Of course athiests make a claim. Atheists claim the non-existence of anything but the mundane, physical world.
I always get a good laugh when people describe the physical world as "mundane". How little you grasp about the universe while presuming to make pronouncements about what is beyond it! There is nothing mundane about the physical world. It is full of wonders beside which the petty geegaws of superstitious anthrpomorphic wish-fulfilment and the dowdy veils of "spirituality" can not hold the dimmest of candles. How spiritually bankrupt is the person who lives within the vaults of Earth's skies and says "there must be something else"? How much more do you want? Is the cheetah too slow for you? The Octopus too obvious? Are the stars dull to your eyes? Are the nebula not colourful enough for you? Is love so jaded and hate so cold that you must grovel in the dirt to imaginary friends and plead for more, more, ever more diversions and amusements? How dare you compare your pathetic third-rate adolescent masturbatory fantasies to the grandeur of the real thing!
Get out. Get out and fucking well stay out, you miserable, unhappy, discontented buffoon.
In the example you used, you'll know not to give up your $1,000 before justifying it by measuring the probability that his offer is sincere.
Er, that was my point.
The only provable truth about reality is that we experience. Therefore, the rational approach to improving reality is to alter your experience by altering your conception of reality to a form idealized to the deepest aspect of yourself.
Love yourself and you'll be happier, in other words. I don't know why you want to complicate the idea with silly notions about "improving reality" when you mean "change your perception of reality".
Believing exclusively in the current system of physical theory and shutting out all other possibilities is the worst kind of religious fundamentalism.
There you go again: asking for evidence is not "shutting out all other possibilities". Dogma is blind to evidence; science is not. Physical theory is there because people listened to evidence and possibilities. Otherwise we'd all still be worshipping lightning and calling 40-year-olds "elders".
Would you argue that on that basis there's no probability of anything existence outside of Mario's world? No, you wouldn't, because your reason applied to intuition tells you otherwise.
Actually, I wouldn't because of my knowledge, experience, and special privilege of being outside of Mario's world. None of these apply to the question of the existance of God, at least they don't for me.
You want me to imagine a fantasy world where all conjectures are treated equally. Well, screw that. They are not and can not be.
I am not going to accept random assertions with no evidence and nor should you. If someone comes to the door and says you have won $1,000,000,000 put you need to give him $1,000 before he can release the funds you will tell them to prove it or fuck off. Quite rightly. No amount of logic can be applied to that situation which would prove whether they are telling the truth or not. Probability and experience suggest that the wisest course is to ask them to provide the proof since logic is unable to. The athiest is in the same situation. A wildly astounding claim, worth far more than $1,000,000,000 has been made but nothing has been produced to back it up. Logic is mute as to the truth or falsity of the claim, so the athiest asks the theist to demonstrate it. When the proof is not forthcoming the rational response is "I don't believe you; stop wastng my time."
Why you've decided to bring Capt. Kirk into this is quite frankly bizarre and somewhat amusing.
I'm sorry if that was too advanced for you; I'll try again:
Your argument is that not believing that a character in a story (God/bible) is real requires the same level of faith as believing they are real. That is your actual argument which you suggest shows that atheism and theism are equivilent.
I pointed out that if that is your stance, then unless there is some objective gold-standard for judging stories then the same must be true of Captain Kirk. You dismiss this with an attempt at derision instead of argument because it cuts the heart out of your proposition.
Any child over 10 or so can see that for Captain Kirk to be real would require an enormous leap of faith compared to not believing. You are relying on a cultural bias in order to make the same argument applied to God seem more reasonable than it really is. That same cultural bias is why the same child might struggle with the same issue applied to God; they have been taught their belief from before they had the facilities to judge the likelyhood of it being true.
Anyone from completely outside your culture would have no way of determining which story (Kirk/God) is more reasonable, for the simple reason that neither is intrinsically more reasonable and it is just as ridiculous in both cases to say that belief/unbelief are totally equivilent demonstrations of faith.
Theists make an extraordinary claim about the world. Atheists do not make that claim; it is not their responsibility to demonstrate it to be true, in exactly the same way that the Trekie who wants to claim that Kirk is real has the responsibility to demonstrate evidence for such an amazing claim before any reasonable person accepts it.
I think it is much more interesting, and fruitful, to discuss whether the Hebrew God is a good God; whether he exists then becomes interesting,
I agree insofar as it is also interesting to discuss whether Kirk was a good captain or not. It's fun, sure. And there is value to be had in discussing why we think the actions of either character are good or bad. But these discussions can be had about any character in any book without having to make a surreal leap into believing that the characters are real.
Morality comes from us, and we write the stories to support that view. Or not, in the case of atheists. Either way, the gods/starship captains are only illustrations of those moral stances, not the founts of them.
As it happens, I am more of a militant atheist: I believe that it does not matter, in the moral sense, if god(s) exist. Whether they do or not does not excuse us from the responsibility of forming and making moral decisions, nor would it give them the right to impose them. This is a belief, but one born out of a weariness of watching theists debate endless nuances of theology (the study of what God meant to say) and translations of what are clearly just folk stories. Why bother? Good is good and bad is bad; what difference would a referee make? It's not like anyone who disagreed would listen to him/her/it anyway. People are like that.
Gods simply have no function, which is the big reason why I have not been moved to believe any of these stories, and also why I don't think it matters if they exist, really. It's just one big appeal to authority, which is no basis for a moral framework, or any other sort of important matter either.
What logic CAN prove is that there's such a thing as experience.
And experience tells us that there is no reason to invoke giant beardy men in the sky to explain the world around us. This is nothing to do with logic and everything to do with reason. Logic would in fact support your position that athiesm is no "better" than theism. Reasonableness, however takes account of probability. Is it a logical possibility that there are 10 purple crows in my garden as I type this? Yes. Is it reasonable to believe you if you tell me that was in fact the case, but they've all flown off now? No.
Sorry, material guy, but your physical world isn't very real, much less the only thing in existence.
Ultimately, you are, by definition of atheism. Otherwise you are an agnostic.
Here's the difference:
You:I am from Mars and am actually three times taller than I look.
Agnostic: Well, maybe; there may be something I'm missing. I'll not bother having an opinion either way.
Athiest: Prove it. No? Right, fuck off and don't come back 'till you can back it up.
Does Love, Hate, etc. exist?
They do for me; they are emotions internal to me and are thus subjective.
Really? Prove it
I can't prove it to you any more than I can prove that I like the colour blue.
If I asked you the question "do you hate joe smith?" or "do you not hate joe smith?" would you be able to formally prove such things?
No; the answer is subjective.
If you believe in love or hate, emperically prove it exists and I will believe (sarcasm)
I don't care if you believe they exist. Maybe they don't for you; how would I know? I really don't see where you're going with this.
Problem is that you are the one spewing infantile rhetoric based on your own beliefs, those which you say you cannot prove (while at the same time deriding others for not proving it).
Love, hate, etc. are things which we can all decide if we feel for ourselves and are built into us (or at least, me). Deities are not the same thing at all since, apart from anything else, they are supposed to have an external existance which is not a matter of opinion. But they are nowhere to be seen. Great things are claimed for them but there is no evidence of their actions anywhere. I can feel love, hate, hunger, tiredness, envy for myself; they are not things I need proved to me and the claim that you feel them too is not radical or strange. Invisible giants that create things out of thin air are radical and strange and do need more than your bland assurances that they do in fact exist. And saying so is not an act of faith any more than darkness is a type of black light.
You're implying there is no God because no one can provide you proof.
Tell me what is the difference in not believing in God and not believing in Captain Kirk? Do you maintain your position that not believing in Kirk is an act of faith exactly equivalent to believing in Jesus' divinty, for example?
If you do maintain the position that not believing that a character in a popular story is real is an act of faith whether the character is Jesus, Cpt. Kirk, or Thor, then you are at least being consistant, if totally unconvincing and irrational.
If you are able to point to some intrinsic difference between God, Jesus, Kirk, Thor, Xenu, or Prester John that would enable a person ignorant of your culture to discern which ones are not real then you may at least have some sort of real argument.
In fact, of course, you are relying on the culture in which you are living to lend gravitas to one particular story which, knowingly or not, you are assuming to be more believeable than the others. Having started from that position you are incapable of seeing that the assumptions of your culture are just that - assumptions - and then measure everything only in relation to them. You are a blind man trying to tell the world that sight is just a particular form of blindness which is no better or worse than your own.
Even though I've made no statement as to whether I believe in God or not.
Whether you believe in god(s) or not has no bearing on the fatuousness of your argument that belief and non-belief of claims which are both extrodinary and contradictory are both equally faith-based positions.
If we were born with a belief in God then there would be no religions without God. It is patently obvious that babies are taught religion, not vice versa. You can take the opposite position for the purposes of an infantile rhetorical device but that's your problem, not mine.
I can't prove there is a God. I can't prove there isn't one. Neither can you.
I'm not trying to. I have no reason to think that gods exists, just as I have no reason to think that three-headed monkeys exist. In neither case is it a position of faith; if you do believe in three-headed monkeys or gods then bring me one and I will happily believe; but it's up to you, not me.
Theists can't prove there is a God, atheists can't prove there isn't a God.
We don't have to. All humans are born without a belief in a God; it is up to theists to move us from that position. It is not a form of belief to show that someone else has failed to prove their argument.
And atheism is dry and meaningless and unfulfilling.
Your forgot "and correct".
Life means what you make it mean, and if it's unfulfilling then it's your fault, not the universe's; it's not here for your entertainment, although it is very entertaining if you stop looking for magic pixies and enjoy what's actually there. It's far more amazing than silly folk stories or (intentionally) bad science-fiction stories invented to make money out of fools.
Trade is a 2-way negotiation. We don't have to accept all their imports if we don't like their IP treatment.
That only works up to the point where so much of your industry has withered away that your economy can't cope with the results of the embargo that results. I think the US, and much of Europe, has passed that point.
I totally agree on the free-trade/free-market dogma: it's based on as much reality as communism was, ie none at all.
how would you react to a website where anyone (including potential employers) could search for you and see what your average bug count per 100 lines of code was?
Or, better yet, what people who don't like you claim that your bug count per 100 lines is. Great idea.
no matter how much you disagree with someone's opinions, you just don't marginalise and ridicule his death because of it.
Well, first of all you're wrong in the general sense: I'm happy to celebrate the death of any number of bigots and racists, for example. Secondly, we're not talking, in this case, about mere "opinions". Valenti changed the world and he used corrupt methods to do so (getting a judge who was a personal friend is normally regarded as a reason for mistrial) and lied to elected members of government in order to have his "opinion" enshrined and backed by the weight of the law qhile marginalising the opinions of the supposed democratic electorate, who now have to live with this bastard's mess.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Pity it didn't happen sooner.
Whether that method involves a series of gears, a paintbrush's movement on canvas, or some lines of code isn't really relevant, generally.
"Some lines of code" is like saying "using engineering". Physical method patents are far more tightly restricted than that and copyright effectively gives the same level of protection in the world of software, and that is all that is needed or desirable.
It seems increasingly clear to me that the reason there is a gulf between Einstein and QM, for example in the question of General Relativity Vs QED, is that Einstein was right and QM is, somewhere, somehow, deeply wrong. Any theory which can not explain existance without recource to an observer is obviously screwed since it leads to infinate regression (who observed the first observer sort of stuff) and ultimately explains nothing at all.
There sure are a lot of things QED predicts accurately (to an astounding precision) but previous success does not mean we just have to swallow everything that comes out of the field unquestionly, and this result is clearly wrong. If the scientists involved can't see that it's wrong, well, that's their problem.
People bitch about software patents, but in reality they are not that different from any other patents.
Or, to put it another way, you have no idea what you're talking about. Software patents are totally different from normal patents because they protect ideas instead of implimentations. This is inevitable since software is almost always translated from a source language, which is often a trade secret. If software patents were the same as normal ones it would be the details of this source code which is protected (as it is by copyright law already). Allowing patents on software extends the protection to any implimentation in any language and often with any algorithm. This is vastly more protection than a normal patent which covers only one, clearly defined, method and effectively allows a software patent to lock up an entire idea or concept.
Additionally, this patent covers something which is as old as the hills. Tabs for organising pages are almost as old as paper itself. Putting that onto a computer simulation of paper is not something that should be patentable at all.
where did this dumbass manage to find a lawyer that is also big enough of a dumbass to think this might actually be a success?
As far as a lawyer is concerned, if he's paying then that's all that matters. Saying you found a lawyer who's prepared to argue your case is like saying you found a prostitute prepared to have sex with you.
"The method separates content, form, and function of the computer application so that each may be accessed or modified separately. The method includes creating arbitrary objects, managing the arbitrary objects throughout their life cycle in an object library, and deploying the arbitrary objects in a design framework for use in complex computer applications."
Sounds like Smalltalk and a serialised Model View Controller to me. Using XML for the resource file isn't exactly rocket science either since that's the sort of thing XML was designed for.
Slashdot Mirror
I always get a good laugh when people describe the physical world as "mundane". How little you grasp about the universe while presuming to make pronouncements about what is beyond it! There is nothing mundane about the physical world. It is full of wonders beside which the petty geegaws of superstitious anthrpomorphic wish-fulfilment and the dowdy veils of "spirituality" can not hold the dimmest of candles. How spiritually bankrupt is the person who lives within the vaults of Earth's skies and says "there must be something else"? How much more do you want? Is the cheetah too slow for you? The Octopus too obvious? Are the stars dull to your eyes? Are the nebula not colourful enough for you? Is love so jaded and hate so cold that you must grovel in the dirt to imaginary friends and plead for more, more, ever more diversions and amusements? How dare you compare your pathetic third-rate adolescent masturbatory fantasies to the grandeur of the real thing!
Get out. Get out and fucking well stay out, you miserable, unhappy, discontented buffoon.
Reality beats fantasy every time.
TWW
Er, that was my point.
The only provable truth about reality is that we experience. Therefore, the rational approach to improving reality is to alter your experience by altering your conception of reality to a form idealized to the deepest aspect of yourself.
Love yourself and you'll be happier, in other words. I don't know why you want to complicate the idea with silly notions about "improving reality" when you mean "change your perception of reality".
Believing exclusively in the current system of physical theory and shutting out all other possibilities is the worst kind of religious fundamentalism.
There you go again: asking for evidence is not "shutting out all other possibilities". Dogma is blind to evidence; science is not. Physical theory is there because people listened to evidence and possibilities. Otherwise we'd all still be worshipping lightning and calling 40-year-olds "elders".
TWW
Would you argue that on that basis there's no probability of anything existence outside of Mario's world? No, you wouldn't, because your reason applied to intuition tells you otherwise.
Actually, I wouldn't because of my knowledge, experience, and special privilege of being outside of Mario's world. None of these apply to the question of the existance of God, at least they don't for me.
You want me to imagine a fantasy world where all conjectures are treated equally. Well, screw that. They are not and can not be.
I am not going to accept random assertions with no evidence and nor should you. If someone comes to the door and says you have won $1,000,000,000 put you need to give him $1,000 before he can release the funds you will tell them to prove it or fuck off. Quite rightly. No amount of logic can be applied to that situation which would prove whether they are telling the truth or not. Probability and experience suggest that the wisest course is to ask them to provide the proof since logic is unable to. The athiest is in the same situation. A wildly astounding claim, worth far more than $1,000,000,000 has been made but nothing has been produced to back it up. Logic is mute as to the truth or falsity of the claim, so the athiest asks the theist to demonstrate it. When the proof is not forthcoming the rational response is "I don't believe you; stop wastng my time."
TWW
What?
Why you've decided to bring Capt. Kirk into this is quite frankly bizarre and somewhat amusing.
I'm sorry if that was too advanced for you; I'll try again:
Your argument is that not believing that a character in a story (God/bible) is real requires the same level of faith as believing they are real. That is your actual argument which you suggest shows that atheism and theism are equivilent.
I pointed out that if that is your stance, then unless there is some objective gold-standard for judging stories then the same must be true of Captain Kirk. You dismiss this with an attempt at derision instead of argument because it cuts the heart out of your proposition.
Any child over 10 or so can see that for Captain Kirk to be real would require an enormous leap of faith compared to not believing. You are relying on a cultural bias in order to make the same argument applied to God seem more reasonable than it really is. That same cultural bias is why the same child might struggle with the same issue applied to God; they have been taught their belief from before they had the facilities to judge the likelyhood of it being true.
Anyone from completely outside your culture would have no way of determining which story (Kirk/God) is more reasonable, for the simple reason that neither is intrinsically more reasonable and it is just as ridiculous in both cases to say that belief/unbelief are totally equivilent demonstrations of faith.
Theists make an extraordinary claim about the world. Atheists do not make that claim; it is not their responsibility to demonstrate it to be true, in exactly the same way that the Trekie who wants to claim that Kirk is real has the responsibility to demonstrate evidence for such an amazing claim before any reasonable person accepts it.
TWW
I agree insofar as it is also interesting to discuss whether Kirk was a good captain or not. It's fun, sure. And there is value to be had in discussing why we think the actions of either character are good or bad. But these discussions can be had about any character in any book without having to make a surreal leap into believing that the characters are real.
Morality comes from us, and we write the stories to support that view. Or not, in the case of atheists. Either way, the gods/starship captains are only illustrations of those moral stances, not the founts of them.
As it happens, I am more of a militant atheist: I believe that it does not matter, in the moral sense, if god(s) exist. Whether they do or not does not excuse us from the responsibility of forming and making moral decisions, nor would it give them the right to impose them. This is a belief, but one born out of a weariness of watching theists debate endless nuances of theology (the study of what God meant to say) and translations of what are clearly just folk stories. Why bother? Good is good and bad is bad; what difference would a referee make? It's not like anyone who disagreed would listen to him/her/it anyway. People are like that.
Gods simply have no function, which is the big reason why I have not been moved to believe any of these stories, and also why I don't think it matters if they exist, really. It's just one big appeal to authority, which is no basis for a moral framework, or any other sort of important matter either.
TWW
And experience tells us that there is no reason to invoke giant beardy men in the sky to explain the world around us. This is nothing to do with logic and everything to do with reason. Logic would in fact support your position that athiesm is no "better" than theism. Reasonableness, however takes account of probability. Is it a logical possibility that there are 10 purple crows in my garden as I type this? Yes. Is it reasonable to believe you if you tell me that was in fact the case, but they've all flown off now? No.
Sorry, material guy, but your physical world isn't very real, much less the only thing in existence.
Yes, quite. How is Santa?
TWW
Here's the difference:
You:I am from Mars and am actually three times taller than I look.
Agnostic: Well, maybe; there may be something I'm missing. I'll not bother having an opinion either way.
Athiest: Prove it. No? Right, fuck off and don't come back 'till you can back it up.
Does Love, Hate, etc. exist?
They do for me; they are emotions internal to me and are thus subjective.
Really? Prove it
I can't prove it to you any more than I can prove that I like the colour blue.
If I asked you the question "do you hate joe smith?" or "do you not hate joe smith?" would you be able to formally prove such things?
No; the answer is subjective.
If you believe in love or hate, emperically prove it exists and I will believe (sarcasm)
I don't care if you believe they exist. Maybe they don't for you; how would I know? I really don't see where you're going with this.
Problem is that you are the one spewing infantile rhetoric based on your own beliefs, those which you say you cannot prove (while at the same time deriding others for not proving it).
Love, hate, etc. are things which we can all decide if we feel for ourselves and are built into us (or at least, me). Deities are not the same thing at all since, apart from anything else, they are supposed to have an external existance which is not a matter of opinion. But they are nowhere to be seen. Great things are claimed for them but there is no evidence of their actions anywhere. I can feel love, hate, hunger, tiredness, envy for myself; they are not things I need proved to me and the claim that you feel them too is not radical or strange. Invisible giants that create things out of thin air are radical and strange and do need more than your bland assurances that they do in fact exist. And saying so is not an act of faith any more than darkness is a type of black light.
TWW
Tell me what is the difference in not believing in God and not believing in Captain Kirk? Do you maintain your position that not believing in Kirk is an act of faith exactly equivalent to believing in Jesus' divinty, for example?
If you do maintain the position that not believing that a character in a popular story is real is an act of faith whether the character is Jesus, Cpt. Kirk, or Thor, then you are at least being consistant, if totally unconvincing and irrational.
If you are able to point to some intrinsic difference between God, Jesus, Kirk, Thor, Xenu, or Prester John that would enable a person ignorant of your culture to discern which ones are not real then you may at least have some sort of real argument.
In fact, of course, you are relying on the culture in which you are living to lend gravitas to one particular story which, knowingly or not, you are assuming to be more believeable than the others. Having started from that position you are incapable of seeing that the assumptions of your culture are just that - assumptions - and then measure everything only in relation to them. You are a blind man trying to tell the world that sight is just a particular form of blindness which is no better or worse than your own.
Even though I've made no statement as to whether I believe in God or not.
Whether you believe in god(s) or not has no bearing on the fatuousness of your argument that belief and non-belief of claims which are both extrodinary and contradictory are both equally faith-based positions.
TWW
If we were born with a belief in God then there would be no religions without God. It is patently obvious that babies are taught religion, not vice versa. You can take the opposite position for the purposes of an infantile rhetorical device but that's your problem, not mine.
I can't prove there is a God. I can't prove there isn't one. Neither can you.
I'm not trying to. I have no reason to think that gods exists, just as I have no reason to think that three-headed monkeys exist. In neither case is it a position of faith; if you do believe in three-headed monkeys or gods then bring me one and I will happily believe; but it's up to you, not me.
TWW
We don't have to. All humans are born without a belief in a God; it is up to theists to move us from that position. It is not a form of belief to show that someone else has failed to prove their argument.
TWW
Your forgot "and correct".
Life means what you make it mean, and if it's unfulfilling then it's your fault, not the universe's; it's not here for your entertainment, although it is very entertaining if you stop looking for magic pixies and enjoy what's actually there. It's far more amazing than silly folk stories or (intentionally) bad science-fiction stories invented to make money out of fools.
TWW
TWW
Interestingly, that part was actually falsified by a clerk of the court who was in the pay of the RR barons.
Yes, but THEY can turn the screws as fast as they like and boycott you as soon as you show signs of causing trouble.
That only works up to the point where so much of your industry has withered away that your economy can't cope with the results of the embargo that results. I think the US, and much of Europe, has passed that point.
I totally agree on the free-trade/free-market dogma: it's based on as much reality as communism was, ie none at all.
TWW
Isn't this how at least some FORTH debuggers have worked for decades?
Or, better yet, what people who don't like you claim that your bug count per 100 lines is. Great idea.
TWW
Well, first of all you're wrong in the general sense: I'm happy to celebrate the death of any number of bigots and racists, for example. Secondly, we're not talking, in this case, about mere "opinions". Valenti changed the world and he used corrupt methods to do so (getting a judge who was a personal friend is normally regarded as a reason for mistrial) and lied to elected members of government in order to have his "opinion" enshrined and backed by the weight of the law qhile marginalising the opinions of the supposed democratic electorate, who now have to live with this bastard's mess.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Pity it didn't happen sooner.
TWW
Interesting. Your whole post appears to be wrong.
"Some lines of code" is like saying "using engineering". Physical method patents are far more tightly restricted than that and copyright effectively gives the same level of protection in the world of software, and that is all that is needed or desirable.
TWW
There sure are a lot of things QED predicts accurately (to an astounding precision) but previous success does not mean we just have to swallow everything that comes out of the field unquestionly, and this result is clearly wrong. If the scientists involved can't see that it's wrong, well, that's their problem.
TWW
Or, to put it another way, you have no idea what you're talking about. Software patents are totally different from normal patents because they protect ideas instead of implimentations. This is inevitable since software is almost always translated from a source language, which is often a trade secret. If software patents were the same as normal ones it would be the details of this source code which is protected (as it is by copyright law already). Allowing patents on software extends the protection to any implimentation in any language and often with any algorithm. This is vastly more protection than a normal patent which covers only one, clearly defined, method and effectively allows a software patent to lock up an entire idea or concept.
Additionally, this patent covers something which is as old as the hills. Tabs for organising pages are almost as old as paper itself. Putting that onto a computer simulation of paper is not something that should be patentable at all.
TWW
As far as a lawyer is concerned, if he's paying then that's all that matters. Saying you found a lawyer who's prepared to argue your case is like saying you found a prostitute prepared to have sex with you.
TWW
Sounds like Smalltalk and a serialised Model View Controller to me. Using XML for the resource file isn't exactly rocket science either since that's the sort of thing XML was designed for.
TWW