I'll explain how Anonymous works. Hopefully you'll understand why "gaining control of it" is ridiculous.
If you wish to direct them simply find an appropriate target - anyone whose behavior leads you to say "It'd be fun watching them get their own medicine". If you find a proposed hack funny, chances are other people will too. You then go to IRC - ANY channel, and tell people about it. Some demographics are more into it than others. If they find it funny and wish to run a similar attack around the same time, you have recruited an anonymous accomplice.
But they aren't your army. They are all independents and if they aren't enjoying themselves they'll simply not be there anymore. If you redirect your attack, instead of kicking abusers like scientology or sony, to a less fun target you'll be alone all of a sudden. Everyone in the group will have independently decided to ignore that bossy guy.
There is no structure. There's not just not a lot of structure as most people imagine, there is none. The only directions the group obeys are ones that most of them decide to follow for themselves, having read/participated in the discussion. If you aren't even involved but point out that staggering the attack in a certain way would increase its effectiveness, your suggestion will be followed to the letter. And if you're the guy who started it and you changed your mind or were bribed/threatened and try to call it off, you'll be ignored by everyone.
Of course some people involved in any actions will know each other. In fact, they likely heard about it from each other, so they could have secure channel, but they can't invite others into it anonymously, and so remain just a piece of anonymous, not a structure within it.
The thing about anonymous is that it's perfect cover and distraction. Like a parade would let people wear clown masks up to a bank without suspicion, any attacker can work under the cover of Anonymous DDoSing the game servers and hack other systems. Because of this they can be blamed for anything, even if it never actually happened, or was unrelated to the actions/knowledge of the masses.
Any Anonymous action can have agent provocateurs, sent to make the reasonable participants (protestors, etc) look unreasonable. For instance, wear a Guy Fawkes mask near a scientology event and mug someone. Bonus points for using slurs towards them as if they're scientologists. Then the legitimate actions and message of the group are drowned out by the invented message.
When reading about anonymous you need to know what's reasonable for a bunch of disconnected people who like to see justice served (picket scientology and make them miserable, DDoS hypocritical corporations, etc) and what isn't (organized hacking, physical attacks, etc) to know what anonymous and what's opportunistic criminals, lazy corporate security, or enemy misdirection blaming them for everything happening at the same time.
That you call either of those statements 'my' position just proves you didn't even read what I, or the guy before me, was actually saying.
My point, though it's just a restatement of the point of the guy you were arguing with, is that the first amendment appears to block all laws congress would pass which would interfere. Yes, we do know that's not the interpretation of anyone in power. You keep saying that various groups disagree but that's not relevant for the issue, which is what it appears to be saying.
You claim that the wording of the first amendment, versus the more direct wording of the thirteenth, indicates how it's intended only to block direct laws. That would only be true if the first was written after the thirteenth.
Sure, you disagree. Noted. But then you go on providing evidence that doesn't speak to the issue. Get tested for reading comprehension.
Absolutely. Patents are bad, all of them. Flash of Genius is an incredible example of how.
He jumps through all the right hoops, files the right paperwork, pays all the fees, gets a patent, gets ripped off, fights so long he loses his family, and finally wins a moderate sum.
And you're using that as an example of the system working. It's ludicrous. Especially since his outcome is much better than most individuals with a patent. His *is* the rare success story.
If we really want to encourage invention we should 1) abolish patents and 2) start a tax-funded scheme (using the money saved by not licensing patents) to reward the most important creators and teachers, as seen in retrospect by their peers - even if they don't file a single form.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Where in that do you see anything prohibiting the executive branch from doing it's job enforcing the law by punishing those who break contracts they voluntarily signed?
The part that says Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. Notably absent is a phrase like "no laws directly abridging", or "except indirectly".
Now, people here have been making a mistaken correlation between the first and thirteenth amendments, saying that you can not legally contract yourself into slavery. But the wording of the thirteenth is very different:
Yes, and 13 is greater than 1. Perhaps in the seventy-five years since the first amendment people realized they needed to be more explicit. If written knowing what we now know perhaps they'd have said "No federal law is valid where it abridges the freedom of speech, etc..."
Slavery is illegal. Limiting your own speech is not.
Yes yes, that is how it is under the currently accepted reading. You say you aren't missing the point but this suggests you are. He's not saying it is that way, but that perhaps it should be.
You can argue that the current state of affairs is not how you would like them,
Nope. Just saying that the current state of affairs doesn't appear to be justified by a strict interpretation.
but that is not how the constitution is currently written.
No, that is how it is written. But we both agree that it's not how it's read.
It does not protect free speech, it only limits one branch of government from passing laws that limit it.
Yes, any laws that limit it. There are no limiting phrases.
I would argue that that is as it should be. I should be able to, for instance, demand your silence in return for some consideration from me, such as would be the case with NDAs and trade secrets. I can also prohibit you from [...]
Yes yes, there are many reasons you'd want to muzzle someone. Such as offering to pay them damages if and only if they agree to never disclose your mistakes, even to others in their position.
I should also have the ability to recoup damages from you if you slander or libel me, and
And I should have a pony.
Your right to free speech does not trump all other rights in existence.
That is how the law works, and what the SC says, and how presidential candidates interpret the constitution. But by a strict reading, they're wrong.
If the constitution is the spec and the law the implementation, and they match, they can still be wrong if they don't properly represent the intent.
But yeah, you have a serious case of shoot the messenger. You were missing the OPs point and you seem determined to be belligerent and keep missing it.
Unfortunately for me? I'm explaining how you missed the point of the post you replied to.
But you still miss the point. If the gov is prohibited from passing any law that restricts speech, and the supreme court interprets a law as justifiably restricting speech then the gov still has an unconstitutional law. The constitution doesn't read "[shall pass no such law] except indirectly."
The technicality of who is infringing on your right to speech is less important when it's still government men (sheriffs, judges) who enforce it.
you are [claiming]: that by a strict reading of the constitution all Non Discolsure Agreements and many other contractual provisions and laws are unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Fixed that for you.
Contract law, in that it is law which can be used to uphold restrictions on speech, seems to be against the spirit of the 1st amendment.
Otherwise, just for instance, some professionals offering a required service could band together and force you to sign away your rights to speak freely, and the government would enforce it. And that would be ridiculous...
NDAs plainly exist, and have been enforced for hundreds of years.
Sure, and there are likely a ton of other ways our current government has drastically overstepped its intended bounds.
Therefore, your claim requires some extraordinary proof on your part.
No, it requires a strict interpretation of the words, not a desire to justify our current circumstances.
He's not claiming NDAs aren't enforceable, he's claiming they should not be, and the government is wrong in doing so.
"I am sure to get flamed to death, but I can try." - is me bitching?
It is. You can't just say what you're going to say, let it stand on its own. Instead you predict haters will attack you for no good reason, to imply that it certainly couldn't be that they disagreed with you.
And I was exactly right, so you would down mod because I was right?
Right? No. Self-fulfilling. You, by complaining, attract this.
What I said *is* controversial (read: wrong? What an amazing cop out.
It is. By predicting that what you'll say will be attacked, not because it's silly, but because others have an agenda is a cop-out. This way if what you say is criticized you say "See, a flamer - proof that I'm right".
Stand up and speak your mind or not, but don't hide behind mod points you amazing coward.)
Wow, you really don't know how it works here, do you? By posting in this thread I'm unable to moderate posts in it.
I'm saying, up-front, what I mod posts down for. I am speaking my mind.
I am just trying to see your mindset here.
No you aren't, liar. You don't understand my mindset so you make up a strawman and flail at it for a while. If you cared to understand you'd ask a question without calling me a coward and assuming maliciousness.
But since you asked, your post has the "crazy guy who thinks everyone is against him so he pre-loads everything with a rant about how everyone is against him, making everyone think he's crazy and thus be biased against him" vibe.
Moderation isn't for you, something to which you're entitled. The purpose of moderation is to sort posts so the majority of the users see the good messages and can skip the wastes of time. By modding you offtopic better posts percolate up. Ones where people say things that you say, but without the "I'm sure to get flamed for this" baggage.
Proving I understand the requirements. You need to show ANY possible effect from prayer. Once there's a reason for ruling out other effects you can get fancy.
Not at all. A religious person believes something and will despite proof or the lack thereof. That's what faith is about. In the vernacular you might say you believe your car keys are on the table where you put them, but a million things including a sly tester could have moved them. When you look and see that the keys are not on the table you won't "believe" anymore. That's non-religious belief.
FYI, you can be an atheist believer in god. A theism is a specific thing and you can have a god without one. Therefore it's obvious an atheist does not "believe there is no god" or this could not be so.
You state You have to accept that anything is possible. First off Spaghetti monster is a symbol created to mock religious folk.
Why is that less likely to be true? How are you ranking these things?
Secondly you state this as if I have to somehow defend their existence.
You do, as much as you defend the potential existence of every other crazy idea. Or, admit you've got favored beliefs to which you don't extend regular skepticism.
If someone took the stance that Thor exists or did exist...who the fuck am I to say otherwise? you seem to believe that accepting the possible existence is saying they do exist.
You're here defending Jesus-agnosticism, why aren't you actively defending Teapot-agnosticism?
I don't need to invest the time to know how an atom works in a chem lab ( 6 semesters of chemistry was enough thank you) I will trust the people doing the grunt work have all their ducks in a row.
You don't need to invest the time to learn why it works because it still works. Reality is funny that way.
But trust doesn't come into it. You know people have their ducks in a row (as far as you've tested) because their answers check out. You don't care to learn why, so that their theory might be broken outside the realm you've applied (and tested) it in doesn't matter to you.
As a scientist I am not sure this is true. I am not sure the experiment has ever been done. Or ever could be done. To do a double blind study of prayer...it would have to be a twin study on steroids, caffeine and meth...yuk. Even thinking about the methodology gives me a headache.
It'd be trivial. You wouldn't have to generate a working theory of prayer, simply show ANY benefit from it. Further studies, if they were ever needed, could better control the variables.
I wasn't aware there was one of those. Does it confer protection against mockery? Because abusing the right to freedom of thought in order to justify belief does not.
Otherwise though, you are right. An untested assumption is not the same as "belief".
You also bitched about moderation and implied that only reason you could be modded down was people who couldn't argue the point. When I moderate I always down-mod moderation whiners, which includes those who always "predict" they'll be down-modded before they say something "controversial" (read: wrong).
Math is really the only thing we use infix for and if you discuss it using prefix operation, as above, nobody has a problem understanding, and therefore getting how lisp works. (add-this-list 1 2 3)
LISP's lispisms really only bug other, often narrowly skilled, programers who can't imagine another way to do anything. To someone learning from scratch it's so simple its oddity is of little importance.
The real problem is that someone hasn't killed you yet.
Once, I saw a guy racistly badmouth a black lady for being clumsy when she almost tripped on him. While his back was turned to the crowd someone threw a huge rock at the guy. It missed his head and caught him in the neck, breaking (we later read) two vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed for life. The hilarious thing is that even though at least five hundred people must have seen it, and someone must have seen who threw it, nobody "saw" anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that she and her two friends were the only blacks there so whoever threw the rock was white.
Turns out the lady's shoe was broken. Someone helped her fix it and everyone had a GREAT day.
The Bitcoin author can't control anything. While he could create a rogue transaction (as could anyone) it would have to check out by other users before it'd be accepted in the block, and a bad transaction in a block would mean nobody would accept that block and build upon it.
Examples are payments from nowhere, from accounts without adequate balance, accounts you don't have the signing key for, etc.
Unfortunately that sum is only half the story. The dollar was worth more then and those companies could have been benefiting from its use for years. And they'd have been selling a cheaper unencumbered product.
The real damages in this case are immense, probably to the entire industry but certainly to these companies. Damages our court system will never address.
Doesn' tolerate dissent? Perhaps some churches are like that. Mine encourages questioning.
As for dissent being allowed, if what you ask still assumes the inherent superiority of the religious (ie, guess and hope) methodology it implicitly supports all their assumptions and feelings.
Try asking "Aren't we all wasting time here, making up pleasing answers in an non-challenging environment of yes-men instead of actually looking for testable facts and basing our opinions and actions on them."
Cults are not the same as mainstream religions. In the real world (i.e. outside the fevered imaginations of atheists), the difference is very clear.
No, cults and religions still encourage you to either believe what others tell you, or to make up answers yourself, instead of using intelligent examination to understand your world. They're all based on lunacy and wishful thinking. No-matter how much lipstick you use it's still a pig underneath.
The mainstream religions have caused more death and suffering in the last century alone than all (narrowly defined) cults have through-out history. Any line you could draw would be self-serving at best and totally unrelated to the damage faith-based institutions cause.
I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but reality doesn't conform to your prejudices.
Is that the same 'reality' your god/whatever exists in?
What is your religion then? If you're right about being encouraged to think, and the lack of faith that implies, then you might only be mistaken about it being a religion.
And what you fail to understand here is that Australia will uphold their end of the treaty willingly as they have in the past for lesser crimes.
What bearing does their reaction to "lesser crimes" have on world-shaking whistle-blowing. Most crimes serve the criminals and hurt the world and that's why everyone agrees to measures to enforce justice.
If they withdraw from those treaties, we will discuss the rules then.
In other words, breaking out the threats.
The approval rating of the world is insignificant.
And you can't imagine why other countries are pissed with you.
he is in the custody of countries who aren't afraid to hand him over.
It's not that they'd be afraid to hand him over. It's that they benefit from not. Every leak that comes out levels the field a bit. Every delay costs the USA, they don't even have to say no.
extradite lesser people for less of a crime.
Yes, they'd extradite a thief or murderer, because we all benefit from catching those people. We all benefit from leaving whistleblowers though, all but the guilty.
Anyways, they *may* extradite him, depending on the pressure the USA uses. But that's how it'll have to be, because the rest of the world benefits from having the USA's secrets spilled.
You have showed absolutely nothing but speculation in your own mind that any of the treaties will not be honored or that they aren't mutual.
No, that they aren't mutual is pretty obvious. Also that USA is trying to use them to hush up a whistleblower that everyone else benefits from listening to.
I have showed that not only have they been honored in the past, that they were mutual [...]
Yeah, in the past. Things were different. The treaty served them then, and does not now. Or rather, not letting it serve you serves them.
The founding fathers did not go around and kill the kings citizens hoping he would rule differently.
Because the rich war-backing civilians were an ocean away.
Innocent civilians and legitimate military targets, while still sometimes blurred, have been defined much clearer then any interpretation Bin Laden could possible use to justify that.
Not at all. If those people backed the USA's military ventures in the area, financially or politically, they are legitimate targets. The USA states that financially supporting terrorists implicates you, and has acted upon this to arrest, detain, and torture people who've never held a weapon.
By those (your!) rules, Bin Laden was in the right.
Fuck, are you that damn stupid and screwed up that you are now arguing that terrorism is a legitimate military tactic?
When fighting the 'Shock and Awe' people, yes. You use terrorism, and indiscriminately kill civilians - having killed easily 50 times more civilians (and innocent ones) in these wars than Bin Laden did.
And yes, when someone attacks you unprovoked and without warning, it is an illegitimate attack according to international law.
He was provoked, and had tried to warn you in smaller ways. By your logic it was a legitimate attack.
However, your unprovoked attacks against Afghanistan (linked because Bin Laden occasionally hid there) and Iraq (linked for absolutely no reason at all) are, as you say, illegitimate.
Yet you fail to see that they are only using it because it's to their advantage. They have no other reason to bring it up and will not bring it up unless it can be used to their advantage. So when we have nothing left, it will disappear along with their desire to have some sort of advantage.
Having someone with unquestionable yet false authority lecturing you and indoctrinating your children about right/wrong and how the world works is very harmful. And a cult is the same thing.
The catholics and mormons are very culty. Islam is culty. Maybe you could find some religion that is not, but the majority of religion involves conditioning and control and doesn't tolerate dissent or it wouldn't have survived to be a mainstream religion.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll explain how Anonymous works. Hopefully you'll understand why "gaining control of it" is ridiculous.
If you wish to direct them simply find an appropriate target - anyone whose behavior leads you to say "It'd be fun watching them get their own medicine". If you find a proposed hack funny, chances are other people will too. You then go to IRC - ANY channel, and tell people about it. Some demographics are more into it than others. If they find it funny and wish to run a similar attack around the same time, you have recruited an anonymous accomplice.
But they aren't your army. They are all independents and if they aren't enjoying themselves they'll simply not be there anymore. If you redirect your attack, instead of kicking abusers like scientology or sony, to a less fun target you'll be alone all of a sudden. Everyone in the group will have independently decided to ignore that bossy guy.
There is no structure. There's not just not a lot of structure as most people imagine, there is none. The only directions the group obeys are ones that most of them decide to follow for themselves, having read/participated in the discussion. If you aren't even involved but point out that staggering the attack in a certain way would increase its effectiveness, your suggestion will be followed to the letter. And if you're the guy who started it and you changed your mind or were bribed/threatened and try to call it off, you'll be ignored by everyone.
Of course some people involved in any actions will know each other. In fact, they likely heard about it from each other, so they could have secure channel, but they can't invite others into it anonymously, and so remain just a piece of anonymous, not a structure within it.
The thing about anonymous is that it's perfect cover and distraction. Like a parade would let people wear clown masks up to a bank without suspicion, any attacker can work under the cover of Anonymous DDoSing the game servers and hack other systems. Because of this they can be blamed for anything, even if it never actually happened, or was unrelated to the actions/knowledge of the masses.
Any Anonymous action can have agent provocateurs, sent to make the reasonable participants (protestors, etc) look unreasonable. For instance, wear a Guy Fawkes mask near a scientology event and mug someone. Bonus points for using slurs towards them as if they're scientologists. Then the legitimate actions and message of the group are drowned out by the invented message.
When reading about anonymous you need to know what's reasonable for a bunch of disconnected people who like to see justice served (picket scientology and make them miserable, DDoS hypocritical corporations, etc) and what isn't (organized hacking, physical attacks, etc) to know what anonymous and what's opportunistic criminals, lazy corporate security, or enemy misdirection blaming them for everything happening at the same time.
If homeschooling has a stigma it's that it's often religiously motivated. Of course anything non-reality based is bad education.
But when done right, by motivated people, it's the best.
That you call either of those statements 'my' position just proves you didn't even read what I, or the guy before me, was actually saying.
My point, though it's just a restatement of the point of the guy you were arguing with, is that the first amendment appears to block all laws congress would pass which would interfere. Yes, we do know that's not the interpretation of anyone in power. You keep saying that various groups disagree but that's not relevant for the issue, which is what it appears to be saying.
You claim that the wording of the first amendment, versus the more direct wording of the thirteenth, indicates how it's intended only to block direct laws. That would only be true if the first was written after the thirteenth.
Sure, you disagree. Noted. But then you go on providing evidence that doesn't speak to the issue. Get tested for reading comprehension.
Absolutely. Patents are bad, all of them. Flash of Genius is an incredible example of how.
He jumps through all the right hoops, files the right paperwork, pays all the fees, gets a patent, gets ripped off, fights so long he loses his family, and finally wins a moderate sum.
And you're using that as an example of the system working. It's ludicrous. Especially since his outcome is much better than most individuals with a patent. His *is* the rare success story.
If we really want to encourage invention we should 1) abolish patents and 2) start a tax-funded scheme (using the money saved by not licensing patents) to reward the most important creators and teachers, as seen in retrospect by their peers - even if they don't file a single form.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Where in that do you see anything prohibiting the executive branch from doing it's job enforcing the law by punishing those who break contracts they voluntarily signed?
The part that says Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. Notably absent is a phrase like "no laws directly abridging", or "except indirectly".
Now, people here have been making a mistaken correlation between the first and thirteenth amendments, saying that you can not legally contract yourself into slavery. But the wording of the thirteenth is very different:
Yes, and 13 is greater than 1. Perhaps in the seventy-five years since the first amendment people realized they needed to be more explicit. If written knowing what we now know perhaps they'd have said "No federal law is valid where it abridges the freedom of speech, etc..."
Slavery is illegal. Limiting your own speech is not.
Yes yes, that is how it is under the currently accepted reading. You say you aren't missing the point but this suggests you are. He's not saying it is that way, but that perhaps it should be.
You can argue that the current state of affairs is not how you would like them,
Nope. Just saying that the current state of affairs doesn't appear to be justified by a strict interpretation.
but that is not how the constitution is currently written.
No, that is how it is written. But we both agree that it's not how it's read.
It does not protect free speech, it only limits one branch of government from passing laws that limit it.
Yes, any laws that limit it. There are no limiting phrases.
I would argue that that is as it should be. I should be able to, for instance, demand your silence in return for some consideration from me, such as would be the case with NDAs and trade secrets. I can also prohibit you from [...]
Yes yes, there are many reasons you'd want to muzzle someone. Such as offering to pay them damages if and only if they agree to never disclose your mistakes, even to others in their position.
I should also have the ability to recoup damages from you if you slander or libel me, and
And I should have a pony.
Your right to free speech does not trump all other rights in existence.
No, but perhaps it was meant to trump all laws.
Yes,we know how it is.
That is how the law works, and what the SC says, and how presidential candidates interpret the constitution. But by a strict reading, they're wrong.
If the constitution is the spec and the law the implementation, and they match, they can still be wrong if they don't properly represent the intent.
But yeah, you have a serious case of shoot the messenger. You were missing the OPs point and you seem determined to be belligerent and keep missing it.
Unfortunately for me? I'm explaining how you missed the point of the post you replied to.
But you still miss the point. If the gov is prohibited from passing any law that restricts speech, and the supreme court interprets a law as justifiably restricting speech then the gov still has an unconstitutional law. The constitution doesn't read "[shall pass no such law] except indirectly."
The technicality of who is infringing on your right to speech is less important when it's still government men (sheriffs, judges) who enforce it.
you are [claiming]: that by a strict reading of the constitution all Non Discolsure Agreements and many other contractual provisions and laws are unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Fixed that for you.
Contract law, in that it is law which can be used to uphold restrictions on speech, seems to be against the spirit of the 1st amendment.
Otherwise, just for instance, some professionals offering a required service could band together and force you to sign away your rights to speak freely, and the government would enforce it. And that would be ridiculous...
NDAs plainly exist, and have been enforced for hundreds of years.
Sure, and there are likely a ton of other ways our current government has drastically overstepped its intended bounds.
Therefore, your claim requires some extraordinary proof on your part.
No, it requires a strict interpretation of the words, not a desire to justify our current circumstances.
He's not claiming NDAs aren't enforceable, he's claiming they should not be, and the government is wrong in doing so.
"I am sure to get flamed to death, but I can try." - is me bitching?
It is. You can't just say what you're going to say, let it stand on its own. Instead you predict haters will attack you for no good reason, to imply that it certainly couldn't be that they disagreed with you.
And I was exactly right, so you would down mod because I was right?
Right? No. Self-fulfilling. You, by complaining, attract this.
What I said *is* controversial (read: wrong? What an amazing cop out.
It is. By predicting that what you'll say will be attacked, not because it's silly, but because others have an agenda is a cop-out. This way if what you say is criticized you say "See, a flamer - proof that I'm right".
Stand up and speak your mind or not, but don't hide behind mod points you amazing coward.)
Wow, you really don't know how it works here, do you? By posting in this thread I'm unable to moderate posts in it.
I'm saying, up-front, what I mod posts down for. I am speaking my mind.
I am just trying to see your mindset here.
No you aren't, liar. You don't understand my mindset so you make up a strawman and flail at it for a while. If you cared to understand you'd ask a question without calling me a coward and assuming maliciousness.
But since you asked, your post has the "crazy guy who thinks everyone is against him so he pre-loads everything with a rant about how everyone is against him, making everyone think he's crazy and thus be biased against him" vibe.
Moderation isn't for you, something to which you're entitled. The purpose of moderation is to sort posts so the majority of the users see the good messages and can skip the wastes of time. By modding you offtopic better posts percolate up. Ones where people say things that you say, but without the "I'm sure to get flamed for this" baggage.
Proving I understand the requirements. You need to show ANY possible effect from prayer. Once there's a reason for ruling out other effects you can get fancy.
Not routers, they don't. Most of the cost is the processor/bus/etc, not the chassis and plugs/sockets.
Atheism is a belief structure like bald is a hair color.
I don't "believe" your god is bunk, I simply haven't heard of a convincing god story.
Wow. In the end school taught you a lot. I pity your classmates.
Not at all. A religious person believes something and will despite proof or the lack thereof. That's what faith is about. In the vernacular you might say you believe your car keys are on the table where you put them, but a million things including a sly tester could have moved them. When you look and see that the keys are not on the table you won't "believe" anymore. That's non-religious belief.
FYI, you can be an atheist believer in god. A theism is a specific thing and you can have a god without one. Therefore it's obvious an atheist does not "believe there is no god" or this could not be so.
You state You have to accept that anything is possible. First off Spaghetti monster is a symbol created to mock religious folk.
Why is that less likely to be true? How are you ranking these things?
Secondly you state this as if I have to somehow defend their existence.
You do, as much as you defend the potential existence of every other crazy idea. Or, admit you've got favored beliefs to which you don't extend regular skepticism.
If someone took the stance that Thor exists or did exist...who the fuck am I to say otherwise? you seem to believe that accepting the possible existence is saying they do exist.
You're here defending Jesus-agnosticism, why aren't you actively defending Teapot-agnosticism?
I don't need to invest the time to know how an atom works in a chem lab ( 6 semesters of chemistry was enough thank you) I will trust the people doing the grunt work have all their ducks in a row.
You don't need to invest the time to learn why it works because it still works. Reality is funny that way.
But trust doesn't come into it. You know people have their ducks in a row (as far as you've tested) because their answers check out. You don't care to learn why, so that their theory might be broken outside the realm you've applied (and tested) it in doesn't matter to you.
As a scientist I am not sure this is true. I am not sure the experiment has ever been done. Or ever could be done. To do a double blind study of prayer...it would have to be a twin study on steroids, caffeine and meth...yuk. Even thinking about the methodology gives me a headache.
It'd be trivial. You wouldn't have to generate a working theory of prayer, simply show ANY benefit from it. Further studies, if they were ever needed, could better control the variables.
I completely respect your right to be religious
I wasn't aware there was one of those. Does it confer protection against mockery? Because abusing the right to freedom of thought in order to justify belief does not.
Otherwise though, you are right. An untested assumption is not the same as "belief".
You also bitched about moderation and implied that only reason you could be modded down was people who couldn't argue the point. When I moderate I always down-mod moderation whiners, which includes those who always "predict" they'll be down-modded before they say something "controversial" (read: wrong).
We have a prefix-form for math, observe:
add 3, 5, 10
multiply 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
etc.
Math is really the only thing we use infix for and if you discuss it using prefix operation, as above, nobody has a problem understanding, and therefore getting how lisp works. (add-this-list 1 2 3)
LISP's lispisms really only bug other, often narrowly skilled, programers who can't imagine another way to do anything. To someone learning from scratch it's so simple its oddity is of little importance.
The real problem is that someone hasn't killed you yet.
Once, I saw a guy racistly badmouth a black lady for being clumsy when she almost tripped on him. While his back was turned to the crowd someone threw a huge rock at the guy. It missed his head and caught him in the neck, breaking (we later read) two vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed for life. The hilarious thing is that even though at least five hundred people must have seen it, and someone must have seen who threw it, nobody "saw" anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that she and her two friends were the only blacks there so whoever threw the rock was white.
Turns out the lady's shoe was broken. Someone helped her fix it and everyone had a GREAT day.
I wish you had been there. :)
The Bitcoin author can't control anything. While he could create a rogue transaction (as could anyone) it would have to check out by other users before it'd be accepted in the block, and a bad transaction in a block would mean nobody would accept that block and build upon it.
Examples are payments from nowhere, from accounts without adequate balance, accounts you don't have the signing key for, etc.
Unfortunately that sum is only half the story. The dollar was worth more then and those companies could have been benefiting from its use for years. And they'd have been selling a cheaper unencumbered product.
The real damages in this case are immense, probably to the entire industry but certainly to these companies. Damages our court system will never address.
Patent law costs everyone, a lot.
Doesn' tolerate dissent? Perhaps some churches are like that. Mine encourages questioning.
As for dissent being allowed, if what you ask still assumes the inherent superiority of the religious (ie, guess and hope) methodology it implicitly supports all their assumptions and feelings.
Try asking "Aren't we all wasting time here, making up pleasing answers in an non-challenging environment of yes-men instead of actually looking for testable facts and basing our opinions and actions on them."
Cults are not the same as mainstream religions. In the real world (i.e. outside the fevered imaginations of atheists), the difference is very clear.
No, cults and religions still encourage you to either believe what others tell you, or to make up answers yourself, instead of using intelligent examination to understand your world. They're all based on lunacy and wishful thinking. No-matter how much lipstick you use it's still a pig underneath.
The mainstream religions have caused more death and suffering in the last century alone than all (narrowly defined) cults have through-out history. Any line you could draw would be self-serving at best and totally unrelated to the damage faith-based institutions cause.
I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but reality doesn't conform to your prejudices.
Is that the same 'reality' your god/whatever exists in?
What is your religion then? If you're right about being encouraged to think, and the lack of faith that implies, then you might only be mistaken about it being a religion.
All treaties are self serving.
They're sold as mutually beneficial.
And what you fail to understand here is that Australia will uphold their end of the treaty willingly as they have in the past for lesser crimes.
What bearing does their reaction to "lesser crimes" have on world-shaking whistle-blowing. Most crimes serve the criminals and hurt the world and that's why everyone agrees to measures to enforce justice.
If they withdraw from those treaties, we will discuss the rules then.
In other words, breaking out the threats.
The approval rating of the world is insignificant.
And you can't imagine why other countries are pissed with you.
he is in the custody of countries who aren't afraid to hand him over.
It's not that they'd be afraid to hand him over. It's that they benefit from not. Every leak that comes out levels the field a bit. Every delay costs the USA, they don't even have to say no.
extradite lesser people for less of a crime.
Yes, they'd extradite a thief or murderer, because we all benefit from catching those people. We all benefit from leaving whistleblowers though, all but the guilty.
Anyways, they *may* extradite him, depending on the pressure the USA uses. But that's how it'll have to be, because the rest of the world benefits from having the USA's secrets spilled.
You have showed absolutely nothing but speculation in your own mind that any of the treaties will not be honored or that they aren't mutual.
No, that they aren't mutual is pretty obvious. Also that USA is trying to use them to hush up a whistleblower that everyone else benefits from listening to.
I have showed that not only have they been honored in the past, that they were mutual [...]
Yeah, in the past. Things were different. The treaty served them then, and does not now. Or rather, not letting it serve you serves them.
The founding fathers did not go around and kill the kings citizens hoping he would rule differently.
Because the rich war-backing civilians were an ocean away.
Innocent civilians and legitimate military targets, while still sometimes blurred, have been defined much clearer then any interpretation Bin Laden could possible use to justify that.
Not at all. If those people backed the USA's military ventures in the area, financially or politically, they are legitimate targets. The USA states that financially supporting terrorists implicates you, and has acted upon this to arrest, detain, and torture people who've never held a weapon.
By those (your!) rules, Bin Laden was in the right.
Fuck, are you that damn stupid and screwed up that you are now arguing that terrorism is a legitimate military tactic?
When fighting the 'Shock and Awe' people, yes. You use terrorism, and indiscriminately kill civilians - having killed easily 50 times more civilians (and innocent ones) in these wars than Bin Laden did.
And yes, when someone attacks you unprovoked and without warning, it is an illegitimate attack according to international law.
He was provoked, and had tried to warn you in smaller ways. By your logic it was a legitimate attack.
However, your unprovoked attacks against Afghanistan (linked because Bin Laden occasionally hid there) and Iraq (linked for absolutely no reason at all) are, as you say, illegitimate.
Yet you fail to see that they are only using it because it's to their advantage. They have no other reason to bring it up and will not bring it up unless it can be used to their advantage. So when we have nothing left, it will disappear along with their desire to have some sort of advantage.
Oh, you're so c
Having someone with unquestionable yet false authority lecturing you and indoctrinating your children about right/wrong and how the world works is very harmful. And a cult is the same thing.
The catholics and mormons are very culty. Islam is culty. Maybe you could find some religion that is not, but the majority of religion involves conditioning and control and doesn't tolerate dissent or it wouldn't have survived to be a mainstream religion.