I use Vim for exactly the scenario you describe. Programmers on 3 continents, hundreds of source files, real customers all over the world. I am one of 4 main devs on the project (there are others with less direct responsibility). I use Vim, one uses Textpad, one uses Emacs, and one uses Notepad++. I have actually been using Sublime Text 2 as well, which is different but nice. My point is that if you do not lean too heavily on the IDE, and the language/platform allows it, then you can just let each programmer use whatever the hell they feel like. Too much abstraction and code generation (I'm looking at you.Net, with your files all over the place that have at the top "//PLEASE, DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE... OH GOD PLEASE"), and this ideal scenario of each person using what they are most productive with becomes out of grasp.
I use to be a VS guy and have gone a year now without it. Switched to Vim and shell and could not be happier. In the case of Vim, I just love that I can have an editor that runs absolutely everywhere. I had a mission critical fix a couple weeks ago that I needed to patch through, except I was in an airplane stuck on the tarmac. Took out my phone, loaded up vim through ssh, and made the fix. With touch keyboards, I do not think that would even be possible in just about any other editor. Obviously, that was a pretty wacky scenario, but pretty cool anyway. I will say that I have been exploring other text editors as well, looking for that sweet spot between vim and emacs and a full blown IDE. So far my favorite by far has been Sublime Text 2.
Just took over a project recently with a few hundred files averaging 15000 LOC each. All in a dynamic language. Zero tests. All parameters passed as untyped arrays. Hungarian notation. Shoot me in the face...
Watch out. VS will spoil you for life. As an ex-C#er, I can say that going without it will cause severe symptoms of withdrawal. Jk, but seriously, it is an awesome IDE and aside from eating up resources like a mofo, is by far the best IDE in existence.
This is completely wrong. I happen to use a vim setup without any heavy duty IDE, but there are definitely valid use cases for a good debugger. The best example is diving into an unfamiliar code base. Sure, if you wrote the code, you should rarely need a debugger, but when the guy who got fired down the hall dumps all of his crap code on you when he leaves, a debugger can be a real lifesaver.
I have no problem with IDEs, but I will dispute your claim. Pretty much everyone in the node.js community these days is using a command line text editor combo these days. Having to stop the server and run "node app.js" everytime you made a change is a huge pain in the ass, so most are using tools like nodemon these days. Essentially, you just run "nodeomon [main js file] -w [directory/to/watch]", and forget about it. The program watches all of your files and if any of them change, it will rerun the script. This works really well for web development, where you are updating a rest service or something, and for api work, where you hook it up to your tests.
I can see the OLD to NEW meaning a change in moral codes for a people (interpret that more eloquently if you wish). It is still problematic, however, if the OLD has factual errors and you still want to say that it has any historical reliability. Also, the way God acts has little to do with whether we were in the OLD or NEW. He is supposed to me an eternal being who knows everything and has the power to do whatever he wants. Even a casual read will show that the OLD T God is quite inconsistent with the NEW T God.
You are right. Most just pick and choose at their convenience, which is quite possibly even more ridiculous. Fine with me, but the parts of the Bible that people can still cling to is dwindling every day. Old Testament is pretty much out the window as a reliable moral guide for most non-fundamentalist Christians these days (genocide, slavery, rape, killing disrespectful children, etc.). That leaves the New Testament which is being eaten away too, with many noting that Paul was a misogynist. The Gospels are pretty firmly held to still, but it is only a matter of time. At the end of the day, contemporary Christianity will be reduced to all of the nice things that Jesus said (which you could get from practically any other text on morality, ie: golden rule). We can already see this has happened in the Unitarian Church where many ministers are actually atheists, and it is happening in churches like the National Episcopal Church where the teachings from the head bishop sound like a lecture copied from a Secular Humanists meeting.
The facts of his parentage clearly affect whether or not his teachings were any good. If I went around telling people A) love one another and work together for the common good and B) worship me because I am God and if you do not then you will burn in a fiery pit for all eternity, then I think people would probably say I was a psychopathic nut, despite my claim in A.
Or just walk into any given evangelical church any given Sunday in the bible belt. I have seen Jesus Camp and although I was disgusted, it was not news to me, being from the south east. What is really crazy about Jesus Camp is that it is not taking place in Westboro or some wacky cult; it pretty accurately captures mainstream evangelicals.
I think that you are completely right to criticize many of the new atheists, especially Hitchens and other prominent anti-theists. They clearly make normative claims about religion with little support. I would also say, however, that myself and many other new atheists subscribe to the "skeptics first" framework. Essentially, we try to believe as many true things as possible and not believe in as many false things as possible. I would say that figures like Dawkins and Hitchens represent this position pretty poorly, since they both (Hitchens especially) tend to get mired in name calling and "who killed more people" arguments. The skeptical movement basically says "Who the hell cares which side killed more people or caused more suffering over the years?". For skeptics, the real question is about the truth of the claims that have been presented. Not every skeptic is perfect, but we try to seek the truth in an intellectually honest way. If you want a much better example of an atheist pretty firmly grounded in skepticism, then check out Matt Dillahunty from the Atheist Experience out of Austin.
I never said that your faith was harmful, so why should I prove it? I know nothing about what you believe. Personally, I think that a belief in a deity has little effect on how someone will act in general. Bad Christians would generally be bad atheists and vise versa. I do not have data for that, so it is really more just my opinion based on personal experience. I really do not even have any beef against any particular religion or belief. I DO think that it is a bad idea to believe something without proof, as you have done. You essentially conceded defeat with:
I know better than to offer the evidence of various writers who went to their deaths proclaiming the Gospel. Nor can I offer current examples of healing, despite documentation, as these are easily discarded on the absence of direct testimony of the patient and their doctors. And other reports of visitations, etc. generally are to be seen as unreliable, since these usually include like-minded individuals who could reasonably be considered unreliable also.
I could be wrong, but to me this reads something like "I believe something and have no good reasons for believing it. Now you prove some unrelated claim that you never made."
I think few atheists who know anything about it would argue that, in their time and context, Jesus's teachings were bad.
Ole Jebus had his fair share of wacky teachings. He condoned slavery (time and context be damned, it did not stop the Quakers or many others from condemning it). He encouraged people to abandon their wives and children (probably even WORSE given the historical context). Also, the biggest one, he went around telling everyone he was motherf**king god and that everyone should worship him or die trying. This is not something a rational, sane, or moral human being says. This is something that David Karesh or Jim Jones says.
Don't get me wrong, Jesus said some things that were good, but let's be honest, that is a pretty low bar. Mao had some great poetic teachings about human progress and working together... but we can safely say he was a total asshole, because he killed millions of people. Jesus said some nice things... then founded the most divisive and destructive religion of all time, leading to 2000 years of persecution and oppression.
This is wrong by any modern definition. Atheism and Agnosticism are not generally considered mutually exclusive, and most atheists would actually call themselves agnostics as well (including myself). Anti-theism is the affirmative position that there are no gods. This is only a subset of atheists. Most atheists would not make this claim, because it shifts the burden of proof from the theists back to them, and IMHO (and that of quite a few others in the skeptic community) is a nonsensical claim, since it tries to prove a negative. Similarly, I do would not make the claim 'no pixies exist'. I highly doubt they do and I would bet a billion dollars that they do not, but I cannot actually say that I KNOW they do not exist, because I would have to explore every corner of the universe to actually know this with absolute certainty. It is really all semantics, because at the end of the day, whether I am an atheist or an agnostic, I can simply state my position: "I do not have any belief in any gods" (as opposed to "I believe there are no gods"). At that point, a theist must defend their claim that, in fact, some gods DO exist, at which point I will ask for proof.
You read slashdot comments and think that the average commenter would qualify for MENSA??? Sure, it's better than Yahoo where the average IQ is probably around 85, but I would not put the Slashdot average anywhere above 115. You realize that you probably do not even know anyone with an IQ above 160? Someone with an IQ of 130 is pretty damn intelligent. 160 is an absolute rarity.
... his assertions that many who believe in God do so because they were taught so by their parents...
I agree. That is just one of many possible reasons someone might believe in superstitions. This is not about "beliefs"; it is about reality. Come up with good reasons for your claims (those of us here in the real world often call this "evidence"), or prepare to be ridiculed along with the Scientologists, Moonies, and Flat-Earthians. Let's be honest here. Belief in an invisible being who gets angry when you jerk it in the shower is a completely ridiculous claim, and as such, requires some serious evidence. Without evidence, its pretty safe to assume the belief is completely moronic. Mod down all you want, but I guarantee that nobody will respond with a decent counter argument (aka, one that does not center around a known fallacious argument), and certainly not actual evidence (the horror!).
Answer: "I do not know why anything exists. Do you?". After they stop babbling, just call them on an Argument from Ignorance, which I will predict with 99% certainty that they will have just made.
Countdown to the inevitable followup: Your argument seems reasonable, but a true apologist could answer this better than me. They would be able to counter your arguments with ease.
Atheism is, in fact, not a religion. Atheism is nothing more than the lack of belief in any gods. In short, no Dawkins is not promoting his own religion. Quite the opposite. He is encouraging others to reject religion and other supernatural beliefs that are made without good reasons (ie: evidence).
Except that they brainwash people from young ages to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to reason their way out of the indoctrination. IDK how many headcases I have met where people have been guilted into oblivion by the impossible bar attached to human sexual conduct. Hell might not be real, but the fear and depression caused by the teaching around it are quite real. You may not believe it, but do not underestimate how powerful indoctrination can be at its most intense.
Slashdot Mirror
GUNDAM STYLE!
I use Vim for exactly the scenario you describe. Programmers on 3 continents, hundreds of source files, real customers all over the world. I am one of 4 main devs on the project (there are others with less direct responsibility). I use Vim, one uses Textpad, one uses Emacs, and one uses Notepad++. I have actually been using Sublime Text 2 as well, which is different but nice. My point is that if you do not lean too heavily on the IDE, and the language/platform allows it, then you can just let each programmer use whatever the hell they feel like. Too much abstraction and code generation (I'm looking at you .Net, with your files all over the place that have at the top "//PLEASE, DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE... OH GOD PLEASE"), and this ideal scenario of each person using what they are most productive with becomes out of grasp.
I use to be a VS guy and have gone a year now without it. Switched to Vim and shell and could not be happier. In the case of Vim, I just love that I can have an editor that runs absolutely everywhere. I had a mission critical fix a couple weeks ago that I needed to patch through, except I was in an airplane stuck on the tarmac. Took out my phone, loaded up vim through ssh, and made the fix. With touch keyboards, I do not think that would even be possible in just about any other editor. Obviously, that was a pretty wacky scenario, but pretty cool anyway. I will say that I have been exploring other text editors as well, looking for that sweet spot between vim and emacs and a full blown IDE. So far my favorite by far has been Sublime Text 2.
Never did too much Java myself, but Eclipse seemed horrible in comparison to NetBeans. Huge resource hog.
Just took over a project recently with a few hundred files averaging 15000 LOC each. All in a dynamic language. Zero tests. All parameters passed as untyped arrays. Hungarian notation. Shoot me in the face...
Watch out. VS will spoil you for life. As an ex-C#er, I can say that going without it will cause severe symptoms of withdrawal. Jk, but seriously, it is an awesome IDE and aside from eating up resources like a mofo, is by far the best IDE in existence.
This is completely wrong. I happen to use a vim setup without any heavy duty IDE, but there are definitely valid use cases for a good debugger. The best example is diving into an unfamiliar code base. Sure, if you wrote the code, you should rarely need a debugger, but when the guy who got fired down the hall dumps all of his crap code on you when he leaves, a debugger can be a real lifesaver.
I have no problem with IDEs, but I will dispute your claim. Pretty much everyone in the node.js community these days is using a command line text editor combo these days. Having to stop the server and run "node app.js" everytime you made a change is a huge pain in the ass, so most are using tools like nodemon these days. Essentially, you just run "nodeomon [main js file] -w [directory/to/watch]", and forget about it. The program watches all of your files and if any of them change, it will rerun the script. This works really well for web development, where you are updating a rest service or something, and for api work, where you hook it up to your tests.
I can see the OLD to NEW meaning a change in moral codes for a people (interpret that more eloquently if you wish). It is still problematic, however, if the OLD has factual errors and you still want to say that it has any historical reliability. Also, the way God acts has little to do with whether we were in the OLD or NEW. He is supposed to me an eternal being who knows everything and has the power to do whatever he wants. Even a casual read will show that the OLD T God is quite inconsistent with the NEW T God.
You are right. Most just pick and choose at their convenience, which is quite possibly even more ridiculous. Fine with me, but the parts of the Bible that people can still cling to is dwindling every day. Old Testament is pretty much out the window as a reliable moral guide for most non-fundamentalist Christians these days (genocide, slavery, rape, killing disrespectful children, etc.). That leaves the New Testament which is being eaten away too, with many noting that Paul was a misogynist. The Gospels are pretty firmly held to still, but it is only a matter of time. At the end of the day, contemporary Christianity will be reduced to all of the nice things that Jesus said (which you could get from practically any other text on morality, ie: golden rule). We can already see this has happened in the Unitarian Church where many ministers are actually atheists, and it is happening in churches like the National Episcopal Church where the teachings from the head bishop sound like a lecture copied from a Secular Humanists meeting.
The facts of his parentage clearly affect whether or not his teachings were any good. If I went around telling people A) love one another and work together for the common good and B) worship me because I am God and if you do not then you will burn in a fiery pit for all eternity, then I think people would probably say I was a psychopathic nut, despite my claim in A.
TL;DR; God kills a dude for using the pull out method.
Or just walk into any given evangelical church any given Sunday in the bible belt. I have seen Jesus Camp and although I was disgusted, it was not news to me, being from the south east. What is really crazy about Jesus Camp is that it is not taking place in Westboro or some wacky cult; it pretty accurately captures mainstream evangelicals.
I think that you are completely right to criticize many of the new atheists, especially Hitchens and other prominent anti-theists. They clearly make normative claims about religion with little support. I would also say, however, that myself and many other new atheists subscribe to the "skeptics first" framework. Essentially, we try to believe as many true things as possible and not believe in as many false things as possible. I would say that figures like Dawkins and Hitchens represent this position pretty poorly, since they both (Hitchens especially) tend to get mired in name calling and "who killed more people" arguments. The skeptical movement basically says "Who the hell cares which side killed more people or caused more suffering over the years?". For skeptics, the real question is about the truth of the claims that have been presented. Not every skeptic is perfect, but we try to seek the truth in an intellectually honest way. If you want a much better example of an atheist pretty firmly grounded in skepticism, then check out Matt Dillahunty from the Atheist Experience out of Austin.
I know better than to offer the evidence of various writers who went to their deaths proclaiming the Gospel. Nor can I offer current examples of healing, despite documentation, as these are easily discarded on the absence of direct testimony of the patient and their doctors. And other reports of visitations, etc. generally are to be seen as unreliable, since these usually include like-minded individuals who could reasonably be considered unreliable also.
I could be wrong, but to me this reads something like "I believe something and have no good reasons for believing it. Now you prove some unrelated claim that you never made."
I think few atheists who know anything about it would argue that, in their time and context, Jesus's teachings were bad.
Ole Jebus had his fair share of wacky teachings. He condoned slavery (time and context be damned, it did not stop the Quakers or many others from condemning it). He encouraged people to abandon their wives and children (probably even WORSE given the historical context). Also, the biggest one, he went around telling everyone he was motherf**king god and that everyone should worship him or die trying. This is not something a rational, sane, or moral human being says. This is something that David Karesh or Jim Jones says.
Don't get me wrong, Jesus said some things that were good, but let's be honest, that is a pretty low bar. Mao had some great poetic teachings about human progress and working together... but we can safely say he was a total asshole, because he killed millions of people. Jesus said some nice things... then founded the most divisive and destructive religion of all time, leading to 2000 years of persecution and oppression.
This is wrong by any modern definition. Atheism and Agnosticism are not generally considered mutually exclusive, and most atheists would actually call themselves agnostics as well (including myself). Anti-theism is the affirmative position that there are no gods. This is only a subset of atheists. Most atheists would not make this claim, because it shifts the burden of proof from the theists back to them, and IMHO (and that of quite a few others in the skeptic community) is a nonsensical claim, since it tries to prove a negative. Similarly, I do would not make the claim 'no pixies exist'. I highly doubt they do and I would bet a billion dollars that they do not, but I cannot actually say that I KNOW they do not exist, because I would have to explore every corner of the universe to actually know this with absolute certainty. It is really all semantics, because at the end of the day, whether I am an atheist or an agnostic, I can simply state my position: "I do not have any belief in any gods" (as opposed to "I believe there are no gods"). At that point, a theist must defend their claim that, in fact, some gods DO exist, at which point I will ask for proof.
You read slashdot comments and think that the average commenter would qualify for MENSA??? Sure, it's better than Yahoo where the average IQ is probably around 85, but I would not put the Slashdot average anywhere above 115. You realize that you probably do not even know anyone with an IQ above 160? Someone with an IQ of 130 is pretty damn intelligent. 160 is an absolute rarity.
... his assertions that many who believe in God do so because they were taught so by their parents...
I agree. That is just one of many possible reasons someone might believe in superstitions. This is not about "beliefs"; it is about reality. Come up with good reasons for your claims (those of us here in the real world often call this "evidence"), or prepare to be ridiculed along with the Scientologists, Moonies, and Flat-Earthians. Let's be honest here. Belief in an invisible being who gets angry when you jerk it in the shower is a completely ridiculous claim, and as such, requires some serious evidence. Without evidence, its pretty safe to assume the belief is completely moronic. Mod down all you want, but I guarantee that nobody will respond with a decent counter argument (aka, one that does not center around a known fallacious argument), and certainly not actual evidence (the horror!).
Answer: "I do not know why anything exists. Do you?". After they stop babbling, just call them on an Argument from Ignorance, which I will predict with 99% certainty that they will have just made.
Countdown to the inevitable followup: Your argument seems reasonable, but a true apologist could answer this better than me. They would be able to counter your arguments with ease.
Atheism is, in fact, not a religion. Atheism is nothing more than the lack of belief in any gods. In short, no Dawkins is not promoting his own religion. Quite the opposite. He is encouraging others to reject religion and other supernatural beliefs that are made without good reasons (ie: evidence).
Except that they brainwash people from young ages to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to reason their way out of the indoctrination. IDK how many headcases I have met where people have been guilted into oblivion by the impossible bar attached to human sexual conduct. Hell might not be real, but the fear and depression caused by the teaching around it are quite real. You may not believe it, but do not underestimate how powerful indoctrination can be at its most intense.
Read Leviticus for about 3 seconds. You will find a cornucopia of examples of G-d explaining who to throw rocks at.
Could be true. Nothing like the Steam client for Mac should ever be approved for the Apple Store. Horrible crapware IMHO.