I can tell by that one post that you're actually a Discordian. (I don't know if you're personally aware of this fact, however. Read Principia Discordia if you're not sure... (not that it will help...))
Personally I've always found religions to be comfort for the weak of mind, those who need the comfort of a 'god' to justify their existance. This saddens me.
If that is someone's reason for following a religion, it saddens me, too. However, I don't find that that sort of comfort is reason why very many people are into religion at all. Perhaps that's true for many Christians, I wouldn't know (I don't know many Christians), but it's certainly not true for most of the religious people I know. Even the Christians I know don't seem to need any religious justification for their existence -- that's just not what it's all about for most of us.
Yes, this is true. On the other hand if you had something that made your life better wouldn't you want to share it with others.
Not if they obviously weren't interested.
Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
Spammers are genuinely interested in generating customers, and are not the slightest bit interested in annoying people. They still annoy people, though, because they are intrusive with their unsolicited advertising.
Why are Christians so convinced that anyone who is genuinely interested won't be able to find their church? They're not that hard to find, people! Don't come knocking on my door, don't harass me as I walk between classes, I'm not interested! The fact that I'm in my home or walking to my next class rather than standing in your church ought to be a clue!
The actions of one moderator do not "prove" anything about Slashdot. And why are you saying "way to go...people" when we're talking about a single person?
Of course Slashdot has an anti-Christian bias. It also has a pro-Christian bias. In fact, it has many of both. Slashdot (and by this I assume you mean the people who participate on it, not the webserver itself) has many opinions, often contradictory. There are even morons who seem to think the phrase "the opinion of Slashdot" makes sense and refers to some particular opinion. The fact that the sysops don't allow us to delete them shows quite a deal of tolerance...
OTOH, there are also plenty of brilliant, interesting, weird Christian hackers out there. Just look at Larry Wall.:-)
Of course. Being Christian doesn't disqualify you from being highly intelligent and independent, strongly anti-authoritarian, animistic, magickal, creative, or interesting and weird. Only Fundamentalists would disagree with anything on this list (particularly the animistic and magickal parts). But I know of Christians with very animistic, even shamanistic world-views, and I know of Christians who use magick. Nothing in Bible ("properly" translated) contradicts or forbids this, only mainline churches do.
This leads me to believe that interest in the "occult" as defined in the article is usually an attempt by intellectually weak, physically diminutive individuals to seek a form of worldview which cannot be based on either complex socio-political ideas or typical, sexually driven social interaction.
What pagans have you been hanging around with? People with these sorts of issues are generally drawn towards Christianity, which attempts to remove this part of life from the equation (or at least simplify it by restricting it to particular times and circumstances). You have to be prepared to deal with this much more around pagans, where this type of social interaction tends to be much less restricted and more complex (especially when you throw polyamorists into the mix).
I don't follow the socio-political thing, though. I've noticed no difference between the social and political views of pagans vs. non-pagans aside from the obvious (i.e. when someone says your religion isn't even a religion, you tend not to vote for them -- and conservatives are good as loosing the pagan vote this way, not that it's a statistically significant loss... but I still find conservative pagans).
And as far as intellectually weak goes, that seems pretty much dead-opposite to what I've observed. Most pagans I know are both intelligent and (more importantly, at least according to Albert Einstein) more imaginative that average.
Incidently, your last comment is way off base. No intellectually dominant, self-assured type scorns anyone else's pursuits. Scorn is heaped out by people with feelings of inferiority in order to try to make themselves feel superior. If they already felt that way, they'd have no need of scorn.
Neopaganism is largely an effort to rekindle the traditional European religions (by that I mean what our ancestor's religions were before Judeo-Christianity was imported from the Middle-East). Zen Buddhism is a religion from Asia that never went out of style to begin with. Indeed, there is no overlap.
However, neopagans tend to be pathologically eclectic. Many have taken concepts from Asian religions, including both true and "Beat" Zen. This should be considered a form of flattery but I can also see how it can be quite annoying when they put their own spin on it.
The only thing 99.9% of computer geeks are into is computers. An informal survey of my company reveals geek interest in role-playing games at only 20% (I am of course excluding everyone who doesn't write code -- if I included the web designers and salespeople the percentage would fall further, but they're not geeks)... (Note: I'm not saying that if you're a web designer, you're not a geek. If you're a web designer who doesn't use perl, CGI, Java, Javascript, or anything like that, but merely moves pictures and text around in DreamWeaver, then you're not a geek -- go write some code and get back with me...)
Indeed. You can judge other people's beliefs (actually, you can hardly avoid it -- anytime anyone tells you anything, you form an opinion of it). You can even disagree with other people's beliefs. What you shouldn't do is berate other people's beliefs. Tolerance is not about being a relativist and it's not about being agreeable. It's about being respectful.
But what about a more Taoist formulation? What about God taken as the entire universe considered as a single entity?
This is also Benedictus de Spinoza's version of God. (Spinoza was a contemporary of Descartes and Leibniz, and much of his philisophical writing was in a way a response/rebuttal to Descartes. Thus, since Descartes was consider so wonderful, Spinoza became rather obscure. Of course, it didn't help that he was a heretic who didn't publish much in his life for fear over his life.)
Everyone who believes in the universe believes in Spinoza's God... the problem is, was Spinoza really just (as many have claimed) an atheist in disguise? If you take his work and replace the word "God" with the word "nature" everywhere it occurs, it makes just as much sense (some would say more). He even uses the phrase in one place, "God, or Nature," as if the two terms are completely interchangeable (and they are, if you buy his philosophy). Ultimately, thought, there is a distinction between pantheism and atheism, and I don't believe Spinoza was an atheist, just a man with an extremely heretical view of God. (Extremely heretical -- as you might expect from someone who considers "God" and "The Universe" as interchangeable terms, he believed God could not be said to love anyone, could not be said to make decisions or possess free will (he was also a determinist), etc...)
I was unaware that Taoists has a similar formulation. I'd be interested in how close or how far it is from Spinoza's...
By the way, I should add I'm not entirely sure what distinction you're trying to make between "active" and (presumably) "passive" disbelief, but it should be noted that it's irrelevant. If you believe god(s) do not exist, you're an atheist, it makes no difference how "active" this belief is. And it disqualifies you from being an agnostic, who like a true sceptic (another word whose meaning has been horribly mangled*) both fails to believe god(s) exist and fails to believe god(s) do not exist, and thus makes no claim on the subject. Again, how "active" this belief is is irrelevant.
* A sceptic is someone who does not believe. A sceptic never utters the sentence "I believe X", it does not matter whether you replace X with a positive or negative. I.e. you can replace X with either "unicorns exist" or "unicorns do not exist" and get a sentence that a sceptic WILL NOT agree to. Sceptics do not believe things don't exist. Sceptics both don't believe things exist and don't believe things don't exist. They suspend judgement until proof exists (and for most true sceptics, their standards are so high that the proposition is never proven, be the proposition X or not-X). The fundamental confusion between true sceptics and what people frequently call sceptics (but who are in fact not at all sceptical, since they believe many things, that X doesn't exist, that Y doesn't exist, etc) underlies why many people confuse agnosticism and atheism. Agnostics are a particular kind of sceptic, who make no knowledge claims (by modern definition) about the exist of god(s). Atheists may a claim, they believe god(s) do not exist, thus they are neither sceptics of any sort, including agnostics.
Any intelligent atheist will *self-describe* as someone who *fails* to believe in god, not someone who *actively disbelieves* in God.
Saying you fail to believe in god does not make you an atheist. Nor does it make you an agnostic. You could be either. That fact alone doesn't make you an agnostic (nor does it make you an atheist). Further information is required to determine which of these two categories to fall into.
Someone who fails to believe X does not necessarily believe not-X (but they might). If X = "god(s) exist" and you fail to believe X but also fail to believe not-X, you're an agnostic. If you fail to believe X but actually do believe not-X, you're an atheist. The two terms ARE mutually exclusive, since to claim "god(s) do not exist" is to make a claim about which you cannot possibly have knowledge, thus violating the (correct) definition of agnosticism you're using.
You're asuming human emotions are lawful. Which is a natural assuption if you have faith in the fundamental axioms upon which science rests, the most important of which is that nature is lawful, and nothing happens except in accordance with the laws of nature. Although this is a popular belief, it should be noted that it is (a) unproven, and furthermore (b) unproveable. Believing it is a matter of faith. I happen to believe it myself, but I'm not so intellectually dishonest that I ridicule others for behaving in the exact same behavior I engage in (accepting something unproven and unproveable on faith alone).
It should be noted that following Occam's Razor requires a GREAT DEAL of faith. There's no fundamental, logical reason why the simplist solution should be the correct one. In fact, upon observing the great complexity in this world, believing that Nature truly is simple at the core requires an incredible leap of faith.
Being an influential man doesn't make everything you say true (although it does at least make it worth listening to, I agree -- but you may listen to it and reject it). In terms of the number of people's lives affected, Karl Marx was probably the most influential man who lived during the last couple of centuries. Are you a Marxist? How about a Nazi? Adolf Hitler was an extremely influential man this century (which still has another 3+ months to go)...
Please note I do not mean to compare Jesus to Hitler, I'm merely pointing out that "influential man" is not a valid credential for believing what he says. If you're sincere in your faith, I'm sure you can come up with about twelve better reasons why people should listen to Jesus. I certainly can and I'm not even Christian. I think Jesus was worth listening to, it's just the people who subsequently deified him and built a religion around him who aren't worth listening to. But from everything I've heard he himself was a great man, much like Buddha or Ghandi or any number of other great men whose ideas were greater than others and will doubtless echo through the centuries. I have a great, great respect for Jesus. I just don't happen to worship him...
For my part, I am an atheist. (Strictly speaking, I am also an agnostic -- "agnostic" does not mean "unsure about beliefs in god", it means "thinks that it is immoral to claim to have knowledge that you could not possibly have".)
Your definition of agnostic is correct, you are however definately not one. Witness your next remarks:
There is no God. There are no gods.
An agnostic would never say this.
Here's a quick scorecare everyone can use:
Is there a god? (A) Yes. One and only one.
(B) Yes, in fact there is more than one.
(C) No, there is no god.
(D) I don't know, but it's conceivable that it could be proven one way or the other.
(E) I don't know, and furthermore that kind of knowledge is impossible. No one knows, no one ever has, and no one ever will.
If you answered (A), congratulations, you're a monotheist! God Bless!
If you answered (B), congratulations, you're a polytheist! Blessed Be!
If you answered (C), congratulations, you're an atheist! Have a nice day!
If you answered (D), congratulatoins, you're an agnostic! Your intellectual honesty (in admitting you don't know when you actually don't know) is highly admirable.
If you answered (E), congratulations, you're a strong agnostic! This is actually the traditional meaning of "agnostic", although (D) is also an accepted use of the word these days. You may or may not also be an epistemological sceptic (i.e. you deny the possibility of knowledge altogether).
To claim to know whether a god exists or not automatically makes you not an agnostic, regardless of whether that claim is that a god exists or that no god exists. To make either claim is to violate the very definition you gave for what it means to be agnostic. Since you believe no god exists, you are an atheist and definately not at all agnostic.
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Re:Cliff bud, are you looking to set Slashdot on f
on
Hackers And Mysticism?
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· Score: 1
Umm, didn't he die about 1960-1970 years ago?
But for what it's worth, I agree with you. If you're familiar with physics at all, you know about the Law of Conservation. You never get something from nothing, and things always go somewhere. In short, things can change form, but they can never be created or destroyed. "Creation" and "destruction" are myths we concocted to explain things when we don't understand where they came from or what happened to them, but rest assured, they came from something beforehand and they went somewhere after. The logical implication here is that in the entire history of the universe, nothing has ever been created, and nothing has ever been destroyed. Everything that truly does exist always has existed and always will exist.
It follows from this that if Jesus ever did exist, he still does. Of course, this is also true of Nero, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Ghengis Khan, Buddha, and Adolf Hitler. There's nothing special about Jesus in this respect...
That's because they were magic. Whenever you take advantage of the laws of Nature without understanding them, you're using magic. The fact that there is a scientific explanation doesn't make it any less magickal...
Out of this relativistic perspective is born the notion of tolerance.
Err, no. Tolerance is born from respect for the rights of others. You can believe someone else is wrong (and you're right; i.e. you can reject relativism) without in any way hurting your ability to respect their rights, including their right to be wrong. Tolerance has absolutely nothing at all whatsoever with believing nobody is right or wrong.
If somebody tries to tell you that Christ is your savior, don't hate them for it.
This is the religious equivalent of telemarking or spam. I have every respect for your right to choose whoever you like as your savior, or no one at all if you like. If I decide I want to do the same, I'll come to one of your churches and ask for help. What I don't want in your unsolicited attempts to convert me. If I want to join your religion, I'll come to you, just as if I want to buy your products, I'll come to you. Proselytize me, telemarket me, or spam me, and I will be quite annoyed...
Anything you claim to "know for a fact" is something you have faith it. Otherwise, you wouldn't believe it. You certainly don't have proof, after all. (If you disagree, head over to the Philosophy department and take a class in Epistemology, quick. Only fools believe in proof...)
The real question should be:
Do hackers ever believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
Yes. This is an established fact, assuming you consider Eric S. Raymond a hacker and paganism a mystical religion. See his
Dancing With The Gods. He's also the maintainer of the Neopaganism FAQ.
Not to mention I'm YATP (Yet Another TechnoPagan) myself...
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Re:Hacker *magic* (Probably OT yet not quite funny
on
Hackers And Mysticism?
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· Score: 1
Some previous poster mentioned that electricity used to be magic to everyone. Well, to most people, it STILL IS MAGIC. It's just a magic that they've become used to, and know what to expect from. What's the difference?
Indeed. Just because you explain something scientifically doesn't make it any less magickal. I always love it when people claim "magick doesn't work" and when confronted with an example, explain how it does work! I guess they think that if they can explain it, it's not magick. I don't quite follow the logic there.
Personally, I don't believe in the supernatural. Nothing violates the laws of Nature, her rules are absolute. Those of us who practice magick do so with her blessing...
Slashdot Mirror
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If that is someone's reason for following a religion, it saddens me, too. However, I don't find that that sort of comfort is reason why very many people are into religion at all. Perhaps that's true for many Christians, I wouldn't know (I don't know many Christians), but it's certainly not true for most of the religious people I know. Even the Christians I know don't seem to need any religious justification for their existence -- that's just not what it's all about for most of us.
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Not if they obviously weren't interested.
Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
Spammers are genuinely interested in generating customers, and are not the slightest bit interested in annoying people. They still annoy people, though, because they are intrusive with their unsolicited advertising.
Why are Christians so convinced that anyone who is genuinely interested won't be able to find their church? They're not that hard to find, people! Don't come knocking on my door, don't harass me as I walk between classes, I'm not interested! The fact that I'm in my home or walking to my next class rather than standing in your church ought to be a clue!
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Of course Slashdot has an anti-Christian bias. It also has a pro-Christian bias. In fact, it has many of both. Slashdot (and by this I assume you mean the people who participate on it, not the webserver itself) has many opinions, often contradictory. There are even morons who seem to think the phrase "the opinion of Slashdot" makes sense and refers to some particular opinion. The fact that the sysops don't allow us to delete them shows quite a deal of tolerance...
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Of course. Being Christian doesn't disqualify you from being highly intelligent and independent, strongly anti-authoritarian, animistic, magickal, creative, or interesting and weird. Only Fundamentalists would disagree with anything on this list (particularly the animistic and magickal parts). But I know of Christians with very animistic, even shamanistic world-views, and I know of Christians who use magick. Nothing in Bible ("properly" translated) contradicts or forbids this, only mainline churches do.
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What pagans have you been hanging around with? People with these sorts of issues are generally drawn towards Christianity, which attempts to remove this part of life from the equation (or at least simplify it by restricting it to particular times and circumstances). You have to be prepared to deal with this much more around pagans, where this type of social interaction tends to be much less restricted and more complex (especially when you throw polyamorists into the mix).
I don't follow the socio-political thing, though. I've noticed no difference between the social and political views of pagans vs. non-pagans aside from the obvious (i.e. when someone says your religion isn't even a religion, you tend not to vote for them -- and conservatives are good as loosing the pagan vote this way, not that it's a statistically significant loss... but I still find conservative pagans).
And as far as intellectually weak goes, that seems pretty much dead-opposite to what I've observed. Most pagans I know are both intelligent and (more importantly, at least according to Albert Einstein) more imaginative that average.
Incidently, your last comment is way off base. No intellectually dominant, self-assured type scorns anyone else's pursuits. Scorn is heaped out by people with feelings of inferiority in order to try to make themselves feel superior. If they already felt that way, they'd have no need of scorn.
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However, neopagans tend to be pathologically eclectic. Many have taken concepts from Asian religions, including both true and "Beat" Zen. This should be considered a form of flattery but I can also see how it can be quite annoying when they put their own spin on it.
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This is also Benedictus de Spinoza's version of God. (Spinoza was a contemporary of Descartes and Leibniz, and much of his philisophical writing was in a way a response/rebuttal to Descartes. Thus, since Descartes was consider so wonderful, Spinoza became rather obscure. Of course, it didn't help that he was a heretic who didn't publish much in his life for fear over his life.)
Everyone who believes in the universe believes in Spinoza's God... the problem is, was Spinoza really just (as many have claimed) an atheist in disguise? If you take his work and replace the word "God" with the word "nature" everywhere it occurs, it makes just as much sense (some would say more). He even uses the phrase in one place, "God, or Nature," as if the two terms are completely interchangeable (and they are, if you buy his philosophy). Ultimately, thought, there is a distinction between pantheism and atheism, and I don't believe Spinoza was an atheist, just a man with an extremely heretical view of God. (Extremely heretical -- as you might expect from someone who considers "God" and "The Universe" as interchangeable terms, he believed God could not be said to love anyone, could not be said to make decisions or possess free will (he was also a determinist), etc...)
I was unaware that Taoists has a similar formulation. I'd be interested in how close or how far it is from Spinoza's...
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* A sceptic is someone who does not believe. A sceptic never utters the sentence "I believe X", it does not matter whether you replace X with a positive or negative. I.e. you can replace X with either "unicorns exist" or "unicorns do not exist" and get a sentence that a sceptic WILL NOT agree to. Sceptics do not believe things don't exist. Sceptics both don't believe things exist and don't believe things don't exist. They suspend judgement until proof exists (and for most true sceptics, their standards are so high that the proposition is never proven, be the proposition X or not-X). The fundamental confusion between true sceptics and what people frequently call sceptics (but who are in fact not at all sceptical, since they believe many things, that X doesn't exist, that Y doesn't exist, etc) underlies why many people confuse agnosticism and atheism. Agnostics are a particular kind of sceptic, who make no knowledge claims (by modern definition) about the exist of god(s). Atheists may a claim, they believe god(s) do not exist, thus they are neither sceptics of any sort, including agnostics.
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Saying you fail to believe in god does not make you an atheist. Nor does it make you an agnostic. You could be either. That fact alone doesn't make you an agnostic (nor does it make you an atheist). Further information is required to determine which of these two categories to fall into.
Someone who fails to believe X does not necessarily believe not-X (but they might). If X = "god(s) exist" and you fail to believe X but also fail to believe not-X, you're an agnostic. If you fail to believe X but actually do believe not-X, you're an atheist. The two terms ARE mutually exclusive, since to claim "god(s) do not exist" is to make a claim about which you cannot possibly have knowledge, thus violating the (correct) definition of agnosticism you're using.
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Please note I do not mean to compare Jesus to Hitler, I'm merely pointing out that "influential man" is not a valid credential for believing what he says. If you're sincere in your faith, I'm sure you can come up with about twelve better reasons why people should listen to Jesus. I certainly can and I'm not even Christian. I think Jesus was worth listening to, it's just the people who subsequently deified him and built a religion around him who aren't worth listening to. But from everything I've heard he himself was a great man, much like Buddha or Ghandi or any number of other great men whose ideas were greater than others and will doubtless echo through the centuries. I have a great, great respect for Jesus. I just don't happen to worship him...
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Your definition of agnostic is correct, you are however definately not one. Witness your next remarks:
There is no God. There are no gods.
An agnostic would never say this.
Here's a quick scorecare everyone can use:
If you answered (A), congratulations, you're a monotheist! God Bless!
If you answered (B), congratulations, you're a polytheist! Blessed Be!
If you answered (C), congratulations, you're an atheist! Have a nice day!
If you answered (D), congratulatoins, you're an agnostic! Your intellectual honesty (in admitting you don't know when you actually don't know) is highly admirable.
If you answered (E), congratulations, you're a strong agnostic! This is actually the traditional meaning of "agnostic", although (D) is also an accepted use of the word these days. You may or may not also be an epistemological sceptic (i.e. you deny the possibility of knowledge altogether).
To claim to know whether a god exists or not automatically makes you not an agnostic, regardless of whether that claim is that a god exists or that no god exists. To make either claim is to violate the very definition you gave for what it means to be agnostic. Since you believe no god exists, you are an atheist and definately not at all agnostic.
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But for what it's worth, I agree with you. If you're familiar with physics at all, you know about the Law of Conservation. You never get something from nothing, and things always go somewhere. In short, things can change form, but they can never be created or destroyed. "Creation" and "destruction" are myths we concocted to explain things when we don't understand where they came from or what happened to them, but rest assured, they came from something beforehand and they went somewhere after. The logical implication here is that in the entire history of the universe, nothing has ever been created, and nothing has ever been destroyed. Everything that truly does exist always has existed and always will exist.
It follows from this that if Jesus ever did exist, he still does. Of course, this is also true of Nero, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Ghengis Khan, Buddha, and Adolf Hitler. There's nothing special about Jesus in this respect...
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Err, replace "with" with "to do with". [sigh]... My typing starts to fail when I enter rant mode...
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Err, no. Tolerance is born from respect for the rights of others. You can believe someone else is wrong (and you're right; i.e. you can reject relativism) without in any way hurting your ability to respect their rights, including their right to be wrong. Tolerance has absolutely nothing at all whatsoever with believing nobody is right or wrong.
If somebody tries to tell you that Christ is your savior, don't hate them for it.
This is the religious equivalent of telemarking or spam. I have every respect for your right to choose whoever you like as your savior, or no one at all if you like. If I decide I want to do the same, I'll come to one of your churches and ask for help. What I don't want in your unsolicited attempts to convert me. If I want to join your religion, I'll come to you, just as if I want to buy your products, I'll come to you. Proselytize me, telemarket me, or spam me, and I will be quite annoyed...
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Do hackers ever believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
Yes. This is an established fact, assuming you consider Eric S. Raymond a hacker and paganism a mystical religion. See his Dancing With The Gods. He's also the maintainer of the Neopaganism FAQ.
Not to mention I'm YATP (Yet Another TechnoPagan) myself...
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Indeed. Just because you explain something scientifically doesn't make it any less magickal. I always love it when people claim "magick doesn't work" and when confronted with an example, explain how it does work! I guess they think that if they can explain it, it's not magick. I don't quite follow the logic there.
Personally, I don't believe in the supernatural. Nothing violates the laws of Nature, her rules are absolute. Those of us who practice magick do so with her blessing...
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He's also a PK.
Yuck. I can't stand those. I try to stay away from MUDs where that sort of behavior is tolerated...
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