USENET (as long as you are not posting), you are only downloading.
That may be, but I no longer feel comfortable that being a "download-only" user is sufficient to keep me safe from potentially ruinous lawsuits. Joel Tennenbaum's case was a real wake-up call for me.
Yes, Tennenbaum also uploaded songs, and yes, he was stupid enough to admit to it. However, we're talking about 31 songs here. The RIAA was more than willing to ruin this man's life for a measly 31 songs! Do you really think they only went after him because he had also uploaded those 31 songs? Clearly, they wanted to make an example of him, to scare people like me away from downloading OR uploading copyrighted music.
It worked. I no longer find the reward of free music (or movies or e-books or whatever) worth the risk of having my life ruined, no matter how remote that possibility might be. NOT TO MENTION what it would do to my wife and kids. I am my family's sole provider, and the kind of work I do requires extensive background checks. Something like this (what happened to Tennenbaum) would totally ruin me and my family. For what? So I can watch some stupid movie right now rather than having to wait a whole 2 days for Netflix to send it to me? Pardon my language, but FUCK THAT!
Using SSL is definitely a step up, but of course, even this won't help you if the MPAA gets a judge to issue an order forcing your Usenet provider to log all of its users' downloads. I use a paid Usenet service as well, and my concern is that my provider will someday be slapped with such an order, along with a gag order to prevent them from warning their users about the logging.
I'm thinking maybe, at long last, the writing is on the wall for Usenet - at least as far as me using it is concerned. I have too much to lose (job,assets), and too many people depending on me (wife, kids). It's just not worth the risk anymore. No matter how much I despise the MPAA, RIAA, etc, the obsolete business models of the companies they represent, and their strong-arm tactics, I stand to lose FAR more than I stand to gain. I will continue to donate to the EFF, but no more Usenet downloads for me - not even the non-infringing variety.
Are you kidding me? First off, I never said the government was a monolithic mind. I said if the government wants to give you spies, you get spies. And by "government" I mean whoever the hell is in charge and responsible for things like getting the telecoms involved in wiretapping, etc, etc. These are not just isolated incidents, and it is pure folly to think that just because bureaucracy sometimes creates organizational barriers, that the government can be controlled and held accountable. The spooks will infiltrate wherever they please. The tail wags the dog.
Google wants geeks, but it runs the risk of getting spies, too.
How exactly will splitting the NSA fix this? It's a government agency. If the government wants to give you spies, you get spies. Doesn't matter which 3-letter acronym organization they get their paychecks from.
Wow. Big surprise. Just more gibberish from you, and still dodging the fact that ALL of your so called answers are nothing but a massive circle-jerk of endless speculation. I'm guessing by your argument style (or lack thereof) that you're about 19 years old. Anyway, you've wasted enough of my time already pretending that all of humanity's greatest mysteries are merely child's play, yet quizzically offering up no coherent arguments and instead merely rattling off dozens of possible answers. It would seem that, in your mind, plausibility is equal to provable certainty. If that floats your boat, so be it, but I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying (in vain) to convince you that they are two completely different things. Have a good day.
This makes no sense whatsoever. The whole point of me asking for proofs was to challenge your assertion that you have the answers. Presumably, if you have all the answers, then you ought to be able to prove them, and if you are claiming to have solved these problems, then you must already have all the definitions you required. Remember, we are discussing *your* alleged proofs, not mine. If and when I claim to have answers, then we can discuss my definitions. Trying to turn the question back around on me is a total cop out.
Ah. Then you do have a problem with definitions.
Only if you've chosen deliberately loose definitions in order to make the problems trivially easy to solve. For instance, if I say I can prove that meteors are made of cheese, and I define the word meteor to mean "a big ball of space cheese", then I can claim to have proven something, but all I've really done is construct a tautology. That's an absurdly simple example, but in the realm of public debate, it is quite common for people to come up with much more clever/sinister ways of manipulating definitions (or, more generally, ways of framing the problem) so as to appear to have answered a question without having actually said anything of substance. That was my only point of possible contentions about your definitions. If your definitions are more or less the commonly accepted ones, then I have no problem with your definitions.
As for the rest of your comment, it's all just a bunch of playing tricks with semantics to avoid having to answer my question. You keep going off on irrelevant tangents such as what does 'life' mean, is good/evil the same thing as entropy, or why did I ask why must there be so much suffering, etc? Who cares about the word 'must'? It's clear what I meant. So fine, let's change it to "Why is there so much suffering?" and move on. Instead of addressing the essence of my questions, you're just trying to trip me up in a bunch of mental masturbation about semantics.
All of which completely and utterly evades the main thrust of my argument, which is that you have absolutely no credible claim to having answered all those questions. You've simply made up answers that fit your worldview, and when asked to defend your position, instead of giving me any sort of rational argument or empirical evidence to support your claims, you merely attempt to bog the discussion down with petty semantics.
You scoff at the questions, as if they are trivially easy to answer, but from any sort of rational perspective, your answers are no more valid than those provided by religion. Both are based on nothing more than speculation. For example, is there life after death? It's absolutely clear what I mean by that, without getting all tangled up in definitions and talking about prions and chemical processes in our cells, etc. If some guy walks up to you on the street and asks you that question, you know immediately what he means, and if you start getting all anal about definitions instead of just answering the question, you're just dodging it. But just to humor your obviously feigned confusion about what the question means, first of all the question is almost invariably phrased in a human context, and secondly, it virtually always means, "After I die, will my consciousness continue in some way?"
At least IICV seems to have understood the question when he rephrased it as "does your 'you'-ness continue after your brain ceases to function?" But, having managed to get past the silly hair-slitting on that question, we haven't progressed from my original point of contention, which is "how do you know?" Both you and IICV state without any doubt that there is no life after death. You turn to dust, and that's that. But, once again, your own certitude on that is not based on reason. It's based on your own personal religion (which I'm guessing is atheism). Like I said to IICV, atheism is a religion of sor
No idea how that got posted as AC. I was logged in when I started. I guess I must have accidentally checked the "Post Anonymously" box. Either that, or it took me so long to write that long-winded monologue that my session expired.
No, but I think it's a safe assumption that cocaine addiction is light years away from religion in terms of depth and complexity, as well as its overall effect on mankind and the course of history.
So if your point is merely that I'm not qualified to talk about the psychological effects of cocaine addiction, then okay, I'll grant you that. However, I stand by my assertion that something as deep and complex as religion cannot be adequately modeled by analogy to something as relatively mundane as drug addiction.
Why is the burden on me to provide rigorous definitions, when you're the one claiming to have all the answers? You show me the proofs, and I'll be happy to go along with your definitions, assuming you haven't merely selectively chosen your definitions to make the questions easy to answer, thus diluting your answers down to meaningless tautologies.
But let's not get bogged down in your imaginary proofs, because that misses the point of me asking for proofs in the first place, which is that your answers are completely speculative. Maybe you're convinced of them, and maybe they help you sleep better at night, but you can't possibly be so arrogant as to think that you've somehow solved all of life's eternal mysteries, and that you can explain them all in two lines of text. Then again, maybe you are that arrogant.
Either way, your answers don't amount to a pile of monkey dung, and your cocky assertion that "The only reason why these questions weigh on [me] is because [I] don't want the answers" is nothing more than moronic trolling.
Thanks for the brilliant analysis. Sheesh, where have you been all my life? All this time, I was thinking those were actually difficult questions, but little did I know some super-genius who goes by "IICV" on Slashdot had them all figured out. Who knew?
/sarcasm
If you really feel the answers are that easy, then hey I'm glad for you. But don't confuse your own certitude with actual certainty, unless you're prepared to show me rigorous proofs of all of those answers.
Thanks for the dazzling display of pedantry, but I wasn't looking for some Slashdot know-it-all to answer those questions for me. Although, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone on Slashdot completely missed my point. Those questions, and many others like them, are all but impossible to answer with any credible degree of certainty, your own genius answers notwithstanding. Moreover, those are the kinds of questions that we each must ultimately answer for ourselves, no matter how many times, or by whom they have been answered before. I assure you I don't need the help of some wise-cracking pedant on Slashdot to answer them for me. Besides which, you've completely ignored the context in which they were posed, and all the other questions that discussion brings up, namely, "How does an individual's struggle to answer those questions relate to his/her affinity (or lack thereof) for religion?"
I apologize if I misunderstood your point. It seemed that you were making a statement about rationalism itself, rather than simply pointing out that most of us tend to mis-apply it.
It seems we're actually not very far apart in our assessments. The only part of your original post that I objected to was, again, that you seemed to be suggesting that rationalism itself was merely a cover. As for the rest, I agree completely.
Yes, I realized all those implications when I wrote the post, but I didn't think it would be particularly useful or productive to dive into a full blown discussion of epistemology. Especially since I don't think that the OP himself (as I alluded to at the beginning of the 3rd paragraph) really believes that all truth is relative.
Obviously, as an agnostic, I don't believe that religion answers those questions sufficiently. But it's not relevant whether *I* think it does. We're discussing why so many other people cling so tightly to religion, and my assertion is simply that religion does sufficiently answer those questions, in the minds of billions of its followers.
You're just tilting at windmills, trying to frame the discussion of other peoples' religious beliefs within the confines of your own beliefs. Religious people don't give a rat's ass if c6gunner on Slashdot thinks that their religion adequately addresses those questions. It all makes sense to them, and to them, that's good enough.
You know, I keep hearing that argument, and it's just mind-boggling to me that any intelligent individual could say something so stupid. It's like claiming that abolishing cocaine would cause large tracts of the population to disappear, since cocaine is the the only thing that keeps them going.
I'm not saying I buy the GP's argument (at least not completely), but I think you vastly underestimate how important religion is to some people. The cocaine=religion analogy doesn't really stand up very well under scrutiny. And I'm not merely making the obvious observation that all analogies are flawed and fall apart if you examine them closely enough - I'm saying this one is worse than most.
Yes, many people who are addicted to cocaine may actually feel that they cannot live without the drug. But religion is not merely a drug - it is intertwined with all of the most important unanswerable questions in life. Does life have purpose? Is there such a thing as The Truth? Is there life after death? Will I see my lost loved ones again someday? Is there justice in this world? Will good ultimately prevail over evil? Why must there be so much suffering?
As an agnostic, I am used to having my religious friends and family members say that I'm just taking the easy way out. To them, no God means no responsibility, no sense of duty, no moral quandaries, no church on Sunday, etc, etc. However, as I'm sure many agnostics can tell you, being an agnostic is anything but easy. All of those Big Unanswerable Questions weigh heavily on you - much more so than for religious people who've found all of those questions conveniently answered by their religion of choice. Meanwhile, I've spent nearly my entire life being constantly tormented by those questions. Some mornings, I find it excruciatingly difficult to drag myself out of bed, because I'm desperately trying to figure out "What the fuck is the point of all this?" Don't confuse this with depression. I am not merely depressed. In fact, most days, I don't feel depressed at all. I enjoy life. But those questions are always there, always eating away at me, making it difficult to function at times.
I'm not trying to sound "deep" or compare myself to philosophers like Tolstoy who were nearly driven mad by those questions. I'm merely observing that life is difficult enough already without the struggle to find meaning. With that struggle, life can be unbearable at times. And for a lot of people, religion is the only thing that can fill that void and make life worth living, or at least seem to be so. I get the whole "religion is just a crutch for weak minds" thing. I really do. I felt that way in my early 20's. But I'm in my late 30's now, and all those questions have been a heavy burden on me in the intervening years. So although I'm still as much of an agnostic as I ever was, much of my arrogance has been replaced with understanding. My agnosticism is no longer something that makes me feel superior. In many ways, I actually envy my religious friends, and if I could force myself to believe in God, I probably would. Don't think I haven't tried - numerous times. I'm just not wired for faith, it seems.
Anyway, the point is, given how deeply intertwined religion is with those things which weigh most heavily on the human mind (or "soul", if you believe there is one), I don't think the cocaine analogy, nor the implied addiction model of religious belief, even come close to explaining why people adhere so steadfastly to religion. It's a LOT deeper and a LOT more complicated than you give it credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know of any FOSS PDF-to-PS converters? I have a significant number of PDF files that I'd like to not have to worry about.
[I haven't actually gone and Google'd the answer to my own question yet, so mod me down if you will, but I'll take personal advice any day over a blind Google search]
Blocking PDF exploits is a great first step, but is there a way to detect infected PDF files, and disinfect them? I have no problem leaving Foxit permanently in safe mode, but it would be nice to be able to trust a PDF file once in a while, and be able to turn the JavaScript/etc back on for files I trust.
Star Wars hit rock bottom with Episode I, and has been bouncing and skidding along in the gutter ever since. Then again, I haven't actually seen the Christmas special. But given how truly awful Episode I was, I can't imagine the Christmas Special could really be all that much worse. At this point, I'm guessing that even the Star Wars erotic fan fiction is, on average, of a higher caliber than any of the franchise's official releases.
I've written a couple different fake shells, but usually just as a practical joke. Such as: C:\ > dir WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format? y Formatting 248.9 GB...3% I've also written a BSOD screensaver, which was really fun. I also once hacked someone's existing screensaver to throw in an occasional subliminal message like "Do it." or "Kill him." Oh, and don't forget the ol' replacing someone's desktop background with a screen-shot of their old desktop, and then deleting all the icons. That's always good for a few laughs.
Jeezus, are you still taking the bait? What the hell, man???
Listen, I don't normally troll. In fact, I never troll, but you couldn't just leave well enough alone, and I didn't feel like spending half my day debating the finer points of Slashdot etiquette, the importance of grammar, or what a god-awful film Independence Day is. So instead I trolled, hoping you'd get the point.
At no time was I actually trying to be funny, nor was your mockery lost on me.
My original point (which I thought was fairly obvious, and didn't feel like repeating) with the grammar thing was not merely to be a troll - although, at best, it borders on being such - it was that despite your protestations about "nerd rage", you clearly are a nerd just like the rest of us. Funny how many people on Slashdot try to elevate themselves above the unwashed nerd masses, yet really aren't any different than the rest. How much time have you wasted today trying to get one-up on "that stupid Slashdot troll"?
You take me to task for my grammar advice not being pertinent or helpful to these forums, yet your own "+5 Insightful" post wasn't particularly enlightening, and completely misses the point about why most nerds didn't like Independence Day. It's not merely "nerd rage" about how unrealistic it is. It's the "deus ex machina" that most nerds don't like. We don't expect every movie to be full of plausible-sounding science and make you think until your head hurts, but once in a while (even in a big "summer blockbuster"), we'd appreciate a plot that can move forward on its own steam, rather than resorting to cheap, lazy plot devices to propel it.
Oh no. Now you're really hurting my feelings with your razor-sharp wit.
Wow, good burn! You really showed me! Or something.
There, fixed that for ya.
The word "queue", when used as a verb (in non-nerd terms), means to line up. The idiom you were thinking of is actually "cue the ____", which is derived from the use of the word cue in a studio and/or stage setting, where a cue is a signal for a performer to enter the scene.
Where are all the anti-anti-pirates?
That may be, but I no longer feel comfortable that being a "download-only" user is sufficient to keep me safe from potentially ruinous lawsuits. Joel Tennenbaum's case was a real wake-up call for me.
Yes, Tennenbaum also uploaded songs, and yes, he was stupid enough to admit to it. However, we're talking about 31 songs here. The RIAA was more than willing to ruin this man's life for a measly 31 songs! Do you really think they only went after him because he had also uploaded those 31 songs? Clearly, they wanted to make an example of him, to scare people like me away from downloading OR uploading copyrighted music.
It worked. I no longer find the reward of free music (or movies or e-books or whatever) worth the risk of having my life ruined, no matter how remote that possibility might be. NOT TO MENTION what it would do to my wife and kids. I am my family's sole provider, and the kind of work I do requires extensive background checks. Something like this (what happened to Tennenbaum) would totally ruin me and my family. For what? So I can watch some stupid movie right now rather than having to wait a whole 2 days for Netflix to send it to me? Pardon my language, but FUCK THAT!
Using SSL is definitely a step up, but of course, even this won't help you if the MPAA gets a judge to issue an order forcing your Usenet provider to log all of its users' downloads. I use a paid Usenet service as well, and my concern is that my provider will someday be slapped with such an order, along with a gag order to prevent them from warning their users about the logging.
I'm thinking maybe, at long last, the writing is on the wall for Usenet - at least as far as me using it is concerned. I have too much to lose (job,assets), and too many people depending on me (wife, kids). It's just not worth the risk anymore. No matter how much I despise the MPAA, RIAA, etc, the obsolete business models of the companies they represent, and their strong-arm tactics, I stand to lose FAR more than I stand to gain. I will continue to donate to the EFF, but no more Usenet downloads for me - not even the non-infringing variety.
Are you kidding me? First off, I never said the government was a monolithic mind. I said if the government wants to give you spies, you get spies. And by "government" I mean whoever the hell is in charge and responsible for things like getting the telecoms involved in wiretapping, etc, etc. These are not just isolated incidents, and it is pure folly to think that just because bureaucracy sometimes creates organizational barriers, that the government can be controlled and held accountable. The spooks will infiltrate wherever they please. The tail wags the dog.
How exactly will splitting the NSA fix this? It's a government agency. If the government wants to give you spies, you get spies. Doesn't matter which 3-letter acronym organization they get their paychecks from.
Minus the GPS and digital camera, of course.
Wow. Big surprise. Just more gibberish from you, and still dodging the fact that ALL of your so called answers are nothing but a massive circle-jerk of endless speculation. I'm guessing by your argument style (or lack thereof) that you're about 19 years old. Anyway, you've wasted enough of my time already pretending that all of humanity's greatest mysteries are merely child's play, yet quizzically offering up no coherent arguments and instead merely rattling off dozens of possible answers. It would seem that, in your mind, plausibility is equal to provable certainty. If that floats your boat, so be it, but I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying (in vain) to convince you that they are two completely different things. Have a good day.
Because you're the one asking the questions.
This makes no sense whatsoever. The whole point of me asking for proofs was to challenge your assertion that you have the answers. Presumably, if you have all the answers, then you ought to be able to prove them, and if you are claiming to have solved these problems, then you must already have all the definitions you required. Remember, we are discussing *your* alleged proofs, not mine. If and when I claim to have answers, then we can discuss my definitions. Trying to turn the question back around on me is a total cop out.
Ah. Then you do have a problem with definitions.
Only if you've chosen deliberately loose definitions in order to make the problems trivially easy to solve. For instance, if I say I can prove that meteors are made of cheese, and I define the word meteor to mean "a big ball of space cheese", then I can claim to have proven something, but all I've really done is construct a tautology. That's an absurdly simple example, but in the realm of public debate, it is quite common for people to come up with much more clever/sinister ways of manipulating definitions (or, more generally, ways of framing the problem) so as to appear to have answered a question without having actually said anything of substance. That was my only point of possible contentions about your definitions. If your definitions are more or less the commonly accepted ones, then I have no problem with your definitions.
As for the rest of your comment, it's all just a bunch of playing tricks with semantics to avoid having to answer my question. You keep going off on irrelevant tangents such as what does 'life' mean, is good/evil the same thing as entropy, or why did I ask why must there be so much suffering, etc? Who cares about the word 'must'? It's clear what I meant. So fine, let's change it to "Why is there so much suffering?" and move on. Instead of addressing the essence of my questions, you're just trying to trip me up in a bunch of mental masturbation about semantics.
All of which completely and utterly evades the main thrust of my argument, which is that you have absolutely no credible claim to having answered all those questions. You've simply made up answers that fit your worldview, and when asked to defend your position, instead of giving me any sort of rational argument or empirical evidence to support your claims, you merely attempt to bog the discussion down with petty semantics.
You scoff at the questions, as if they are trivially easy to answer, but from any sort of rational perspective, your answers are no more valid than those provided by religion. Both are based on nothing more than speculation. For example, is there life after death? It's absolutely clear what I mean by that, without getting all tangled up in definitions and talking about prions and chemical processes in our cells, etc. If some guy walks up to you on the street and asks you that question, you know immediately what he means, and if you start getting all anal about definitions instead of just answering the question, you're just dodging it. But just to humor your obviously feigned confusion about what the question means, first of all the question is almost invariably phrased in a human context, and secondly, it virtually always means, "After I die, will my consciousness continue in some way?"
At least IICV seems to have understood the question when he rephrased it as "does your 'you'-ness continue after your brain ceases to function?" But, having managed to get past the silly hair-slitting on that question, we haven't progressed from my original point of contention, which is "how do you know?" Both you and IICV state without any doubt that there is no life after death. You turn to dust, and that's that. But, once again, your own certitude on that is not based on reason. It's based on your own personal religion (which I'm guessing is atheism). Like I said to IICV, atheism is a religion of sor
No idea how that got posted as AC. I was logged in when I started. I guess I must have accidentally checked the "Post Anonymously" box. Either that, or it took me so long to write that long-winded monologue that my session expired.
No, but I think it's a safe assumption that cocaine addiction is light years away from religion in terms of depth and complexity, as well as its overall effect on mankind and the course of history.
So if your point is merely that I'm not qualified to talk about the psychological effects of cocaine addiction, then okay, I'll grant you that. However, I stand by my assertion that something as deep and complex as religion cannot be adequately modeled by analogy to something as relatively mundane as drug addiction.
Why is the burden on me to provide rigorous definitions, when you're the one claiming to have all the answers? You show me the proofs, and I'll be happy to go along with your definitions, assuming you haven't merely selectively chosen your definitions to make the questions easy to answer, thus diluting your answers down to meaningless tautologies.
But let's not get bogged down in your imaginary proofs, because that misses the point of me asking for proofs in the first place, which is that your answers are completely speculative. Maybe you're convinced of them, and maybe they help you sleep better at night, but you can't possibly be so arrogant as to think that you've somehow solved all of life's eternal mysteries, and that you can explain them all in two lines of text. Then again, maybe you are that arrogant.
Either way, your answers don't amount to a pile of monkey dung, and your cocky assertion that "The only reason why these questions weigh on [me] is because [I] don't want the answers" is nothing more than moronic trolling.
Thanks for the brilliant analysis. Sheesh, where have you been all my life? All this time, I was thinking those were actually difficult questions, but little did I know some super-genius who goes by "IICV" on Slashdot had them all figured out. Who knew?
If you really feel the answers are that easy, then hey I'm glad for you. But don't confuse your own certitude with actual certainty, unless you're prepared to show me rigorous proofs of all of those answers.
Thanks for the dazzling display of pedantry, but I wasn't looking for some Slashdot know-it-all to answer those questions for me. Although, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone on Slashdot completely missed my point. Those questions, and many others like them, are all but impossible to answer with any credible degree of certainty, your own genius answers notwithstanding. Moreover, those are the kinds of questions that we each must ultimately answer for ourselves, no matter how many times, or by whom they have been answered before. I assure you I don't need the help of some wise-cracking pedant on Slashdot to answer them for me. Besides which, you've completely ignored the context in which they were posed, and all the other questions that discussion brings up, namely, "How does an individual's struggle to answer those questions relate to his/her affinity (or lack thereof) for religion?"
I apologize if I misunderstood your point. It seemed that you were making a statement about rationalism itself, rather than simply pointing out that most of us tend to mis-apply it.
It seems we're actually not very far apart in our assessments. The only part of your original post that I objected to was, again, that you seemed to be suggesting that rationalism itself was merely a cover. As for the rest, I agree completely.
Yes, I realized all those implications when I wrote the post, but I didn't think it would be particularly useful or productive to dive into a full blown discussion of epistemology. Especially since I don't think that the OP himself (as I alluded to at the beginning of the 3rd paragraph) really believes that all truth is relative.
You miss my point entirely.
Obviously, as an agnostic, I don't believe that religion answers those questions sufficiently. But it's not relevant whether *I* think it does. We're discussing why so many other people cling so tightly to religion, and my assertion is simply that religion does sufficiently answer those questions, in the minds of billions of its followers.
You're just tilting at windmills, trying to frame the discussion of other peoples' religious beliefs within the confines of your own beliefs. Religious people don't give a rat's ass if c6gunner on Slashdot thinks that their religion adequately addresses those questions. It all makes sense to them, and to them, that's good enough.
You know, I keep hearing that argument, and it's just mind-boggling to me that any intelligent individual could say something so stupid. It's like claiming that abolishing cocaine would cause large tracts of the population to disappear, since cocaine is the the only thing that keeps them going.
I'm not saying I buy the GP's argument (at least not completely), but I think you vastly underestimate how important religion is to some people. The cocaine=religion analogy doesn't really stand up very well under scrutiny. And I'm not merely making the obvious observation that all analogies are flawed and fall apart if you examine them closely enough - I'm saying this one is worse than most.
Yes, many people who are addicted to cocaine may actually feel that they cannot live without the drug. But religion is not merely a drug - it is intertwined with all of the most important unanswerable questions in life. Does life have purpose? Is there such a thing as The Truth? Is there life after death? Will I see my lost loved ones again someday? Is there justice in this world? Will good ultimately prevail over evil? Why must there be so much suffering?
As an agnostic, I am used to having my religious friends and family members say that I'm just taking the easy way out. To them, no God means no responsibility, no sense of duty, no moral quandaries, no church on Sunday, etc, etc. However, as I'm sure many agnostics can tell you, being an agnostic is anything but easy. All of those Big Unanswerable Questions weigh heavily on you - much more so than for religious people who've found all of those questions conveniently answered by their religion of choice. Meanwhile, I've spent nearly my entire life being constantly tormented by those questions. Some mornings, I find it excruciatingly difficult to drag myself out of bed, because I'm desperately trying to figure out "What the fuck is the point of all this?" Don't confuse this with depression. I am not merely depressed. In fact, most days, I don't feel depressed at all. I enjoy life. But those questions are always there, always eating away at me, making it difficult to function at times.
I'm not trying to sound "deep" or compare myself to philosophers like Tolstoy who were nearly driven mad by those questions. I'm merely observing that life is difficult enough already without the struggle to find meaning. With that struggle, life can be unbearable at times. And for a lot of people, religion is the only thing that can fill that void and make life worth living, or at least seem to be so. I get the whole "religion is just a crutch for weak minds" thing. I really do. I felt that way in my early 20's. But I'm in my late 30's now, and all those questions have been a heavy burden on me in the intervening years. So although I'm still as much of an agnostic as I ever was, much of my arrogance has been replaced with understanding. My agnosticism is no longer something that makes me feel superior. In many ways, I actually envy my religious friends, and if I could force myself to believe in God, I probably would. Don't think I haven't tried - numerous times. I'm just not wired for faith, it seems.
Anyway, the point is, given how deeply intertwined religion is with those things which weigh most heavily on the human mind (or "soul", if you believe there is one), I don't think the cocaine analogy, nor the implied addiction model of religious belief, even come close to explaining why people adhere so steadfastly to religion. It's a LOT deeper and a LOT more complicated than you give it credit for.