Google also seems to indicate, with trivial searches that...
Democrats lie about their political opponents. Compared to the usual lies, this is quite tame.
In general, people lie about political opponents... And for things like manufacturing grassroots campaigns, there's even a verb in common use : "astroturfing". You wouldn't believe how common it is world wide (ever notice how "anti-government protests" in pakistan have english placards... When hardly anyone there even speaks English...)
The problem with attitudes like the grandparent post that is that they mean -in practice- support for the theocratic gay-killers.
I can't understand how you can be against, say, the KKK, but defend the "right" of Iran to do things like this. For any reason. Why the double standard ?
Iran once imported millions of black slaves, not even that long ago. Trust me, you don't want to read the stories of what happened to them before lunch.
I mean the KKK is bad, I fully agree, very, very bad. But they're better than Iran, and the US is udoubtedly better than both of them. "Collaboration" with the NSA is almost a virtue, as whatever else, it will raise the world to a better ethical standard.
Even if that raising means bombing Iran to the stone age, such an act would still raise both quality of life, both ours and the large majority of people in the region and morality, again both in the region and world-wide.
Can I count on equal support if I stone your girlfriend/wife/daughter(s) to death ? (slowly of course)
Hey at worst I'd be as bad as the current Iranians you're defending. I just wonder how far this defense of the indefensible goes. I wonder, if I were to kill you, and claim I'm doing it for my beliefs whether or not you'll push your own arbitrary moral values on me or not.
This post is an attempt at using sarcasm to call you out on your support for, e.g. stoning gays, religious genocide, oppressive state religions and the like. And let's not pretend that it's anything else that you're supporting.
Just about all evolutionists only believe evolution explains history. It's most trivial prediction, that every species (including humans) will exhaust any amount of resources*, so any society will eventually return to the kill or be killed resource wars. (you don't have to kill in these wars, but you have to commit actions that cause others to starve).
The only reason we're (currently) not doing that is the exponential rise in available resources, during which peace is possible. Given finite resources, this period must end (and quite frankly, oil is the reason we're not doing this right now). This evident consequence of evolutionary theory, properly adjusted for groups (small groups)... is not believed by any evolutionists. I wonder what replaces it ?
* and obviously birth control or even any natural form of having less children lasts exactly until another group decides to have more, said group will take over in short order, no matter how small they are. If a 1% subgroup of society has 10% more children (and generally we're talking 200% or so), they will be a 99% majority in a mere about 20 generations.
So really you have a) people who don't believe in evolution b) people who... also don't believe in evolution. They just think this word explains how they're right and a) is wrong. Evolution is little more than a 9-letter sequence that "proves" how smart they are. But don't mention any content of the theory (esp. not the death part)
This is the "beacon of tolerance" that we're supposed to believe about muslim history. Or the "golden age" in Egypt is another one (ie. when muslims were a tiny minority and massacres were few). When you check, though, you find constant massacres on Jews and Christians.
And yes Jews were doubly fucked. They chose the side of the muslims, thinking they'd be protected and elevated above Christians. This even worked, partially, where the elite of the muslim state was concerned. But soon Muslims attacked them, for racist reasons, and Christians attacked the state, for obvious reasons. They may not have participated in the thousands of massacres on Christians that muslims comitted in Spain, but they organized the logistics of those murders and divided up the loot. When Christians reconquered Spain, they were given a choice : leave or convert and accept a very low place in society.
No Moorish Spain is not, in reality, a beacon of tolerance.
There is no tolerant part of muslim history, never, nowhere. Islam started with 13 massacres, including a famous massacre on Jews (at "Khaybar", next time you hear muslims shouting that word, that's a reference to a genocide, comitted by the muslim prophet "on orders from allah" on jews). Mecca was a Jewish city.
Why doesn't anyone ever talk about returning Mecca, or Constantinopel, or any Mediterranean port city to it's original inhabitants ?
Oh right the old "communism works, it's just never been implemented right" argument.
Of course none of the socialist governments in history, none of them, have ever even approached socialism. None of these ever had anything to do with socialism... And of course it's totally racist of me to assume that different socialists have anything to do with eachother.
Riiiight...
Even if one believes that drivel, the catch is, of course, given that this socialism has never been implemented and all historical attempts to do so "devolved" into genocide, what exactly would stop the next attempt from doing... exactly the same ?
And the grand total of US "comitted" genocides according to you are... hiroshima. That's a pretty sad deathcount for a genocide you know. I mean South-Sudanese muslims killed more Jews than that in their desert. And are you seriously going to pretend that the US had, like those muslims, no reason to attack hiroshima, except for "they're ugly little nips". Of course.
Given the lies and total twisting and raping of history you have to constantly commit to even approach the point where your ideology isn't the genocidal monstruosity history's shown it to be... don't you think that maybe there's something wrong with your ideology, not with history ?
You're the revisionist here. Google "molotov ribbentrop" and read up on a bit of history preceding it. You do know that nazi translates to socialist, right ? Why wouldn't they have been allies ?*
It is a proven historical fact that the USSR knew beforehand about Hitler's invasions (including dates), and supported the attacks (or at least did nothing to stop them). Furthermore the USSR knew beforehand of the endlosung and even helped Nazi intelligence with it.
Wikipedia's take. Note the mention of "territorial and political rearrangements", in a secret part of the treaty.
But hey, what's a bit of lying when it's to demonize the US ? Let's chalk up your statement to be "fake but accurate", right ? Also known as lying and deceiving for political ends. Hey isn't that exactly what you accuse (but fail to prove in a big way) your opponents of ?
* I know of course, that you're intention is to demonize the right, even knowing full well that all genocides of the 20th century were committed by people who self-identified as "socialists", and professed policies (ie. government control of the economy) that are clearly leftist. Oh right you self-identify as socialist, so of course you want to deny that blatant fact of history. And we're to accept that they are the complete opposite of you, that they really were *shudder* republikans. Any history that conflicts with that view is to be discarded as "revisionist". Oh please.
Well according to the leftist propagandist Goebbels this is actually a very good tactic. Especially if you have some thugs and guns behind it. There's nothing new about lefties using those fascist and communist tactics, of course, they were invented, and remain the near-exclusive domain, of the left.
Name 1 (one) country that hasn't been an aggressive, expanionist power since it's inception. Name 1 country that doesn't have a reputation that's at least 10 times worse than that of the US.
Just say Iran. Come on. Unless, of course, you can't without laughing. That'd be entirely understandable. One small hint : google "plastic keys to heaven" before you claim moral superiority for mr. "there are no gays in Iran, and so we're tolerant".
That these women-stoning gay-killing "victims" have any motives other than living in total harmony with gaia is like telling a democrat chicago politician that he earns enough money and doesn't need bribes.
Incidentally Iran unveiled it's "ambassador of death" today. Isn't that a coincidence ? Well, actually it might potentially even be a coincidence. Still, it says something about them...
But of course, don't let me appear racist. Hereby I testify : 1) there are no gays in Iran 2) islam does not call for stoning, nor does any contemporary muslim call for stoning and execution for gays. And it most certainly is not the case that all islamic scholars, of all 4 schools agree on the stoning and killing 3) if any of these statements appear to have anything to do with religion, that's a mistaken impression. I certainly do not claim that either on seeks to kill, or one clearly ignores allah's wishes, which obviously means you're not a muslim. This isn't true, of course, but it would be doubly true if all contemporary religious schools were to agree that this is so. But of course it's not true. 4) all these guys want is peace and harmony for all mankind in gaia. Amen. 5) that peace they want obviously makes forcing Jews to drop their defenses the good and moral thing to do, after all, anything else would be racist, now wouldn't it
And of course the USSR has *never* attempted to use Cuba as a base for military operations near the US right ? What's that you say ? Nuclear rockets... ICBMs... military maneuvres off the coast of Florida ?
Oh my...
Besides this is about Iran, and we all know what the problem is : all cultures are equal. And since Christianity preaches tolerance and understaning, surely a theocratic muslim state will use nukes solely for the purpose of increasing tolerance and understanding, right ? Otherwise, what does that say about... *shudder*
You know, the new tolerance. It consists of letting people attack Jews, because they're Jewish, because not letting this happen is racist. It's the new democratic mantra (one that conveniently enough allows them to steal more money for their politicians... whoops... I meant constituents).
I call bullshit on your post. Nuclear batteries can easily power a ship for 1-2 months,10-20 years, 100-200 years... The whole advantage of nuclear batteries (which is what they're called, btw, you don't even seem to know the name) is their extremely long life. Furthermore, they have a half-time, so even after their theoretical lifetime (which is generally taken less than even 1 half time) they still provide quite a bit of power.
And the total power they can provide is MUCH higher than solar panels (at least in earth orbit). Furthermore they're not subject to tons of mechanical problems that plague solar panels. A nuclear battery will operate anywhere. It may be dusty, it maybe far from the sun (you can't power the voyagers by solar power), if may be obscured,...
And as I said before, for equivalent power they're much lighter than just the solar panels themselves, ignoring that having a nuclear battery means you don't need batteries, engines, and much less restrictions on craft design.
Nuclear batteries are infinitely superior to solar panels. Too bad they're also so expensive (and dangerous) they're only really an option for big governments.
I can see you do not have an answer to my question. Just more "but look at this !" statements. "The others are just as bad !". "Hypocrites exist !". All are very true statements, and completely beside the point.
My theory : you do not have an answer, and you cannot find any reason why an atheist, not believing in an afterlife, would refrain from genocide, if it were convenient.
Why not make the other argument : the only reason I find genocide unacceptable is religious in nature, and that's obviously so very unoriginal of me... Maybe I should think for myself and see that genocide might be good...
At least that'd be a honest argument.
The examples you give are almost all non-atheists (except perhaps humanism, which is indeed a moral abomination once you look past the thin upper layer). All of the examples you give (including humanism) base their standards of behavior upon unchallengeable higher authority, which would seem a very non-atheistic stance to me. Most of your examples include very supernatural things like an afterlife.
Humanism in mathematics, incidentally, has failed. Why ? Simple, because there are known mathematical truths that cannot be tested or proven (they're not just unproven, they are provably both true and independent of any set of axioms, look up Godel-sentences for an algorithm that will create an infinite (at least aleph-1) number of them). In humanism, such a thing cannot exist. And then the proof came down that the set of true knowledge is infinitely larger than the set of provable knowledge. If all we can prove about mathematics would be a small grain of sand, mathematics itself would be bigger than the universe. Needless to say, humanist standards for knowledge were thrown out the door, replaced by a still-running project to find the most useful unfounded beliefs to include in our axiom sets (this search turned out to be a minefield).
Humanism has not been much more succesfull in other disciplines and has been universally replaced for various reasons.
A baby that is born is an atheist and could be thought morals he/she would live by easily without any theism.
I have a doctorate in AI, and unless babies work totally different from all known AI neural network algorithms this is not true (and it does seem unlikely that we've done everything wrong). A baby would not even survive without interaction with adults, his brain would lose entropy and he/she would die because the brain would (eventually) stop the heart and the breathing when this happened. It would not matter if that brain's body were afforded all the tools for survival and even very comfortable living (obviously this has never been tried with human babies, but it does happen with mice).
You see babies copy behavior from those around them. That copy would include believing behavior and (maybe) explicit belief (this happens long before a child is ever confronted with a church or school). It would most certainly not be possible to exclude implicit belief from this. (this obviously means that all owners of neural networks, not just humans, have what you could usefully define as religion, or at the very least "ideology". Ants, cats, dogs, cows, pigs, wolves, even some plants...)
When you think about the problems the brain has to solve, you'll immediately see why it cannot ever work without unfounded beliefs. You see, either you copy knowledge from some source, or you do trial and error. There is no third way. The problem with trial and error is simple : if humans found out dropping from a balcony was dangerous by trial and error, we'd be long extinct. The concept of thinking itself does not, cannot work without unfounded belief.
Incidentally this means, obviously, that science itself, and indeed the way you think is also based on unfounded assumptions. Your opinions are simply copied from somewhere. Given how this system works, even arguing this point with me is dangerous
Because the whole point of atheism is that there is nothing other than creature comfort in this short life.
Specifically being atheist means that there is ONE singular value judgement of any action : how much comfort it gives inside a very limited timeframe (your life). And yes, this can mean different things for different people (including having others like them, which would give more-or-less livable moral decisions)
But this is the source of the problem with atheist "morality". It's a-moral. The whole point of atheism is that the decision whether to commit any act (whether that means adopting an orphan or raping your neighbor's baby) is independent of morals, independent even, of law. Judgment of actions is dependent exclusively on short-term comfort for one single individual.
And read up in the first book you find about morality. Amoralism is not "neutral" between good and evil. It is, in many cases, thoroughly evil. When you're talking about real-life criminals, they are never "more" evil than amoral. No human is evil like for example satan is (satan sacrifices his own comfort, or anything really, including his own life, just to make bad things happen to people, nobody does that).
Can you give any answer to the simple question : why would any atheist, based on atheist morals refrain from that crime (killing off a country for comfort, like Stalin did). Knowing, of course, that said crime would go unpunished, and that it would be "tactically" the best move to make at any one point, say, to impress people he/she finds important (in that case to impress the lefty atheists his position depended upon).
And I reiterate, I hope you see why your "Mary-Jane doesn't do this and when I look into her eyes I don't see any God"-answers don't quite cut it. They're a bit like saying "rain is made from cheese, because Jan said so last friday. He laughed afterwards". These examples contain zero useful information, as they fail to treat atheism objectively.
And isn't the whole reason for atheism that it's supposedly more objective ?
An answer by atheist to those questions could be just about anything. Atheist only agree on one single point, they don't believe in any gods. Everything else is up for grabs.
Really ? Unfortunately you're way off the mark. Another evident property of atheist morality, the one where all the above questions are based on, is that they don't believe in an afterlife. And so, by definition they must prefer the quality of their current life above all else, because all else - by definition - doesn't exist.
For an atheist, there exists no history prior to his first memories, and there exists no history after his last breath.
So comfort in this life, because it's all there is, supercedes all other concerns.
And unfortunately, that leads to the big problem of atheist morality : the only two reasons an atheist doesn't kill are that it either isn't useful at the moment, or the risk of getting caught * the punishment is too high.
That also makes the only variable one can use to control or influence atheist behavior the punishment for crimes.
I still prefer not to hurt other beings, people or animal.
That's because you're what might be called "first-gen" atheist. Your attitudes are 1% arguing for atheism and 99% reaction like a protestant Christian (the odds are good you're a protestant Christian).
Your kids will not share that opinion. They will have behaviors closer to "raw" atheist morality, more distant from Christian morality. Incidentally, you will not like this, at all.
That is of course the real effect that all this "every ideology is equal" bullshit is based on. Given that 50 years ago everyone was a comitted Christian, of course their kids reactions are "mostly" Christian. And then atheists like to point out "look at those kids", when their pointing to Christian behavior with a thin atheist layer over it. In reality they're pointing at a temporary illusion (that nevertheless is already visibly less moral and more problematic)
Of course that's not how you like to view things. And "all viewpoints are equal".
The question, I repeat, was not whether YOU would exterminate entire countries for your comfort. The question is whether an atheist would. Someone whose behavior is based, not on "Jesus loves you", but on an atheist worldview. The question was how an atheist answer the question : do you slaughter an entire nation for comfort (implying of course, no punishment will be forthcoming).
However, one only needs to look at history of the 20th century to know the answer. In that century, there were 2 large groups of atheists : communists and nazis.
We all know how atheist leaders responded to a food shortage. Their choices were to admit that they failed (ie. ask for help) or... to kill anyone who complained. Well... why don't you ask the Ukranians what choice was made. Or the Jews.
If I held a software patent for a program that measured how many times the Spacebar button is pressed, I cannot be held from collecting damages under the laches rule because it is unreasonable to expect patent holders to troll every piece of software in search of patent infringement. The courts cannot reasonably accept the argument, "Anonymous Coward did not find the patent infringement within X number of days within Windows 7's launch, therefore he should not be allowed to collect damages."
And yet they hold people to the opposite. When anyone writes a piece of software they are supposed to 1. search the entire patent database (that excels in clarity *cough*) 2. check to see if this covers their program 3. either contact the patent holder and negotiate a license -or- program "around" it (insofar that's possible)
Is that reasonable ?
According to Lawrence Lessig, the "hello, world" program violates at least 15 patents. Surely any other program violates at least those same patents, plus potentially dozens or hundreds of others. Is that reasonable ? Or is Lessig lying ? (he is a lawyer, you know)
And if you don't do this you become liable for retroactive damages... this is not reasonable, surely you see that.
How about we make the following addendum to patent law : anyone is free to send a description of an invention (source to a program, designs,...) to the patent office, which then for 15$ and within 14 days has to list all patents that cover that invention, and that list is binding upon the courts. If they do not respond within 14 days, the program is considered not to violate *any* patents, and this is equally binding upon all the courts.
Quite frankly, that rule should be extended to the entire law system.
This is typically government style doing : they pass laws, which leave large gaps in interpretation. So anyone on the street does not even have the possibility to know if he is or is not violating the law. You'd think that he could ask the government if something is wrong or not, but he can't. Government wants to impose rules, but like all tyrants, does not feel the need to explain them. Obviously one needs to be able to ask these questions, and get a response, for free, within a reasonable timeframe.
And if the government cannot provide this service, quite frankly, they should leave making laws to a more capable organization, or simply have less laws.
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Good point.
Moral equivalence and logic ... not good partners.
I think you mean Norway and Sweden (and perhaps Finland), Denmark is not nearly as socialist as these 3.
I believe I even saw an economic freedom list where Denmark was above the US. Not that that's very hard with our new president.
Google also seems to indicate, with trivial searches that ...
Democrats lie about their political opponents. Compared to the usual lies, this is quite tame.
In general, people lie about political opponents ... And for things like manufacturing grassroots campaigns, there's even a verb in common use : "astroturfing". You wouldn't believe how common it is world wide (ever notice how "anti-government protests" in pakistan have english placards ... When hardly anyone there even speaks English ...)
The problem with attitudes like the grandparent post that is that they mean -in practice- support for the theocratic gay-killers.
I can't understand how you can be against, say, the KKK, but defend the "right" of Iran to do things like this. For any reason. Why the double standard ?
Iran once imported millions of black slaves, not even that long ago. Trust me, you don't want to read the stories of what happened to them before lunch.
I mean the KKK is bad, I fully agree, very, very bad. But they're better than Iran, and the US is udoubtedly better than both of them. "Collaboration" with the NSA is almost a virtue, as whatever else, it will raise the world to a better ethical standard.
Even if that raising means bombing Iran to the stone age, such an act would still raise both quality of life, both ours and the large majority of people in the region and morality, again both in the region and world-wide.
Can I count on equal support if I stone your girlfriend/wife/daughter(s) to death ? (slowly of course)
Hey at worst I'd be as bad as the current Iranians you're defending. I just wonder how far this defense of the indefensible goes. I wonder, if I were to kill you, and claim I'm doing it for my beliefs whether or not you'll push your own arbitrary moral values on me or not.
This post is an attempt at using sarcasm to call you out on your support for, e.g. stoning gays, religious genocide, oppressive state religions and the like. And let's not pretend that it's anything else that you're supporting.
Why ?
Obviously a perfect being can both choose to make mistakes and create imperfect beings. It's the other way round that doesn't work.
Just about all evolutionists only believe evolution explains history. It's most trivial prediction, that every species (including humans) will exhaust any amount of resources*, so any society will eventually return to the kill or be killed resource wars. (you don't have to kill in these wars, but you have to commit actions that cause others to starve).
The only reason we're (currently) not doing that is the exponential rise in available resources, during which peace is possible. Given finite resources, this period must end (and quite frankly, oil is the reason we're not doing this right now). This evident consequence of evolutionary theory, properly adjusted for groups (small groups) ... is not believed by any evolutionists. I wonder what replaces it ?
* and obviously birth control or even any natural form of having less children lasts exactly until another group decides to have more, said group will take over in short order, no matter how small they are. If a 1% subgroup of society has 10% more children (and generally we're talking 200% or so), they will be a 99% majority in a mere about 20 generations.
So really you have ... also don't believe in evolution. They just think this word explains how they're right and a) is wrong. Evolution is little more than a 9-letter sequence that "proves" how smart they are. But don't mention any content of the theory (esp. not the death part)
a) people who don't believe in evolution
b) people who
It's even worse than we thought !
The problem with that myth is that it's a ... myth. Unless you consider a few hundred genocides just tiny temporary lapses in tolerance. This was Not an isolated incident at all.
This is the "beacon of tolerance" that we're supposed to believe about muslim history. Or the "golden age" in Egypt is another one (ie. when muslims were a tiny minority and massacres were few). When you check, though, you find constant massacres on Jews and Christians.
And yes Jews were doubly fucked. They chose the side of the muslims, thinking they'd be protected and elevated above Christians. This even worked, partially, where the elite of the muslim state was concerned. But soon Muslims attacked them, for racist reasons, and Christians attacked the state, for obvious reasons. They may not have participated in the thousands of massacres on Christians that muslims comitted in Spain, but they organized the logistics of those murders and divided up the loot. When Christians reconquered Spain, they were given a choice : leave or convert and accept a very low place in society.
No Moorish Spain is not, in reality, a beacon of tolerance.
There is no tolerant part of muslim history, never, nowhere. Islam started with 13 massacres, including a famous massacre on Jews (at "Khaybar", next time you hear muslims shouting that word, that's a reference to a genocide, comitted by the muslim prophet "on orders from allah" on jews). Mecca was a Jewish city.
Why doesn't anyone ever talk about returning Mecca, or Constantinopel, or any Mediterranean port city to it's original inhabitants ?
Put your self in an Iranian Ayatollah's sandals for a moment. The <rational arguments supposedly followed by theocratic muslim rules>
Yeah that'll work. It's not like they ever did something irrational like sending their own (*ahem* their followers') kids into minefields carrying plastic keys to heaven, right ? (you know, like the palestinian practice of throwing kids on the street just before an Israeli jeep just so they can claim the IDF murders children).
I mean muslims have seriously fucked up religion and don't have a history where sanity prevailed, you know, even for a few seconds.
Oh right the old "communism works, it's just never been implemented right" argument.
Of course none of the socialist governments in history, none of them, have ever even approached socialism. None of these ever had anything to do with socialism ... And of course it's totally racist of me to assume that different socialists have anything to do with eachother.
Riiiight ...
Even if one believes that drivel, the catch is, of course, given that this socialism has never been implemented and all historical attempts to do so "devolved" into genocide, what exactly would stop the next attempt from doing ... exactly the same ?
And the grand total of US "comitted" genocides according to you are ... hiroshima. That's a pretty sad deathcount for a genocide you know. I mean South-Sudanese muslims killed more Jews than that in their desert. And are you seriously going to pretend that the US had, like those muslims, no reason to attack hiroshima, except for "they're ugly little nips". Of course.
Given the lies and total twisting and raping of history you have to constantly commit to even approach the point where your ideology isn't the genocidal monstruosity history's shown it to be ... don't you think that maybe there's something wrong with your ideology, not with history ?
*bzzzzzzzzzzt* read up on history. What does "aboriginal" mean again ?
And yes, you could probably chalk that one up to the British, but that's like saying America's never fought any war*.
* in the last week
Uhm ... not quite.
You're the revisionist here. Google "molotov ribbentrop" and read up on a bit of history preceding it. You do know that nazi translates to socialist, right ? Why wouldn't they have been allies ?*
It is a proven historical fact that the USSR knew beforehand about Hitler's invasions (including dates), and supported the attacks (or at least did nothing to stop them). Furthermore the USSR knew beforehand of the endlosung and even helped Nazi intelligence with it.
Wikipedia's take. Note the mention of "territorial and political rearrangements", in a secret part of the treaty.
But hey, what's a bit of lying when it's to demonize the US ? Let's chalk up your statement to be "fake but accurate", right ? Also known as lying and deceiving for political ends. Hey isn't that exactly what you accuse (but fail to prove in a big way) your opponents of ?
* I know of course, that you're intention is to demonize the right, even knowing full well that all genocides of the 20th century were committed by people who self-identified as "socialists", and professed policies (ie. government control of the economy) that are clearly leftist. Oh right you self-identify as socialist, so of course you want to deny that blatant fact of history. And we're to accept that they are the complete opposite of you, that they really were *shudder* republikans. Any history that conflicts with that view is to be discarded as "revisionist". Oh please.
Well according to the leftist propagandist Goebbels this is actually a very good tactic. Especially if you have some thugs and guns behind it. There's nothing new about lefties using those fascist and communist tactics, of course, they were invented, and remain the near-exclusive domain, of the left.
In a way, the red scare of that time parallels the terrorist fear of today.
Exactly. Heh, funny it's almost the 11th of se....
And about that other one, you might want to ask ... well just about any central-asian country.
Name 1 (one) country that hasn't been an aggressive, expanionist power since it's inception. Name 1 country that doesn't have a reputation that's at least 10 times worse than that of the US.
Just say Iran. Come on. Unless, of course, you can't without laughing. That'd be entirely understandable. One small hint : google "plastic keys to heaven" before you claim moral superiority for mr. "there are no gays in Iran, and so we're tolerant".
That these women-stoning gay-killing "victims" have any motives other than living in total harmony with gaia is like telling a democrat chicago politician that he earns enough money and doesn't need bribes.
Incidentally Iran unveiled it's "ambassador of death" today. Isn't that a coincidence ? Well, actually it might potentially even be a coincidence. Still, it says something about them ...
But of course, don't let me appear racist. Hereby I testify :
1) there are no gays in Iran
2) islam does not call for stoning, nor does any contemporary muslim call for stoning and execution for gays. And it most certainly is not the case that all islamic scholars, of all 4 schools agree on the stoning and killing
3) if any of these statements appear to have anything to do with religion, that's a mistaken impression. I certainly do not claim that either on seeks to kill, or one clearly ignores allah's wishes, which obviously means you're not a muslim. This isn't true, of course, but it would be doubly true if all contemporary religious schools were to agree that this is so. But of course it's not true.
4) all these guys want is peace and harmony for all mankind in gaia. Amen.
5) that peace they want obviously makes forcing Jews to drop their defenses the good and moral thing to do, after all, anything else would be racist, now wouldn't it
And of course the USSR has *never* attempted to use Cuba as a base for military operations near the US right ? What's that you say ? Nuclear rockets ... ICBMs ... military maneuvres off the coast of Florida ?
Oh my ...
Besides this is about Iran, and we all know what the problem is : all cultures are equal. And since Christianity preaches tolerance and understaning, surely a theocratic muslim state will use nukes solely for the purpose of increasing tolerance and understanding, right ? Otherwise, what does that say about ... *shudder*
You know, the new tolerance. It consists of letting people attack Jews, because they're Jewish, because not letting this happen is racist. It's the new democratic mantra (one that conveniently enough allows them to steal more money for their politicians ... whoops ... I meant constituents).
Don't feed the trolls.
I call bullshit on your post. Nuclear batteries can easily power a ship for 1-2 months,10-20 years, 100-200 years ... The whole advantage of nuclear batteries (which is what they're called, btw, you don't even seem to know the name) is their extremely long life. Furthermore, they have a half-time, so even after their theoretical lifetime (which is generally taken less than even 1 half time) they still provide quite a bit of power.
And the total power they can provide is MUCH higher than solar panels (at least in earth orbit). Furthermore they're not subject to tons of mechanical problems that plague solar panels. A nuclear battery will operate anywhere. It may be dusty, it maybe far from the sun (you can't power the voyagers by solar power), if may be obscured, ...
And as I said before, for equivalent power they're much lighter than just the solar panels themselves, ignoring that having a nuclear battery means you don't need batteries, engines, and much less restrictions on craft design.
Nuclear batteries are infinitely superior to solar panels. Too bad they're also so expensive (and dangerous) they're only really an option for big governments.
Not that wikipedia's much of an authority but here's their take on it.
I can see you do not have an answer to my question. Just more "but look at this !" statements. "The others are just as bad !". "Hypocrites exist !". All are very true statements, and completely beside the point.
My theory : you do not have an answer, and you cannot find any reason why an atheist, not believing in an afterlife, would refrain from genocide, if it were convenient.
Why not make the other argument : the only reason I find genocide unacceptable is religious in nature, and that's obviously so very unoriginal of me ... Maybe I should think for myself and see that genocide might be good ...
At least that'd be a honest argument.
The examples you give are almost all non-atheists (except perhaps humanism, which is indeed a moral abomination once you look past the thin upper layer). All of the examples you give (including humanism) base their standards of behavior upon unchallengeable higher authority, which would seem a very non-atheistic stance to me. Most of your examples include very supernatural things like an afterlife.
Humanism in mathematics, incidentally, has failed. Why ? Simple, because there are known mathematical truths that cannot be tested or proven (they're not just unproven, they are provably both true and independent of any set of axioms, look up Godel-sentences for an algorithm that will create an infinite (at least aleph-1) number of them). In humanism, such a thing cannot exist. And then the proof came down that the set of true knowledge is infinitely larger than the set of provable knowledge. If all we can prove about mathematics would be a small grain of sand, mathematics itself would be bigger than the universe. Needless to say, humanist standards for knowledge were thrown out the door, replaced by a still-running project to find the most useful unfounded beliefs to include in our axiom sets (this search turned out to be a minefield).
Humanism has not been much more succesfull in other disciplines and has been universally replaced for various reasons.
A baby that is born is an atheist and could be thought morals he/she would live by easily without any theism.
I have a doctorate in AI, and unless babies work totally different from all known AI neural network algorithms this is not true (and it does seem unlikely that we've done everything wrong). A baby would not even survive without interaction with adults, his brain would lose entropy and he/she would die because the brain would (eventually) stop the heart and the breathing when this happened. It would not matter if that brain's body were afforded all the tools for survival and even very comfortable living (obviously this has never been tried with human babies, but it does happen with mice).
You see babies copy behavior from those around them. That copy would include believing behavior and (maybe) explicit belief (this happens long before a child is ever confronted with a church or school). It would most certainly not be possible to exclude implicit belief from this. (this obviously means that all owners of neural networks, not just humans, have what you could usefully define as religion, or at the very least "ideology". Ants, cats, dogs, cows, pigs, wolves, even some plants ...)
When you think about the problems the brain has to solve, you'll immediately see why it cannot ever work without unfounded beliefs. You see, either you copy knowledge from some source, or you do trial and error. There is no third way. The problem with trial and error is simple : if humans found out dropping from a balcony was dangerous by trial and error, we'd be long extinct. The concept of thinking itself does not, cannot work without unfounded belief.
Incidentally this means, obviously, that science itself, and indeed the way you think is also based on unfounded assumptions. Your opinions are simply copied from somewhere. Given how this system works, even arguing this point with me is dangerous
Why should comfort supercede everything?
Because the whole point of atheism is that there is nothing other than creature comfort in this short life.
Specifically being atheist means that there is ONE singular value judgement of any action : how much comfort it gives inside a very limited timeframe (your life). And yes, this can mean different things for different people (including having others like them, which would give more-or-less livable moral decisions)
But this is the source of the problem with atheist "morality". It's a-moral. The whole point of atheism is that the decision whether to commit any act (whether that means adopting an orphan or raping your neighbor's baby) is independent of morals, independent even, of law. Judgment of actions is dependent exclusively on short-term comfort for one single individual.
And read up in the first book you find about morality. Amoralism is not "neutral" between good and evil. It is, in many cases, thoroughly evil. When you're talking about real-life criminals, they are never "more" evil than amoral. No human is evil like for example satan is (satan sacrifices his own comfort, or anything really, including his own life, just to make bad things happen to people, nobody does that).
Can you give any answer to the simple question : why would any atheist, based on atheist morals refrain from that crime (killing off a country for comfort, like Stalin did). Knowing, of course, that said crime would go unpunished, and that it would be "tactically" the best move to make at any one point, say, to impress people he/she finds important (in that case to impress the lefty atheists his position depended upon).
And I reiterate, I hope you see why your "Mary-Jane doesn't do this and when I look into her eyes I don't see any God"-answers don't quite cut it. They're a bit like saying "rain is made from cheese, because Jan said so last friday. He laughed afterwards". These examples contain zero useful information, as they fail to treat atheism objectively.
And isn't the whole reason for atheism that it's supposedly more objective ?
An answer by atheist to those questions could be just about anything. Atheist only agree on one single point, they don't believe in any gods. Everything else is up for grabs.
Really ? Unfortunately you're way off the mark. Another evident property of atheist morality, the one where all the above questions are based on, is that they don't believe in an afterlife. And so, by definition they must prefer the quality of their current life above all else, because all else - by definition - doesn't exist.
For an atheist, there exists no history prior to his first memories, and there exists no history after his last breath.
So comfort in this life, because it's all there is, supercedes all other concerns.
And unfortunately, that leads to the big problem of atheist morality : the only two reasons an atheist doesn't kill are that it either isn't useful at the moment, or the risk of getting caught * the punishment is too high.
That also makes the only variable one can use to control or influence atheist behavior the punishment for crimes.
I still prefer not to hurt other beings, people or animal.
That's because you're what might be called "first-gen" atheist. Your attitudes are 1% arguing for atheism and 99% reaction like a protestant Christian (the odds are good you're a protestant Christian).
Your kids will not share that opinion. They will have behaviors closer to "raw" atheist morality, more distant from Christian morality. Incidentally, you will not like this, at all.
That is of course the real effect that all this "every ideology is equal" bullshit is based on. Given that 50 years ago everyone was a comitted Christian, of course their kids reactions are "mostly" Christian. And then atheists like to point out "look at those kids", when their pointing to Christian behavior with a thin atheist layer over it. In reality they're pointing at a temporary illusion (that nevertheless is already visibly less moral and more problematic)
Of course that's not how you like to view things. And "all viewpoints are equal".
The question, I repeat, was not whether YOU would exterminate entire countries for your comfort. The question is whether an atheist would. Someone whose behavior is based, not on "Jesus loves you", but on an atheist worldview. The question was how an atheist answer the question : do you slaughter an entire nation for comfort (implying of course, no punishment will be forthcoming).
However, one only needs to look at history of the 20th century to know the answer. In that century, there were 2 large groups of atheists : communists and nazis.
We all know how atheist leaders responded to a food shortage. Their choices were to admit that they failed (ie. ask for help) or ... to kill anyone who complained. Well ... why don't you ask the Ukranians what choice was made. Or the Jews.
An on atheistic morality, this is the only life I know I will have, thus it is very precious.
Is it more precious than morality ? And from your perspective, is your life more precious than that of others ?
Obviously the answer of an atheist to both questions is a resounding "yes".
Would you kill to remain alive ?
Again there can be no doubt about the atheist answer. But why don't we skip ahead to the really icky one :
Would you exterminate entire countries to increase the comfort and luxury in your life ?
Would you steal an organ from someone to extend your own life ?
Do tell, what is the atheist answer ? Or rather : answer these questions, given that you find your own life more important than morality ...
And people would actually *know* whether they'd end up in jail for something or not.
I'm sure Terry Childs would be thankful.
If I held a software patent for a program that measured how many times the Spacebar button is pressed, I cannot be held from collecting damages under the laches rule because it is unreasonable to expect patent holders to troll every piece of software in search of patent infringement. The courts cannot reasonably accept the argument, "Anonymous Coward did not find the patent infringement within X number of days within Windows 7's launch, therefore he should not be allowed to collect damages."
And yet they hold people to the opposite. When anyone writes a piece of software they are supposed to
1. search the entire patent database (that excels in clarity *cough*)
2. check to see if this covers their program
3. either contact the patent holder and negotiate a license -or- program "around" it (insofar that's possible)
Is that reasonable ?
According to Lawrence Lessig, the "hello, world" program violates at least 15 patents. Surely any other program violates at least those same patents, plus potentially dozens or hundreds of others. Is that reasonable ? Or is Lessig lying ? (he is a lawyer, you know)
And if you don't do this you become liable for retroactive damages ... this is not reasonable, surely you see that.
How about we make the following addendum to patent law : anyone is free to send a description of an invention (source to a program, designs, ...) to the patent office, which then for 15$ and within 14 days has to list all patents that cover that invention, and that list is binding upon the courts. If they do not respond within 14 days, the program is considered not to violate *any* patents, and this is equally binding upon all the courts.
Quite frankly, that rule should be extended to the entire law system.
This is typically government style doing : they pass laws, which leave large gaps in interpretation. So anyone on the street does not even have the possibility to know if he is or is not violating the law. You'd think that he could ask the government if something is wrong or not, but he can't. Government wants to impose rules, but like all tyrants, does not feel the need to explain them. Obviously one needs to be able to ask these questions, and get a response, for free, within a reasonable timeframe.
And if the government cannot provide this service, quite frankly, they should leave making laws to a more capable organization, or simply have less laws.