Easy enough, but also irrational and done only with the agenda of giving people the impression that organized religions enjoy the same unimpeachable defensibilty associated with the absence of a belief in gods. Not a valid or useful definition at all.
"unimpeachable defensiblity" is not something that mere absence of evidence can never give. Organized or not, Strong or Weak, Atheism is an answer to a religious question, and secular civilization simply cannot determine one answer's worth when balanced against another
Translation: I am threatened by the word "atheism" and don't want people to realize just how many atheists there are out there so I'll try to classify them as just another religion and hope nobody pays too much attention to the utter invalidity of all of my arguments.
Sheesh.
That's an ad hominem attack that doesn't even attempt to refute my point.
I am actualy very curious as to how many people identify themselves as atheists, agnostics, "disbelievers", 'undecided', and just about any answer you could give to "what religion are you?"
It is, however, good that you acknowledge that is is accurate to say that all those who don't believe in a god are atheists.
I said it was "technically acccurate." As in, "sure, it's technically accurate to call Hindus Pagans, but it's a useless overextension for modern discourse."
By your definition, the government would count people who attend church every day with their children but don't really believe as atheists, even though said persons would never identify themselves as atheists.
Your attempt to subtlely describe atheism as a "minor religion" is noted and rejected.
Yes, I'll admit that having re-read my original sentence it could have better worded to avoid ambiguity but, just because you assumed the wrong meaning, it doesn't make the statement any less valid.
I didn't say that it was invalid. Just that it was worded badly.;)
Still, another way of saying the same point you made is that MS changes DOC formats as often as they change OS "paradigms." (I'd say "kernal", but DOS and Win9x were the same core, just radically different implementations.)
As I've said, it goes way beyond the per seat cost of the software - there's a lot more money invested in training, etc that you're ignoring. Simply saying that people will defect when a superior alternative becomes clear is rather niave.
Naw. I just have a fairly liberal opinion of what constituties "better" and "cost." For a sizable majority of office users, a switch to OpenOffice (or Wordperfect Office) would be no more or less disconcerting than a switch to the latest version of MS Office.
And as for your statement that "end-user adoption of software is the only real measure of how 'good' it is", well, all I have to say to that is Internet Explorer.
Again, IE isn't a discreet unit. It's largely marketed and sold as part of Windows, and has been since when, in 97 or 98, it overcame Netscape 3 or 4 in usability.
Of course, web browsers are actually a good example for my argument. Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Safari, and a few others are "best HTML readers", which encourages a significant (small, but significant) number of end-users to switch.
Heck, if not for some despirate cross-marketing, IE's biggest 'end-user', AOL, would have already switched away--and already has in some versions, or so I hear.
I said "every other" version, not "every" version. I take it you don't know what the phrase "every other" means. Well it means every two versions. Basic english, bub.
I know what the phrase "every-other" means, and that's not strictly what you said. What you said was "every other", as in "Mom, I can't wear blue! Every other girl is wearing black!" or "turn every other glass upside down."
You should be aware of the ambiguity, and strive for clearer use of language.
As to switching from Microsoft Office to other application suites, I guess you've never worked in an enterprise environment. There is no way a company that has thousands of seats is going to up and change its default desktop package unless it has to. Can you imagine how much work there is in reimaging thousands of PCs and retraining thousands of users? Do you want to be the one to tell the CEO that he can no longer use the software that he's just about got used to? Dream on, buddy.
This is exactly the hurdle that MS has found itself in. New versions of office often aren't worth their upgrade cost--exactly what I said. As you have worked in an Enterprise environment, I'm sure that you realize that "convince the CEO to use it" is part of the cost of any new userland software.
You yourself say that there's nothing in the latest versions of Office worth spending $500 a seat to upgrade. Yet you think that corporations will willingly spend as much as that if not more rejigging their desktops and retraining their staff?
When the software is good enough, yes. As I said, end-user adoption of software is the only real measure of how "good" it is.
Face it, Microsoft is a unique position of dominance.
I never said that they weren't.
So, I'll ask you again, what makes you think that Microsoft will "focus on making Word the best DOC writer"?
Their necessity of competing with previous versions.
Which is why every other version of Microsoft Office has introduced a new file format.
Not quite. Office XP (and 2003, AFAIK) both use the same DOC format as Word 2000.
Even if OpenOffice was a hundred or a thousand times superior to Microsoft Word for creating documents do you think there would be a widescale switch away from the Microsoft product?
YES.
Word got where it is by being so much better than Wordperfect--which included making it very easy for users of Wordperfect to switch. And beyond that, a new version of Word has to be good enough to convince users to make the switch.
The last two versions of office haven't sold like hotcakes, at least partly becuase Office 2000 is "good enough" for just about everything it's used for. There are oodles of changes, but nothing so groundbreaking that it's worth it to spend $500 a seat to upgrade.
Internet Explorer clearly dominates the browser market, but is it the best browser?
Bad example. IE is given away for free, and got its position by being preinstalled. When MS gives Word away with every copy of Windows, then we can talk.
I was going to counter your post with some actual rebuttals (such as the hotmail service's changes being rather reasonable IMO, or the fact that ANYONE can change Word's default file format) but instead I'll offer a much more useful commentary.
Don't spread FUD. Your point would be MUCH better recieved, on and off/., if you focus more on doubt and skepticism than proclaiming your certainty of MS's ill will.
Oh, and I do have one rebuttal: MS keeps things closed when they think that they can make money off of them. When OpenOffice et al can read and write DOC files as well as a majority of the Office installations, MS is best served to abandon the idea of proprietary DOC and focus on making word the best DOC writer.
'course, they're still not to be trusted, based on their horrid past behavior. But the appropriate expression of this is skepticism, not zealous outrage.
This schema is patented. Patents are an exclusive right to use an idea. Now if you use their format without upholding their conditions, you're a criminal, even if you figured out the format yourself.
By publishing the format, they can cast doubt on anyone that does reverse engineer it. "I bet you read the spec on line".
With a patent, they have rights to the schema no matter what. You can't "clean room implement" a patent.
Of course, IMO patents are the proper way to restrict software innovations. Leave copyright for art, use patents for engineering.
If you've given source code out under the GPL, you gave anyone who wants it a license to redistribute the code. You can't just revoke that license.
I suspect that someone could, as long as no one else contributed code to them. The practicality would make a lot of projects simply not worthwhile to "un-GPL", but, AFAIK (IANAL-RU?), authors can generally renig licensing agreements for, at the least, a return of any payment that they have recieved.
Even assuming that I'm 100% right (I'm probably at least partly wrong, not being a lawyer), SCO wouldn't be helped by this at all. They weren't the author of UNIX, and Linux has far more authors than just SCO.
However, the current popular theorum about the universe's creation (Big Bang) has a simliar problem--how did the "metaverse" in which the Big Bang happen arise? What happened before the Big Bang?
Note: I'm a firm Christian who believes in God, and that He intented our world to look exactly as it did when sentient life first looked at it, AND that He has a stated goal of hiding Himself from us.
That said:
evolution/natural selection is the natural effect when beings are subjected to adversity: only the strong surviveI
Evolution doesn't say that the "strong" survive. Evolution is the simple observation that in any given environment, the creatures most fit for that environment will thrive the most--and, ergo, creatures that thrive the most will be those most likely to survive.
The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design,
We don't know what the odds are of any mutation--though we do know that, just in the last 10,000 years, there have been 3,652,500 days. So if the odds are one in a million that a one-day generational organism will evolve a certain set of traits are one in a million, it will have happened three times just since the Neolithic revolution began. And, of course, science believes that Earth is several orders of magnitude older than 10,000 years.
which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's Wager has nothing to do with evolution, and as a mathematical statement it is flawed based on its treatment of faith as a binary equation. (What if you worship the wrong diety?) God intended there to be doubt in the world, and He is perfectly capable of remedying said doubt when He sees fit.
So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts.
Intelligent design, like most theories, is little more than untestable conjecture about the past. The uncertainty that must be applied to theroums about archeological past are so great that competetly opposite theories (ID and Evolution) can exist based on the exact same evidence.
As such, any versions of Warp Pipe develop would need to be open source, as they would be a derivative wor of the previous open source alpha code?
Nope. The original author, unless they cede copyright to the FSF or a similiar organization, retains the right to re-license the code.
It's even feasible (IANAL-RU?) that the author could disallow the open-source'd code as well. Don't know, not a judge, not a lawyer, can't cite precedent.
You know...there are some reasons for anonymous voting...
Of course there are--the government rarely does anything without at least some reason.
But it's still worth considering a different system than what we have. We already have laws that prohibit employers for firing their employees because they change religions, change political parties, have children, or do a host of other things.
And, really, the Mafia can already put folks to hang around outside and threaten folks--if they can avoid the police enforcement around polling centers, they can sneak a camera into the voting booth itself.
Personally, I think we'd be better off if we traded our hand-holding of meek voters for certainity that the vote-counter can't rig the election in secret.
You are attempting to make the following argument:
No, I'm not. You are, for the Nth time, committing a logical fallicy of reading more into what I'm saying that I'm saying.
I was merely noting the odd nature of your position with regards to being called an atheist. The implication that Atheism *IS* a religion (rather than merely falling under some definitions of religion for certain purposes and contexts) is one that you are making, not me.
I can't help noticing that you seem awfully adamant about redefining atheism as merely "strong atheism" and classifying it as a religion
You notice wrong. I am perfectly willing to accept your usage of the word "atheism." My preference for other words does not negate this. (Note that I have not said that the USA's government is not atheist; merely that it is no more "atheist" than it is "christian.")
Your actions, in general, are consistent with a classification of "atheism" as a religion/creed/party of some strong sort. You certain stick to your opinions with the same zeal as any Christian I've met.
While I can appreciate a desire for accuracy, my experience has been that accuracy in such matters is best served by putting aside terms which the parties have "religious-like" opinions on and focusing on the root of what is being discussed.
Tomatos aren't vegetables, women aren't men and pet fish are pets. You have stated cases where people have decided to promote a deliberate inaccuracy because it was easier than the alternative
No. In legal cases, how the law is written at the time of the cause of action is what must be used--and judges do not have the power to re-write whole swaths of law.
If you want to argue about how the law should be run, feel free--but that's outside the purview of our disucssion.
The whole thing boils down to the idea that weak atheists should call themselves "agnostics" to make things easier for people who don't want to think about the subject.
Where did you get that idea? Atheists are free to call themselves whatever they want--and when the Census Bureau wonders where to put down "Atheist" on a Census form, "Religion" is still the right slot.
I decline to cooperate. I, much like the United States government, lack a belief in any god so I am an atheist. There are no creeds, no religious beliefs, no vast conspiracy to destroy religion. I will not pretend otherwise for anyone's benefit.
Point 1: Large parts of the US government have a non-agnostic, non-atheist religion. Government service compels these persons to seek secular corellation for any religious conviction they seek to set into law. It does not, and should not, require them to put aside their religious view.
Hence, calling the US Government "Atheist" is, at the least, as misleading as calling it "Chrisitan."
Point 2: For someone who claims that Atheism is merely a word and not a creed or religion, you seem awfuly admant about not being called anything else.
I'm not sure why you thought I would just agree to use your erroneous definitions when much of the argument is about those very definitions.
Arguing about definitons is foolhardy. I was conceding your use of terms as you mean them and asking that, for accuracy's sake, you specify when you were discussing more than mere weak atheism or the rights of those who call themselves atheists.
Where you trying to trick me?
No. I was attempting to clarify the discussion. Were it convenient, we could use complete nonsense words (or numbers, or letters) to stand-in for contested phrases.
You again, for your own zealous reasons, refuse to accept my opinion that government should be agnostic. You can take this to mean "non-Strong Atheist" if you like; I find such terminology needlessly complex, and prefer the single term of "Agnostic."
Agnosticism: The position that it is an error to believe an assertion without evidence. Often applied to the subject of gods as the position that it is impossible to know the nature of a god or gods.
The term "Agnostic" was coined specifically in a religious context. Your continued definiton of "Atheist" as "someone who does not believe" is emminently compatable with "someone who is of the opinion that we do not have sufficient evidence to believe in God" and, for the purposes of this discussion, "Agnostic" is essentially synonymous with "Atheist."
There is no dishonesty here, merely an attempt to clarify positions. Your refusal to accept an alterate and emminently reasonable usage of words seems, to me, a sign of a closed mind.
Back to the root of the matter:
I said evidence, not more assertion. You fail to provide evidence for any of these points. To respond to each:
You fail to provide evidence against. I am discussiong "shoulds" and "musts" as theoetical and intellectual prioriites in keeping with the principles of jurisprudence and liberty.
* You misspelled "atheistic" as "agnostic" when describing government institutions or other public bodies.
That's a childish maintenance of your near-zealous definition. You are free to call the government "atheistic", and I am free to call it "agnostic." We both agree that it should take no stance on matters of religion, and that mere religious evidence is insufficient grounds for government action.
Because of the necessary liberty of freedom of religion, the government should treat someone who identifies themselves as an "atheist" the same as someone who calls themselves a "christian", "muslim", "jew", "Jedi", "Scientologist", or "Freethinker." In a like vein, an organization that identifies itself as "Atheist" should be treated the same as an organization that calls itself "Pagan", "Christian", "New Age", or "Mormon."
* I pointed out your First Amendment error above; atheism does not need to be treated as a religion in order for the rights of atheists to be protected.
Most civl rights laws and anti-discrimination clauses use language similar to "no discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion." Atheism should be considered a "religion"--wherever a body is allowed to discriminate on the basis of religions, it should be able to exclude atheists, and wherever a body is unable to discriminate based on religion, it should not be able to specifically exclude atheists.
* You seem to think atheism is "anti-god". It isn't. I think this is the basis of your objection to the term. It seems to make you feel better to erroneously use the word "agnostic" instead of "atheistic" but it simply isn't accurate.
1: Strong Atheism is anti-religion, and a good deal of the public propaganda labeled as Atheist is in intent or effect anti-religious. Moreover, I specifically identified anti-religious material; my statement specifically excludes material that is not aimed against religion.
You are expressing a desire to treat atheism as if it were a religion even though you seem to understand that it isn't. I see no benefit to atheists were that to happen
Which explains your fairly irrational dislike of the idea of Atheism being considered a religion.
In all honesty, you should admit that this is the state that we live in now, not some theoretical adjustmet to the state. Atheists are protected by the "Freedom of religion" clause in the First Amendment, and there have been a fair ammount of cases wherein they have benefited from the specific provisions of said law.
One last point:
"Crude bungling of the language" is ad hominem.
No, it's a comment. An ad hominem attack would be if, in addition to noting that you're bungling the language, I claimed that said bungling defeated your points; I made no such claim. (The closest we've gotten is your assertation that religions, as a "source of bad ideas", should be limited in speech.)
To explain my comment:
Essentially no one calls themselves "theists", and as an opposite for atheism (as you used it) it's only tenably acceptable. A much fairer grouping of options would be a list I provided earlier: Monotheism, Atheism, Polytheism, Pantheism, and Transcednence. We could even add "Spirituallity" to the list if we wanted to.
Now, of course, there ARE cross-overs between the groups, but the six words I chose are good broad catagories for individuals to find their religious belief within (even if said belief is "there's nothing out there").
One more thing, since you asked:
I simply recognize that language is a flexible thing, and for a good deal of contexts, atheism can indeed be catagorized as "a religion."
You keep saying this and you keep failing to provide examples of these "good deal of contexts". One thing you need to learn about atheists is that we tend to require evidence before we accept a person's assertions. If you really are "seeking understanding" you'll start providing some.
Sure, but I'll be repeating myself.
Atheism MUST be considered a religion:
When speaking in the context of agnostic government institutions or other public bodies
When applying Civil Rights laws
When evaluating scientific claims that do not pertain to theology or sociology. (i.e., in a physics paper, any mention of God or gods save by parable should be striken, be it pro-God or anti-God.)
Atheism CAN be considered a religion:
By individuals seeking a religion that fits their beliefs
By Sociological or Theological academia working from an agnostic or non-atheist point of view.
In statistics research.
Atheism MUST NOT be considered a religion:
In Atheist "anti-religious" marketing materials, such as an "anti-tract" or a Strong Atheist website.
When dicussing the benefit or harm of religion on society.
When speculating on hypothetical future mergins of religions.
Now, I'll admit that the last catagory is a bit sparse--but, in intelletual honesty, I couldn't find three good contexts where atheism should not be treated as a religion.
You have made claims that religions require proof (they do not), and that atheism is somehow harmed by being considered a religion (I cannot see any just way why this is so). If you would care to take the time, kindly elaborate and provide some supporting logic for either of your claims.
In an attempt to keep your answer clear: Public Bodies supposedly require proof for religious (or otherwise) claims because they are agnostic--they simply do not consider the religion question.
(I believe that we can both agree that "Agnosticism" and "Weak Atheism" are essentially synonyms. Please state "All Atheists" or "Strong Atheists" if you mean more than mere disbelief or followers of the Atheist creed.)
Is the world's first supra-national organization...
Hardly. The Leauge of Nations and the Catholic Church both predate the UN, and boht are very arguably "supra-national" organizations--heck, the LoN was the precursor to the UN itself.
Still, it is what we've got, and better a weak international government that no international government.
Baptism/Protestantism: Thou Shalt Not Have Other Gods Before Me.
Which is an argument for seperation of church and state. Bad example.
No, I'm hung up on honesty. Trying to change the definitions of words is a common theist tactic but it only works on the dim. As for the ad hominem, fallacies like that won't save you.
Bullocks. If anyone is making ad hominem attacks it is you. YOU are the one who is misinterpreting what I'm saying because you have an irrational dislike of atheism being treated as a religion by the government.
You seem to have this perception of atheists gathering to discuss and celebrate atheism the same way theists do their religion.
No, I don't. And I've said as such. To paraphrase: "Atheists only organize to the extent that they do organize to oppose religion." They don't gather as Atheists to celebrate, to donate to charities, or to form communities.
When an atheist does any of these things, they choose from secular and even religous extant bodies, and if they must form a new body, they generally won't label it as "atheist" unless they specifically want to counterbalance the influence of organized religion.
This is, of course, their right. But "Atheist" organizations should be treated exactly the same as "Christian" organizations by all such organizations that are neither Atheist nor Christian.
The position that you claim you want government to hold is (weakly) atheistic. You seem to have some sort of problem with the word "atheistic" so you want to substitute "agnostic". You seem to want to redefine atheism to mean strong atheism. Well, we're not having it.
(We?)
The term "Agnostic" was coined to mean PRECISELY what I'm using it for: a third choice between, to use your crude bungling of the language, atheism and theism. Atheism is a loaded term that is imprecise for the purposes of our discussion; thus, it is appropriate to use the newer term of "Agnostic" to define a position that is neither for nor against religion.
Furthermore, I am not attempting to "redefine" what religion means. I simply recognize that language is a flexible thing, and for a good deal of contexts, atheism can indeed be catagorized as "a religion." But I suspect that you'll fail to grasp the fine point or the imprecision of our language.
Quite simply, you have fallen into zealous and rote repetition of dogma even though it is utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. While I am urged by my ethics, morals, and religion to seek love and understanding, I fear that no more understanding will come from this discussion.
Religion is far from the only cause of such dangerous ideas but every cause that can be eliminated, should.
I simply disagree--and I suspect that most great statemen would also disagree. No source of ideas should be silenced out of fear--in fact, no source of ideas should be silenced at all.
Or, as I said in the post that you replied to: "the risk of a dangerous idea being democratically instituted is less dangerous that the certain dangers of limiting free discourse in government or relying on a non-democratic form of government. "
All of the major religions in this country have commandments or rules
Kindly name some tenets of Wicca, Bhuddism, Baptism, or "mainstream Protestantism" that are in opposition to the law of the land.
You keep talking about government having neither a belief nor an absence of belief as though there were some third option. There isn't.
Yes, there is. When discussion such vagarities, we have a word constructed by a "weak Atheist" to describe those who, rather than answering the question, consider the question unanswerable: Agnostics.
You are getting hung up on semantics, which reflects poorly on your intellectual ability. I said that government (et al) should be Agnostic--not that they should or shouldn't be Atheist.
Essentially, you're reflecting the single worst fault about Atheists. Atheism is a creed, like Christianity or the Black Panthers or the Republican Party. NO ONE is an atheist who doesn't consider themselves an atheist--and everyone who does consider themselves an atheist is an atheist, even if they're utterly convinced of God's existance.
Now, YOU don't need to consider anyone who doesn't fit your definition atheists, and you can certainly call anyone an atheist that you want.
Which, of course, gets me (yet again) back to my point--the government, that shared body that makes decisions that effect us all--should treat Atheism as just another religion, and say the @#$ out of the debate.
[Y}ou continue to assert that atheism should be treated as something it is not without providing reasons for doing so.
Fine. I shall spell it out for you.
Government, businesses, political parties, and a good many other secular elements of our society have prohibited themselves from discriminating against people based on religious belief. We have Constitutional Law that explicity states that private parties are allowed to discriminated based on said religious belief. And, finally, there is a well-set inertia against any religious body having an undue influence on the government.
I do not want Atheists discriminated against, I do not want them forbidden from congregating based on Atheism alone, and I do not want Atheist organizations having a disproportionate influence on the government. If Atheists want to, as Atheists, congregate or express their beliefs or influence the government, they should be treated by the same rules that they helped created to restrain and protect religion.
*sigh* I'll attempt to keep this short--verbosity merely clouds the discussion in needless rebuttal.
Point the first:
If you're going to ban religion, you might as well ban political parties and socio-economic theorists from government as well.
This is a strawman; no one has suggested banning religion.
There was an implied "in government" corollary to that. To restate: if you're going to unilaterally ban religion from influencing government on the basis that it is unproven, you might as well ban political parties or socio-economic theories, as well.
None of these are harmful to government, simply because any truly dangerous idea would very unlikely make it through the democratic system--and, quite frankly, the risk of a dangerous idea being democratically instituted is less dangerous that the certain dangers of limiting free discourse in government or relying on a non-democratic form of government.
Point the second:
Please present evidence of atheism "working against religion". I have never seen such a thing.
Quite simply, you haven't looked. The most recent example is Michael Newdow's Supreme Court case. He is acting, as an atheist, to alter what he sees as a religious expression, on the basis that it is a religious expression.
Another one is related to a person you mentioned. Larry Darby, "former Alabama state director of American Atheists, who led the protest to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building in Montgomery." (quote from linked article.)
A third example is the case of Michael and William Randall, who were plaintiffs in one of the landmark cases that exempted the Boy Scouts of America from anti-discrimination laws based on the BSA being a private party. (The Randalls were atheists who refused to swear the BSA's religious oath.) [This example is a good example, btw, of atheism being treated already as a religion by the government.]
Atheism, either as lack of faith or faith in the nonexistance of god, is only organized to the extent that it is organized to counter religion's influence in our culture.
Point the third:
You persist in using the word "agnostic" where you should be using "atheistic"
No, I don't. The goverment should not believe in any god, and neither should it have belief nor actual absence of belief in any deity or religion. Goverment, and all other public bodies, should be agnostic--unless religion is important to them, as it undoubtedly is to some, they should simply be of the opinion that they, as public bodies, cannot answer any religious question at all.
I have four small rebuttals, and then I'll make my last point. (Feel free to reply to these, but I will not counter-reply unless specifically invited.)
Rebuttal 1:
Christianity, a belief for which there is no evidence.
There IS evidence for Christianity. Just not enough to be scientifically conclusive. (Were we to hold jury trials to decide the veraicty of religions, much of the evidence for religion would be quite admissable.)
Rebuttal 2:
No governmental claims are based on atheism; the concept is preposterous.
The concept is hardly preposterous. I can concieve of a variety of claims that could be put forth to governemnt wherein a major factor was the falsehood of religion. One example would be an objection to euthanasia, based on the belief that there is nothing after death. Another would be the somewhat repugnant petition of some social clubs for religious tax-exemptions based on religion's supposed falsehood. (Many religions are, essentially, charities, and atheists can simply not provide them with any funds but donate their dollars elsewhere, or keep them for themselves.)
Rebuttal 3:
You'd have trouble finding a scientist who claimed the
Slashdot Mirror
Easy enough, but also irrational and done only with the agenda of giving people the impression that organized religions enjoy the same unimpeachable defensibilty associated with the absence of a belief in gods. Not a valid or useful definition at all.
"unimpeachable defensiblity" is not something that mere absence of evidence can never give. Organized or not, Strong or Weak, Atheism is an answer to a religious question, and secular civilization simply cannot determine one answer's worth when balanced against another
Translation: I am threatened by the word "atheism" and don't want people to realize just how many atheists there are out there so I'll try to classify them as just another religion and hope nobody pays too much attention to the utter invalidity of all of my arguments.
Sheesh.
That's an ad hominem attack that doesn't even attempt to refute my point.
I am actualy very curious as to how many people identify themselves as atheists, agnostics, "disbelievers", 'undecided', and just about any answer you could give to "what religion are you?"
It is, however, good that you acknowledge that is is accurate to say that all those who don't believe in a god are atheists.
I said it was "technically acccurate." As in, "sure, it's technically accurate to call Hindus Pagans, but it's a useless overextension for modern discourse."
By your definition, the government would count people who attend church every day with their children but don't really believe as atheists, even though said persons would never identify themselves as atheists.
Your attempt to subtlely describe atheism as a "minor religion" is noted and rejected.
It is. Face it.
Yes, I'll admit that having re-read my original sentence it could have better worded to avoid ambiguity but, just because you assumed the wrong meaning, it doesn't make the statement any less valid.
;)
I didn't say that it was invalid. Just that it was worded badly.
Still, another way of saying the same point you made is that MS changes DOC formats as often as they change OS "paradigms." (I'd say "kernal", but DOS and Win9x were the same core, just radically different implementations.)
As I've said, it goes way beyond the per seat cost of the software - there's a lot more money invested in training, etc that you're ignoring. Simply saying that people will defect when a superior alternative becomes clear is rather niave.
Naw. I just have a fairly liberal opinion of what constituties "better" and "cost." For a sizable majority of office users, a switch to OpenOffice (or Wordperfect Office) would be no more or less disconcerting than a switch to the latest version of MS Office.
And as for your statement that "end-user adoption of software is the only real measure of how 'good' it is", well, all I have to say to that is Internet Explorer.
Again, IE isn't a discreet unit. It's largely marketed and sold as part of Windows, and has been since when, in 97 or 98, it overcame Netscape 3 or 4 in usability.
Of course, web browsers are actually a good example for my argument. Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Safari, and a few others are "best HTML readers", which encourages a significant (small, but significant) number of end-users to switch.
Heck, if not for some despirate cross-marketing, IE's biggest 'end-user', AOL, would have already switched away--and already has in some versions, or so I hear.
What does everybody else think?
MS buying out Nintendo of America, dropping the X-box, and selling a Nintendo-branded (or Nintendo-variant) console?
Yeah, I could see that. And I would probably pick one up, too.
I said "every other" version, not "every" version. I take it you don't know what the phrase "every other" means. Well it means every two versions. Basic english, bub.
I know what the phrase "every-other" means, and that's not strictly what you said. What you said was "every other", as in "Mom, I can't wear blue! Every other girl is wearing black!" or "turn every other glass upside down."
You should be aware of the ambiguity, and strive for clearer use of language.
As to switching from Microsoft Office to other application suites, I guess you've never worked in an enterprise environment. There is no way a company that has thousands of seats is going to up and change its default desktop package unless it has to. Can you imagine how much work there is in reimaging thousands of PCs and retraining thousands of users? Do you want to be the one to tell the CEO that he can no longer use the software that he's just about got used to? Dream on, buddy.
This is exactly the hurdle that MS has found itself in. New versions of office often aren't worth their upgrade cost--exactly what I said. As you have worked in an Enterprise environment, I'm sure that you realize that "convince the CEO to use it" is part of the cost of any new userland software.
You yourself say that there's nothing in the latest versions of Office worth spending $500 a seat to upgrade. Yet you think that corporations will willingly spend as much as that if not more rejigging their desktops and retraining their staff?
When the software is good enough, yes. As I said, end-user adoption of software is the only real measure of how "good" it is.
Face it, Microsoft is a unique position of dominance.
I never said that they weren't.
So, I'll ask you again, what makes you think that Microsoft will "focus on making Word the best DOC writer"?
Their necessity of competing with previous versions.
Which is why every other version of Microsoft Office has introduced a new file format.
Not quite. Office XP (and 2003, AFAIK) both use the same DOC format as Word 2000.
Even if OpenOffice was a hundred or a thousand times superior to Microsoft Word for creating documents do you think there would be a widescale switch away from the Microsoft product?
YES.
Word got where it is by being so much better than Wordperfect--which included making it very easy for users of Wordperfect to switch. And beyond that, a new version of Word has to be good enough to convince users to make the switch.
The last two versions of office haven't sold like hotcakes, at least partly becuase Office 2000 is "good enough" for just about everything it's used for. There are oodles of changes, but nothing so groundbreaking that it's worth it to spend $500 a seat to upgrade.
Internet Explorer clearly dominates the browser market, but is it the best browser?
Bad example. IE is given away for free, and got its position by being preinstalled. When MS gives Word away with every copy of Windows, then we can talk.
g'ha--stop spreading FUD!
/., if you focus more on doubt and skepticism than proclaiming your certainty of MS's ill will.
I was going to counter your post with some actual rebuttals (such as the hotmail service's changes being rather reasonable IMO, or the fact that ANYONE can change Word's default file format) but instead I'll offer a much more useful commentary.
Don't spread FUD. Your point would be MUCH better recieved, on and off
Oh, and I do have one rebuttal: MS keeps things closed when they think that they can make money off of them. When OpenOffice et al can read and write DOC files as well as a majority of the Office installations, MS is best served to abandon the idea of proprietary DOC and focus on making word the best DOC writer.
'course, they're still not to be trusted, based on their horrid past behavior. But the appropriate expression of this is skepticism, not zealous outrage.
This schema is patented. Patents are an exclusive right to use an idea. Now if you use their format without upholding their conditions, you're a criminal, even if you figured out the format yourself.
By publishing the format, they can cast doubt on anyone that does reverse engineer it. "I bet you read the spec on line".
With a patent, they have rights to the schema no matter what. You can't "clean room implement" a patent.
Of course, IMO patents are the proper way to restrict software innovations. Leave copyright for art, use patents for engineering.
Read closer, polish up your grammar. To rephrase your quote:
"Mozilla is now the best brower around, even if it's not the most popular."
If you've given source code out under the GPL, you gave anyone who wants it a license to redistribute the code. You can't just revoke that license.
I suspect that someone could, as long as no one else contributed code to them. The practicality would make a lot of projects simply not worthwhile to "un-GPL", but, AFAIK (IANAL-RU?), authors can generally renig licensing agreements for, at the least, a return of any payment that they have recieved.
Even assuming that I'm 100% right (I'm probably at least partly wrong, not being a lawyer), SCO wouldn't be helped by this at all. They weren't the author of UNIX, and Linux has far more authors than just SCO.
Good point.
However, the current popular theorum about the universe's creation (Big Bang) has a simliar problem--how did the "metaverse" in which the Big Bang happen arise? What happened before the Big Bang?
Note: I'm a firm Christian who believes in God, and that He intented our world to look exactly as it did when sentient life first looked at it, AND that He has a stated goal of hiding Himself from us.
That said:
evolution/natural selection is the natural effect when beings are subjected to adversity: only the strong surviveI
Evolution doesn't say that the "strong" survive. Evolution is the simple observation that in any given environment, the creatures most fit for that environment will thrive the most--and, ergo, creatures that thrive the most will be those most likely to survive.
The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design,
We don't know what the odds are of any mutation--though we do know that, just in the last 10,000 years, there have been 3,652,500 days. So if the odds are one in a million that a one-day generational organism will evolve a certain set of traits are one in a million, it will have happened three times just since the Neolithic revolution began. And, of course, science believes that Earth is several orders of magnitude older than 10,000 years.
which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's Wager has nothing to do with evolution, and as a mathematical statement it is flawed based on its treatment of faith as a binary equation. (What if you worship the wrong diety?) God intended there to be doubt in the world, and He is perfectly capable of remedying said doubt when He sees fit.
So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts.
Intelligent design, like most theories, is little more than untestable conjecture about the past. The uncertainty that must be applied to theroums about archeological past are so great that competetly opposite theories (ID and Evolution) can exist based on the exact same evidence.
As such, any versions of Warp Pipe develop would need to be open source, as they would be a derivative wor of the previous open source alpha code?
Nope. The original author, unless they cede copyright to the FSF or a similiar organization, retains the right to re-license the code.
It's even feasible (IANAL-RU?) that the author could disallow the open-source'd code as well. Don't know, not a judge, not a lawyer, can't cite precedent.
Anonimity is the only thing that ensures people can vote according to their beliefs and not to social pressures.
1: It doesn't work now. People vote according to social pressures already. (i.e., "don't waste your vote!" "vote the party line!")
2: Will of the meek isn't democracy. Democracy is will of the mob to choose a leader, with a structure and a mechanism to protect the minority.
You know...there are some reasons for anonymous voting...
Of course there are--the government rarely does anything without at least some reason.
But it's still worth considering a different system than what we have. We already have laws that prohibit employers for firing their employees because they change religions, change political parties, have children, or do a host of other things.
And, really, the Mafia can already put folks to hang around outside and threaten folks--if they can avoid the police enforcement around polling centers, they can sneak a camera into the voting booth itself.
Personally, I think we'd be better off if we traded our hand-holding of meek voters for certainity that the vote-counter can't rig the election in secret.
Imagine, for a bit, what the world would be like if votes were done completely in the open, attributable to persons who come in and cast their votes.
Sure, the FBI would have to spend a bit more on cracking down on those who illegally attempt to fix an election--but they have to do that anyway.
One could even bind it so that there's no more of a record than the final tally--which should be enough to satisfy the non-rabid privacy advocates.
You are attempting to make the following argument:
No, I'm not. You are, for the Nth time, committing a logical fallicy of reading more into what I'm saying that I'm saying.
I was merely noting the odd nature of your position with regards to being called an atheist. The implication that Atheism *IS* a religion (rather than merely falling under some definitions of religion for certain purposes and contexts) is one that you are making, not me.
I can't help noticing that you seem awfully adamant about redefining atheism as merely "strong atheism" and classifying it as a religion
You notice wrong. I am perfectly willing to accept your usage of the word "atheism." My preference for other words does not negate this. (Note that I have not said that the USA's government is not atheist; merely that it is no more "atheist" than it is "christian.")
Your actions, in general, are consistent with a classification of "atheism" as a religion/creed/party of some strong sort. You certain stick to your opinions with the same zeal as any Christian I've met.
While I can appreciate a desire for accuracy, my experience has been that accuracy in such matters is best served by putting aside terms which the parties have "religious-like" opinions on and focusing on the root of what is being discussed.
Tomatos aren't vegetables, women aren't men and pet fish are pets. You have stated cases where people have decided to promote a deliberate inaccuracy because it was easier than the alternative
No. In legal cases, how the law is written at the time of the cause of action is what must be used--and judges do not have the power to re-write whole swaths of law.
If you want to argue about how the law should be run, feel free--but that's outside the purview of our disucssion.
The whole thing boils down to the idea that weak atheists should call themselves "agnostics" to make things easier for people who don't want to think about the subject.
Where did you get that idea? Atheists are free to call themselves whatever they want--and when the Census Bureau wonders where to put down "Atheist" on a Census form, "Religion" is still the right slot.
I decline to cooperate. I, much like the United States government, lack a belief in any god so I am an atheist. There are no creeds, no religious beliefs, no vast conspiracy to destroy religion. I will not pretend otherwise for anyone's benefit.
Point 1: Large parts of the US government have a non-agnostic, non-atheist religion. Government service compels these persons to seek secular corellation for any religious conviction they seek to set into law. It does not, and should not, require them to put aside their religious view.
Hence, calling the US Government "Atheist" is, at the least, as misleading as calling it "Chrisitan."
Point 2: For someone who claims that Atheism is merely a word and not a creed or religion, you seem awfuly admant about not being called anything else.
, or they believe that it's broken, or clunky ...
;)
OoO is occasionally "broken", and it is fairly clunky. But it's getting better a heck of a lot faster than Office 97.
I'm not sure why you thought I would just agree to use your erroneous definitions when much of the argument is about those very definitions.
Arguing about definitons is foolhardy. I was conceding your use of terms as you mean them and asking that, for accuracy's sake, you specify when you were discussing more than mere weak atheism or the rights of those who call themselves atheists.
Where you trying to trick me?
No. I was attempting to clarify the discussion. Were it convenient, we could use complete nonsense words (or numbers, or letters) to stand-in for contested phrases.
You again, for your own zealous reasons, refuse to accept my opinion that government should be agnostic. You can take this to mean "non-Strong Atheist" if you like; I find such terminology needlessly complex, and prefer the single term of "Agnostic."
Agnosticism: The position that it is an error to believe an assertion without evidence. Often applied to the subject of gods as the position that it is impossible to know the nature of a god or gods.
The term "Agnostic" was coined specifically in a religious context. Your continued definiton of "Atheist" as "someone who does not believe" is emminently compatable with "someone who is of the opinion that we do not have sufficient evidence to believe in God" and, for the purposes of this discussion, "Agnostic" is essentially synonymous with "Atheist."
There is no dishonesty here, merely an attempt to clarify positions. Your refusal to accept an alterate and emminently reasonable usage of words seems, to me, a sign of a closed mind.
Back to the root of the matter:
I said evidence, not more assertion. You fail to provide evidence for any of these points. To respond to each:
You fail to provide evidence against. I am discussiong "shoulds" and "musts" as theoetical and intellectual prioriites in keeping with the principles of jurisprudence and liberty.
* You misspelled "atheistic" as "agnostic" when describing government institutions or other public bodies.
That's a childish maintenance of your near-zealous definition. You are free to call the government "atheistic", and I am free to call it "agnostic." We both agree that it should take no stance on matters of religion, and that mere religious evidence is insufficient grounds for government action.
Because of the necessary liberty of freedom of religion, the government should treat someone who identifies themselves as an "atheist" the same as someone who calls themselves a "christian", "muslim", "jew", "Jedi", "Scientologist", or "Freethinker." In a like vein, an organization that identifies itself as "Atheist" should be treated the same as an organization that calls itself "Pagan", "Christian", "New Age", or "Mormon."
* I pointed out your First Amendment error above; atheism does not need to be treated as a religion in order for the rights of atheists to be protected.
Most civl rights laws and anti-discrimination clauses use language similar to "no discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion." Atheism should be considered a "religion"--wherever a body is allowed to discriminate on the basis of religions, it should be able to exclude atheists, and wherever a body is unable to discriminate based on religion, it should not be able to specifically exclude atheists.
* You seem to think atheism is "anti-god". It isn't. I think this is the basis of your objection to the term. It seems to make you feel better to erroneously use the word "agnostic" instead of "atheistic" but it simply isn't accurate.
1: Strong Atheism is anti-religion, and a good deal of the public propaganda labeled as Atheist is in intent or effect anti-religious. Moreover, I specifically identified anti-religious material; my statement specifically excludes material that is not aimed against religion.
2: My objection, as you call it, is based in sm
Which explains your fairly irrational dislike of the idea of Atheism being considered a religion.
In all honesty, you should admit that this is the state that we live in now, not some theoretical adjustmet to the state. Atheists are protected by the "Freedom of religion" clause in the First Amendment, and there have been a fair ammount of cases wherein they have benefited from the specific provisions of said law.
One last point:
"Crude bungling of the language" is ad hominem.
No, it's a comment. An ad hominem attack would be if, in addition to noting that you're bungling the language, I claimed that said bungling defeated your points; I made no such claim. (The closest we've gotten is your assertation that religions, as a "source of bad ideas", should be limited in speech.)
To explain my comment:
Essentially no one calls themselves "theists", and as an opposite for atheism (as you used it) it's only tenably acceptable. A much fairer grouping of options would be a list I provided earlier: Monotheism, Atheism, Polytheism, Pantheism, and Transcednence. We could even add "Spirituallity" to the list if we wanted to.
Now, of course, there ARE cross-overs between the groups, but the six words I chose are good broad catagories for individuals to find their religious belief within (even if said belief is "there's nothing out there").
One more thing, since you asked:
I simply recognize that language is a flexible thing, and for a good deal of contexts, atheism can indeed be catagorized as "a religion."
You keep saying this and you keep failing to provide examples of these "good deal of contexts". One thing you need to learn about atheists is that we tend to require evidence before we accept a person's assertions. If you really are "seeking understanding" you'll start providing some.
Sure, but I'll be repeating myself.
Atheism MUST be considered a religion:
When speaking in the context of agnostic government institutions or other public bodies
When applying Civil Rights laws
When evaluating scientific claims that do not pertain to theology or sociology. (i.e., in a physics paper, any mention of God or gods save by parable should be striken, be it pro-God or anti-God.)
Atheism CAN be considered a religion:
By individuals seeking a religion that fits their beliefs
By Sociological or Theological academia working from an agnostic or non-atheist point of view.
In statistics research.
Atheism MUST NOT be considered a religion:
In Atheist "anti-religious" marketing materials, such as an "anti-tract" or a Strong Atheist website.
When dicussing the benefit or harm of religion on society.
When speculating on hypothetical future mergins of religions.
Now, I'll admit that the last catagory is a bit sparse--but, in intelletual honesty, I couldn't find three good contexts where atheism should not be treated as a religion.
You have made claims that religions require proof (they do not), and that atheism is somehow harmed by being considered a religion (I cannot see any just way why this is so). If you would care to take the time, kindly elaborate and provide some supporting logic for either of your claims.
In an attempt to keep your answer clear: Public Bodies supposedly require proof for religious (or otherwise) claims because they are agnostic--they simply do not consider the religion question.
(I believe that we can both agree that "Agnosticism" and "Weak Atheism" are essentially synonyms. Please state "All Atheists" or "Strong Atheists" if you mean more than mere disbelief or followers of the Atheist creed.)
Is the world's first supra-national organization...
Hardly. The Leauge of Nations and the Catholic Church both predate the UN, and boht are very arguably "supra-national" organizations--heck, the LoN was the precursor to the UN itself.
Still, it is what we've got, and better a weak international government that no international government.
Baptism/Protestantism: Thou Shalt Not Have Other Gods Before Me.
Which is an argument for seperation of church and state. Bad example.
No, I'm hung up on honesty. Trying to change the definitions of words is a common theist tactic but it only works on the dim. As for the ad hominem, fallacies like that won't save you.
Bullocks. If anyone is making ad hominem attacks it is you. YOU are the one who is misinterpreting what I'm saying because you have an irrational dislike of atheism being treated as a religion by the government.
You seem to have this perception of atheists gathering to discuss and celebrate atheism the same way theists do their religion.
No, I don't. And I've said as such. To paraphrase: "Atheists only organize to the extent that they do organize to oppose religion." They don't gather as Atheists to celebrate, to donate to charities, or to form communities.
When an atheist does any of these things, they choose from secular and even religous extant bodies, and if they must form a new body, they generally won't label it as "atheist" unless they specifically want to counterbalance the influence of organized religion.
This is, of course, their right. But "Atheist" organizations should be treated exactly the same as "Christian" organizations by all such organizations that are neither Atheist nor Christian.
The position that you claim you want government to hold is (weakly) atheistic. You seem to have some sort of problem with the word "atheistic" so you want to substitute "agnostic". You seem to want to redefine atheism to mean strong atheism. Well, we're not having it.
(We?)
The term "Agnostic" was coined to mean PRECISELY what I'm using it for: a third choice between, to use your crude bungling of the language, atheism and theism. Atheism is a loaded term that is imprecise for the purposes of our discussion; thus, it is appropriate to use the newer term of "Agnostic" to define a position that is neither for nor against religion.
Furthermore, I am not attempting to "redefine" what religion means. I simply recognize that language is a flexible thing, and for a good deal of contexts, atheism can indeed be catagorized as "a religion." But I suspect that you'll fail to grasp the fine point or the imprecision of our language.
Quite simply, you have fallen into zealous and rote repetition of dogma even though it is utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. While I am urged by my ethics, morals, and religion to seek love and understanding, I fear that no more understanding will come from this discussion.
Religion is far from the only cause of such dangerous ideas but every cause that can be eliminated, should.
I simply disagree--and I suspect that most great statemen would also disagree. No source of ideas should be silenced out of fear--in fact, no source of ideas should be silenced at all.
Or, as I said in the post that you replied to: "the risk of a dangerous idea being democratically instituted is less dangerous that the certain dangers of limiting free discourse in government or relying on a non-democratic form of government. "
All of the major religions in this country have commandments or rules
Kindly name some tenets of Wicca, Bhuddism, Baptism, or "mainstream Protestantism" that are in opposition to the law of the land.
You keep talking about government having neither a belief nor an absence of belief as though there were some third option. There isn't.
Yes, there is. When discussion such vagarities, we have a word constructed by a "weak Atheist" to describe those who, rather than answering the question, consider the question unanswerable: Agnostics.
You are getting hung up on semantics, which reflects poorly on your intellectual ability. I said that government (et al) should be Agnostic--not that they should or shouldn't be Atheist.
Essentially, you're reflecting the single worst fault about Atheists. Atheism is a creed, like Christianity or the Black Panthers or the Republican Party. NO ONE is an atheist who doesn't consider themselves an atheist--and everyone who does consider themselves an atheist is an atheist, even if they're utterly convinced of God's existance.
Now, YOU don't need to consider anyone who doesn't fit your definition atheists, and you can certainly call anyone an atheist that you want.
Which, of course, gets me (yet again) back to my point--the government, that shared body that makes decisions that effect us all--should treat Atheism as just another religion, and say the @#$ out of the debate.
[Y}ou continue to assert that atheism should be treated as something it is not without providing reasons for doing so.
Fine. I shall spell it out for you.
Government, businesses, political parties, and a good many other secular elements of our society have prohibited themselves from discriminating against people based on religious belief. We have Constitutional Law that explicity states that private parties are allowed to discriminated based on said religious belief. And, finally, there is a well-set inertia against any religious body having an undue influence on the government.
I do not want Atheists discriminated against, I do not want them forbidden from congregating based on Atheism alone, and I do not want Atheist organizations having a disproportionate influence on the government. If Atheists want to, as Atheists, congregate or express their beliefs or influence the government, they should be treated by the same rules that they helped created to restrain and protect religion.
*sigh* I'll attempt to keep this short--verbosity merely clouds the discussion in needless rebuttal.
Point the first:
If you're going to ban religion, you might as well ban political parties and socio-economic theorists from government as well.
This is a strawman; no one has suggested banning religion.
There was an implied "in government" corollary to that. To restate: if you're going to unilaterally ban religion from influencing government on the basis that it is unproven, you might as well ban political parties or socio-economic theories, as well.
None of these are harmful to government, simply because any truly dangerous idea would very unlikely make it through the democratic system--and, quite frankly, the risk of a dangerous idea being democratically instituted is less dangerous that the certain dangers of limiting free discourse in government or relying on a non-democratic form of government.
Point the second:
Please present evidence of atheism "working against religion". I have never seen such a thing.
Quite simply, you haven't looked. The most recent example is Michael Newdow's Supreme Court case. He is acting, as an atheist, to alter what he sees as a religious expression, on the basis that it is a religious expression.
Another one is related to a person you mentioned. Larry Darby, "former Alabama state director of American Atheists, who led the protest to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building in Montgomery." (quote from linked article.)
A third example is the case of Michael and William Randall, who were plaintiffs in one of the landmark cases that exempted the Boy Scouts of America from anti-discrimination laws based on the BSA being a private party. (The Randalls were atheists who refused to swear the BSA's religious oath.) [This example is a good example, btw, of atheism being treated already as a religion by the government.]
Atheism, either as lack of faith or faith in the nonexistance of god, is only organized to the extent that it is organized to counter religion's influence in our culture.
Point the third:
You persist in using the word "agnostic" where you should be using "atheistic"
No, I don't. The goverment should not believe in any god, and neither should it have belief nor actual absence of belief in any deity or religion. Goverment, and all other public bodies, should be agnostic--unless religion is important to them, as it undoubtedly is to some, they should simply be of the opinion that they, as public bodies, cannot answer any religious question at all.
I have four small rebuttals, and then I'll make my last point. (Feel free to reply to these, but I will not counter-reply unless specifically invited.)
Rebuttal 1:
Christianity, a belief for which there is no evidence.
There IS evidence for Christianity. Just not enough to be scientifically conclusive. (Were we to hold jury trials to decide the veraicty of religions, much of the evidence for religion would be quite admissable.)
Rebuttal 2:
No governmental claims are based on atheism; the concept is preposterous.
The concept is hardly preposterous. I can concieve of a variety of claims that could be put forth to governemnt wherein a major factor was the falsehood of religion. One example would be an objection to euthanasia, based on the belief that there is nothing after death. Another would be the somewhat repugnant petition of some social clubs for religious tax-exemptions based on religion's supposed falsehood. (Many religions are, essentially, charities, and atheists can simply not provide them with any funds but donate their dollars elsewhere, or keep them for themselves.)
Rebuttal 3:
You'd have trouble finding a scientist who claimed the