Again, it is common that in pursuing war for ethnic, economic, ideological or strategic reasons, secular authorities will emphasise religious differences to try and dehumanise the enemy. Examples include Iran/Iraq war, the most recent US/UK invasion of Iraq, Northern Ireland, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, military action against indigenous groups in Kalimantan and Aceh by government sponsored "muslim" militia.
You are trying to evade the reality for the majority by pointing out the cynicism of the minority. I have some experience in Northern Ireland and I can tell you that without religion as a recruitment device on both sides there would have been no Troubles. It is true to say that the driving forces for he leadership/intelligentsia were much more complex, but the raw fuel that the foot-soldiers and their baggage trains responded to, and believe, is religion. It is at the heart of the ethnic clash.
But again, what you really meant is "Religions other than my own [are] a menal illness and we as a species would be better off if it was treated as such.".
No, I don't. I mean all religions. Any belief system based on dogma is bad, but religious systems where that dogma is harnessed to an organisational structure is basically the greatest affliction we as a species suffer from.
Simply telling someone who claims invisible creatures control our destiny that they should get help is not a religion.
Both are verbal statements of freedom of expression + in the second case: freedom of speech.
The first is a moral position, the second is raving caused by mental illness. As I said, you have the right to refuse treatment, but don't give me that "religion is a human right" shit. We erradicated smallpox; we should try to do the same with religion, not give it super-double-special inalienable right status.
Then I assume that you know it isn't going to war for god. And God had nothing to do with why the government was pisses at them..
I was suggesting that the government counts some "fighting for god" as acceptable, not that some "fighting for god" is in reality a reasonable thing to do.
In what way was objecting to murder and torture by the state comparable to saying invisible things are watching us all the time and judging what we do according to ancient codes of practice for long dead tribespeople?
How can you even begin to suggest a parity between actual real suffering in the real world and fantasists raving about life after death and being rewarded with 72 virgins for blowing women and children up, or claiming that actual living people should be thrown off their land because of a 3000-year-old myth?
In what way is religious delusion a human right while many less harmful mental problems are routinely treated with medication?
Basically, you're telling me that I have no human right to think any way except your way.
You have the right to be ill. You have the right to refuse treatment. Noisily.
But believing that invisible beings are ordering your life and planning to punish you if you don't do what they want is not something I feel should be treated in the same was as feedom of assembly or speech.
I have to give you credit for saying it in a postmodern world.
Don't look at this as people going to "work or war" for god, look at it as people going to join the enemy side of a force at war with you.
That force is at war with me only because of my government's actions. Radical Islam is the bastard offspring of decades of American policy in the Middle East to which my (UK) government has constantly cleved to in a pathetic attempt to remain a major player on the world stage (ie, by being the Big Boy's henchman). So it's hard to get too worked up about a bunch of bearded ladies who have been worked up by propaganda which, really, has quite a lot of truth to it.
Plus, I live in Northern Ireland and I've been blown up and I've had friends and relatives killed by actual terrorists and I know that locking people up on such minor issues is actually counter-productive in the long run; you're just making a hydra for yourself.
Christians aren't trying to militarily solve the issue of religious oppression.
What about Darfur? I know lots of people like to label conflicts as "ethnic" in direct contrast to "religious" but I don't see how religion can be so easily separated out from enthnicity unless you mean the word to be synonymous with "racial". The same applies to your argument about Israel.
I'm of the view that freedom of religion (as guaranteed by the UN Convention on Human Rights) means also accepting that others will have a view that differs from my own.
Supporting freedom of religion is like supporting freedom of cholera. Religion is a menal illness and we as a species would be better off if it was treated as such.
It's not a human right - it's a human tragedy. And these idiots illustrate the point well. They appear to have wanted, or at least considered, throwing away their lives based on some mediaeval gibberish they were force fed as children; they've been mentally abused as kids - what bloody "right" is worth defending there?
These guys were caught because one of them wrote a "bye, I'm going to fight for Allah" note to his parents. He promised to engage in conventional warfare (as opposed to domestic terrorism).
Well, not to support religious nutters of any persuasion, but if he had written "I'm off to fight for Christ, but only in conventional warfare somewhere Christians are being oppressed and killed" would anybody even bat an eyelid? Even less so: if they'd said they were going to Israel to fight for the preservation of the Jewish homeland?
Probably the best solution would be to put anyone espousing religious ideas into a mental hospital until they get better.
First, I doubt the summary. Hubble was launched thirty years after the discussed satellite. I'm supposed to believe that the technology for optics, electronics, gyroscopes, etc didn't improve between 1965 and 1995? It could hardly have been a "Hubble pointed at Earth".
Actually, I remember that the week Hubble was launched (after many, many delays), it was described as "Basically an out-of-date spy satellite pointed the wrong way" by a scientist on the news. Obviously, though, Hubble has been upgraded since launch.
I held a clearance in the USAF (1971-1975) and saw stuff that is still classified.
The first LotR film came out in 2001. What's have you been doing for the last seven (7) years?
Probably asking politely. Lawyers can spin out "Let's have a meeting" for a long, long time.
TWW
Re:This is actually untrue
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
Real world businesses know that they have to keep both customers and suppliers happy
In chess terms, you are not looking enough plys ahead. In the real world all businesses are striving to eliminate all competition so that they can then treat suppliers and customers as cash-cows to be milked dry. Before you reach that blessed state, of course, you may need to pay lip-service to ethics and customer-relations but ethics that are forced on you are not really ethics, they're either regulation or market-forces. A real business attempts to subvert the former and eliminate the latter.
It seems to me that the essential problem is that the state does not own the hospitals, so you have to get middle-men (the insurance companies) involved. They will then do what they do best - fleece both sides. So the hospitals have to be nationalised first to make this work. That's NEVER going to happen, so the US will never have a decent heath-care system.
That's really what you think about the people that administer a giant network used by millions of people - that they're just dumb?
Actually, I was referring to MS as a whole. A group of people who constantly churn out bad, buggy, insecure software for decades is dumb. I don't know how you could look at it any other way. It's also not surprising given that only second-rate programmers generally have so little pride as to want to work for such an organisation.
why aren't you doing something more successful than they are?
I am. Pretty well by definition, not working for an organisation like MS is a success if you're feeding yourself and paying the mortgage/rent. Having to work for such a shabby outfit in order to do those things is a failure.
I have to wonder how in the world they thought this wasn't going to come out? Or they just didn't care?
It's a tough call: most of their staff are so dumb that they might have thought they could get away with it, but at the same time the management really don't care. Let's say "both" and leave it at that.
I came here for a goddamned auction, not to see some pathetic imitation of an ordinary High Street. It drives me up the wall when I search for something and get back 50 items all at the same price, all "Buy it Now" only, and almost all from the same bloody seller in Hong Kong.
THAT'S why I stopped using Ebay, not some stupid feedback issue.
Slashdot Mirror
You: "My car tells me what to do. And if I don't do it, it says that I will have to work in the Ford factory forever after I die."
Me: "You need to get help for that."
You: "Bolshevist!"
I mean, at least I can see your bloody car!
TWW
You are trying to evade the reality for the majority by pointing out the cynicism of the minority. I have some experience in Northern Ireland and I can tell you that without religion as a recruitment device on both sides there would have been no Troubles. It is true to say that the driving forces for he leadership/intelligentsia were much more complex, but the raw fuel that the foot-soldiers and their baggage trains responded to, and believe, is religion. It is at the heart of the ethnic clash.
But again, what you really meant is "Religions other than my own [are] a menal illness and we as a species would be better off if it was treated as such.".
No, I don't. I mean all religions. Any belief system based on dogma is bad, but religious systems where that dogma is harnessed to an organisational structure is basically the greatest affliction we as a species suffer from.
Simply telling someone who claims invisible creatures control our destiny that they should get help is not a religion.
TWW
The first is a moral position, the second is raving caused by mental illness. As I said, you have the right to refuse treatment, but don't give me that "religion is a human right" shit. We erradicated smallpox; we should try to do the same with religion, not give it super-double-special inalienable right status.
TWW
I was suggesting that the government counts some "fighting for god" as acceptable, not that some "fighting for god" is in reality a reasonable thing to do.
TWW
I think I agree with almost everything in your post. Which is more than I did with my own original post!
In what way was objecting to murder and torture by the state comparable to saying invisible things are watching us all the time and judging what we do according to ancient codes of practice for long dead tribespeople?
How can you even begin to suggest a parity between actual real suffering in the real world and fantasists raving about life after death and being rewarded with 72 virgins for blowing women and children up, or claiming that actual living people should be thrown off their land because of a 3000-year-old myth?
In what way is religious delusion a human right while many less harmful mental problems are routinely treated with medication?
TWW
You have the right to be ill. You have the right to refuse treatment. Noisily.
But believing that invisible beings are ordering your life and planning to punish you if you don't do what they want is not something I feel should be treated in the same was as feedom of assembly or speech.
I have to give you credit for saying it in a postmodern world.
Thank you.
TWW
That force is at war with me only because of my government's actions. Radical Islam is the bastard offspring of decades of American policy in the Middle East to which my (UK) government has constantly cleved to in a pathetic attempt to remain a major player on the world stage (ie, by being the Big Boy's henchman). So it's hard to get too worked up about a bunch of bearded ladies who have been worked up by propaganda which, really, has quite a lot of truth to it.
Plus, I live in Northern Ireland and I've been blown up and I've had friends and relatives killed by actual terrorists and I know that locking people up on such minor issues is actually counter-productive in the long run; you're just making a hydra for yourself.
TWW
What about Darfur? I know lots of people like to label conflicts as "ethnic" in direct contrast to "religious" but I don't see how religion can be so easily separated out from enthnicity unless you mean the word to be synonymous with "racial". The same applies to your argument about Israel.
I'm of the view that freedom of religion (as guaranteed by the UN Convention on Human Rights) means also accepting that others will have a view that differs from my own.
Supporting freedom of religion is like supporting freedom of cholera. Religion is a menal illness and we as a species would be better off if it was treated as such.
It's not a human right - it's a human tragedy. And these idiots illustrate the point well. They appear to have wanted, or at least considered, throwing away their lives based on some mediaeval gibberish they were force fed as children; they've been mentally abused as kids - what bloody "right" is worth defending there?
TWW
Well, not to support religious nutters of any persuasion, but if he had written "I'm off to fight for Christ, but only in conventional warfare somewhere Christians are being oppressed and killed" would anybody even bat an eyelid? Even less so: if they'd said they were going to Israel to fight for the preservation of the Jewish homeland?
Probably the best solution would be to put anyone espousing religious ideas into a mental hospital until they get better.
TWW
You are a moron.
TWW
That's got to hurt.
Actually, I remember that the week Hubble was launched (after many, many delays), it was described as "Basically an out-of-date spy satellite pointed the wrong way" by a scientist on the news. Obviously, though, Hubble has been upgraded since launch.
I held a clearance in the USAF (1971-1975) and saw stuff that is still classified.
That's what they told you!
TWW
Probably asking politely. Lawyers can spin out "Let's have a meeting" for a long, long time.
TWW
In chess terms, you are not looking enough plys ahead. In the real world all businesses are striving to eliminate all competition so that they can then treat suppliers and customers as cash-cows to be milked dry. Before you reach that blessed state, of course, you may need to pay lip-service to ethics and customer-relations but ethics that are forced on you are not really ethics, they're either regulation or market-forces. A real business attempts to subvert the former and eliminate the latter.
TWW
TWW
I wouldn't be that amazed, but at least I can fix those I do know about. With closed-source I can't fix any of 'em.
TWW
Although, apparently, I can't handle entering text on /.!
TWW
That's why I use an open-source OS. I can fix it when it breaks.
TWW
TWW
TWW
Actually, I was referring to MS as a whole. A group of people who constantly churn out bad, buggy, insecure software for decades is dumb. I don't know how you could look at it any other way. It's also not surprising given that only second-rate programmers generally have so little pride as to want to work for such an organisation.
why aren't you doing something more successful than they are?
I am. Pretty well by definition, not working for an organisation like MS is a success if you're feeding yourself and paying the mortgage/rent. Having to work for such a shabby outfit in order to do those things is a failure.
TWW
It's a tough call: most of their staff are so dumb that they might have thought they could get away with it, but at the same time the management really don't care. Let's say "both" and leave it at that.
TWW
When did that come in?
THAT'S why I stopped using Ebay, not some stupid feedback issue.
TWW