You do according to Oxford and Websters dictionaries. Some people use the terms differently, but they're wrong:o)
What's important is not so much the labels as the belief systems - my point goes to those who actively believe in the non-existance of God, not whether agnostics call themselves atheists.
I agree that there are differences within labels - usually relating to differences about how we arrive at our beliefs. But, Websters defines Atheist like so:
Main Entry: atheist Pronunciation: 'A-thE-ist Function: noun : one who believes that there is no deity
From Oxford:
Jacket image of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
Rubbish. There is no evidence at all that God doesn't exist, just like there is no evidence at all the he does.
No observation about the world is sufficient to either prove or disprove the existence of a god being.
I've always been fond of "the problem of evil" as an argument against the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god: there is evil in the world, god allows evil to happen, god could stop evil (being omnipotent) and if god exists, he would stop evil (being omnibenevolent) but evil exists therefore god does not. The trouble with such arguments, and indeed, the whole class of metaphysical arguments is that they go beyond what we can sensibly talk about. Outside the normal bounds of well-known science, or mathematics or everyday experience, our ability to reason about things that cross these boundaries is really non-existant. For example, in the case of the "problem of evil", a Theist can simply claim that God is infinitely smarter than I am, and in some sense that god appreciates and I do not, the world is either not evil or perhaps even just as lacking in evil as it is logically possible to be. Not being infinitely wise, or a god-being myself, I can't come up with any real response to that, other than "that's a really crap argument". The trouble is, that does not sway the Theist - who has faith - because my arguments are powerless to strike at that faith - it is the faith that motivates his belief, and faith cannot be argued. Faith isn't true or false, it just is. Not being something which exists in the universe of logic, it is impervious to it
Systems of reasoning - such as logic and mathematics, have limitations (something that Godel showed) - push them too far to their boundaries, and they start falling over. There are at least two ways in which this can occur - the formal systemic way in which complex systems become unable to prove somethings they can express, or express things they cannot prove (a la Godel) or in the simple "category error" manner in which a system is asked to process something which simply makes no sense. E.g: in maths, "1 + 1" is a valid sentence which makes sense. "1 + sqrt(-1)" is a valid sentence which might make sense (depending on which mathematical model you employ) "the number 1 is nice" is not a valid sentence at all in mathematics - it just doesn't work, even if there are various senses in which this might be a meaningful sentence to a human being. "1 is nice" or the question "what is the smell of 5?" are both sentences which exhibit "category error" - they are not even meaningful questions because they are asked in a context in which they cannot be processed (let alone make sense).
Metaphysical questions are like that - they seem meaningful, but when we get right down to it, we have no mechanism for resolving such questions. If you ask me "what is 1+1?" I can answer you, and we all know the system to use to resolve such a question. If I ask you "does God exist?", we have no such system to resolve the question. Our best tool so far for questioning the universe - science - can falsify theories. But the existence of God is completely unfalsifiable since Theists can simply switch the goalposts in response to ANY attack on the idea (note the way that Evolution can be absorbed into a Theistic viewpoint with no change in the core belief)
We should argue the things we can sensibly speak about - and those are the things that our best tool (science) lets us falsify. And science is mute about the metaphysical nature of the universe (just as it would have to be mute about any "brain in a jar" kind of scenarios - there is no test that goes beyond what we can experience). Therefore, arguments about God are fruitless and pointless. In reality, we can have such "arguments", but we should realise that when we do so, we cross over the bounds of reason and into the world of fairy tales where we can make up anything we like (although, given the same set of fairy tale assumptions (metaphysical axioms) then we can argue f
Absence of faith, or the belief that it's not possible to decide on the given evidence, is agnosticism. Belief that God does not exist is atheism. If you mean the former, don't use the term "Athiest"
I'm not an astrophysicist, but my understanding is that time also began in the big bang. It's not like one moment there was lots of mass and energy when there was none the previous moment. There was no previous moment.
Not quite. It would be more correct to say that the maths doesn't work when you try to describe a previous moment, or indeed T=0. That said, there have been recent mathematical alternatives suggested to get past this limitation.
Not to perturb you with actual facts, but Sun *are* actually making a profit.
This, after the strategy of open sourcing all the family jewels has only been running for the last year. That's quite a turn around in quite a short period of time.
Hardly. Blade Runner is NOT the same story as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Some of the setting is similar, but the purpose of the stories are quite different. What PKD was aiming at has nothing to do with Blade Runner. Blade Runner is it's own creature, and for one I prefer it to DADOES (although, the book is still excellent in its own way)
Exactly. And that really needs to be the answer to all those purists who bitch about film derivatives of written works - they are different beasts and need to stand or fall on their own merits, without one slavishly referencing the other.
I completely disagree. To me the whole point of the movie is examining what it means to be human. For all intents and purposes, the replicant *are* human - it's just the programmed in termination date that makes them differ from anyone else. And at the end of the film, when we are wondering how long Decker and Rachel will have together, one should realise that that;s the situation that we're all in, "real" or not. None of us know what the future holds.
Sun have released tons of stuff free and open source. Those are ACTIONs not words, and I challenge you to find ANY other company who has released (or is releasing) their crown jewels in a similar fashion./. bigots like you make me sick.
Stock price is not the same thing as profitability at all. EBIT is more a measure of health than what the stock market trading card game thinks of a company.
The point remains, which you haven't refuted, that "Haemorging cash" is not an apt description of a company making a profit (even if it is a small one). That was the original point of this thread, that's what I've supported and that point is still true.
WTF? You use figures which are OLDER than the grandparent poster to show that the long term looks bad? If you read the GP article, it was talking about why Sun profitability had been turned around (for structural reasons which will continue to reap profit)
That *is* a troll you dumb fuck. As was pointed out to you, Java already runs on hundreds of millions of phones without the situation you describe ever happening. Spreading FUD makes you a troll. Deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You do according to Oxford and Websters dictionaries. Some people use the terms differently, but they're wrong :o)
What's important is not so much the labels as the belief systems - my point goes to those who actively believe in the non-existance of God, not whether agnostics call themselves atheists.
Gah, I really wish /. let you edit your posts :o)
Cursed HTML brings me down again!!!!
Both websters and oxford dictionary define atheism as the belief that there is no god.
/aythi-iz'm/
Ofxford:
atheism
noun the belief that God does not exist.
-- DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.
-- ORIGIN from Greek a- 'without' + theos 'god'.
I'll take those sources over Princeton's wordnet (which is a language project, not a dictionary)
From Oxford dictionary:
/aythi-iz'm/
atheism
noun the belief that God does not exist.
-- DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.
-- ORIGIN from Greek a- 'without' + theos 'god'.
So again, you're wrong.
I agree that there are differences within labels - usually relating to differences about how we arrive at our beliefs. But, Websters defines Atheist like so:
/aythi-iz'm/
Main Entry: atheist
Pronunciation: 'A-thE-ist
Function: noun
: one who believes that there is no deity
From Oxford:
Jacket image of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
atheism
noun the belief that God does not exist.
-- DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.
-- ORIGIN from Greek a- 'without' + theos 'god'.
So... I'll stick to my use of the terms, as they match up with the most authoritative sources.
From Websters:
Main Entry: atheist
Pronunciation: 'A-thE-ist
Function: noun
: one who believes that there is no deity
What part of "well regulated militia" is so hard to understand?
No observation about the world is sufficient to either prove or disprove the existence of a god being.
I've always been fond of "the problem of evil" as an argument against the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god: there is evil in the world, god allows evil to happen, god could stop evil (being omnipotent) and if god exists, he would stop evil (being omnibenevolent) but evil exists therefore god does not. The trouble with such arguments, and indeed, the whole class of metaphysical arguments is that they go beyond what we can sensibly talk about. Outside the normal bounds of well-known science, or mathematics or everyday experience, our ability to reason about things that cross these boundaries is really non-existant. For example, in the case of the "problem of evil", a Theist can simply claim that God is infinitely smarter than I am, and in some sense that god appreciates and I do not, the world is either not evil or perhaps even just as lacking in evil as it is logically possible to be. Not being infinitely wise, or a god-being myself, I can't come up with any real response to that, other than "that's a really crap argument". The trouble is, that does not sway the Theist - who has faith - because my arguments are powerless to strike at that faith - it is the faith that motivates his belief, and faith cannot be argued. Faith isn't true or false, it just is. Not being something which exists in the universe of logic, it is impervious to it
Systems of reasoning - such as logic and mathematics, have limitations (something that Godel showed) - push them too far to their boundaries, and they start falling over. There are at least two ways in which this can occur - the formal systemic way in which complex systems become unable to prove somethings they can express, or express things they cannot prove (a la Godel) or in the simple "category error" manner in which a system is asked to process something which simply makes no sense. E.g: in maths, "1 + 1" is a valid sentence which makes sense. "1 + sqrt(-1)" is a valid sentence which might make sense (depending on which mathematical model you employ) "the number 1 is nice" is not a valid sentence at all in mathematics - it just doesn't work, even if there are various senses in which this might be a meaningful sentence to a human being. "1 is nice" or the question "what is the smell of 5?" are both sentences which exhibit "category error" - they are not even meaningful questions because they are asked in a context in which they cannot be processed (let alone make sense).
Metaphysical questions are like that - they seem meaningful, but when we get right down to it, we have no mechanism for resolving such questions. If you ask me "what is 1+1?" I can answer you, and we all know the system to use to resolve such a question. If I ask you "does God exist?", we have no such system to resolve the question. Our best tool so far for questioning the universe - science - can falsify theories. But the existence of God is completely unfalsifiable since Theists can simply switch the goalposts in response to ANY attack on the idea (note the way that Evolution can be absorbed into a Theistic viewpoint with no change in the core belief)
We should argue the things we can sensibly speak about - and those are the things that our best tool (science) lets us falsify. And science is mute about the metaphysical nature of the universe (just as it would have to be mute about any "brain in a jar" kind of scenarios - there is no test that goes beyond what we can experience). Therefore, arguments about God are fruitless and pointless. In reality, we can have such "arguments", but we should realise that when we do so, we cross over the bounds of reason and into the world of fairy tales where we can make up anything we like (although, given the same set of fairy tale assumptions (metaphysical axioms) then we can argue f
Absence of faith, or the belief that it's not possible to decide on the given evidence, is agnosticism. Belief that God does not exist is atheism. If you mean the former, don't use the term "Athiest"
Not quite. It would be more correct to say that the maths doesn't work when you try to describe a previous moment, or indeed T=0. That said, there have been recent mathematical alternatives suggested to get past this limitation.
Hmmm. I've got a command line interface written in java which starts in one second, including loading the window that it displays in.
Bigots like you are very tiresome.
Not to perturb you with actual facts, but Sun *are* actually making a profit.
This, after the strategy of open sourcing all the family jewels has only been running for the last year. That's quite a turn around in quite a short period of time.
Hardly. Blade Runner is NOT the same story as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Some of the setting is similar, but the purpose of the stories are quite different. What PKD was aiming at has nothing to do with Blade Runner. Blade Runner is it's own creature, and for one I prefer it to DADOES (although, the book is still excellent in its own way)
I mentioned this elsewhere, but Riddley Scott recently confirmed that Deckard was a replicant.
Exactly. And that really needs to be the answer to all those purists who bitch about film derivatives of written works - they are different beasts and need to stand or fall on their own merits, without one slavishly referencing the other.
I completely disagree. To me the whole point of the movie is examining what it means to be human. For all intents and purposes, the replicant *are* human - it's just the programmed in termination date that makes them differ from anyone else. And at the end of the film, when we are wondering how long Decker and Rachel will have together, one should realise that that;s the situation that we're all in, "real" or not. None of us know what the future holds.
Ridley Scott not that long ago confirmed that Decker was a replicant
"If these downloads manifested into regular Safari users, then we just might have a third major browser on the Windows platform."
Yeah, and if your auntie had balls, she'd be your uncle.
They don't commit to anything?
/. bigots like you make me sick.
BULLSHIT.
Sun have released tons of stuff free and open source. Those are ACTIONs not words, and I challenge you to find ANY other company who has released (or is releasing) their crown jewels in a similar fashion.
...in the marketplace, or literally, by sitting on you?
Stock price is not the same thing as profitability at all. EBIT is more a measure of health than what the stock market trading card game thinks of a company.
The point remains, which you haven't refuted, that "Haemorging cash" is not an apt description of a company making a profit (even if it is a small one). That was the original point of this thread, that's what I've supported and that point is still true.
WTF? You use figures which are OLDER than the grandparent poster to show that the long term looks bad? If you read the GP article, it was talking about why Sun profitability had been turned around (for structural reasons which will continue to reap profit)
Your are either a FUD-monger or confused.
That *is* a troll you dumb fuck. As was pointed out to you, Java already runs on hundreds of millions of phones without the situation you describe ever happening. Spreading FUD makes you a troll. Deal with it.
Sun.com is the developer site, not where newbs should go to get the jre