Pretty much everything in your post is wrong. The IPCC's latest report does NOT state that the science supporting global climate change is "weaker than ever". Sure, a few minor botches were discovered in the report, but that doesn't change the fact that there is overwhelming evidence, supported by over 90% of climate scientists, that global climate change is real and caused by human actions.
Many people are much more willing to change their mind when presented with evidence that contradicts favored beliefs than religious fundamentalists, and others who strongly identify who they are to a particular dogma.
There seems to be a.lot more "noisy" republicans/conservatives that are proud of not changing their mind in the face of evidence than there are democrats/liberals with this trait. For example some liberals are now promoting nuclear energey now that global climate change has proved to be a much bigger issue.
I don't think it is a win for freedom when your company, run by very few people at the top, gets to tell the employees, a generally much large number of people, how to run their private lives. Each person should be free to make important decisions about their lives without interference from companies or the government when their decisions harm no other people. Embryos are not people.
More importantly, no secular government should be paying any attention to any religious belief when making laws. Iron Age superstition has no place in deciding important moral, philosophical, or law questions. Our body of knowledge about what is moral has change drastically since those days, and especially since the enlightenment.
Keep religion out of the law - it is the only way to have freedom. There are thousands of religions, and even if you restrict yourself to Christian sects, you still have thousands of sects - there is no way to pick the "correct" morality from this mess of contradictory, and generally backward beliefs.
Don't get offended when I call Christian beliefs backwards; go read the bible. I'm always amazed at the number of people calling themselves "chistians" who haven't bothered to read the bible. Often, reading the bible, and/or making a serious study of theology cures one of religion.
And everyone in that plane is going to want to kill you after only 5 hours. For the love of god, don't do it unless you have a miracle child that will sleep through the whole flight.
As a parent of three grown children, I never inflicted my perfect, but often screaming, children on theaters, high end restaurants, or long plane trips. It is is selfish, unthinking, and rude.
I don't see how a bug that will likely be fixed soon is a "slimy" business practice. Normally if an imessage doesn't go through it gets resent as a normal sms. Some sort of bug is causing the resend to not happen.
From my point of view this is frivolous lawsuit, I hope apple wins, and the plaintiffs lawyers lose a bundle.
And, while this is interesting tech, a large stationary power-plant should be more efficient - even with transmission losses so I'll be waiting until I can get a battery powered car at a reasonable price with good enough range. Battery research is what cars need.
Electricity is cheap where I live so my "fuel" costs would be cut by about 85% if I got an electric. (7.5Km per dollar for gas vs 50k per dollar for electricity).
What boggles my mind is that this despicable behavior was done in front of a teacher! Any school I, or my kids went to, that bullying tirade would have been stopped, and the student marched down to the principals office by the teacher. A "cut it out" is for talking to your friend when you should be paying attention.
I'm from Canada, but I'm going to guess the bully was an athlete. Untouchable.
And I agree with others that have pointed out that the school admin seems more concerned with protecting the schools reputation and athletics program than with learning and justice.
And in what way is tirade shouted out in a classroom not public? What is wrong with that magistrate, and that cop?
Sorry, but there is very little doubt that mass murder is evil, and that goes on at frequent enough intervals for there to be no doubt that god allows evil.
If god doesn't think mass murder is evil then he isn't good, and no amount of "god's way is a mystery" hand waving will change that fact.
The Catholic church was certainly aware that unfiltered thinking could cause problems with faith which is why for centuries the clergy read the bible in latin and told the "flock" what to think, and they burned at the stake the man who first publish the bible in English.
Actually, we do have an arbiter of good evil outside the bible which is why good christens are not keeping slaves, stoning their neighbors to death for not observing the Sabbath or killing kids who disrespect their parents. This arbiter is the knowledge that certain actions harm other people, and our empathy allows us to know that other do not want to be harmed. Basically, the morals and ethics that arose during the enlightenment (which do owe something to some ancient Greeks) are the basis of most secular western law and principals of judgement.
You bring up two topics: the morality of gay marriage, and the completely separate issue of the financial and legal benefits the the USA government bestows on married couples.
You make a persuasive argument against the government giving special rights and benefits to married couples that are denied to other long term, stable relationships. I agree with you that the government has no business doling out special rights to some couples because they made a commitment called marriage while similar commitments are denied these benefits.
It is my opinion that government should not give any financial benefits simply because your are married. Further, I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely. Marriage, outside of religious ceremonies, should be replaced by civil contracts.A lot of people don't really understand that when they get married they are agreeing to a huge and convoluted legal contract. A range of simpler contracts should be available that spell out the rights and privileges of both partners: power of attorney, child custody and guardianship, shared assets, and how to dissolve the partnership would be some of the key things to include in these contracts..
The moral issue is should being gay be treated like being a red head, or being black, or being white, that is something that the law should prevent everyone from discriminating against.
In this case I disagree with you and say that being gay should be something that no one, and no law, can use as something to justify discrimination. Being gay is like having blue eyes, something you are born with. All government programs, civil rights, etc... should be available to gay people just as if they were straight.
And hospitals do NOT decide the rules about who can visit and who has the right to make medical decisions those are all laws - laws that currently discriminate against a lot of people. rules governing wills, child custody, etc... are also generally unfair to anyone other than straight couples.
Gay people are not forcing their morals on anyone. They are asking to be treated equally before the law. Asking for people to stop discriminating against yourself is not forcing your morals on anyone; it is asking for the law to be fair.
Finally, gay people are not "greedily" grabbing benefits they are just asking for the same benefits others already have, and you so eloquently argued that everyone should have. Are you saying that all committed, long term relationships should get benefits, except gay ones? That would hardly be moral.
And I'd say your description of the communication issues the autistic face is a definite disadvantage. The intelligence boost in 50% of mild cases isn't worth it.
You've never actually met an autistic person have you? It is NOT an advantage in 99.99999% of cases, A few people with mild cases can live normal lives, but this is the exception. Most autistic people cannot live on their own and require close supervision 24x7. Most people, even saintly social workers, find it extremely unrewarding, frustrating, and generally unbearable working with autistic people.
No, limited liability corps limit the financial liability to the company, and prevent the owners from being personally responsible for DEBT the company racks up.
Limited liability companies were invented to encourage investment in risky ventures, like buying a ship and sending it to India for the spice trade. If the venture failed creditors could only go after the companies assets, not your personal assets.
Limited liability companies have no affect on criminal responsibility. It is hard to sue individuals in companies for criminal acts because it is generally very hard to determine which individual is responsible. Who knew, who decided? It can be very hard to prove.
1/3 of American Christians do think the bible should be taken literally, according to various polls. 56% think the bible should "have a greater role in society", yet - 57% didn't read the bible at all the year the poll was taken. 75% of people in the USA think the bible is the word of god, or inspired by god.
If you accept the Bible to be the "word of god", and most Americans do, then you are NOT taking it metaphorically. But, on the other hand most Americans haven't actually read the whole bible and only hear the "good" parts in church, as selected by their pastor. The evidence is overwhelming that most USA christians have a simple, literal, or almost literal, belief in the bible. They are not taking it metaphorically.
Once you decide that the bible should be taken "metaphorically" how does one decide what it really means? How does one decide which parts should be ignored? How does one decide which parts are good? It appears that most theologians are using rational, post enlightenment ideals, to cherry pick the good parts from the bible, and explaining away the parts that are evil, or contradicted by science as metaphor. Once you start down this path you are pretty close not needing the bible at all for your moral outlook, and discarding the iron age myths in favour of modern secular morals will seem a sensible step.
Since when has being beyond an evolutionary incentive had anything to do with morality. We vaccinate our children, wash our hands, build sewage treatment plants, etc... all of which subvert evolution. If you can make peoples lives better and longer it is right to do so.
"Death is wrong" is a silly thing to say philosophically because wrong and right only apply to the actions and decisions of sentient being, like humans, not the actions of natural forces like earthquakes and senescence.
I DO want to beat death because I like living and experiencing. If I could live forever I would. I'd settle for a few thousand years.
Why is transhumanism a fantasy? Our consciousness arises from the functioning of our physical brain and if we can duplicate that functioning in a machine then we can live much, much longer than we live know.
I concede we are a long ways from the technology to duplicate human consciousness in a machine, but it isn't a fantasy.
Divisive? If your neighbors were trying to teach everyone that children should dress in black and play on highways at night would you call it divisive to point that isn't a good idea?
All the benefits of religion can be had from secular means that don't encourage magical thinking, which has a long track record of having numerous bad side affects.
Ignorance is easily cured in people without faith by teaching them. Ignorance in the faithful is often immune to any teaching that contradicts the person's faith.
Thus, faith is the enemy of science, not ignorance.
Even thinking that having faith is a good idea means that your whole outlook on the way the world and reality works is at odds with science.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much everything in your post is wrong. The IPCC's latest report does NOT state that the science supporting global climate change is "weaker than ever". Sure, a few minor botches were discovered in the report, but that doesn't change the fact that there is overwhelming evidence, supported by over 90% of climate scientists, that global climate change is real and caused by human actions.
Many people are much more willing to change their mind when presented with evidence that contradicts favored beliefs than religious fundamentalists, and others who strongly identify who they are to a particular dogma.
There seems to be a .lot more "noisy" republicans/conservatives that are proud of not changing their mind in the face of evidence than there are democrats/liberals with this trait. For example some liberals are now promoting nuclear energey now that global climate change has proved to be a much bigger issue.
I don't think it is a win for freedom when your company, run by very few people at the top, gets to tell the employees, a generally much large number of people, how to run their private lives. Each person should be free to make important decisions about their lives without interference from companies or the government when their decisions harm no other people. Embryos are not people.
More importantly, no secular government should be paying any attention to any religious belief when making laws. Iron Age superstition has no place in deciding important moral, philosophical, or law questions. Our body of knowledge about what is moral has change drastically since those days, and especially since the enlightenment.
Keep religion out of the law - it is the only way to have freedom. There are thousands of religions, and even if you restrict yourself to Christian sects, you still have thousands of sects - there is no way to pick the "correct" morality from this mess of contradictory, and generally backward beliefs.
Don't get offended when I call Christian beliefs backwards; go read the bible. I'm always amazed at the number of people calling themselves "chistians" who haven't bothered to read the bible. Often, reading the bible, and/or making a serious study of theology cures one of religion.
Once all the cars are autonomous, and networked there won't be traffic jams.
And everyone in that plane is going to want to kill you after only 5 hours. For the love of god, don't do it unless you have a miracle child that will sleep through the whole flight.
As a parent of three grown children, I never inflicted my perfect, but often screaming, children on theaters, high end restaurants, or long plane trips. It is is selfish, unthinking, and rude.
I don't see how a bug that will likely be fixed soon is a "slimy" business practice. Normally if an imessage doesn't go through it gets resent as a normal sms. Some sort of bug is causing the resend to not happen.
From my point of view this is frivolous lawsuit, I hope apple wins, and the plaintiffs lawyers lose a bundle.
And, while this is interesting tech, a large stationary power-plant should be more efficient - even with transmission losses so I'll be waiting until I can get a battery powered car at a reasonable price with good enough range. Battery research is what cars need.
Electricity is cheap where I live so my "fuel" costs would be cut by about 85% if I got an electric. (7.5Km per dollar for gas vs 50k per dollar for electricity).
What boggles my mind is that this despicable behavior was done in front of a teacher! Any school I, or my kids went to, that bullying tirade would have been stopped, and the student marched down to the principals office by the teacher. A "cut it out" is for talking to your friend when you should be paying attention.
I'm from Canada, but I'm going to guess the bully was an athlete. Untouchable.
And I agree with others that have pointed out that the school admin seems more concerned with protecting the schools reputation and athletics program than with learning and justice.
And in what way is tirade shouted out in a classroom not public? What is wrong with that magistrate, and that cop?
Sorry, but there is very little doubt that mass murder is evil, and that goes on at frequent enough intervals for there to be no doubt that god allows evil.
If god doesn't think mass murder is evil then he isn't good, and no amount of "god's way is a mystery" hand waving will change that fact.
The Catholic church was certainly aware that unfiltered thinking could cause problems with faith which is why for centuries the clergy read the bible in latin and told the "flock" what to think, and they burned at the stake the man who first publish the bible in English.
I don't mind others faith until they try to turn into law and jam it down my throat.
Actually, we do have an arbiter of good evil outside the bible which is why good christens are not keeping slaves, stoning their neighbors to death for not observing the Sabbath or killing kids who disrespect their parents. This arbiter is the knowledge that certain actions harm other people, and our empathy allows us to know that other do not want to be harmed. Basically, the morals and ethics that arose during the enlightenment (which do owe something to some ancient Greeks) are the basis of most secular western law and principals of judgement.
Do the gods love the good because the gods say what is good, or because the gods love what is good?
As humanities moral development has improved over the ages, more and more of the bible has become metaphor.
You bring up two topics: the morality of gay marriage, and the completely separate issue of the financial and legal benefits the the USA government bestows on married couples.
You make a persuasive argument against the government giving special rights and benefits to married couples that are denied to other long term, stable relationships. I agree with you that the government has no business doling out special rights to some couples because they made a commitment called marriage while similar commitments are denied these benefits.
It is my opinion that government should not give any financial benefits simply because your are married. Further, I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely. Marriage, outside of religious ceremonies, should be replaced by civil contracts.A lot of people don't really understand that when they get married they are agreeing to a huge and convoluted legal contract. A range of simpler contracts should be available that spell out the rights and privileges of both partners: power of attorney, child custody and guardianship, shared assets, and how to dissolve the partnership would be some of the key things to include in these contracts..
The moral issue is should being gay be treated like being a red head, or being black, or being white, that is something that the law should prevent everyone from discriminating against.
In this case I disagree with you and say that being gay should be something that no one, and no law, can use as something to justify discrimination. Being gay is like having blue eyes, something you are born with. All government programs, civil rights, etc... should be available to gay people just as if they were straight.
And hospitals do NOT decide the rules about who can visit and who has the right to make medical decisions those are all laws - laws that currently discriminate against a lot of people. rules governing wills, child custody, etc... are also generally unfair to anyone other than straight couples.
Gay people are not forcing their morals on anyone. They are asking to be treated equally before the law. Asking for people to stop discriminating against yourself is not forcing your morals on anyone; it is asking for the law to be fair.
Finally, gay people are not "greedily" grabbing benefits they are just asking for the same benefits others already have, and you so eloquently argued that everyone should have. Are you saying that all committed, long term relationships should get benefits, except gay ones? That would hardly be moral.
And I'd say your description of the communication issues the autistic face is a definite disadvantage. The intelligence boost in 50% of mild cases isn't worth it.
You've never actually met an autistic person have you? It is NOT an advantage in 99.99999% of cases, A few people with mild cases can live normal lives, but this is the exception. Most autistic people cannot live on their own and require close supervision 24x7. Most people, even saintly social workers, find it extremely unrewarding, frustrating, and generally unbearable working with autistic people.
Autism is a horrible affliction.
Companies are "persons" only for the purpose of applying a few laws, not in a general legal sense, even in the USA.
No, limited liability corps limit the financial liability to the company, and prevent the owners from being personally responsible for DEBT the company racks up.
Limited liability companies were invented to encourage investment in risky ventures, like buying a ship and sending it to India for the spice trade. If the venture failed creditors could only go after the companies assets, not your personal assets.
Limited liability companies have no affect on criminal responsibility. It is hard to sue individuals in companies for criminal acts because it is generally very hard to determine which individual is responsible. Who knew, who decided? It can be very hard to prove.
You are confusing the term science and secular.
There are lots of secular charities, and they do a lot of good.The modern welfare state is one form of very well organized secular charity.
1/3 of American Christians do think the bible should be taken literally, according to various polls. 56% think the bible should "have a greater role in society", yet - 57% didn't read the bible at all the year the poll was taken. 75% of people in the USA think the bible is the word of god, or inspired by god.
If you accept the Bible to be the "word of god", and most Americans do, then you are NOT taking it metaphorically. But, on the other hand most Americans haven't actually read the whole bible and only hear the "good" parts in church, as selected by their pastor. The evidence is overwhelming that most USA christians have a simple, literal, or almost literal, belief in the bible. They are not taking it metaphorically.
Once you decide that the bible should be taken "metaphorically" how does one decide what it really means? How does one decide which parts should be ignored? How does one decide which parts are good? It appears that most theologians are using rational, post enlightenment ideals, to cherry pick the good parts from the bible, and explaining away the parts that are evil, or contradicted by science as metaphor. Once you start down this path you are pretty close not needing the bible at all for your moral outlook, and discarding the iron age myths in favour of modern secular morals will seem a sensible step.
Actually all rich countries birth rate is too low to support the current population and would be shrinking if not for immigration.
Life extension would just accelerate this trend.
Contraceptives make your perpetual war unnecessary
.
Since when has being beyond an evolutionary incentive had anything to do with morality. We vaccinate our children, wash our hands, build sewage treatment plants, etc... all of which subvert evolution. If you can make peoples lives better and longer it is right to do so.
"Death is wrong" is a silly thing to say philosophically because wrong and right only apply to the actions and decisions of sentient being, like humans, not the actions of natural forces like earthquakes and senescence.
I DO want to beat death because I like living and experiencing. If I could live forever I would. I'd settle for a few thousand years.
Why is transhumanism a fantasy? Our consciousness arises from the functioning of our physical brain and if we can duplicate that functioning in a machine then we can live much, much longer than we live know.
I concede we are a long ways from the technology to duplicate human consciousness in a machine, but it isn't a fantasy.
Divisive? If your neighbors were trying to teach everyone that children should dress in black and play on highways at night would you call it divisive to point that isn't a good idea?
All the benefits of religion can be had from secular means that don't encourage magical thinking, which has a long track record of having numerous bad side affects.
Ignorance is easily cured in people without faith by teaching them. Ignorance in the faithful is often immune to any teaching that contradicts the person's faith.
Thus, faith is the enemy of science, not ignorance.
Even thinking that having faith is a good idea means that your whole outlook on the way the world and reality works is at odds with science.