I know what you mean. When you truly believe that there is no god to make things right, no afterlife to reward suffering etc... then you are forced to realize that how you treat people in this life is what matters most. Every time I hear someone say "well at least they're in a better place" I think to myself, gee, you could justify every sort of evil in the world with that attitude. If you give yourself the luxury of thinking that this life is just a short bit of purgatory on the way to something everlasting, then surely any harm done to people is irrelevant right? I mean, they have an eternity of bliss coming to them anyway, who cares what pain they suffer in their short living existence...
If anything, the atheists I know behave more "morally" than the religious. When you believe that this life is all we've got, it is all the more imperative not to cause or allow suffering.
On the other hand, in your personal struggle... well, you could argue that since this is also _your_ only existence, you do have a right to enjoy it. Who knows but that the perfect wife for you doesn't also need your help and support. Perhaps your current wife would actually benefit from having to take a good look at her life and how she's been living it.
The only reason that works for the politicians and greedy businessmen is that most people don't behave that way. If everyone took that as an example and behaved that way, the whole mess would collapse. It's like the random jerks who use the HOV lane when driving alone... it only works because everyone isn't doing it. If we all broke the rules, the benefit to doing so would disappear along with our society in general.
Because humans are social animals and for the most part cannot survive alone. I require relationships with other people in my household, neighborhood and world to stay alive and thrive. I do not grow my own vegetables, butcher my own meat, make my own circuit boards, generate my own electricity. We evolved in communities and had to be able to work together to thrive. It is "bad" for me to harm others because it upsets relationships necessary for my survival. The community would be forced to act to remove the member who was harming rather than helping the rest. I should be nice to others because it encourages cooperation between all members of the community which helps to ensure we all get the most out of it.
It doesn't take much looking to see that communities that have greed and violence rampant end up worse off.
The scientific explanation says you should be good to others because in general that leads to the best outcome for all. The religious one says some set of rules are right by definition because they came from some supernatural source. That is how the religious definition can be twisted to support almost any act (and has been throughout history). It depends on interpreting those rules and some sort of divine will.
Energy wasn't created or destroyed. Our universe is zero sum. Positive and negative energy are separated but if added up would cancel each other out. You should watch Lawrence Krauss. who gives an excellent talk on how the universe came from nothing. And, if you're going to try to use science to disprove science (spouting the law of conservation of energy) you've got way more explaining to do on how god came from nothing as a fully formed, intelligent being. It should be quite obvious that if scientific laws actually forbade the possibility of the big bang that scientists wouldn't be touting it as an answer.
Science is a process for learning about the world. It is complete at what it is and the fact that it has limits is irrelevant to your argument. The origin of the universe is well within the purview of science, and on the way to being understood by anyone who doesn't have a mental block due to religious brainwashing.
If you want to find something that genuinely uses "magic" to explain things, look no further than religion.
I know quite a few atheists and am one myself. Most of us don't go around talking about it and are somewhat surprised to run into another one. If you're going to define a "sense of rightness" as "Deity" then I suppose that's your business, but it is not what I think anyone's common definition would be. I have a sense of rightness that derives from empathy. It doesn't take any notion of the supernatural or any deity to understand that if I can feel pain, then I can expect that my fellow humans can as well. If I feel that someone causing me pain is "bad" then it follows that causing others' pain is bad.
Surely you've heard of the Golden Rule? This requires zero belief in the supernatural or any sort of sacredness. It is my experience as an atheist that many theists are so attached to their world view that they simply can't help but ascribe it to others, even if they have to mangle the definitions of common words to do so.
Except Netflix is also bound by stupid rules and regulations. The entertainment industry is set up to milk every last penny they can, so I would assume that the contracts that Netflix has with Hollywood etc. don't allow them to offer all content to all regions even if Netflix wanted to. For Netflix' part, I'm sure the more subscribers they have, the more money they make and the better leverage they have in signing new content. I wouldn't think they'd go any further than absolutely necessary to prevent paying customers from accessing the service.
Unless their product isn't so much "bad" as hampered by local regulations that Netflix isn't subject to. Lots of things are cheaper/easier/better when the provider skirts all the regulations heaped on the industry. I'm all for protective regulations, but where entertainment is concerned almost all the rules are more about being sure pockets get lined than making sure customers are protected. In my mind, Netflix isn't doing anything wrong. The Australians who are cheating the system rather than working hard to fix it are more the problem, though I don't really blame them.
It is similar to the problem that Uber is having with taxi services. The Australian providers and taxi services are subject to presumably expensive regulations. Due to this expense and other regulated limits on their services, they might be less attractive to users. However, it doesn't take much to understand why the people in those businesses stuck following the rules aren't happy when customers cheat and use unauthorized alternatives. The real answer is to investigate the regulations. Get rid of rules that only impair customer service and make sure the ones that protect customers/users are followed by everyone.
Netflix isn't cheating here. They have no reason to work hard to tell a VPN user from Australia from any other VPN user who just wants privacy. But the Australians who use Netflix rather than the local (hopefully) law abiding services are cheating. Quikflix is going after the wrong people.
There does come a point when the resistance to the information goes beyond what is reasonable though. My personal opinion is that it doesn't even matter if the current warming trend is being caused by humans. The scary thing to me is the number of people who think that it can be safely ignored regardless. When growing regions and seasons change, when water availability changes, when coastal areas are flooded and tropical diseases migrate to previously temperate areas... well, there will be a lot of people wishing we'd put some money into mitigation plans.
The cause of global warming might matter somewhat to plans for things like carbon taxing and emission controls, but there is a separate larger issue of what to do to preserve our way of life even if it is caused by sun activity. No one will care whether it was man-made or cosmic rays when people in Wisconsin are dying of malaria.
No real scientist would ever say that you should accept something just because experts have reached a consensus. However, I would say that the consensus of the experts aught to weigh more heavily in people's minds than the rantings of the layperson.
Just to be pedantic, scientific theories are quite strong and rarely disproven wholesale. Hypotheses on the other hand come and go pretty easily. What's funny to me is that people accept all sorts of science that suffers from the exact same problems that you write about... difficulty in reproducing, complex results that the layperson can't understand... but only those sciences that imply we might have to change our way of life get scolded. I'm pretty sure testing out femto-second lasers requires specialized gear that most people couldn't construct in their garage, but no one cares because they aren't asked to give up their gas-guzzling supercar because of lasers.
You don't have to take the word of the consensus. What you should do however is not pretend that remaining ignorant of the science behind the consensus makes the science bad. Some things can be summarized for children and some things can't. Why should climate science - which is a complex blend of chemistry, physics and mathematics - be easily summarized? The studies are out there. Text books on climate and environmental science are out there. Do some leg work and figure it out.
Yeah, I've always thought this one was tricky. On the one hand you've got a man who never wanted to have a kid. On the other, a kid who'll still need taking care of. In a more socialized country where medical care and food for children would be more certain, I think it'd be easier to say the man should be able to get a court ruling during the pregnancy that he does not want to be involved at all. Giving up paternal rights and responsibilities legally and putting the decision on the woman whether to go through with the pregnancy or not should be an option... except in the U.S. with our health care and lack of a social net... do you really want to consign the child to a life of poor care?
I agree to some extent. The problem is how easy it is to turn it into a he said/she said after the fact. The woman gets pregnant, asks if he'll help support the child. In a moment of weakness they decide to give it a go. Later he bails and claims he never wanted the kid. How do you tell that situation from the one where he said all along she'd better figure out how to do it without him because he wanted no part of it?
There is birth control that is plenty visible and controllable by the man. If he truly does not want a child and does not want to (or cannot) support one, then I'd suggest he bring a plentiful supply of condoms and spermicide to each and every liaison. Sure, it's not 100%, but it's better than hoping she's not lying when she says she's on the pill or whatever.
Having more social support should definitely help, but I was thinking of other issues as well. Such as the unmarried woman getting dirty looks from her co-workers when her pregnancy becomes obvious. Or mangers who won't hire the woman based on the assumption that she'll want lots of family leave to take care of a child. There are assumptions made about women/mothers that don't affect men - at least in the same way. I've heard stories about men getting promotions because they "have a family to support" as if the same weren't true of women. And in any case nothing trumps the fact that it is the woman's body. No law or man should be able to force her into or out of motherhood.
Exercise is necessary to remain healthy, however most people will not or cannot burn enough calories in exercise to make up for a "bad" diet. You have to control the diet first. Consider exercise its own separate and necessary part of being healthy.
All of this research we're seeing lately indicates that as far as the likelihood of any given calorie being stored in the body as fat, they are not all alike regardless of what you might think. They aren't all alike in your body and they might be even more different in someone else's body. There is more to it than the number on the label.
It has been noted in weight loss circles for a while that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Most people simply don't have the time or long term willpower to burn off lots of calories every day. You have to control your intake first to lose weight. Exercise for the extra calorie burn and for your overall health. There is no doubt that exercise is important for its own sake in keeping the cardiovascular system and the body in general as healthy as possible.
It is easy to point fingers at overweight people and think they are just lazy. The reality is that research is finding complexities in fat/protien/carb ratios, gut flora and insulin response are also important. You can feel holier-than-thou for resisting desert last night or jogging an extra mile, but you can't know how someone else would respond to the same diet and activity. There is simply more to it than "eat less, move more." Certainly "eat more, move less" isn't the answer, but most people will have to eat the right amount of the right foods in order to lose weight and be healthy. Exercise needs to be considered a necessary but separate topic.
I shouldn't respond to a troll... but how about ban abortion until men suffer the exact same social disgrace as women for having children out of wedlock. Or suffer the same career setbacks, the same physical burden, the same social expectation of putting all of your dreams aside to raise a kid. There is no male equivalent to carrying a developing child around inside you for 9 months and therefore I see no reason why the law should treat them the same.
If you are a man who absolutely does not want a child, then you'd best find a woman who agrees with you. And if you're a man who absolutely couldn't bear to have your child aborted, then again, you'd best find someone who agrees with you. Using the law to force a woman to carry your child around for 9 months is horrible, as is forcing her to abort because the man doesn't want it.
It's the woman's body and it should be between her and her doctor what happens to it.
Yeah, it's a tough problem that doesn't lend itself to easy multiple choice tests. Still, I think we could make better progress without idiot politicians like this one. I'm glad that I'm too old to have suffered through the "teaching to the test" era of school philosophy. I do worry about my young niece though.
Yes, not extinguishing their curiosity is vital. But so is helping them to understand the fundamentals of critical thinking so they'll know when they're getting BS as an answer when they ask "but why?"
Yes, kids need to know a bunch of facts. But prioritizing facts over methods of thought is wrong, I think. If anything they should go hand in hand... here's the fact and here's how you can deconstruct it to see why we say it's true. Sure, memorizing multiplication tables is a good shortcut for getting through your day, but it doesn't compare to understanding what multiplication IS. How is knowing a bunch of facts without knowing WHY they are facts going to help when the next "fact" is shared with them on facebook?
The fuss is that teaching kids how to think will benefit them for life while teaching them a few facts that they could find out for themselves at any point where they need them won't. Can you really think that learning to think critically is less important than rote facts here? And the problem with the religious or political bit is that depending on the beholder, lots of things are religious or political. If we can't teach in schools anything that rubs someone the wrong way, then that leaves young minds wide open for someone else to come in later and fill in the gaps. It is my belief that this is the goal here. If schools aren't allowed to teach evolution because some people consider it a "religious or political" interpretation then students have no competing information to combat their churches and/or parents. If students haven't been taught the method of examining claims and the evidence behind them... well, now you've got a bunch of little sheep just ready to be filled with whatever "facts" you decide to pump into them.
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I know what you mean. When you truly believe that there is no god to make things right, no afterlife to reward suffering etc... then you are forced to realize that how you treat people in this life is what matters most. Every time I hear someone say "well at least they're in a better place" I think to myself, gee, you could justify every sort of evil in the world with that attitude. If you give yourself the luxury of thinking that this life is just a short bit of purgatory on the way to something everlasting, then surely any harm done to people is irrelevant right? I mean, they have an eternity of bliss coming to them anyway, who cares what pain they suffer in their short living existence...
If anything, the atheists I know behave more "morally" than the religious. When you believe that this life is all we've got, it is all the more imperative not to cause or allow suffering.
On the other hand, in your personal struggle... well, you could argue that since this is also _your_ only existence, you do have a right to enjoy it. Who knows but that the perfect wife for you doesn't also need your help and support. Perhaps your current wife would actually benefit from having to take a good look at her life and how she's been living it.
The only reason that works for the politicians and greedy businessmen is that most people don't behave that way. If everyone took that as an example and behaved that way, the whole mess would collapse. It's like the random jerks who use the HOV lane when driving alone... it only works because everyone isn't doing it. If we all broke the rules, the benefit to doing so would disappear along with our society in general.
Because humans are social animals and for the most part cannot survive alone. I require relationships with other people in my household, neighborhood and world to stay alive and thrive. I do not grow my own vegetables, butcher my own meat, make my own circuit boards, generate my own electricity. We evolved in communities and had to be able to work together to thrive. It is "bad" for me to harm others because it upsets relationships necessary for my survival. The community would be forced to act to remove the member who was harming rather than helping the rest. I should be nice to others because it encourages cooperation between all members of the community which helps to ensure we all get the most out of it.
It doesn't take much looking to see that communities that have greed and violence rampant end up worse off.
The scientific explanation says you should be good to others because in general that leads to the best outcome for all. The religious one says some set of rules are right by definition because they came from some supernatural source. That is how the religious definition can be twisted to support almost any act (and has been throughout history). It depends on interpreting those rules and some sort of divine will.
Energy wasn't created or destroyed. Our universe is zero sum. Positive and negative energy are separated but if added up would cancel each other out. You should watch Lawrence Krauss. who gives an excellent talk on how the universe came from nothing. And, if you're going to try to use science to disprove science (spouting the law of conservation of energy) you've got way more explaining to do on how god came from nothing as a fully formed, intelligent being. It should be quite obvious that if scientific laws actually forbade the possibility of the big bang that scientists wouldn't be touting it as an answer.
Science is a process for learning about the world. It is complete at what it is and the fact that it has limits is irrelevant to your argument. The origin of the universe is well within the purview of science, and on the way to being understood by anyone who doesn't have a mental block due to religious brainwashing.
If you want to find something that genuinely uses "magic" to explain things, look no further than religion.
"True atheist?"
I know quite a few atheists and am one myself. Most of us don't go around talking about it and are somewhat surprised to run into another one. If you're going to define a "sense of rightness" as "Deity" then I suppose that's your business, but it is not what I think anyone's common definition would be. I have a sense of rightness that derives from empathy. It doesn't take any notion of the supernatural or any deity to understand that if I can feel pain, then I can expect that my fellow humans can as well. If I feel that someone causing me pain is "bad" then it follows that causing others' pain is bad.
Surely you've heard of the Golden Rule? This requires zero belief in the supernatural or any sort of sacredness. It is my experience as an atheist that many theists are so attached to their world view that they simply can't help but ascribe it to others, even if they have to mangle the definitions of common words to do so.
Except Netflix is also bound by stupid rules and regulations. The entertainment industry is set up to milk every last penny they can, so I would assume that the contracts that Netflix has with Hollywood etc. don't allow them to offer all content to all regions even if Netflix wanted to. For Netflix' part, I'm sure the more subscribers they have, the more money they make and the better leverage they have in signing new content. I wouldn't think they'd go any further than absolutely necessary to prevent paying customers from accessing the service.
Unless their product isn't so much "bad" as hampered by local regulations that Netflix isn't subject to. Lots of things are cheaper/easier/better when the provider skirts all the regulations heaped on the industry. I'm all for protective regulations, but where entertainment is concerned almost all the rules are more about being sure pockets get lined than making sure customers are protected. In my mind, Netflix isn't doing anything wrong. The Australians who are cheating the system rather than working hard to fix it are more the problem, though I don't really blame them.
It is similar to the problem that Uber is having with taxi services. The Australian providers and taxi services are subject to presumably expensive regulations. Due to this expense and other regulated limits on their services, they might be less attractive to users. However, it doesn't take much to understand why the people in those businesses stuck following the rules aren't happy when customers cheat and use unauthorized alternatives. The real answer is to investigate the regulations. Get rid of rules that only impair customer service and make sure the ones that protect customers/users are followed by everyone.
Netflix isn't cheating here. They have no reason to work hard to tell a VPN user from Australia from any other VPN user who just wants privacy. But the Australians who use Netflix rather than the local (hopefully) law abiding services are cheating. Quikflix is going after the wrong people.
We'll probably end up with both in the long term. Unless we sort out global politics and stop hating science.
Ha!
There does come a point when the resistance to the information goes beyond what is reasonable though. My personal opinion is that it doesn't even matter if the current warming trend is being caused by humans. The scary thing to me is the number of people who think that it can be safely ignored regardless. When growing regions and seasons change, when water availability changes, when coastal areas are flooded and tropical diseases migrate to previously temperate areas... well, there will be a lot of people wishing we'd put some money into mitigation plans.
The cause of global warming might matter somewhat to plans for things like carbon taxing and emission controls, but there is a separate larger issue of what to do to preserve our way of life even if it is caused by sun activity. No one will care whether it was man-made or cosmic rays when people in Wisconsin are dying of malaria.
No real scientist would ever say that you should accept something just because experts have reached a consensus. However, I would say that the consensus of the experts aught to weigh more heavily in people's minds than the rantings of the layperson.
Just to be pedantic, scientific theories are quite strong and rarely disproven wholesale. Hypotheses on the other hand come and go pretty easily. What's funny to me is that people accept all sorts of science that suffers from the exact same problems that you write about... difficulty in reproducing, complex results that the layperson can't understand... but only those sciences that imply we might have to change our way of life get scolded. I'm pretty sure testing out femto-second lasers requires specialized gear that most people couldn't construct in their garage, but no one cares because they aren't asked to give up their gas-guzzling supercar because of lasers.
You don't have to take the word of the consensus. What you should do however is not pretend that remaining ignorant of the science behind the consensus makes the science bad. Some things can be summarized for children and some things can't. Why should climate science - which is a complex blend of chemistry, physics and mathematics - be easily summarized? The studies are out there. Text books on climate and environmental science are out there. Do some leg work and figure it out.
Yeah, I've always thought this one was tricky. On the one hand you've got a man who never wanted to have a kid. On the other, a kid who'll still need taking care of. In a more socialized country where medical care and food for children would be more certain, I think it'd be easier to say the man should be able to get a court ruling during the pregnancy that he does not want to be involved at all. Giving up paternal rights and responsibilities legally and putting the decision on the woman whether to go through with the pregnancy or not should be an option... except in the U.S. with our health care and lack of a social net... do you really want to consign the child to a life of poor care?
Hard choices.
I agree to some extent. The problem is how easy it is to turn it into a he said/she said after the fact. The woman gets pregnant, asks if he'll help support the child. In a moment of weakness they decide to give it a go. Later he bails and claims he never wanted the kid. How do you tell that situation from the one where he said all along she'd better figure out how to do it without him because he wanted no part of it?
There is birth control that is plenty visible and controllable by the man. If he truly does not want a child and does not want to (or cannot) support one, then I'd suggest he bring a plentiful supply of condoms and spermicide to each and every liaison. Sure, it's not 100%, but it's better than hoping she's not lying when she says she's on the pill or whatever.
Having more social support should definitely help, but I was thinking of other issues as well. Such as the unmarried woman getting dirty looks from her co-workers when her pregnancy becomes obvious. Or mangers who won't hire the woman based on the assumption that she'll want lots of family leave to take care of a child. There are assumptions made about women/mothers that don't affect men - at least in the same way. I've heard stories about men getting promotions because they "have a family to support" as if the same weren't true of women. And in any case nothing trumps the fact that it is the woman's body. No law or man should be able to force her into or out of motherhood.
Exercise is necessary to remain healthy, however most people will not or cannot burn enough calories in exercise to make up for a "bad" diet. You have to control the diet first. Consider exercise its own separate and necessary part of being healthy.
All of this research we're seeing lately indicates that as far as the likelihood of any given calorie being stored in the body as fat, they are not all alike regardless of what you might think. They aren't all alike in your body and they might be even more different in someone else's body. There is more to it than the number on the label.
It has been noted in weight loss circles for a while that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Most people simply don't have the time or long term willpower to burn off lots of calories every day. You have to control your intake first to lose weight. Exercise for the extra calorie burn and for your overall health. There is no doubt that exercise is important for its own sake in keeping the cardiovascular system and the body in general as healthy as possible.
It is easy to point fingers at overweight people and think they are just lazy. The reality is that research is finding complexities in fat/protien/carb ratios, gut flora and insulin response are also important. You can feel holier-than-thou for resisting desert last night or jogging an extra mile, but you can't know how someone else would respond to the same diet and activity. There is simply more to it than "eat less, move more." Certainly "eat more, move less" isn't the answer, but most people will have to eat the right amount of the right foods in order to lose weight and be healthy. Exercise needs to be considered a necessary but separate topic.
I shouldn't respond to a troll... but how about ban abortion until men suffer the exact same social disgrace as women for having children out of wedlock. Or suffer the same career setbacks, the same physical burden, the same social expectation of putting all of your dreams aside to raise a kid. There is no male equivalent to carrying a developing child around inside you for 9 months and therefore I see no reason why the law should treat them the same.
If you are a man who absolutely does not want a child, then you'd best find a woman who agrees with you. And if you're a man who absolutely couldn't bear to have your child aborted, then again, you'd best find someone who agrees with you. Using the law to force a woman to carry your child around for 9 months is horrible, as is forcing her to abort because the man doesn't want it.
It's the woman's body and it should be between her and her doctor what happens to it.
Yeah, it's a tough problem that doesn't lend itself to easy multiple choice tests. Still, I think we could make better progress without idiot politicians like this one. I'm glad that I'm too old to have suffered through the "teaching to the test" era of school philosophy. I do worry about my young niece though.
Yes, not extinguishing their curiosity is vital. But so is helping them to understand the fundamentals of critical thinking so they'll know when they're getting BS as an answer when they ask "but why?"
Yes, kids need to know a bunch of facts. But prioritizing facts over methods of thought is wrong, I think. If anything they should go hand in hand... here's the fact and here's how you can deconstruct it to see why we say it's true. Sure, memorizing multiplication tables is a good shortcut for getting through your day, but it doesn't compare to understanding what multiplication IS. How is knowing a bunch of facts without knowing WHY they are facts going to help when the next "fact" is shared with them on facebook?
The fuss is that teaching kids how to think will benefit them for life while teaching them a few facts that they could find out for themselves at any point where they need them won't. Can you really think that learning to think critically is less important than rote facts here? And the problem with the religious or political bit is that depending on the beholder, lots of things are religious or political. If we can't teach in schools anything that rubs someone the wrong way, then that leaves young minds wide open for someone else to come in later and fill in the gaps. It is my belief that this is the goal here. If schools aren't allowed to teach evolution because some people consider it a "religious or political" interpretation then students have no competing information to combat their churches and/or parents. If students haven't been taught the method of examining claims and the evidence behind them... well, now you've got a bunch of little sheep just ready to be filled with whatever "facts" you decide to pump into them.