Obama's church believes that "AIDS was created by the US for black genocide".
Oh sorry I keep forgetting it's not racism when you're attacking the "right" skin color. Sorry I just seem to repeatedly get behind the times on what racism is allowed. Today's "positive" racism (excuse me discrimination) strikes me as equally hollow as hitler's "positive" discrimination (he actually used the same term you know), but I guess I better get with the program.
it will be just like in holland. some hideous diseases are checked and checked and the government throws money at it, then throws some more at it. unless the little letters of the law, a contract which you did not sign, specify otherwise.
take holland again... got cancer... they do everything in their power. then you turn 65. then you get nothing anymore. so on that birthday your bill changes. from 0 to 2000 euros per month. oops.
but don't worry. you can file a suit for discrimination, which does stand a chance of success. in the meantime you do have to pay obviously, generally it takes 12 years. the people you're suing however, have the power to change the law...
so you live in a country where bureaucrats are deciding patients treatment. yes you can pay a horrific premium and override their decision, but that's not a reasonable prospect for any real person.
Obama's friends are getting 13% (20% of 65%) of all the loans bought in the bailout. They demanded cash now obviously, like all socialists do, but that made even half the democrats vote against them.
True if we were talking ONE acorn employee. Maybe even 2 could happen in different states. 3 convictions in 3 states for voter fraud by the same organisation is starting to become less "it's just the employees". How many does ACORN have ?
In the conviction (first article) these people state that ACORN management specifically asked them to do this. But don't worry. Obama is giving them "at least 10%" of the $700 billion bailout package. Surely that'll improve their behavior, right ? But it's possible that he just doesn't know, right ?
possible as in "it's possible you get hit by a meteor right now" that is.
Just be glad you're not a European. Think 2, 3 cars at least (I earn about $50k, income taxes were $26k+, on the remainder 21% VAT has to be added if you want to actually spend your income*). And you see the party leaders of the socialist parties driving around in said cars.
* but don't worry, there are "tax rebates" on mortgage payments, and for kids, and for education, and for... I never seem to get any, and you see people doing nothing for years, but as the politicians always say : don't worry about that.
Trivial for the feds to do the following : -> read in image file -> resize to standard 40x40 resolution, to 16bit color (defeating most "noise adding" attempts) -> run contour detection filter (defeating just about anything I can immediately think of) -> create md5 of the result
Which would already be non-trivial to defeat. You'd have to do translation (more than a few pixels too) to defeat this, or rotation. This would probably be described in the paper as "md5 checksums" or even just "checksumming".
On a flip side, would it be possible to get the known "bad" MD5's then using a rainbow table, create innocuous files that equate to the "bad" hash, similar to the self recursive web page that pretends to host madonna.mp3 to trap RIAA spiders?
You might want to read up on that collisions paper. The technique is not quite ready to use rainbow table to create random colissions...
You seem to forget... this is slashdot. People here actually defend Obama's "let's kill abortion survivor babies" vote. That children are human beings with their own rights (meaning that parents can't just have any right to their children, and since they're not children... this "reduces their freedom")
Things have not changed. There was a proposed change, the "european constitution". You seem to neglect the fact that it was rejected. Despite it's democratic rejection, it is being pushed for implementation anyway.
Needless to say, such a procedure cannot result in a democratic state in any reasonable definition of the word. If this "change" is forced AGAINST the votes of the electorate, the EU will simply force through other things at will, still remaining undemocratic. Furthermore I'm unsure if accepting that document would change things, because it itself is in violation of just about every other treaty that forms the EU, and is in violation of just about every constitution of every member state.
The constitution was rejected, by referenda in 2 countries. I realize that such an observation is terribly inconvenient for "progressive" parties, but it nevertheless is rejected. Acting as if it was accepted does NOT result in a democratic EU, the mere suggestion baffles one in it's stupidity.
The Commission does not have any legislative right.
Look, I'm not even going to discuss this. I'm going to provide 1 (one) pointer :
"european directive"
Look it up, with particular emphasis on what happens is the european parliament votes against it (nothing) or the subjects of the EU (local parliaments) vote against it (nothing, it's still passed).
Yes I realise how much they like to pretend otherwise, I realise how much they publish about it. It doesn't change a thing. There is reality, and the reality is that the unelected comission has law-giving authority that supercedes that of elected representatives, which is wrong and completely undemocratic. Whatever they say, in practice, happens in Europe. Point final, as the french like to say.
Well I compare : the comission is BOTH the executive power AND the legislative power. (despite it's name, the european "parliament" does not hold the legislative power). The comission has the power of and the president and the senate and congress, including the power over the army. And they appoint (and sack, if they wish to do so) the judicial power, so in practice they control that as well.
Second the appointed commission's authority supercedes the authority of the parliaments of the member states in legislative matters.
They're not just unelected but they have the power to force laws REFUSED by elected representatives. Something which they frequently do.
And yes the parliament gets to sack the commission. After which that very commission gets to create a new commission (the same physical people, just different name). So, in case this procedure is not entirely clear to some people : they can take legislative power out of the hands of (unelected) group , and then it is put in the hands of... exactly the same people they sacked...
Let's not kid ourselves. Fucking Iran is more democratic than the EU.
That's because the european dictatorship sees a possibility to grow it's power. (the EU is also an undemocratic institution, with the real decisions made by the unelected comission, but don't worry, it's not guarding any freedoms, in fact it's already take sovereignty from many of it's subject states)
You cannot convince any unelected institution to decrease it's power. It just can't be done. Fortunately Turkey is in no hurry to comply.
Turkey is the one muslim country that does not directly attacks anyone with another religion, and commits genocide upon them.
Whether it's African Christians, Hindus (more than 60 million hindus have "disappeared" from pakistan in the last 60 years), or simply people with black skin color in Sudan, genocides are a contemporary trademark of islam everywhere outside of Turkey.
Freedom of religion obviously can only work if that religion does not have doctrine mandating genocide upon non-believers. In other words, it can never cover islam. Preventing said genocide, if part of doctrine, is obviously preventing part of that religion from being practiced. Preventing part is in practice exactly the same as preventing the whole since you'd literally have to cut the 2 biggest chapters out of the quran, over half the book, to prevent people from preaching islamic genocide.
I'm "a dick" to you anyway, whether or not I steal any games. You see, I do not share your opinions and I exist, therefore you are forced to deal with me.
And that's enough to make me "a dick" to you.
You see it's all the same. Whether or not I make those people's lives impossible. Oh right and there's that I don't give a fuck about your opinion, since you're "a dick" for suggesting I am one.
This is the ACLU. They used to have something with freedom. Then the loonies took over.
Now they're fighting for the "right" for people to scream "allahu akbar" in their garage while constructing an electrical timing device in a location where C4 is found - you know, your perfectly normal sunday activity.
It's "constitutionally protected" freedom, you know. "Until it actually kills others", you know.
It depends on the Muslim society. Secular Muslim societies tolerate benign presence as well as secular Christian, Hindu, or any other secular society. To which you might reply "well, not true Muslim societies, as Islam mandates the universal conversion to Islam." indeed, this is theologically defensible in Islam. But it is the same with Christianity; for centuries Christians spread religion around the world at the point of a sword or gun before the largely Christian societies of the west learned, only in the last centuries or so, to ignore the immoral acts mandated by their theology at least to the point that holders of dissenting opinion could survive in their midst. Muslim societies were once that way (during the Dark Age in Europe, ironically), and are, on the whole with some highly visible but non-representative outliers, becoming more tolerant again.
This is cute. First you use the term moral in a relative way, when you're talking about islam. Massacring atheists is not "defensible in islam", it's MORAL in islam. Likewise excluding atheists is moral in christianity.
Of course making the sentence use the word consistently destroys all meaning in the sentence:
It depends on the Muslim society. Secular Muslim societies tolerate benign presence as well as secular Christian, Hindu, or any other secular society. To which you might reply "well, not true Muslim societies, as Islam mandates the universal conversion to Islam." indeed, this is moral for muslims (to attack atheists to extermination). But it is the same with Christianity; for centuries Christians spread religion around the world at the point of a sword or gun before the largely Christian societies of the west learned, only in the last centuries or so, to ignore the moral acts mandated by their theology at least to the point that holders of dissenting opinion could survive in their midst. Muslim societies were once that way (during the Dark Age in Europe, ironically), and are, on the whole with some highly visible but non-representative outliers, becoming more tolerant ("moral in secular humanism", except tolerance to christians, obviously) again.
Note that using words consistently once again reveals the difference between the ideologies that your words attempted to mask. Once the sentence is cleared up the utter ridiculousness of the word "same" comes to the surface, and the fact that you try to pass off parts of your own morals as "universal" when they're really not anywhere near universal. In fact, outside of Christian circles, they're almost unheard of (like your googling of "library of alexandria" will reveal).
During the dark age in Europe muslims were tolerant. this is a joke right ? "Library of Alexandria" why don't you look that up.
Of course by even the standards of Christians during the dark age they weren't tolerant at all.
And you complain that my post was insulting ? Clearly you don't actually practice the golden rule (which obviously would make you answer very politely and without using words like indoctrination, monopoly, testosterone overload,...). So once again I accuse you of massive hypocrisy, which interestingly is the one thing you claim to be better in than Christians... Not that you hadn't shown it before, but right now you're resorting to outright namecalling in defense of your terribly weak point.
Also, to once again state the obvious, if I'm a "young male with testosterone overload" (heh, once, yes, I miss those days) , might I inform you that there are a hell of a lot of "us" around, and that you're going to have to deal with us anyway. And to be perfectly frank, old geezers with their "stable feelings" don't interest "us" much. Except that they're easy to knock down and take their wallets, of course. Their running skills, the only thing that might recover said wallets, are likewise sub-par.
Also you obviously haven't looked around recently, because missing the link between pacifism and the supposedly "secular humanism" ideology is beyond mere blindness.
But please, explain to me how your ideology is not dogmatic, you are so anxious to do so, yet always forget to actually do it. If it's not dogmatic that must mean (and I really mean "must") every last rule is what I want it to be, because otherwise, it is merely another fixed, unchangeable and enforced rule. That is, of course, dogmatic. If it were truly rational, I, also a rational being, would have no doubts about it at all. Therefore, please, explain how it is rational for me not to attack the weak (as a sidenote : if Darwin's true, wouldn't that be a stupid move ? Won't the weak die out whether or not I attack tem, therefore making this act at least morally neutral)
So answer the question you keep talking around, or state that you do not have an answer:
WHY do I have to respect others ? I don't much care to, since I am quite capable of overpowering most everyone I dislike. WHY don't I, from your secular humanist perspective. Only rational responses please.
Because your whole posts, entirely too long, boring and tedious to read, managed to avoid answering this question. Unless you give a truly rational answer (an answer that is rational from MY perspective, including obviously the oversized ego, and the assumption that I can steal more than I can earn, and protect that once stolen. Since this is an assumption (clearly shared by more than enough people in America, as theft figures illustrate) you do not get to attack it).
I ask you the simple question : rationally illustrate why attacking the weak for booty (or women, or...) is wrong. After all, as long as I'm one of the few that do it, it is even in the long term very beneficial for me. That it's bad for "society" I know, I don't care. Even if many do it, it remains beneficial, at least in the short term, mostly also in the longer term.
Of course if you're answer is "because they're human", then we all know just how rational it is. So let's see your answer, I'm terribly curious to see if you've actually got a consistent ideology, and you just missed a few essential points in the previous posts... or of course that you're simply... but let's not talk about that.
(everybody knows secular humanism doesn't have an answer to this, but hey why don't you try, I mean every year some 500 books come out with the same still-as-broken-as-last-year arguments. They so want to believe it works, even when it fails before their eyes again and again).
But to illustrate the utter brokenness of your arguments, let's, just for desert, illustrate just the level of your soundbites, and just how related they are to reality:
It's not a religion. It's lack of religion. I don't collect stamps, but not collecting them is *not* a hobby of mi
The ethical foundation I work from is secular humanism, which recognizes that human beings are interconnected, that all human beings have value, and that we all have rights to life and dignity. The ethical philosophy I agree with most is Immanuel Kant's formulation of deontology, which basically codifies the Golden Rule--act in a way such that, if your actions were codified as law, society would benefit. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
That's a dogmatic ruleset (and not a very well defined one), which is equally "loose sanded" as even the most ridiculous natural religion. Believing in the flying spaghetti monster is equally rational (ie. not at all rational) as your specific dogma. Also, to be honest, you might as well respect the 10 commandments, the difference would be tiny. In other words, you have a Christian ideology without the person of Jesus named. You have a very, very immature religion (does not tell you how to act outside of your own experiences, in other words it only tells you if the past was moral, not how to act morally in the future).
So that brings point 1 : if this is your "rules to live by" then you lose rationality (which is 1 point that's always thrown against christians, that they're not "rational" for believing in God). Any atheist that claims he's more rational, given this ruleset (or any acceptable ruleset really, try formulating a few of them) is one of those most hated of things : a hypocrite.
That, obviously, is not the limit of the problems with this ideology. It has a very big "natural" flaw : it hasn't stood the test of time, according to darwin (obviously an essential part of any atheist ideology) the only real test for anything in the real world. Furthermore, it has failed quite a few tests of time that history offered it.
Furthermore, it has a theoretical weakness : you do not have a way of dealing with people who do not respect your dogma, that so absolutely needs it's values to be embedded in a very large majority of the society you live in to be even remotely liveable. Your dogma would go extinct in a heartbeat in a muslim society, for the simple reason that it requires a pareto-efficient society (it will get blasted very quickly if there is a group, even a relatively small one, that collectively attacks your group).
In Christianity this problem is solved by discriminating against non-believers (not attacking them, but not involving them in their society unless absolutely necessary). In other words : a Christian society will try to isolate itself from non-Christian societies, thereby preserving the option to act pareto-efficient amongst eachother. Holding people to a standard of non-discrimination against, even "mostly" unreliable people, is a recipe for destroying our society.
In islam this problem is solved by not being pareto-efficient in the first place. This, however has the large disadvantage that muslim states cannot survive, except through constant expansion (the Roman empire had the same limitation : if it stopped conquering new ground and growing it's population for even 10 years, it was all over, the same is true for islam : block it's expansion for even a tiny little while and it dies. This obviously means that at one point, no matter how successfull the ideology is, it will die, after having destroyed many, many, many others)
Suppose you have a pareto efficient group, that is pareto efficient in a non-discriminatory manner ("unless you're a racist" you'll agree to this, right ?) against people who are less than pareto efficient. The economically efficient choice for any individual is to attack the pareto-efficient group, knowing that no retribution will follow (since retribution can only directly cause more damage to society than the theft by itself, thereby making retribution unjustified). In other words : stealing and raping members of the pareto-efficient group is the most effective (and certainly the easiest) survival strategy for any groups that do
I'm glad, though, that you're willing to use mitigating circumstances to excuse genocide in the Bible, but not to excuse statutory rape in the Qur'an. I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm neither Christian nor Muslim, double standards and hypocrisy just annoy me.
You will forgive me to doubt the truth of that statement.
All your statements basically parse as "it's the same" even though it's not actually saying the same thing. You "have to think this and add to it". Also there are factual errors (the Roman empire had yet to conquer it's first egg cell in 3500 BC when Moses gave those orders). You're just spouting data you think is correct but really isn't.
Furthermore you add that you agree that in the quran there isn't any thinking required. You agree that it calls directly for genocide, and rape, something which has to be "interpreted" out of the bible (which Christians managed not to do for, oh, 2000 years and counting).
Yet you agree that not only is there no imagination necessary *at all* to read massive divinely and morally "sanctioned" genocide and rape in the quran, the history of the muslims is more than filled to the brim with incidents where they actually DO it.
And since when is it "hypocrisy" to suggest that different religions are... (tadaaa) different. It is a well established fact that religious genocides and rape of other-thinkers, massacring dissidents and gays is perfectly allowed, and not just allowed but forced in sharia law (and forbidden in canon law, you *do* know what canon law is, right ?). Therefore, there isn't really any discussion as much as soundbites from your side that count on very dubious interpretations of the bible, which seem to be unique to non-christians willing, out of pure selfeless devotion to others, point out the "hypocrisy" of people who doubt their morality.
Do you seriously think atheists aren't hypocrites ? Blab yourself out of this one : since you believe in Darwin, whose central tenet is "only the fittest survive", isn't it a virtue (accelerating improvement of humanity and all) to kill a homeless person, barbecue him and feed his flesh to your children ? Clearly you're destroying an unfit person to help people become fitter. That person was going to die helpless anyway, so really you served the "greater good" ? (And if you start blabbing like before "everybody knows why" , "evil hypocrites", you're not going to score many points).
Btw : can you explain to me what, exactly, is the reason not to rape others in atheist philosophy ? I mean if you're not going to get caught by police officers "enforcing Christian morality" I mean. If you can just get away with it, in a dark alley, you can rape a woman, and there's a chance she will carry and raise the child ? It seems to me that said rape would be beneficial. Using only arguments from atheist moral philosophers, explain to me what the moral problem is with this rape ?
Of course, if you don't have an answer, you're at least as hypocrit as anyone you accuse of such. (and the problem obviously is that ANY ruleset, will either be illogical and dogmatic or inconsistent, meaning that the adage that a good lawyer can talk his way out of any crime is unfortunately true, if it wasn't for the ideology of judges).
Slashdot Mirror
The GOVERNMENT (the only real health insurer in Spain) behaves differently from private companies.
They, for example, really dislike aids. Resulting in the fact that no expensive treatments against aids are possible for normal people in Spain.
But this is an inconvenient truth for Obamatons, so let's just shush, ok ?
That's not Obama at all !
He just wants to kill any God (or anything else) that's nice to people with the wrong skin color.
Obama's church believes that "AIDS was created by the US for black genocide".
Oh sorry I keep forgetting it's not racism when you're attacking the "right" skin color. Sorry I just seem to repeatedly get behind the times on what racism is allowed. Today's "positive" racism (excuse me discrimination) strikes me as equally hollow as hitler's "positive" discrimination (he actually used the same term you know), but I guess I better get with the program.
it will be just like in holland. some hideous diseases are checked and checked and the government throws money at it, then throws some more at it. unless the little letters of the law, a contract which you did not sign, specify otherwise.
take holland again ... got cancer ... they do everything in their power. then you turn 65. then you get nothing anymore. so on that birthday your bill changes. from 0 to 2000 euros per month. oops.
but don't worry. you can file a suit for discrimination, which does stand a chance of success. in the meantime you do have to pay obviously, generally it takes 12 years. the people you're suing however, have the power to change the law ...
so you live in a country where bureaucrats are deciding patients treatment. yes you can pay a horrific premium and override their decision, but that's not a reasonable prospect for any real person.
http://rightvoices.com/2008/09/26/why-is-acorn-in-the-bailout/
Obama's friends are getting 13% (20% of 65%) of all the loans bought in the bailout. They demanded cash now obviously, like all socialists do, but that made even half the democrats vote against them.
True if we were talking ONE acorn employee. Maybe even 2 could happen in different states. 3 convictions in 3 states for voter fraud by the same organisation is starting to become less "it's just the employees". How many does ACORN have ?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003982533_acorn30m.html?syndication=rss one instance, 7 defendants, at least 3 guilty, All ACORN, Seattle
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/missouri-acorn-voter-fraud-scandal.html another, 16 defendants, all guilty, All ACORN, Kansas City
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3433 Ohio, 600.000 fake votes
In the conviction (first article) these people state that ACORN management specifically asked them to do this. But don't worry. Obama is giving them "at least 10%" of the $700 billion bailout package. Surely that'll improve their behavior, right ? But it's possible that he just doesn't know, right ?
possible as in "it's possible you get hit by a meteor right now" that is.
Just be glad you're not a European. Think 2, 3 cars at least (I earn about $50k, income taxes were $26k+, on the remainder 21% VAT has to be added if you want to actually spend your income*). And you see the party leaders of the socialist parties driving around in said cars.
* but don't worry, there are "tax rebates" on mortgage payments, and for kids, and for education, and for ... I never seem to get any, and you see people doing nothing for years, but as the politicians always say : don't worry about that.
Trivial for the feds to do the following :
-> read in image file
-> resize to standard 40x40 resolution, to 16bit color (defeating most "noise adding" attempts)
-> run contour detection filter (defeating just about anything I can immediately think of)
-> create md5 of the result
Which would already be non-trivial to defeat. You'd have to do translation (more than a few pixels too) to defeat this, or rotation. This would probably be described in the paper as "md5 checksums" or even just "checksumming".
On a flip side, would it be possible to get the known "bad" MD5's then using a rainbow table, create innocuous files that equate to the "bad" hash, similar to the self recursive web page that pretends to host madonna.mp3 to trap RIAA spiders?
You might want to read up on that collisions paper. The technique is not quite ready to use rainbow table to create random colissions ...
You seem to forget ... this is slashdot. People here actually defend Obama's "let's kill abortion survivor babies" vote. That children are human beings with their own rights (meaning that parents can't just have any right to their children, and since they're not children ... this "reduces their freedom")
Things have not changed. There was a proposed change, the "european constitution". You seem to neglect the fact that it was rejected. Despite it's democratic rejection, it is being pushed for implementation anyway.
Needless to say, such a procedure cannot result in a democratic state in any reasonable definition of the word. If this "change" is forced AGAINST the votes of the electorate, the EU will simply force through other things at will, still remaining undemocratic. Furthermore I'm unsure if accepting that document would change things, because it itself is in violation of just about every other treaty that forms the EU, and is in violation of just about every constitution of every member state.
The constitution was rejected, by referenda in 2 countries. I realize that such an observation is terribly inconvenient for "progressive" parties, but it nevertheless is rejected. Acting as if it was accepted does NOT result in a democratic EU, the mere suggestion baffles one in it's stupidity.
The Commission does not have any legislative right.
Look, I'm not even going to discuss this. I'm going to provide 1 (one) pointer :
"european directive"
Look it up, with particular emphasis on what happens is the european parliament votes against it (nothing) or the subjects of the EU (local parliaments) vote against it (nothing, it's still passed).
Yes I realise how much they like to pretend otherwise, I realise how much they publish about it. It doesn't change a thing. There is reality, and the reality is that the unelected comission has law-giving authority that supercedes that of elected representatives, which is wrong and completely undemocratic. Whatever they say, in practice, happens in Europe. Point final, as the french like to say.
"Compare this to how governments are appointed"
Well I compare : the comission is BOTH the executive power AND the legislative power. (despite it's name, the european "parliament" does not hold the legislative power). The comission has the power of and the president and the senate and congress, including the power over the army. And they appoint (and sack, if they wish to do so) the judicial power, so in practice they control that as well.
Second the appointed commission's authority supercedes the authority of the parliaments of the member states in legislative matters.
They're not just unelected but they have the power to force laws REFUSED by elected representatives. Something which they frequently do.
And yes the parliament gets to sack the commission. After which that very commission gets to create a new commission (the same physical people, just different name). So, in case this procedure is not entirely clear to some people : they can take legislative power out of the hands of (unelected) group , and then it is put in the hands of ... exactly the same people they sacked ...
Let's not kid ourselves. Fucking Iran is more democratic than the EU.
Which, unfortunately, makes them a hell of a lot better than other muslims, who do not "let you live" at all.
That's because the european dictatorship sees a possibility to grow it's power. (the EU is also an undemocratic institution, with the real decisions made by the unelected comission, but don't worry, it's not guarding any freedoms, in fact it's already take sovereignty from many of it's subject states)
You cannot convince any unelected institution to decrease it's power. It just can't be done. Fortunately Turkey is in no hurry to comply.
Turkey is the one muslim country that does not directly attacks anyone with another religion, and commits genocide upon them.
Whether it's African Christians, Hindus (more than 60 million hindus have "disappeared" from pakistan in the last 60 years), or simply people with black skin color in Sudan, genocides are a contemporary trademark of islam everywhere outside of Turkey.
Freedom of religion obviously can only work if that religion does not have doctrine mandating genocide upon non-believers. In other words, it can never cover islam. Preventing said genocide, if part of doctrine, is obviously preventing part of that religion from being practiced. Preventing part is in practice exactly the same as preventing the whole since you'd literally have to cut the 2 biggest chapters out of the quran, over half the book, to prevent people from preaching islamic genocide.
I fear we're going to learn this the hard way.
You mean, until someone designs something that does work ? What are we talking ? 3 months ? 6 months ?
Okay, this is a very diffucult problem, a very very difficult problem. So let's be optimistic and say 2 years.
I'm "a dick" to you anyway, whether or not I steal any games. You see, I do not share your opinions and I exist, therefore you are forced to deal with me.
And that's enough to make me "a dick" to you.
You see it's all the same. Whether or not I make those people's lives impossible. Oh right and there's that I don't give a fuck about your opinion, since you're "a dick" for suggesting I am one.
Hmm there's a new dir on this ftp server that ... you know ... I know nothing about ...
GOG games [all of them] [full version]
Wonder what's in there.
This is the ACLU. They used to have something with freedom. Then the loonies took over.
Now they're fighting for the "right" for people to scream "allahu akbar" in their garage while constructing an electrical timing device in a location where C4 is found - you know, your perfectly normal sunday activity.
It's "constitutionally protected" freedom, you know. "Until it actually kills others", you know.
Got any spare kids ? The ACLU needs lots of them.
It depends on the Muslim society. Secular Muslim societies tolerate benign presence as well as secular Christian, Hindu, or any other secular society. To which you might reply "well, not true Muslim societies, as Islam mandates the universal conversion to Islam." indeed, this is theologically defensible in Islam. But it is the same with Christianity; for centuries Christians spread religion around the world at the point of a sword or gun before the largely Christian societies of the west learned, only in the last centuries or so, to ignore the immoral acts mandated by their theology at least to the point that holders of dissenting opinion could survive in their midst. Muslim societies were once that way (during the Dark Age in Europe, ironically), and are, on the whole with some highly visible but non-representative outliers, becoming more tolerant again.
This is cute. First you use the term moral in a relative way, when you're talking about islam. Massacring atheists is not "defensible in islam", it's MORAL in islam. Likewise excluding atheists is moral in christianity.
Of course making the sentence use the word consistently destroys all meaning in the sentence :
It depends on the Muslim society. Secular Muslim societies tolerate benign presence as well as secular Christian, Hindu, or any other secular society. To which you might reply "well, not true Muslim societies, as Islam mandates the universal conversion to Islam." indeed, this is moral for muslims (to attack atheists to extermination). But it is the same with Christianity; for centuries Christians spread religion around the world at the point of a sword or gun before the largely Christian societies of the west learned, only in the last centuries or so, to ignore the moral acts mandated by their theology at least to the point that holders of dissenting opinion could survive in their midst. Muslim societies were once that way (during the Dark Age in Europe, ironically), and are, on the whole with some highly visible but non-representative outliers, becoming more tolerant ("moral in secular humanism", except tolerance to christians, obviously) again.
Note that using words consistently once again reveals the difference between the ideologies that your words attempted to mask. Once the sentence is cleared up the utter ridiculousness of the word "same" comes to the surface, and the fact that you try to pass off parts of your own morals as "universal" when they're really not anywhere near universal. In fact, outside of Christian circles, they're almost unheard of (like your googling of "library of alexandria" will reveal).
During the dark age in Europe muslims were tolerant. this is a joke right ? "Library of Alexandria" why don't you look that up.
Of course by even the standards of Christians during the dark age they weren't tolerant at all.
And you complain that my post was insulting ? Clearly you don't actually practice the golden rule (which obviously would make you answer very politely and without using words like indoctrination, monopoly, testosterone overload, ...). So once again I accuse you of massive hypocrisy, which interestingly is the one thing you claim to be better in than Christians ... Not that you hadn't shown it before, but right now you're resorting to outright namecalling in defense of your terribly weak point.
Also, to once again state the obvious, if I'm a "young male with testosterone overload" (heh, once, yes, I miss those days) , might I inform you that there are a hell of a lot of "us" around, and that you're going to have to deal with us anyway. And to be perfectly frank, old geezers with their "stable feelings" don't interest "us" much. Except that they're easy to knock down and take their wallets, of course. Their running skills, the only thing that might recover said wallets, are likewise sub-par.
Also you obviously haven't looked around recently, because missing the link between pacifism and the supposedly "secular humanism" ideology is beyond mere blindness.
But please, explain to me how your ideology is not dogmatic, you are so anxious to do so, yet always forget to actually do it. If it's not dogmatic that must mean (and I really mean "must") every last rule is what I want it to be, because otherwise, it is merely another fixed, unchangeable and enforced rule. That is, of course, dogmatic. If it were truly rational, I, also a rational being, would have no doubts about it at all. Therefore, please, explain how it is rational for me not to attack the weak (as a sidenote : if Darwin's true, wouldn't that be a stupid move ? Won't the weak die out whether or not I attack tem, therefore making this act at least morally neutral)
So answer the question you keep talking around, or state that you do not have an answer :
WHY do I have to respect others ? I don't much care to, since I am quite capable of overpowering most everyone I dislike. WHY don't I, from your secular humanist perspective. Only rational responses please.
Because your whole posts, entirely too long, boring and tedious to read, managed to avoid answering this question. Unless you give a truly rational answer (an answer that is rational from MY perspective, including obviously the oversized ego, and the assumption that I can steal more than I can earn, and protect that once stolen. Since this is an assumption (clearly shared by more than enough people in America, as theft figures illustrate) you do not get to attack it).
I ask you the simple question : rationally illustrate why attacking the weak for booty (or women, or ...) is wrong. After all, as long as I'm one of the few that do it, it is even in the long term very beneficial for me. That it's bad for "society" I know, I don't care. Even if many do it, it remains beneficial, at least in the short term, mostly also in the longer term.
Of course if you're answer is "because they're human", then we all know just how rational it is. So let's see your answer, I'm terribly curious to see if you've actually got a consistent ideology, and you just missed a few essential points in the previous posts ... or of course that you're simply ... but let's not talk about that.
(everybody knows secular humanism doesn't have an answer to this, but hey why don't you try, I mean every year some 500 books come out with the same still-as-broken-as-last-year arguments. They so want to believe it works, even when it fails before their eyes again and again).
But to illustrate the utter brokenness of your arguments, let's, just for desert, illustrate just the level of your soundbites, and just how related they are to reality :
It's not a religion. It's lack of religion. I don't collect stamps, but not collecting them is *not* a hobby of mi
www.openpandora.com size & power usage are guaranteed to be tiny. Get a usb floppy drive reader if you need it, it will work.
*sigh*, here we go again
The ethical foundation I work from is secular humanism, which recognizes that human beings are interconnected, that all human beings have value, and that we all have rights to life and dignity. The ethical philosophy I agree with most is Immanuel Kant's formulation of deontology, which basically codifies the Golden Rule--act in a way such that, if your actions were codified as law, society would benefit. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
That's a dogmatic ruleset (and not a very well defined one), which is equally "loose sanded" as even the most ridiculous natural religion. Believing in the flying spaghetti monster is equally rational (ie. not at all rational) as your specific dogma. Also, to be honest, you might as well respect the 10 commandments, the difference would be tiny. In other words, you have a Christian ideology without the person of Jesus named. You have a very, very immature religion (does not tell you how to act outside of your own experiences, in other words it only tells you if the past was moral, not how to act morally in the future).
So that brings point 1 : if this is your "rules to live by" then you lose rationality (which is 1 point that's always thrown against christians, that they're not "rational" for believing in God). Any atheist that claims he's more rational, given this ruleset (or any acceptable ruleset really, try formulating a few of them) is one of those most hated of things : a hypocrite.
That, obviously, is not the limit of the problems with this ideology. It has a very big "natural" flaw : it hasn't stood the test of time, according to darwin (obviously an essential part of any atheist ideology) the only real test for anything in the real world. Furthermore, it has failed quite a few tests of time that history offered it.
Furthermore, it has a theoretical weakness : you do not have a way of dealing with people who do not respect your dogma, that so absolutely needs it's values to be embedded in a very large majority of the society you live in to be even remotely liveable. Your dogma would go extinct in a heartbeat in a muslim society, for the simple reason that it requires a pareto-efficient society (it will get blasted very quickly if there is a group, even a relatively small one, that collectively attacks your group).
In Christianity this problem is solved by discriminating against non-believers (not attacking them, but not involving them in their society unless absolutely necessary). In other words : a Christian society will try to isolate itself from non-Christian societies, thereby preserving the option to act pareto-efficient amongst eachother. Holding people to a standard of non-discrimination against, even "mostly" unreliable people, is a recipe for destroying our society.
In islam this problem is solved by not being pareto-efficient in the first place. This, however has the large disadvantage that muslim states cannot survive, except through constant expansion (the Roman empire had the same limitation : if it stopped conquering new ground and growing it's population for even 10 years, it was all over, the same is true for islam : block it's expansion for even a tiny little while and it dies. This obviously means that at one point, no matter how successfull the ideology is, it will die, after having destroyed many, many, many others)
Suppose you have a pareto efficient group, that is pareto efficient in a non-discriminatory manner ("unless you're a racist" you'll agree to this, right ?) against people who are less than pareto efficient. The economically efficient choice for any individual is to attack the pareto-efficient group, knowing that no retribution will follow (since retribution can only directly cause more damage to society than the theft by itself, thereby making retribution unjustified). In other words : stealing and raping members of the pareto-efficient group is the most effective (and certainly the easiest) survival strategy for any groups that do
I'm glad, though, that you're willing to use mitigating circumstances to excuse genocide in the Bible, but not to excuse statutory rape in the Qur'an. I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm neither Christian nor Muslim, double standards and hypocrisy just annoy me.
You will forgive me to doubt the truth of that statement.
All your statements basically parse as "it's the same" even though it's not actually saying the same thing. You "have to think this and add to it". Also there are factual errors (the Roman empire had yet to conquer it's first egg cell in 3500 BC when Moses gave those orders). You're just spouting data you think is correct but really isn't.
Furthermore you add that you agree that in the quran there isn't any thinking required. You agree that it calls directly for genocide, and rape, something which has to be "interpreted" out of the bible (which Christians managed not to do for, oh, 2000 years and counting).
Yet you agree that not only is there no imagination necessary *at all* to read massive divinely and morally "sanctioned" genocide and rape in the quran, the history of the muslims is more than filled to the brim with incidents where they actually DO it.
And since when is it "hypocrisy" to suggest that different religions are ... (tadaaa) different. It is a well established fact that religious genocides and rape of other-thinkers, massacring dissidents and gays is perfectly allowed, and not just allowed but forced in sharia law (and forbidden in canon law, you *do* know what canon law is, right ?). Therefore, there isn't really any discussion as much as soundbites from your side that count on very dubious interpretations of the bible, which seem to be unique to non-christians willing, out of pure selfeless devotion to others, point out the "hypocrisy" of people who doubt their morality.
Do you seriously think atheists aren't hypocrites ? Blab yourself out of this one : since you believe in Darwin, whose central tenet is "only the fittest survive", isn't it a virtue (accelerating improvement of humanity and all) to kill a homeless person, barbecue him and feed his flesh to your children ? Clearly you're destroying an unfit person to help people become fitter. That person was going to die helpless anyway, so really you served the "greater good" ? (And if you start blabbing like before "everybody knows why" , "evil hypocrites", you're not going to score many points).
Btw : can you explain to me what, exactly, is the reason not to rape others in atheist philosophy ? I mean if you're not going to get caught by police officers "enforcing Christian morality" I mean. If you can just get away with it, in a dark alley, you can rape a woman, and there's a chance she will carry and raise the child ? It seems to me that said rape would be beneficial. Using only arguments from atheist moral philosophers, explain to me what the moral problem is with this rape ?
Of course, if you don't have an answer, you're at least as hypocrit as anyone you accuse of such. (and the problem obviously is that ANY ruleset, will either be illogical and dogmatic or inconsistent, meaning that the adage that a good lawyer can talk his way out of any crime is unfortunately true, if it wasn't for the ideology of judges).