----Airliners won't ever work that way. They only exist because the cost/benefit ratio leaves room for profit. ---
Why does nearly everyone get this wrong? This is exactly the same kind of arguement that was put forth to claim that air travel would never ever be commercially affordable in the first place ("and only the five richest kings in Europe will be able to afford them!"). Safety design features and flight insurance ALREADY make up a huge portion of the cost of planes: how did that ever happen if the story you're telling is true?
And greater safety mostly means greater FIXED costs, not variable costs. As we all know, variable costs are the real measure of import when it comes to profitabilty over quantity, and figuring out whether a huge safety increase would or would no be profitable is not something one can simply know by making grand statements. It very well could make flying MORE profitable, depending on how risk averse people become after these highly publicized tragedies. It could be less profitable. I dunno, neither you or I have done the math, and the industries certainly haven't had a chance to re-examine the market.
But you're right: it's ALSO not clear that less flying would mean more overall safety: it might well mean far more auto deaths, because more people would be on the roads.
---Those who remember the Falkland's War (damn it, it was a WAR, not a "Conflict") will remember the HMS Sheffield, which was built out of aluminium. One direct hit turned it into a giant, inescapable fireball.---
I heard about this in science class, only the way they told it, it was WAY worse than alluminum. They said that it was made of MAGNESIUM. Which, when the ship was hit, ignited. Of course, your story sounds more reasonable. If it was magnesium, probably no one could have even LOOKED at the ship without being blinded, much less survived it igniting. However, magnesium would be a great metal to use if it didn't ignite at such a low temperature (well, a pretty damn high temperature actually, but much less safe than steel, thoug way lighter).
---So here's deliberate, appropriate action: grab dropping stocks! Prevent further damage to the economy, take importants assets out of the hands of incompetent handlers, and make a little something for yourself.----
These sorts of arguements are so misguided that it's hard to even know where to begin.
Spending money on one thing, instead of on another thing, can't help or hurt the economy. We can't get richer just by buying things from each other.
There's no justifiable reason to buy stocks other than that you like holding those particular stocks (you actually value THEM). Buying a stock transfers some stock to you from somebody else, enriches all the current owners of that stock, and hurts all the potential buyers of that stock BY EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT. Leaving on net, no benefit or loss to the economy as a whole. Patriotism doesn't turn a bad investment into a good investment. If you think the stocks might perk up in the future, and you're willing to take the risk that they won't buy them. If not, not. It's that simple.
---Percieved reality becomes reality of enough people "percieve" it----R
Only if they DO something about it that affects the economy as a whole, as opposed to just one market. Not buying stocks is not the same thing as "bad for the economy," nor is "not buying all types of stock." If people decide that airline stocks are risky, that's fine. Predictable risk differentials are important parts of investing.
It still amazes me that anyone could think that if we all buy things from each other, we'll all get richer.
It does depend on where you do it from- if it's still low enough to the ground you can compensate somewhat for how fast its moving. Someone in a blacked out minivan stopped outside the tollbooth on I-78 could probably have a good chance for things coming out of Newark airport, and then get away and ditch the car before witnesses caught on. It really depends on whether one can shoot the wing or if they have to get an engine. A normal sniper rifle probably couldn't do it, but the really nasty ones we gave the mujahadeen back in the 80s, if they're still in working condition, probably could.
This is all pretty scary to think about, because just in the act of thinking about it you realize how many different new crazy things anyone with even a dull brain could think up to do, and how it would be impossible to protect against them all. The world is moving into an era when we have to trust our lives to the judgement of those with the WORST judgement, and the HIGHEST propensity for violence. If they want to do it, and aren't afraid to get caught or die, it's not likely that we can stop them before the fact (no deterent effect either).
It's actually frighteningly trivial to sneak something like this into the U.S., especially if can get it in via either ship or ground. U.S. customs simply cannot stop and search every single cargo ship bringing in thousands of crates of stuff per day, nor can it search every truck that enters the U.S. from Canada or Mexico. It's estimated that if they did, even with the ridiculous assumption that each inspection would only take minute, our shipping economy would grind to a halt.
In fact, because of the special security loopholes given to larger shipping corporations, it would be trivially easy to simply piggyback something in with their goods. For instance, you might hide the Stinger in the trunk of a German-made car being shipped over here. No one checks these cars. All you'd have to have is someone on the inside at the plant in Germany, and someone on the inside at the holding lot in America.
Even if your all for Slashdot poster's rights of free speech, copy-pasting an article from a great publication desperate to financially support itself is at the least, in very poor taste.
Information wants to be free.... but online magazines would like it if they could stay in bussiness, and I'd like it too.
It's for, as the name implies, robots. I.e., the little scripts that get data for search engines to file away cnn stories in their databases. It's not for people, and if too many people start using it for "load balencing" it'll probably screw up how they allocate resources somewhat.
--So you think federalizing airport security will make us more secure?---
Wow, you're totally right. and whille we're at it, let's privative the FBI and the military too. I mean, why should national security be in the hands of the GOVERNMENT? Is that crazy or what?
This is an interesting question for economists: what is the socially efficient level of advertising? I mean, as many people have noticed, movie theaters are steadily increasing the number of commercials that they play before the actual movie (before even the previews!).
They didn't USED to do this, and yet the theater industry got along fine back then. Now they have not only raised ticket prices faster than inflation, but they are getting ad revenue as well. And in a way: ad revenue is the easier way to do it: consumers are far far more likely to respond negatively to increased ticket price than they are to one more minute of ad per movie. So it's pretty clear what a winning deal this is for theaters: for every additional commercial they broadcast, they make tons more money, with little increase in customer dissatisfaction. My question is: do theaters HAVE to do this, or are they really making huge profits off of doing this? And if they are making huge profits, shouldn't that suggest that more theaters will open? My guess is that these ads are meant to defray huge losses that come from now having to compete with cable tv and video rentals. Video rentals can fill their tapes with ads, but people could just fast forward through them. Therefore, ads help theaters stay afloat despite the huge bite of their market that video rentals take.
---Part of the unspoken rules of being a liberal is the pretense that one is really "moderate" and pretending that most ordinary Americans share your views. Well, they don't. ---
Unh hunh.. um, yeah. Whatever. This "the media is liberal" is one of the best PR tactics the extreme-right has dreamt up in a long time.
Just keep repeating it over and over long enough, and it almost seems sensible...
---Fox isn't even "conservative" except that they tone down a bit on the liberal blinkered mentality and include some vaguely conservative talking heads like O'Reilly.---
Oh sure, whatever. They report the "facts" and let YOU decide. For sure...
---Not surprisingly, conservatives tend to watch Fox more because they don't have anyone else who even comes close to catering to their worldview. ---
Journalism, idealy, isn't about catering to a particular "worldview." Fox has started to change all that, or at least vastly accelerate this change by trying to capture a particular audience (conservative) by pandering to a particular political view rather than simply reporting the news.
As far as Win2k goes, I still don't understand exactly what the hell is going on when I delete certain files... and they magically fade back to life unharmed. One neat effect of this is that you can "vanish" huge files instantly in a pretty crazy way. Try this sometime instead of "recylcing" a large file: rename it "Notepad.exe" and drop it into your windows directory, replacing the regular notepad.exe. Wait a few seconds, or cd up and cd back into the windows directory. As if by magic, your huge renamed file has been transformed back into a magically restored pristine and original copy of notepad.exe Hurray! Where did all the bytes go? Who knows?! Why does the OS do this to protect a crappy default text editor that I desperately want to replace with something like editpad? I have no idea! But it IS sort of insane, which is nice.
---We humans are dereft of morality and are not capable of determining right and wrong ourselves is what they contend---
Hunh? I've never heard any theist claim THAT. They claim jsut the opposite: that we CAN tell the difference. They just claim that we are naturally unable to live up good.
---I do not contend that precepts such as "Thou shall not kill are wrong." What I am saying is to think killing is wrong because the Bible or Koran says so is dangerous. ---
I agree, it is dangerous (not to mention dishonest). That's why I don't do it. But I can't even IMAGINE any way to keep other people from believing that, if they feel that it's right. Belief is not like a lightswtich. People rarely choose what they should believe.
---This [that each person is best equipped to decide what to believe] is a popular argument that came out of the Post Modernist movement. ---
Uh, no. This has nothing to do with Post Modernism. I have no truck with those who think that truth is subjective (which equivocates on the word "Truth!"). What I mean is that everyone is best equipped to decide for themselves what is believable, or what they need to believe. It may not always be true, but even if I think they are wrong, I can't alter the contents of someone's brain. Nor would I want to, if it isn't hurting anyone.
---You will most likely not accept my radical anarchistic views on religion. Religion is not about freedom it is about limiting it. ---
So, therefore you conclude we should limit the freedom of people to believe what they see fit to believe? Isn't that a little hypocritical?
---What has an American even done to an Afghani? Except provide them the help for their freedom from the USSR.---
Oh, and boy did they enjoy these freedoms... under the thumb of the Taliban, the rule of a bunch of facist religious nuts that we funded and taught how to terrorize a population. Boy, they should jsut be singing our praises for their "freedom"!
----But faith can be based on a tried and true methodology - visions/symbols/signs. ---
But the point is that this methodology makes no direct attempt at discovering if its claims are valid. It's not a valid epistemological method for actually examining claims. I mean, even if it were, it wouldn't be faith, by definition: it would be knowledge!
---Just because it's not the scientific method doesn't mean that it's not based on some other method. ---
Like I said: flipping a coin is a "method" one can utilize when trying to answer true/false questions. But it's not a valid epistemological method: it's method is not actually related to separating true claims from flase ones.
---And as I said before, a lot of science is taken on "faith" by most of the general population. ---
While it's true that it COULD be by some people, I think you are still missing the basic difference between faith and knowledge. With knowledge, certainty is never absolute. My certainty of things like DNA that I've never verified is based on other facts, such as the fact that the scientific community is structured in such a way that forces actual and competative examination of claims, and the fact that a vast number of people have verified these things, and generally are people who have records of being honest. False theories get rooted out all the time. But even this is not certain: it's not a "faith" I have. If it came out that there was, against all odds, a global conspiracy to manufacture the existence of DNA, that's not out my range of possibility. It could happen. It's just that given everything I know about the world, I judge that it's not very likely.
That's why knowledge, unlike faith, is always ultimately based on agreed upon, not "proven," axioms, and its findings are always provisional: it's a series of "if this is true... then." Now, yes, some people may not really understand this crucial methodology, and may instead simply take things on faith. But that still doesn't change what "knowledge" is, and why it's different from faith.
---I don't believe that there is any difference between the feelings of faith today's populace has for scientists and the faith yesterday's populace had for spiritual leaders. ---
Hey, if you can't see, or don't accept the difference, fine. You can believe whatever you want... on faith.
Answer to which question? "Does a god exist?" and "Do you believe in god?" are two different questions, and the "atheism/theism" distinction is only concerned by the answer to the second.
---Come ask me the same question tomorrow again for a new reevaluation of the evidence.---
Okay. Who said that people can't change? One day, you might believe, the next, not. One day you might be an atheist, and awake the next as a theist. So? Does that make the definitions of these terms any more uncertain?
Ah, Websters... the dictionary written by theists, for theists... I'd like you to note that their definition of God presumes the existence of God. But when it comes to describing any other non-theist beliefs, like astrology, they are said to be "supposed" or "claimed" beliefs. Hmmm... Their definitions for "atheist" and "atheism" are pretty interesting too, since they both presume the existence of god as a fact which one then simply denies (in other words, atheists don't even get the benefit of the usual slander of being people who "claim that no gods exist": they are simply said to pathetically deny reality).
If "wickedness" is archaic, why is it listed first? How come the listed definitions don't fit the etemology of the word? (like "godless")? Do other dictionaries limit their definitions to these simple definitions? No. Just the dictionary most heavily controlled and edited by Christian theists. Hmmm...
Also note that they have no definition for "atheistic." This is a problematic term, since clearly it reffers to something that is atheist in tenor, and yet it is used all the to describe to describe things that are merely secular: i.e. are without god belief content. Instead of dealing with this thorny issue, Webster's just defaults back to "atheism," without trying to call attention to the discrepancy.
---As we can see the fact people buy bad software does not deny the existance of good software - your logic is flawed. ---
But you are misrepresenting what he said. He didn't say that there was no true religion: he said that many many people will follow even a false religion, no matter how off the wall.
You don't have an "affiliation." But you could rightly be classified as an atheist, because you lack belief IN god.
(you didn't answer the question of whether or not you know there is no god, so I can't judge whether or not you are also an agnostic or not, though chances are that you are) You also didn't answer the question of whether or not you are a jedi knight!
No. An atheist does not believe IN a god. They lack god beliefs. But you're right: it's not a religion. When asked "what religion are you," some atheists should well answer "none." However, some atheists are religious: i.e. Buddhists.
Wow, double post, double the unintentional irony. I know what the symbol "=" means, silly, I just didn't understand what prompted him to claim I didn't understand it.
Unfortunately, dictionaries, many of which got their definitions from religious organizations (read, churches and apologists), are not consistent on these terms. Many them go as far as to assume the existence of god in their definitions (like "atheist is one who denies the existence of god" or even worse "One who denies the soverignty of our Lord"), and also include other such gems as "wicked," "untrustworthy", etc. If you want a definition of atheism, ask an outspoken atheist or do some reading into what atheists have historically defined the term as.
----I.e., no answer. The questioner never knows my answer, because I have none! ---
If you really have no answer, then by definition, you are an atheist. Only people that answer "yes" are theists. Everyone else lacks belief.
The "fence" only appears to exist for you as long as you continue to misinterpret the definitional criteria of theism/atheism distinction in the first place.
Right: Spinozan type god belief cannot be wrong or right because they don't make any actual claims: they simply define the "universe" (whatever tha happens to be) as their god. I, personally, would agree with the Spinozan: the universe does exist (provisionally on axiomatic assumption, of course). However, it is not my god. I am atheist, and the Spinozan is a theist, but there is pretty much nothing that we disagree on. I agree: the universe is his god. He agrees: the universe is not my god. Everyone is happy...
Slashdot Mirror
----Airliners won't ever work that way. They only exist because the cost/benefit ratio leaves room for profit. ---
Why does nearly everyone get this wrong? This is exactly the same kind of arguement that was put forth to claim that air travel would never ever be commercially affordable in the first place ("and only the five richest kings in Europe will be able to afford them!").
Safety design features and flight insurance ALREADY make up a huge portion of the cost of planes: how did that ever happen if the story you're telling is true?
And greater safety mostly means greater FIXED costs, not variable costs. As we all know, variable costs are the real measure of import when it comes to profitabilty over quantity, and figuring out whether a huge safety increase would or would no be profitable is not something one can simply know by making grand statements. It very well could make flying MORE profitable, depending on how risk averse people become after these highly publicized tragedies. It could be less profitable. I dunno, neither you or I have done the math, and the industries certainly haven't had a chance to re-examine the market.
But you're right: it's ALSO not clear that less flying would mean more overall safety: it might well mean far more auto deaths, because more people would be on the roads.
---Those who remember the Falkland's War (damn it, it was a WAR, not a "Conflict") will remember the HMS Sheffield, which was built out of aluminium. One direct hit turned it into a giant, inescapable fireball.---
I heard about this in science class, only the way they told it, it was WAY worse than alluminum. They said that it was made of MAGNESIUM. Which, when the ship was hit, ignited. Of course, your story sounds more reasonable. If it was magnesium, probably no one could have even LOOKED at the ship without being blinded, much less survived it igniting. However, magnesium would be a great metal to use if it didn't ignite at such a low temperature (well, a pretty damn high temperature actually, but much less safe than steel, thoug way lighter).
---So here's deliberate, appropriate action: grab dropping stocks! Prevent further damage to the economy, take importants assets out of the hands of incompetent handlers, and make a little something for yourself.----
These sorts of arguements are so misguided that it's hard to even know where to begin.
Spending money on one thing, instead of on another thing, can't help or hurt the economy. We can't get richer just by buying things from each other.
There's no justifiable reason to buy stocks other than that you like holding those particular stocks (you actually value THEM). Buying a stock transfers some stock to you from somebody else, enriches all the current owners of that stock, and hurts all the potential buyers of that stock BY EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT. Leaving on net, no benefit or loss to the economy as a whole. Patriotism doesn't turn a bad investment into a good investment. If you think the stocks might perk up in the future, and you're willing to take the risk that they won't buy them. If not, not. It's that simple.
---Percieved reality becomes reality of enough people "percieve" it----R
Only if they DO something about it that affects the economy as a whole, as opposed to just one market. Not buying stocks is not the same thing as "bad for the economy," nor is "not buying all types of stock." If people decide that airline stocks are risky, that's fine. Predictable risk differentials are important parts of investing.
It still amazes me that anyone could think that if we all buy things from each other, we'll all get richer.
It does depend on where you do it from- if it's still low enough to the ground you can compensate somewhat for how fast its moving. Someone in a blacked out minivan stopped outside the tollbooth on I-78 could probably have a good chance for things coming out of Newark airport, and then get away and ditch the car before witnesses caught on. It really depends on whether one can shoot the wing or if they have to get an engine. A normal sniper rifle probably couldn't do it, but the really nasty ones we gave the mujahadeen back in the 80s, if they're still in working condition, probably could.
This is all pretty scary to think about, because just in the act of thinking about it you realize how many different new crazy things anyone with even a dull brain could think up to do, and how it would be impossible to protect against them all. The world is moving into an era when we have to trust our lives to the judgement of those with the WORST judgement, and the HIGHEST propensity for violence. If they want to do it, and aren't afraid to get caught or die, it's not likely that we can stop them before the fact (no deterent effect either).
It's actually frighteningly trivial to sneak something like this into the U.S., especially if can get it in via either ship or ground. U.S. customs simply cannot stop and search every single cargo ship bringing in thousands of crates of stuff per day, nor can it search every truck that enters the U.S. from Canada or Mexico. It's estimated that if they did, even with the ridiculous assumption that each inspection would only take minute, our shipping economy would grind to a halt.
In fact, because of the special security loopholes given to larger shipping corporations, it would be trivially easy to simply piggyback something in with their goods. For instance, you might hide the Stinger in the trunk of a German-made car being shipped over here. No one checks these cars. All you'd have to have is someone on the inside at the plant in Germany, and someone on the inside at the holding lot in America.
Even if your all for Slashdot poster's rights of free speech, copy-pasting an article from a great publication desperate to financially support itself is at the least, in very poor taste.
Information wants to be free.... but online magazines would like it if they could stay in bussiness, and I'd like it too.
It's for, as the name implies, robots. I.e., the little scripts that get data for search engines to file away cnn stories in their databases. It's not for people, and if too many people start using it for "load balencing" it'll probably screw up how they allocate resources somewhat.
--So you think federalizing airport security will make us more secure?---
Wow, you're totally right. and whille we're at it, let's privative the FBI and the military too. I mean, why should national security be in the hands of the GOVERNMENT? Is that crazy or what?
This is an interesting question for economists: what is the socially efficient level of advertising? I mean, as many people have noticed, movie theaters are steadily increasing the number of commercials that they play before the actual movie (before even the previews!).
They didn't USED to do this, and yet the theater industry got along fine back then. Now they have not only raised ticket prices faster than inflation, but they are getting ad revenue as well. And in a way: ad revenue is the easier way to do it: consumers are far far more likely to respond negatively to increased ticket price than they are to one more minute of ad per movie. So it's pretty clear what a winning deal this is for theaters: for every additional commercial they broadcast, they make tons more money, with little increase in customer dissatisfaction.
My question is: do theaters HAVE to do this, or are they really making huge profits off of doing this? And if they are making huge profits, shouldn't that suggest that more theaters will open?
My guess is that these ads are meant to defray huge losses that come from now having to compete with cable tv and video rentals. Video rentals can fill their tapes with ads, but people could just fast forward through them. Therefore, ads help theaters stay afloat despite the huge bite of their market that video rentals take.
---Part of the unspoken rules of being a liberal is the pretense that one is really "moderate" and pretending that most ordinary Americans share your views. Well, they don't. ---
Unh hunh.. um, yeah. Whatever. This "the media is liberal" is one of the best PR tactics the extreme-right has dreamt up in a long time.
Just keep repeating it over and over long enough, and it almost seems sensible...
---Fox isn't even "conservative" except that they tone down a bit on the liberal blinkered mentality and include some vaguely conservative talking heads like O'Reilly.---
Oh sure, whatever. They report the "facts" and let YOU decide. For sure...
---Not surprisingly, conservatives tend to watch Fox more because they don't have anyone else who even comes close to catering to their worldview. ---
Journalism, idealy, isn't about catering to a particular "worldview." Fox has started to change all that, or at least vastly accelerate this change by trying to capture a particular audience (conservative) by pandering to a particular political view rather than simply reporting the news.
As far as Win2k goes, I still don't understand exactly what the hell is going on when I delete certain files... and they magically fade back to life unharmed. One neat effect of this is that you can "vanish" huge files instantly in a pretty crazy way.
Try this sometime instead of "recylcing" a large file: rename it "Notepad.exe" and drop it into your windows directory, replacing the regular notepad.exe. Wait a few seconds, or cd up and cd back into the windows directory. As if by magic, your huge renamed file has been transformed back into a magically restored pristine and original copy of notepad.exe Hurray! Where did all the bytes go? Who knows?! Why does the OS do this to protect a crappy default text editor that I desperately want to replace with something like editpad? I have no idea! But it IS sort of insane, which is nice.
---We humans are dereft of morality and are not capable of determining right and wrong ourselves is what they contend---
Hunh? I've never heard any theist claim THAT. They claim jsut the opposite: that we CAN tell the difference. They just claim that we are naturally unable to live up good.
---I do not contend that precepts such as "Thou shall not kill are wrong." What I am saying is to think killing is wrong because the Bible or Koran says so is dangerous. ---
I agree, it is dangerous (not to mention dishonest). That's why I don't do it. But I can't even IMAGINE any way to keep other people from believing that, if they feel that it's right. Belief is not like a lightswtich. People rarely choose what they should believe.
---This [that each person is best equipped to decide what to believe] is a popular argument that came out of the Post Modernist movement. ---
Uh, no. This has nothing to do with Post Modernism. I have no truck with those who think that truth is subjective (which equivocates on the word "Truth!"). What I mean is that everyone is best equipped to decide for themselves what is believable, or what they need to believe. It may not always be true, but even if I think they are wrong, I can't alter the contents of someone's brain. Nor would I want to, if it isn't hurting anyone.
---You will most likely not accept my radical anarchistic views on religion. Religion is not about freedom it is about limiting it. ---
So, therefore you conclude we should limit the freedom of people to believe what they see fit to believe? Isn't that a little hypocritical?
---What has an American even done to an Afghani? Except provide them the help for their freedom from the USSR.---
Oh, and boy did they enjoy these freedoms... under the thumb of the Taliban, the rule of a bunch of facist religious nuts that we funded and taught how to terrorize a population. Boy, they should jsut be singing our praises for their "freedom"!
----But faith can be based on a tried and true methodology - visions/symbols/signs. ---
But the point is that this methodology makes no direct attempt at discovering if its claims are valid. It's not a valid epistemological method for actually examining claims. I mean, even if it were, it wouldn't be faith, by definition: it would be knowledge!
---Just because it's not the scientific method doesn't mean that it's not based on some other method. ---
Like I said: flipping a coin is a "method" one can utilize when trying to answer true/false questions. But it's not a valid epistemological method: it's method is not actually related to separating true claims from flase ones.
---And as I said before, a lot of science is taken on "faith" by most of the general population. ---
While it's true that it COULD be by some people, I think you are still missing the basic difference between faith and knowledge. With knowledge, certainty is never absolute. My certainty of things like DNA that I've never verified is based on other facts, such as the fact that the scientific community is structured in such a way that forces actual and competative examination of claims, and the fact that a vast number of people have verified these things, and generally are people who have records of being honest. False theories get rooted out all the time. But even this is not certain: it's not a "faith" I have. If it came out that there was, against all odds, a global conspiracy to manufacture the existence of DNA, that's not out my range of possibility. It could happen. It's just that given everything I know about the world, I judge that it's not very likely.
That's why knowledge, unlike faith, is always ultimately based on agreed upon, not "proven," axioms, and its findings are always provisional: it's a series of "if this is true... then."
Now, yes, some people may not really understand this crucial methodology, and may instead simply take things on faith. But that still doesn't change what "knowledge" is, and why it's different from faith.
---I don't believe that there is any difference between the feelings of faith today's populace has for scientists and the faith yesterday's populace had for spiritual leaders. ---
Hey, if you can't see, or don't accept the difference, fine. You can believe whatever you want... on faith.
---Today, my answer is no. ---
Answer to which question? "Does a god exist?" and "Do you believe in god?" are two different questions, and the "atheism/theism" distinction is only concerned by the answer to the second.
---Come ask me the same question tomorrow again for a new reevaluation of the evidence.---
Okay. Who said that people can't change? One day, you might believe, the next, not. One day you might be an atheist, and awake the next as a theist. So? Does that make the definitions of these terms any more uncertain?
Ah, Websters... the dictionary written by theists, for theists...
I'd like you to note that their definition of God presumes the existence of God. But when it comes to describing any other non-theist beliefs, like astrology, they are said to be "supposed" or "claimed" beliefs. Hmmm...
Their definitions for "atheist" and "atheism" are pretty interesting too, since they both presume the existence of god as a fact which one then simply denies (in other words, atheists don't even get the benefit of the usual slander of being people who "claim that no gods exist": they are simply said to pathetically deny reality).
If "wickedness" is archaic, why is it listed first? How come the listed definitions don't fit the etemology of the word? (like "godless")? Do other dictionaries limit their definitions to these simple definitions? No. Just the dictionary most heavily controlled and edited by Christian theists. Hmmm...
Also note that they have no definition for "atheistic." This is a problematic term, since clearly it reffers to something that is atheist in tenor, and yet it is used all the to describe to describe things that are merely secular: i.e. are without god belief content. Instead of dealing with this thorny issue, Webster's just defaults back to "atheism," without trying to call attention to the discrepancy.
Luke will not appear in any more of the planned movies. He wont even be born by the end of the "last" movie.
---As we can see the fact people buy bad software does not deny the existance of good software - your logic is flawed. ---
But you are misrepresenting what he said. He didn't say that there was no true religion: he said that many many people will follow even a false religion, no matter how off the wall.
You don't have an "affiliation." But you could rightly be classified as an atheist, because you lack belief IN god.
(you didn't answer the question of whether or not you know there is no god, so I can't judge whether or not you are also an agnostic or not, though chances are that you are)
You also didn't answer the question of whether or not you are a jedi knight!
No. An atheist does not believe IN a god. They lack god beliefs. But you're right: it's not a religion. When asked "what religion are you," some atheists should well answer "none." However, some atheists are religious: i.e. Buddhists.
Wow, double post, double the unintentional irony. I know what the symbol "=" means, silly, I just didn't understand what prompted him to claim I didn't understand it.
Unfortunately, dictionaries, many of which got their definitions from religious organizations (read, churches and apologists), are not consistent on these terms. Many them go as far as to assume the existence of god in their definitions (like "atheist is one who denies the existence of god" or even worse "One who denies the soverignty of our Lord"), and also include other such gems as "wicked," "untrustworthy", etc. If you want a definition of atheism, ask an outspoken atheist or do some reading into what atheists have historically defined the term as.
----I.e., no answer. The questioner never knows my answer, because I have none! ---
If you really have no answer, then by definition, you are an atheist. Only people that answer "yes" are theists. Everyone else lacks belief.
The "fence" only appears to exist for you as long as you continue to misinterpret the definitional criteria of theism/atheism distinction in the first place.
Right: Spinozan type god belief cannot be wrong or right because they don't make any actual claims: they simply define the "universe" (whatever tha happens to be) as their god. I, personally, would agree with the Spinozan: the universe does exist (provisionally on axiomatic assumption, of course). However, it is not my god. I am atheist, and the Spinozan is a theist, but there is pretty much nothing that we disagree on. I agree: the universe is his god. He agrees: the universe is not my god. Everyone is happy...