Iran's government is partly democratic. Ahmadinejad was elected President by winning the popular vote. Their President has less power than the the religious leader, known as the Supreme Leader. When the majority of the population wants a government run along religous grounds, this is what you get. It's not good, but it isn't a theocracy like Atwood described in The Handmaid's Tale.
Iran, and indeed all Islamicist cultures/nations, present us with the seeming incongruity of a dystopia that enjoys popular support. But it's only a dystopia by the standards of an open, liberal society, which quite a few even in our society don't really believe in. Leo Strauss and the neoconservatives, for one (not exhaustive) set of examples, felt that liberal society, with its permissiveness and tolerance, is too weak to preserve a nation.
These "fundamentalists" left England because their intolerance was not tolerated. There is a reason the term "Puritan" is not synonymous with "tolerant." As soon as they arrived in what was to become the USA (I hate the term "new world"), they felt no compunction about using the government to enforce their idea of religion on others. Later, there were people like Isaac Bakus (a Baptist, no less) and others who pioneered the separation between church and state, a position that is amazingly repudiated as secular fraud by many Baptists today.
You may get along with many religious people, as I do, but the more pious and certain people get, the less tolerant they get, and the more difficult it is to get along with them. Kingdom Coming is an interesting book on Christian Nationalism, a faction/movement that I find both terrifying and fascinating. Referring back to the subject of the original article, the problem science faces with Islamic society is that the fundamentalists are in charge. Faith in God isn't what undermines science--it's biblical literalism, and the faith that the Bible trumps empirical science, that makes science impossible.
When faith remains a private matter that people call on to console themselves in times of crisis, or as a model in which to understand morality, then faith doesn't encroach on empirical (what fundamentalists call materialistic) science. Faith remains a private matter in secularized societies, and this secularization of society is exactly the grievance that fundamentalists have. They want society to be religious, not secular, and this shift of focus would kill science for us just as it has for Islamic countries. The question is not whether or not Christian Nationalism is as bad as the Taliban. I don't actually believe they would go around putting people to death on streetcorners, Deuteronomy notwithstanding. But the de-secularization of society would still make science impossible, even if you and I find individual religious people sane the vast majority of the time.
Well, the ACLU has actually been involved in some gun cases, such as working with the NRAonce in a while. They certainly can't take all cases, and I'm unsure what specific civil rights were violated in this case. Excessive prosecution, probably, which unfortunately happens all the time. The ACLU's "agenda" usually extends to 9/10 of the Bill of Rights.
They do of course have an agenda, and they are biased--as are all humans on the planet. Human objectivity, especially on something as emotionally complex as civil rights, is impossible, and it's irresponsible to say that they have an agenda without acknowledging that everyone else has one as well.
As far as doing more harm than good, would you prefer to have just the NRA, which sticks up for 1/10 of the Bill of Rights? What other organization fights so consistently for such a broad range of civil rights? I thank the ACLU that cops can't (legally) torture confessions out of people, you can't be locked up indefinitely without trial (less true than it used to be, but still...) and so on.
Even if they are more selective than we would like in which causes they champion, and even if they are imperfect (as we would expect them to be, being human), the alternative is... what? No civil rights organizations at all? Are you one of those who think that the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, etc., have harmed the USA by saying "torture is wrong" and similar things?
When did we forget that it's OK to do an investigation which turns up no evidence of guilt?
Whoa there, buddy, back up a bit. Investigations cost taxpayers money. Offices with low conviction rates don't get budget raises. Cops without a lot of conviction notches in their belt don't go on to become successful politicians. When all is said and done, investigations serve more purposes than just investigating what happened. You're acting as if the most important concern is making sure the government doesn't lock up innocent people. That's a bit old-fashioned, don't you think? Haven't you ACLU types done enough to weaken this country?
Many US schools have a "zero tolerance" policy to violence. If you punch someone even in self-defense, they call the police and you now have a criminal record. Unfortunately, this trigger point often isn't reached until after a long period of bullying, when the victim finally lashes out. The only conclusion I can reliably reach about schools, at least in the USA, is that the staff approve of bullying. Maybe they admire the bully for being strong, or contemn the victim for being weak. I don't know either way, but bullying is tolerated far too much for me to believe that they actually object to it.
Speaking as an intellectual, slacking in school, as in just getting by, leaves more intellectual energy for outside reading. Many college assignments are lame, designed more to test my ability to work on a team than to test my mastery of the actual subject. That's fine if you view college as a job training program, but less so if you're just there for intellectual curiosity. I'd rather meet, rather than exceed, project requirements, and read another Faulkner novel on the side than work extra hours on the project but have no time for outside reading.
I know many, many people who graduated outstanding grades but who don't know all that much now. One of my bosses has a Master's degree but didn't know who Freud or Stalin were. She did well on all the assignments in college, made good grades, and is a moron. She has no intellectual curiosity, and has never read a book that wasn't assigned to her. For her and millions more like her, college was an exercise in following instructions so she could get a high-paying job. By her definition, it was a success. I'd rather be well-read, thanks. Some people are brilliant and can excel in school and still be widely read, but some of use have to choose.
Might the US government look askance at closed-source Russian software that was rumored to contain government-compliant (Russian government, that is) backdoors? It'a a bit obvious that we wouldn't want to trust that, especially with a new cold war brewing. For all Putin knows (not that he's famed for paranoia or anything) the NSA has an instant backdoor to every Windows installation connected to the net, or a kill switch, or whatever. I'd be moving to Linux too.
The internet is my bookstore, research library, mailbox (letters, anyway), dvd/music store, clothing store, shoestore, toystore, stationery store (fountain pens/ink, moleskine journals), news outlet, travel agent, and god knows what else. People see you "surfing the web" and fail to differentiate between the different activities you're actually engaging in. That's a problem with oversimplification, not with internet use.
Best WP feature was ALT-F3 - reveal codes. That was extremely useful when trying to trackdown where some attribute was on or off.
That's why I like LaTeX (or markup languages in general, even HTML). The markup codes are ALWAYS visible. When everything is GUI-driven without at least an option for CLI formatting (keyboard shortcuts don't count) it's just harder to use.
because it always comes down to either what your job makes you use, or personal preference. The involvement of personal preference guarantees that rancor will surface in short order. As far as business/job use, saying that product x is "required for serious document creation" usually means that the company has painted themselves into a corner with previous decisions/purchases and so now lack the flexibility to use the alternative, but they have to paint the poop pretty colors so they pretend that their document needs puts them in an elite class that can only be served by an expensive office suite.
about "liberals" not wanting the govt to be able to surveil terrorists, the real (in fact the only) issue at question was oversight. No leftie (or rightie) was saying that the government should have no wiretapping powers, or that terrorists should get a free pass. The only question was whether or not a warrant should be needed, which by the 4th amendment it clearly should.
the phrase "activist judge" is a synonym for "a judge who made a ruling I don't like.
Amen to that. You didn't hear much about activist judges when the SCOTUS stopped Florida's recount (mandated by state law) and handed the election to George Bush. It's basically a meaningless phrase that serves as a placeholder for social conservatism.
I am a component of that marketplace, cupcake. At no time have I entertained delusions of swaying the market to my whims. I'm just saying that I'm glad they make product x, and that I hope the market produces more along those lines. Obviously if they don't make it I won't buy it. I'm not one of those who rail and rant as if there is a conspiracy against me. My point, and only point, is that some people do indeed want something smaller than a laptop but larger than a PDA. The fact that I exist and I want something with those qualities proves my point sufficiently. I never said that it would be insanely profitable, or that development would continue. Saying "some people want this" when some people do, in fact, want this, should not be too controversial of a statement.
Sony has a little tablet computer, whose name I'm not going to bother looking up. Sharp has the Zaurus. The Nokia N800 I've already mentioned. The smartphone market is growing somewhat. Linux is relevant because of the pre-existing unix apps, to include all those old things like grep, sed, etc. If you don't like the Unix thing then you aren't going to see why a small handheld unix-ish computer is very very cool. I don't begrudge you your difference of opinion, so don't begrudge me mine.
And please don't tell me what I should want. I like LaTeX for typesetting, whether it be poetry, random musings, whatever. You don't have to consider it modern for it to work--if it works and is stable, why abandon it? I prefer LaTeX output to plain text, or HTML, OpenOffice, etc. What you use is your business. I wasn't demanding that someone create what I want/need, only pointing out that people sometimes want/need things that you yourself might not. The fact that companies are making small Linux-based computers indicates that there is a demand, even if the reasons some geeks are buying them aren't the same ones the company had for making them.
after a few years with no TV (meaning nothing on the TV other than occasional DVDs, none of which are of TV shows) is that TV writing is execrably bad. It's to the point that, if I find myself somewhere where a sitcom (that Raymond show comes to mind) is on, I actually wonder if it's bad writing, or a caricature of bad writing. Is there a meta-joke here that I'm almost getting? Are they satirizing bad writing? I can't tell the difference between satire and what passes for creative TV writing. And don't get me started on the news. Fox News is the most egregious, but that's like saying Hitler is worse than Pol Pot.
I don't think it's that parents "don't want to teach their kids how to behave." I think it's that kids aren't behaving, and parents just don't consider this fact to be a reflection on their own abilities|character. They do teach them things, such as how to have a high sense of entitlement, be impatient with other people, expect instant gratification, prefer infotainment to critical reading, etc--all taught by copious example. These parents don't have a conscious disinclination to teach, rather they think that they example they set, and what they consciously teach, are just fine and dandy, and they don't consider the kids misbehavior or short attention span a natural extension of what they have been taught. It's like the people who buy Rottweilers and then don't feel responsible when the dog mauls someone--the common thread here is that they want to do whatever strikes their fancy, but they don't feel responsible for any unintended consequences. I'm not disagreeing with your main idea, only quibbling over phrasing.
Well, the B-52 does in fact carry large amounts of cargo, which it unceremoniously unloads when flying over the destination. Getting someone to sign for that cargo at the end point has, historically, been a bit of a problem, but with this particular bird they chalk that up as a feature rather than a bug.
Many people want a functional linux-based computer that is smaller/lighter than a laptop. The Nokia N800 internet tablet is a good example. Small, light, and runs linux -- there is even a TeX/LaTeX distribution for it. If I'm traveling the world with a backpack, I'd rather have the N800 and a bluetooth keyboard than a laptop.
Something doesn't have to be a huge market-redefining, ipod-magnitude product to find a following. Not everything has to change the world and get 90% market saturation just to be called a success. I hope the N800 has a phone-enabled successor, and that other models follow. I also hope that Palm releases a Linux-based Treo. Small if good, even if you personally wouldn't find a use for it.
"To make an apple pie from scratch, one would first have to invent the universe." Can't remember if that was Sagan, but I think so. It's not as funny, but it's elegant.
Evolutionary theory doesn't say that humans "just randomly formed." Creationist caricatures of Darwinism bear little resemblance to actual evolutionary theory.
That's part of the reason it's so hard to have a debate on the subject. It's difficult to even get to the subject, because you have to wade through so many absurd assumptions about what evolution is (meaning--what the scientific theory is) before you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. Usually we never get to that point, because people don't want to give up their cherished illusions that Darwinism is best summed up by stuff like "Frog+time=prince."
It would be like me arguing against voting Republican because they eat babies. They don't eat babies, but if I couldn't give up that caricature, we could never get to the point of talking about their actual platform or policies.
They avoid that issue by refusing to discuss the actual nature/identity of the designer. We know what they're referring to, and Evangelicals (who aren't apalled by ID advocates denying Jesus by their silence) know what they're referring to, but they think they can have credibility if they keep mum on the subject.
Doesn't work, but it's an interesting theory. "I know there was a designer, but I'm not going to say anything at all about who or what it might be. That way you can't present counterarguments." Might work in 2nd grade or so, but eventually we have to grow up and actually present arguments that can, alas, be refuted.
The ONLY reason I use OS X is because Linux (debian and derivatives, in my case) lack the (easy) hardware support that is automatic when I use OS X. I prefer Debian. I prefer apt-get install to dragging to the Applications folder. But wifi is my only internet connection right now, and I haven't found a distro yet that recognizes/configures wifi for my Macbook out of the box. Most of them won't even recognize the keyboard, so I can't scroll to other boot options anyway. I don't dislike OS X, but I enjoy Linux more. I just can't use it. Still beats windows, though.
is how many people here on Slashdot would rather have no internet service available than have it subsidized/provided by government. If we met someone who would prefer to have no roads at all over government-operated roads, we'd think "what a moron!" but suddenly if it's the internet, we have to wonder if they have a point.
I'm largely libertarian (I know, I know, I've surrendered my credentials with this post alone) but some things, like mail service, phone service, water service, and yes, internet, aren't profitable enough on the small scale for the greed factor to make it worth providing service to houses scattered across the prairie, or even in small towns. So we have to choose between no internet at all or cries of encroaching socialism. The question is whether the economic benefits of internet access are enough to warrant the problems caused by government involvement.
Were the benefits of phone or mail access enough to warrant government involvement? Anyone want to speculate on the economic life of a town with no phone or internet or public roads? The phone system may not have been government-supplied, but they did guarantee the monopoly that made it sufficiently profitable. The distinction isn't that important, in this context.
Before he even took office he was discrediting the Geneva Conventions as "quaint and outdated." He was instrumental in making torture official US policy...oh scratch that, sorry, he was instrumental in necessitating our redefinition of torture so what we were doing wasn't torture anymore. Anyone who was behind him until the Ashcroft/bedside story has been asleep for a few years.
It's easy to be suspicious when the wind if finally blowing that direction--where were you when this crap started? I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I've read about the Zimbardo prison experiment. This has been ugly since day one, and I'm not too sympathetic to anyone who gave Gonzalez et al the benefit of the doubt for this many years when they gutted habeus corpus, normalized torture, built secret prisons, etc.
because we can take the same line of reasoning much further. Refusing to believe that demons cause disease requires blind faith in the germ theory. Refusing to believe that angels push the planets around in their orbits, and that the earth is the center of cosmos, requires faith in the heliocentric solar system, the copernican model, relativity, and all of that. Even on a smaller scale away from the difficulties of science, believing that the cards were dealt as they were in a certain poker game, without divine (or infernal) intervention, requires a staggering amount of faith, since the way those cards were dealt is so staggeringly improbable. Life does exist, however poorly we may be able to envision its beginning. Positing a magical thingie and saying "He did it!" doesn't add any information--it just evades the question. The God of the Gaps argument doesn't become any more persuasive as it becomes older.
So, sorry...the burden of proof (though it should be called the burden of evidence, not proof) still lies with those positing a supernatural being. We're just saying that the natural world exists, and trying to find explanations for things we see in that natural world. Positing something outside that natural world, whether it be magical leprechauns, genies, Star Trek's Q, God, or whatever, requires evidence to support that claim. You're asking people to stop developing explanations and just believe in something that doesn't really bring all that much to the debate.
Me being an atheist doesn't require faith in anything. It isn't that I think science can explain everything, but that science is the only tool by which we can understand the world around us. We have limited data, limited powers of perception, limited intelligence, and so on, so the process, being a human construct, is limited. But again, it's the only tool we have. If you're in the dark you can rely on the guy with the flashlight, even admitting the limitations of the flashlight, or you can stay in the dark with the other guy who tells you a) really nice comforting stories, and b) that the flashlight isn't all it's cracked up to be.
As the flashlight reveals that some of the story-teller's tales are false, the story-teller will get more and more upset and point out, accurately, that the flashlight can't show you everything. But the flashlight, however limited, is still the only alternative to the pretty stories. Science is that flashlight. Trust who you want, but I trust the guys who made medicine, airplanes, air conditioning, and so on. This isn't to say that the story-teller has no value whatsoever. People apparently need someone to tell them that they should be decent human beings because God wants them to be. And people evidently need hope that there is something else out there, that death isn't the end. But when it comes to the physical world, including how biodiversity came about, I'll defer to science every time. Evolutionary theory is critical to fields like antibiotic research, and we can't throw it out just because it doesn't fit well with your bible.
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Iran, and indeed all Islamicist cultures/nations, present us with the seeming incongruity of a dystopia that enjoys popular support. But it's only a dystopia by the standards of an open, liberal society, which quite a few even in our society don't really believe in. Leo Strauss and the neoconservatives, for one (not exhaustive) set of examples, felt that liberal society, with its permissiveness and tolerance, is too weak to preserve a nation.
You may get along with many religious people, as I do, but the more pious and certain people get, the less tolerant they get, and the more difficult it is to get along with them. Kingdom Coming is an interesting book on Christian Nationalism, a faction/movement that I find both terrifying and fascinating. Referring back to the subject of the original article, the problem science faces with Islamic society is that the fundamentalists are in charge. Faith in God isn't what undermines science--it's biblical literalism, and the faith that the Bible trumps empirical science, that makes science impossible.
When faith remains a private matter that people call on to console themselves in times of crisis, or as a model in which to understand morality, then faith doesn't encroach on empirical (what fundamentalists call materialistic) science. Faith remains a private matter in secularized societies, and this secularization of society is exactly the grievance that fundamentalists have. They want society to be religious, not secular, and this shift of focus would kill science for us just as it has for Islamic countries. The question is not whether or not Christian Nationalism is as bad as the Taliban. I don't actually believe they would go around putting people to death on streetcorners, Deuteronomy notwithstanding. But the de-secularization of society would still make science impossible, even if you and I find individual religious people sane the vast majority of the time.
They do of course have an agenda, and they are biased--as are all humans on the planet. Human objectivity, especially on something as emotionally complex as civil rights, is impossible, and it's irresponsible to say that they have an agenda without acknowledging that everyone else has one as well.
As far as doing more harm than good, would you prefer to have just the NRA, which sticks up for 1/10 of the Bill of Rights? What other organization fights so consistently for such a broad range of civil rights? I thank the ACLU that cops can't (legally) torture confessions out of people, you can't be locked up indefinitely without trial (less true than it used to be, but still...) and so on.
Even if they are more selective than we would like in which causes they champion, and even if they are imperfect (as we would expect them to be, being human), the alternative is... what? No civil rights organizations at all? Are you one of those who think that the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, etc., have harmed the USA by saying "torture is wrong" and similar things?
Many US schools have a "zero tolerance" policy to violence. If you punch someone even in self-defense, they call the police and you now have a criminal record. Unfortunately, this trigger point often isn't reached until after a long period of bullying, when the victim finally lashes out. The only conclusion I can reliably reach about schools, at least in the USA, is that the staff approve of bullying. Maybe they admire the bully for being strong, or contemn the victim for being weak. I don't know either way, but bullying is tolerated far too much for me to believe that they actually object to it.
I know many, many people who graduated outstanding grades but who don't know all that much now. One of my bosses has a Master's degree but didn't know who Freud or Stalin were. She did well on all the assignments in college, made good grades, and is a moron. She has no intellectual curiosity, and has never read a book that wasn't assigned to her. For her and millions more like her, college was an exercise in following instructions so she could get a high-paying job. By her definition, it was a success. I'd rather be well-read, thanks. Some people are brilliant and can excel in school and still be widely read, but some of use have to choose.
Might the US government look askance at closed-source Russian software that was rumored to contain government-compliant (Russian government, that is) backdoors? It'a a bit obvious that we wouldn't want to trust that, especially with a new cold war brewing. For all Putin knows (not that he's famed for paranoia or anything) the NSA has an instant backdoor to every Windows installation connected to the net, or a kill switch, or whatever. I'd be moving to Linux too.
The internet is my bookstore, research library, mailbox (letters, anyway), dvd/music store, clothing store, shoestore, toystore, stationery store (fountain pens/ink, moleskine journals), news outlet, travel agent, and god knows what else. People see you "surfing the web" and fail to differentiate between the different activities you're actually engaging in. That's a problem with oversimplification, not with internet use.
because it always comes down to either what your job makes you use, or personal preference. The involvement of personal preference guarantees that rancor will surface in short order. As far as business/job use, saying that product x is "required for serious document creation" usually means that the company has painted themselves into a corner with previous decisions/purchases and so now lack the flexibility to use the alternative, but they have to paint the poop pretty colors so they pretend that their document needs puts them in an elite class that can only be served by an expensive office suite.
about "liberals" not wanting the govt to be able to surveil terrorists, the real (in fact the only) issue at question was oversight. No leftie (or rightie) was saying that the government should have no wiretapping powers, or that terrorists should get a free pass. The only question was whether or not a warrant should be needed, which by the 4th amendment it clearly should.
I am a component of that marketplace, cupcake. At no time have I entertained delusions of swaying the market to my whims. I'm just saying that I'm glad they make product x, and that I hope the market produces more along those lines. Obviously if they don't make it I won't buy it. I'm not one of those who rail and rant as if there is a conspiracy against me. My point, and only point, is that some people do indeed want something smaller than a laptop but larger than a PDA. The fact that I exist and I want something with those qualities proves my point sufficiently. I never said that it would be insanely profitable, or that development would continue. Saying "some people want this" when some people do, in fact, want this, should not be too controversial of a statement.
And please don't tell me what I should want. I like LaTeX for typesetting, whether it be poetry, random musings, whatever. You don't have to consider it modern for it to work--if it works and is stable, why abandon it? I prefer LaTeX output to plain text, or HTML, OpenOffice, etc. What you use is your business. I wasn't demanding that someone create what I want/need, only pointing out that people sometimes want/need things that you yourself might not. The fact that companies are making small Linux-based computers indicates that there is a demand, even if the reasons some geeks are buying them aren't the same ones the company had for making them.
after a few years with no TV (meaning nothing on the TV other than occasional DVDs, none of which are of TV shows) is that TV writing is execrably bad. It's to the point that, if I find myself somewhere where a sitcom (that Raymond show comes to mind) is on, I actually wonder if it's bad writing, or a caricature of bad writing. Is there a meta-joke here that I'm almost getting? Are they satirizing bad writing? I can't tell the difference between satire and what passes for creative TV writing. And don't get me started on the news. Fox News is the most egregious, but that's like saying Hitler is worse than Pol Pot.
I don't think it's that parents "don't want to teach their kids how to behave." I think it's that kids aren't behaving, and parents just don't consider this fact to be a reflection on their own abilities|character. They do teach them things, such as how to have a high sense of entitlement, be impatient with other people, expect instant gratification, prefer infotainment to critical reading, etc--all taught by copious example. These parents don't have a conscious disinclination to teach, rather they think that they example they set, and what they consciously teach, are just fine and dandy, and they don't consider the kids misbehavior or short attention span a natural extension of what they have been taught. It's like the people who buy Rottweilers and then don't feel responsible when the dog mauls someone--the common thread here is that they want to do whatever strikes their fancy, but they don't feel responsible for any unintended consequences. I'm not disagreeing with your main idea, only quibbling over phrasing.
Well, the B-52 does in fact carry large amounts of cargo, which it unceremoniously unloads when flying over the destination. Getting someone to sign for that cargo at the end point has, historically, been a bit of a problem, but with this particular bird they chalk that up as a feature rather than a bug.
Something doesn't have to be a huge market-redefining, ipod-magnitude product to find a following. Not everything has to change the world and get 90% market saturation just to be called a success. I hope the N800 has a phone-enabled successor, and that other models follow. I also hope that Palm releases a Linux-based Treo. Small if good, even if you personally wouldn't find a use for it.
"To make an apple pie from scratch, one would first have to invent the universe." Can't remember if that was Sagan, but I think so. It's not as funny, but it's elegant.
That's part of the reason it's so hard to have a debate on the subject. It's difficult to even get to the subject, because you have to wade through so many absurd assumptions about what evolution is (meaning--what the scientific theory is) before you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. Usually we never get to that point, because people don't want to give up their cherished illusions that Darwinism is best summed up by stuff like "Frog+time=prince."
It would be like me arguing against voting Republican because they eat babies. They don't eat babies, but if I couldn't give up that caricature, we could never get to the point of talking about their actual platform or policies.
Doesn't work, but it's an interesting theory. "I know there was a designer, but I'm not going to say anything at all about who or what it might be. That way you can't present counterarguments." Might work in 2nd grade or so, but eventually we have to grow up and actually present arguments that can, alas, be refuted.
The ONLY reason I use OS X is because Linux (debian and derivatives, in my case) lack the (easy) hardware support that is automatic when I use OS X. I prefer Debian. I prefer apt-get install to dragging to the Applications folder. But wifi is my only internet connection right now, and I haven't found a distro yet that recognizes/configures wifi for my Macbook out of the box. Most of them won't even recognize the keyboard, so I can't scroll to other boot options anyway. I don't dislike OS X, but I enjoy Linux more. I just can't use it. Still beats windows, though.
I'm largely libertarian (I know, I know, I've surrendered my credentials with this post alone) but some things, like mail service, phone service, water service, and yes, internet, aren't profitable enough on the small scale for the greed factor to make it worth providing service to houses scattered across the prairie, or even in small towns. So we have to choose between no internet at all or cries of encroaching socialism. The question is whether the economic benefits of internet access are enough to warrant the problems caused by government involvement.
Were the benefits of phone or mail access enough to warrant government involvement? Anyone want to speculate on the economic life of a town with no phone or internet or public roads? The phone system may not have been government-supplied, but they did guarantee the monopoly that made it sufficiently profitable. The distinction isn't that important, in this context.
It's easy to be suspicious when the wind if finally blowing that direction--where were you when this crap started? I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I've read about the Zimbardo prison experiment. This has been ugly since day one, and I'm not too sympathetic to anyone who gave Gonzalez et al the benefit of the doubt for this many years when they gutted habeus corpus, normalized torture, built secret prisons, etc.
So, sorry...the burden of proof (though it should be called the burden of evidence, not proof) still lies with those positing a supernatural being. We're just saying that the natural world exists, and trying to find explanations for things we see in that natural world. Positing something outside that natural world, whether it be magical leprechauns, genies, Star Trek's Q, God, or whatever, requires evidence to support that claim. You're asking people to stop developing explanations and just believe in something that doesn't really bring all that much to the debate.
Me being an atheist doesn't require faith in anything. It isn't that I think science can explain everything, but that science is the only tool by which we can understand the world around us. We have limited data, limited powers of perception, limited intelligence, and so on, so the process, being a human construct, is limited. But again, it's the only tool we have. If you're in the dark you can rely on the guy with the flashlight, even admitting the limitations of the flashlight, or you can stay in the dark with the other guy who tells you a) really nice comforting stories, and b) that the flashlight isn't all it's cracked up to be.
As the flashlight reveals that some of the story-teller's tales are false, the story-teller will get more and more upset and point out, accurately, that the flashlight can't show you everything. But the flashlight, however limited, is still the only alternative to the pretty stories. Science is that flashlight. Trust who you want, but I trust the guys who made medicine, airplanes, air conditioning, and so on. This isn't to say that the story-teller has no value whatsoever. People apparently need someone to tell them that they should be decent human beings because God wants them to be. And people evidently need hope that there is something else out there, that death isn't the end. But when it comes to the physical world, including how biodiversity came about, I'll defer to science every time. Evolutionary theory is critical to fields like antibiotic research, and we can't throw it out just because it doesn't fit well with your bible.