Actually, of course some ideologies are to blame. You mention nazism's non-association with another creed as an example, but your argument falls flat once you realize that nazism itself is, of course, just as "ideological" as any other creed.
Some creeds are inherently evil. Even without assholes on top of them. Nazism remained a total disaster after hitler's death. Communism was a total disaster even with people at the head who at the very least can be said to have started out honest.
The reality is that some ideologies are more suited to demagogues than others. Unfortunately, marx's ideology, arguably the most successfull demagogue ideology ever, was atheist. And very strongly atheist.
The second most successfull dictator ideology is also politically incorrect to mention : islam.
I'm ignoring violence in the names of political ideologies for now, since it can't be directly blamed on either religion or atheism -- although it can often be traced to the same sort of exaggerated, shared beliefs typical of religions, and rarely to anything resembling the typical atheistic absence of belief
Why do atheist get to be seen as separate from the political ideologies that espouse atheism, while the theists don't get any such luxury ? *
I mean I can understand that you don't distinguish between the muslim faith, and the politics of jihad, because there is no difference.
But one could easily argue that the politics of the middle ages and Christianity are radically different. At the very least you'd have to admit that currently practiced christian religion has nothing to do with the political ideology that called for the crusades (who were really a reaction to a jihad, a defensive move, not an offensive one).
* unless of course you want to stack the deck to make atheism come out on top. If you count communism, an inherently atheistic creed, and a creed pushing atheism on people, atheists are worse than muslims. "revolution !", closely accompanied by a certain statement about "opiate for the masses" killed far more people than even "allahu akbar" did.
Exactly which religions are invoked by the rallying cries of "fight for freedom" and "war on terror".
Note also that there are far more hindus involved in the war on terror than Christians, and also more muslims, and a more than nontrivial group of state atheists too, if you count the numbers. And that's only as long as China does not help out. At that point state atheists will outnumber any other group in the "war on terror".
So, I ask you again, which religion is this cry (and the "fight for freedom" or the communist cry "revolution !") invoking ?
At the very least you'll have to admit they're agnosticist. And the "revolution" one is fundamentally atheist.
Which cry has resulted in the most dead bodies of all the cries ? The atheist one, followed closely by the muslim one. Then there is a huge gap of several hundred million dead bodies less and you'll still find that "fight for freedom" killed more men and women than "onward christian soldiers".
And let's not forget that these cries have varying ages. The "onward christian soldiers" is both the oldest one, and the one with the least death associated to it's name. And "revolution !" in the communist sense is both the youngest and the one with the most deaths associated.
There is this little detail called "history" which provides ample evidence of the existence of God. Or, to put it another way, it provides the same evidence as exists for, just to take a random example, the fact that some french folk stormed some ugly building in paris 120 years ago.
Theology is held to a higher standard because Christian theology shames people in order to make them comply with a higher standard of behavior than atheism.
People want to sin, as the bible states, and they don't want to receive blame when the inevitable happens and the consequences become clear.
They want a world without consequences. And they blame "God" (and I really mean the one, Jesus Christ) for not providing them with such a world.
They don't want to go to church on sunday and reflect on their actions, so as to improve them before they become disasters. They don't want to confess to a priest, and they certainly don't want anybody's advice about how to fix things they've broken. They want someone else to fix those for them - a job the state has gladly taken, of course in return the state expects exactly what the devil expects for the same job : their soul. Their fundamental ability to distinguish between good and evil. By fixing all immoral deeds, the state makes people amoral. In practice amoral people cannot seriously be distinguished in their actions from immoral people.
Fixing other people's problems without them asking for help first, forcing other people to behave morally by overwhelming force ("taxing/stealing 'for the poor'") is a fundamentally flawed course of action that's being pushed on every last human being for 150 years now. It does not bring good, it brings evil. This very same force is responsible for communism, including the atrocities committed in it's name.
while arguments against His existence have, many times, proven quite strong
This is false. Any rigorous argument against the existence of God would run stuck. Additionally you could reject all contemporary claims and only accept that a lot of books, and of course a very old, very well preserved book, describes God, lots of old structures were made for God. And of course there is ample evidence that God-assisted events like the Exodus did indeed happen.
If you further continue your rejection, one could say "but old, well-preserved books are the only reason we have to postulate that the Roman Empire ever existed". I fail to see what answer an honest man would have to this argument.
So in positive science you're stuck. In historical argument you're stuck. In mathematical logic, you're especially stuck. Exactly what sort of reasoning are you going to use to justify your "God does not exist" claim ? "Lately (and we mean in the last 100 or-so years) there's been a lot of philosophical and political figures claiming this is true" ?
In order for a faraday cage to actually block a signal, it's metal wires must be nowhere more apart than twice the wavelength of the signal they intend to block. So that would be a grid for 900 Mhz signals. Well, just how close do these need to be ?
(3 x 10^8)/(900 x 10^6) = 33 cm to (3 x10^8)/(2.2 x 10^9) = 13.6 cm
So that would be a bit of an impractical grid to put around you, now wouldn't it ? A metal wire every 15 centimeter seems a bit ridiculous. Of course there will be no observable phenomena from being inside or outside the grid so selling them a faraday cage that doesn't in fact block cell phone radiation would not be discovered any time soon.
(oh and there is obviously a difference between Christians and hippies, for starters the fact that Christians actually have a purpose and generally act very sensibly)
First I do not say illegal labour is the only thing to blame. The leftist "fair lending" CRA idiocy is the single biggest cause of the current problems.
Second if that thing about americans is true then unemployment benefits are too high. Hell I once asked a playboy photographer if he'd do his job for free, and even he said "no way in hell". People don't work because they like it, they work because they have to. If you change the situation so they don't have to, of course economic activity goes down. The problem is whatever effect is making work optional.
Lowering the minimum wage will enable a number of industries in the US to de-automate, or at the very least postpone it a bit. It will create lots of jobs that are actually helping the economy.
Having the government "create jobs" not only doesn't help the economy. It ALSO damages those who actually do work to make the economy better.
Euhm this is called "broken windows fallacy" and it's not a point of contention amongst serious economists : a $30B stimulus package will COST jobs. It will not gain them. No amount of money spending by the government, whether by taxing people or by printing money will help, it will fail. (another thing the government is doing is printing money, and Obama's gonna have to order new printing presses. I'm looking forward to paying a snack with a $1000 note).
You want to have the maximum number of Americans working and increase economic activity ? Lower the minimum wage. Level the playing field between legal and illegal labour.
It means atheism is only rational under a feelings-based version of "certainty".
Pure "Mathematical logic" does not allow for atheism, as pointed out before. But then, "mathematical logic" doesn't allow for any conclusions about the real world whatsoever.
All the other positive sciences, those that at least attempt to be correct falls under "description of what you can repeatably cause", and that's the source of the "truth" statements from physics and/or any other positive science. Even most of astrophysics can be observed in controlled experiments here on earth (e.g. an event horizon can be generate for extremely short periods of time and studied)
And yes, you can be quite sure that you cannot cause God to react to you in a repeatable manner (though any serious scientist would have to admit there are many historical and contemporary claims of God performing miracles). But that's the heaviest claim the positive sciences let one make. They can certainly not support a "God does not exist" nor a "God exists" claim.
Of course, treating science like this would put religion and climate science on the same truth level. We have certainly not adequately verified we can repeatably change the climate, so the only sources for climate science data is the past. And with religion... the situation is... exactly the same.
(I'd love that climate scientists would use the information theory to improve their treatment of data, force algorithms to be developed against partial datasets, and then test them by having them complete the data sets. Nobody seems to be doing that, even though computer intelligence clearly shows that using all available data leads to nonsensical conclusions)
You're going about this all wrong. The negative claim (fairies don't exist) cannot exist without the positive claim (fairies do exist) being made first. You can't say that you don't believe in god unless someone first makes the claim that god does exist. The claim and burden of proof both fall on the "god exists" camp.
Oh so the second claim is right ? Who decides the sequence of claims ?
It has long been established that, for a baby, belief in a God, the "first claim" that does not need proof, is simply the one (s)he learns from his/her parents.
You even run into this problem yourself.
The problem with christianity and science is simple : they grew together. Science, as it exists today, will never disprove the notion of a Christian God that works through miracles.
It will disprove many other religions, due to the fact that they can easily be shown to make claims that can easily be disproven. You could take allah for example. The quran's inheritance laws are mathematically inconsistent:
[4:11] GOD decrees a will for the benefit of your children; the male gets twice the share of the female. If the inheritors are only women, more than two, they get two-thirds of what is bequeathed. If only one daughter is left, she gets one-half. The parents of the deceased get one-sixth of the inheritance each, if the deceased has left any children. If he left no children, and his parents are the only inheritors, the mother gets one-third. If he has siblings, then the mother gets one-sixth. All this, after fulfilling any will the deceased has left, and after paying off all debts. When it comes to your parents and your children, you do not know which of them is really the best to you and the most beneficial. This is GOD's law. GOD is Omniscient, Most Wise.
[4:12] You get half of what your wives leave behind, if they had no children. If they had children, you get one-fourth of what they leave. All this, after fulfilling any will they had left, and after paying off all debts. They get one-fourth of what you leave behind, if you had no children. If you had children, they get one-eighth of what you bequeath. All this, after fulfilling any will you had left, and after paying off all debts. If the deceased man or woman was a loner, and leaves two siblings, male or female, each of them gets one-sixth of the inheritance. If there are more siblings, then they equally share one-third of the inheritance. All this, after fulfilling any will, and after paying off all debts, so that no one is hurt. This is a will decreed by GOD. GOD is Omniscient, Clement.
This is a dead mistake. How do you divide the inheritance of a man with 3 daughters, a wife and 2 surviving parents ? (most combinations are inconsistent, this is just one example)
3 daughters : 2/3rd of inheritance Mother : 1/6th Father : 1/6th Wife : 1/4th
Sum : 5/4th.
Now this sum is a major oops, isn't it ?
The fact is the bible is very consistent with science. One example is the differing values of pi that are mentioned in the bible, they are acknowledged to be approximations:
according to Solomon the value of pi is "about 3". According to the scriptures following the pentateuch, it is "divided closely to how 22 is divided to 7", which is accurate enough to erect complex buildings.
As such the bible acknowledges for example, both the value of measuring, the possibility of improving upon previous data, and acknowledges that not all that is in the bible are exact figures. They also explicitly leave room, and encourage christians, to improve upon the values and details specified. (but within the rules that human life is sacred, leading to the stemcell debacle, the abortion issues, euthanasia,...)
There is an entire theory about agriculture in the bible, that one, too specifies rather explicitly that more research is needed to cultivate "other lands". At another point the desert is mentioned to b
The problem with scientific skepticism has long been discovered, and is trivially simple :
most things in the world are not explained by the current state of science. Worse, as Godel discovered : even maths does not explain all properties of numbers.
Worse : it will never explain all properties of numbers.
Worse : it is not possible to "unite" science. There is no way to derive physics from maths, there is no way to derive chemistry from physics there is no way to derive biology from chemistry and physics and there is no way to derive psychology from biology.
Oops.
The huge problem with the current state of science is that it's fundamentally incomplete, and cannot be completed, not in a finite amount of time, nor even in an infinite amount of time. Even though, yes, we're making quite a few advances in a few areas, fundamental science is stuck, and has been stuck for close to 50 years now.
Therefore anyone who "only believes what is proven" believes...
We will give Israel a block of land to form a new homeland. It will be lush, resource rich and surrounded and protected by friends.
That's not true.
At the end of WWII such a question was posed to every state in the world, including Ontario. They denied the request.
Before WWI the ottoman empire responded in the positive and gave "palestine" (the current states of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the Sinai and a large part of Saudi Arabia and even a piece of Iraq were all part of Palestine) to the Zionists. That's why in 1948 there was such a large presence of Jews in Israel.
That's basically it, isn't it. Religions in particular, and active ideologies (that seek to recruit followers) in general, are destructive towards those who don't comply. It's part of the vileness of those who invented them, whether out of involuntary insanity, or careful pla
If the idea of applying "evolution-theory" ideas to memes has any value, this is exactly what ANY SUCCESSFULL ideology will do. The actual contents of the ideologies matter little. IF they grow, they will "be destructive towards those who don't comply". Until they have a hugely comfortable position in the world, which seems to be that they control at least half of it, and christianity controlled about 70% of the planet in 1930, and did indeed become a peaceful ideology.
Just like successfull genes are "destructive" towards those with different genes. The very reason we die "of natural causes" is that we are killed by our own genes to give better chances to those with better DNA (ie : our, or someone else's children). (See : "Sex and the Origin of Death" by William R. Clark, for example : not all organisms can die of natural causes)
Do you believe in evolution ? How could you possibly expect anything else to happen ?
The only chance for world peace, if evolution theory indeed applies to "memes", is that one religion/ideology wins, with however many casualties that requires. And even that would be a temporary "fix" : eventually the winning ideology would diverge into multiple branches and restart the conflict. Just like you see in the "muslim world" : they're killing amongst themselves even more than they're killing jews. The only peaceful periods in muslim history are those when massive, successfull "jihads" were executed against their neighbours. Those only brought temporary internal stability, the longest of those peaceful periods lasted about 30 years.
The only reason that there is peace in America is the extremely homogenous ideology that is there. Of course, everybody seems to be trying to fight that homogenity. That "tolerance" (a misnomer if there ever was one) will not lead to peace, it will lead to war.
This of course means that as "atheism" (or any other ideology) grows, it will, inevitably, become violent. I daresay you're already seeing huge signs of that on the internet, and in universities (at least in mine).
If it indeed conquers the planet, violently, it may, after reaching a certain size, become peaceful again, as has happened with christianity. But that will not last. Not for any ideology.
Of course this also means that unless the massive inroads and challenges made to christianity stop before a certain amount of damage is done (that seems hugely unlikely), christianity will resume being a violent ideology, through natural selection : only violent christianity will grow. And soon it will take over the rest of christianity. Given how widespread it is, and how much technology it controls, I highly doubt anything will be able to challenge christianity the next time it tries to conquer the planet.
In 200 years there will be a huge christmas tree, imported at great cost from some exotic location, right in the middle of mecca. In the white house, the duma and shangai alike you will be fired for merely thinking about abortion. And there will be world peace, for a while.
The basic mechanism of evolution is conflict. Conflict by competing for resources (ie. letting the other starve) or direct conflict : killing eachother.
No there are not. Rocket defense systems, like they are installed on carrier groups for example, protect tiny areas against threats fired from a huge area, with an absolutely enormous area of "neutral ground" that can absorb any amount of battering (ie. the sea).
First imagine the path of a rocket that is intended to strike a ship in a carrier group : it is a very direct, ever so slightly curved path that goes over water. So what do rocket defense systems do at a base level : they simply slow down the rocket. The rocket still does a little bit less damage, but does it to the ocean surface, which can take any amount of battering.
Suppose a rocket in a freefall trajectory were to strike a carrier group. By the time the rocket is in range of the defensive systems it is "hanging" (falling, but not infinitely fast) right above the ship. Any bullet, rocket or whatever fired at such a rocket will ultimately hit the ship. So what do carrier groups do if someone tries this ? Simple : they move themselves.
Israel does not have a "sea" buffer zone between itself and hamas, devoid of life, devoid of humans. If they were to down hamas rockets directly over their launch site, they would fall on the schools, hospitals, etc were hamas fires them. Downing them a little bit further in their path and the downed rockets would fall on a palestinian city. A little bit further still and it falls on an Israeli city.
No matter how or where you down hamas' rockets : there will be victims, who have done nothing wrong other than being in the path of a randomly fired rocket.
Therefore the defense against terrorist rockets, fired from populated areas, must be the prevention of those rockets ever being fired in the first place. Once fired, once merely the fuse is lit, casualties cannot be avoided (though one can try to make the people firing them the victims. Of course in palestine, the director of one of the UN schools was firing rockets, straight from the edge of a playground, filled to the brim with children. If you "prevent that rocket from reaching its target", you will have killed a lot of children using your "high tech" system. Even if you're using a laser to detonate the rocket at a great distance, those children will be blased with shrapnel, that was intended to kill jews. Now given that their parents are very much aware of that school being used as a rocket launch site you could say...
However the point I'm trying to make is simple : "High tech" is not some magic miracle that can solve any problem just like that.
And even if these considerations are solved, there is still the price. It costs about $12000 to down a single rocket. Which is a great defense against $200000 sidewinder rockets, but a horrible idea against $200 qassams.
Even though islam comes close with 1,2 billion dead, not a single religion has ever killed anywhere near the amount of death dealt out by the leaders of atheism. By the leaders of socialism. By "the will of the people". By "social justice".
Some billion people total were killed by atheists in the last 100 years. Several hundred million merely for their faith (confucianists in China for example) by these atheists. From Berlin to Hong Kong to East Timor millions have been killed by people looking to "eradicate" religion.
And islam comes close to atheist ideologies in deaths caused by religious persecution. But it took muslims a millenium to kill almost the amount of people the "socialist" atheists killed in less than 100 years.
Some ideologies are genuinly peaceful. And some are not. Amongst the peaceful ideologies you will find multiple religions and some atheists and amongst the massacres you will find religionists and the large mass of atheists.
So unfortunately this whole "it's god" is bullshit. Yes some gods like allah demand rivers of blood, but so does the "will of the people, free from god" as illustrated undeniably by recent history.
The problem is, quite simply, that some people feel themselves better than the rest. Feel themselves superior to others. And frankly, even though I consider myself atheist, there are plenty of atheists that I don't consider good company. Atheists are certainly not tolerant of christians in America and neither are the atheists of china tolerant of the remaining religious peoples there. Standing in the camp of atheists feels almost as dirty as defending hamas.
And what... exactly... is the alternative ? Here's the demand of hamas. Note that it's a repeat of an islamic "holy" text:
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
This is the constitution of hamas. The constitution every Gazan lives under. The constitution over 70% of Gazans have willingly accepted.
What, exactly, is your response to a statement like this, backed up with rockets ? Do tell what the alternative course of action is for israel.
And don't say "talking". They've been "talking" since 1948. Talking is something hamas only does when they're losing the war, and they never keep their promises. In fact since 1948 it's progressively gotten worse for Israel. Right now there are constant attacks on Israeli citizens. EVERY SINGLE DAY rockets rain down on sderot and other Israeli cities.
"Putting the parties down to talk it out" is dependant on there not being ANY group ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD that will not talk. If there is even one such group, no matter how small, that controls a state or even a city, the policy of "talking" is doomed. It can only work between civilized people. What do civilized people do ? First and foremost, they are true to their word.
Just because the overwhelming majority of Americans are reasonable people, true to their words, does not mean that every last human is reasonable. Just read the comments in this story made by muslims and my point will be amply supported.
Hamas does not keep to treaties. Nor does any other neighbour of Israel. The only muslim country that has EVER shown to keep to international treaties when under the slightest bit of pressure is Turkey, and that era in Turkey is coming to an end.
Why don't you tell me under exactly what conditions christians live in Egypt ?
After all, it couldn't possibly be that agreement, since "everyone thinks it's a fraud", right ?
And yes, again, technically you're correct. Not "all" muslims believe in it. Only Sunni. That basically means everyone except Iran, which is technically not "all" of them, just > 95%.
Why don't you check whether you're right first, then start insulting people ? You know, you might actually learn something.
But of course like all progressives, you're bound to learn something you won't like at all.
You're extremely deluded to think that perhaps 50 million (neo)nazis are responsible for the crimes of perhaps 100.000 of them 50 years in the past.
So why do you discriminate against nazi's ? Why would you go against them just because they hate (and sometimes try to kill) gays ? That's just... discrimination. You're not ready to support a nazi president ? That's racist !
Not every nazi, you know, feels the same way. Some don't want to kill ALL blacks. You're just a mean racist for discriminating against nazis just because they hate gays, blacks, and so on.
I hope you can see the sarcasm in this and the problem with your point of view.
I wonder if you'd apply the same standard to nazis. After all, the nazis of today aren't the ones that gassed Jews. The KKK members of today aren't the ones that hanged Blacks. One can fill this list.
I assume you're perfectly tolerant of these ideologies too. And just because they scream "we'll burn your houses down in the night", in no way makes any black person nervous.
We should be tolerant.
"kill all blacks" should sound in every night. "Gas the Jews" should be allowed to be blown out of loudspeakers over every neighbourhood. Nazi propaganda should be spread on television.
Preventing that, after all, would be racist against KKK members and Nazis. (and yes freedom of political opinion and spreading said opinion is part of the human rights).
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Actually, of course some ideologies are to blame. You mention nazism's non-association with another creed as an example, but your argument falls flat once you realize that nazism itself is, of course, just as "ideological" as any other creed.
Some creeds are inherently evil. Even without assholes on top of them. Nazism remained a total disaster after hitler's death. Communism was a total disaster even with people at the head who at the very least can be said to have started out honest.
The reality is that some ideologies are more suited to demagogues than others. Unfortunately, marx's ideology, arguably the most successfull demagogue ideology ever, was atheist. And very strongly atheist.
The second most successfull dictator ideology is also politically incorrect to mention : islam.
I'm ignoring violence in the names of political ideologies for now, since it can't be directly blamed on either religion or atheism -- although it can often be traced to the same sort of exaggerated, shared beliefs typical of religions, and rarely to anything resembling the typical atheistic absence of belief
Why do atheist get to be seen as separate from the political ideologies that espouse atheism, while the theists don't get any such luxury ? *
I mean I can understand that you don't distinguish between the muslim faith, and the politics of jihad, because there is no difference.
But one could easily argue that the politics of the middle ages and Christianity are radically different. At the very least you'd have to admit that currently practiced christian religion has nothing to do with the political ideology that called for the crusades (who were really a reaction to a jihad, a defensive move, not an offensive one).
* unless of course you want to stack the deck to make atheism come out on top. If you count communism, an inherently atheistic creed, and a creed pushing atheism on people, atheists are worse than muslims. "revolution !", closely accompanied by a certain statement about "opiate for the masses" killed far more people than even "allahu akbar" did.
Exactly which religions are invoked by the rallying cries of "fight for freedom" and "war on terror".
Note also that there are far more hindus involved in the war on terror than Christians, and also more muslims, and a more than nontrivial group of state atheists too, if you count the numbers. And that's only as long as China does not help out. At that point state atheists will outnumber any other group in the "war on terror".
So, I ask you again, which religion is this cry (and the "fight for freedom" or the communist cry "revolution !") invoking ?
At the very least you'll have to admit they're agnosticist. And the "revolution" one is fundamentally atheist.
Which cry has resulted in the most dead bodies of all the cries ? The atheist one, followed closely by the muslim one. Then there is a huge gap of several hundred million dead bodies less and you'll still find that "fight for freedom" killed more men and women than "onward christian soldiers".
And let's not forget that these cries have varying ages. The "onward christian soldiers" is both the oldest one, and the one with the least death associated to it's name. And "revolution !" in the communist sense is both the youngest and the one with the most deaths associated.
There is this little detail called "history" which provides ample evidence of the existence of God. Or, to put it another way, it provides the same evidence as exists for, just to take a random example, the fact that some french folk stormed some ugly building in paris 120 years ago.
Theology is held to a higher standard because Christian theology shames people in order to make them comply with a higher standard of behavior than atheism.
People want to sin, as the bible states, and they don't want to receive blame when the inevitable happens and the consequences become clear.
They want a world without consequences. And they blame "God" (and I really mean the one, Jesus Christ) for not providing them with such a world.
They don't want to go to church on sunday and reflect on their actions, so as to improve them before they become disasters. They don't want to confess to a priest, and they certainly don't want anybody's advice about how to fix things they've broken. They want someone else to fix those for them - a job the state has gladly taken, of course in return the state expects exactly what the devil expects for the same job : their soul. Their fundamental ability to distinguish between good and evil. By fixing all immoral deeds, the state makes people amoral. In practice amoral people cannot seriously be distinguished in their actions from immoral people.
Fixing other people's problems without them asking for help first, forcing other people to behave morally by overwhelming force ("taxing/stealing 'for the poor'") is a fundamentally flawed course of action that's being pushed on every last human being for 150 years now. It does not bring good, it brings evil. This very same force is responsible for communism, including the atrocities committed in it's name.
Except part of your statement is flat-out wrong :
while arguments against His existence have, many times, proven quite strong
This is false. Any rigorous argument against the existence of God would run stuck. Additionally you could reject all contemporary claims and only accept that a lot of books, and of course a very old, very well preserved book, describes God, lots of old structures were made for God. And of course there is ample evidence that God-assisted events like the Exodus did indeed happen.
If you further continue your rejection, one could say "but old, well-preserved books are the only reason we have to postulate that the Roman Empire ever existed". I fail to see what answer an honest man would have to this argument.
So in positive science you're stuck. In historical argument you're stuck. In mathematical logic, you're especially stuck. Exactly what sort of reasoning are you going to use to justify your "God does not exist" claim ? "Lately (and we mean in the last 100 or-so years) there's been a lot of philosophical and political figures claiming this is true" ?
In order for a faraday cage to actually block a signal, it's metal wires must be nowhere more apart than twice the wavelength of the signal they intend to block. So that would be a grid for 900 Mhz signals. Well, just how close do these need to be ?
(3 x 10^8)/(900 x 10^6) = 33 cm to (3 x10^8)/(2.2 x 10^9) = 13.6 cm
So that would be a bit of an impractical grid to put around you, now wouldn't it ? A metal wire every 15 centimeter seems a bit ridiculous. Of course there will be no observable phenomena from being inside or outside the grid so selling them a faraday cage that doesn't in fact block cell phone radiation would not be discovered any time soon.
(oh and there is obviously a difference between Christians and hippies, for starters the fact that Christians actually have a purpose and generally act very sensibly)
First I do not say illegal labour is the only thing to blame. The leftist "fair lending" CRA idiocy is the single biggest cause of the current problems.
Second if that thing about americans is true then unemployment benefits are too high. Hell I once asked a playboy photographer if he'd do his job for free, and even he said "no way in hell". People don't work because they like it, they work because they have to. If you change the situation so they don't have to, of course economic activity goes down. The problem is whatever effect is making work optional.
Lowering the minimum wage will enable a number of industries in the US to de-automate, or at the very least postpone it a bit. It will create lots of jobs that are actually helping the economy.
Having the government "create jobs" not only doesn't help the economy. It ALSO damages those who actually do work to make the economy better.
But that one-billionth-of-al-gores-electricity-bill will buy them all sorts of new gadgets !
Euhm this is called "broken windows fallacy" and it's not a point of contention amongst serious economists : a $30B stimulus package will COST jobs. It will not gain them. No amount of money spending by the government, whether by taxing people or by printing money will help, it will fail. (another thing the government is doing is printing money, and Obama's gonna have to order new printing presses. I'm looking forward to paying a snack with a $1000 note).
You want to have the maximum number of Americans working and increase economic activity ? Lower the minimum wage. Level the playing field between legal and illegal labour.
It means atheism is only rational under a feelings-based version of "certainty".
Pure "Mathematical logic" does not allow for atheism, as pointed out before. But then, "mathematical logic" doesn't allow for any conclusions about the real world whatsoever.
All the other positive sciences, those that at least attempt to be correct falls under "description of what you can repeatably cause", and that's the source of the "truth" statements from physics and/or any other positive science. Even most of astrophysics can be observed in controlled experiments here on earth (e.g. an event horizon can be generate for extremely short periods of time and studied)
And yes, you can be quite sure that you cannot cause God to react to you in a repeatable manner (though any serious scientist would have to admit there are many historical and contemporary claims of God performing miracles). But that's the heaviest claim the positive sciences let one make. They can certainly not support a "God does not exist" nor a "God exists" claim.
Of course, treating science like this would put religion and climate science on the same truth level. We have certainly not adequately verified we can repeatably change the climate, so the only sources for climate science data is the past. And with religion ... the situation is ... exactly the same.
(I'd love that climate scientists would use the information theory to improve their treatment of data, force algorithms to be developed against partial datasets, and then test them by having them complete the data sets. Nobody seems to be doing that, even though computer intelligence clearly shows that using all available data leads to nonsensical conclusions)
You're going about this all wrong. The negative claim (fairies don't exist) cannot exist without the positive claim (fairies do exist) being made first. You can't say that you don't believe in god unless someone first makes the claim that god does exist. The claim and burden of proof both fall on the "god exists" camp.
Oh so the second claim is right ? Who decides the sequence of claims ?
It has long been established that, for a baby, belief in a God, the "first claim" that does not need proof, is simply the one (s)he learns from his/her parents.
You even run into this problem yourself.
The problem with christianity and science is simple : they grew together. Science, as it exists today, will never disprove the notion of a Christian God that works through miracles.
It will disprove many other religions, due to the fact that they can easily be shown to make claims that can easily be disproven. You could take allah for example. The quran's inheritance laws are mathematically inconsistent :
[4:11] GOD decrees a will for the benefit of your children; the male gets twice the share of the female. If the inheritors are only women, more than two, they get two-thirds of what is bequeathed. If only one daughter is left, she gets one-half. The parents of the deceased get one-sixth of the inheritance each, if the deceased has left any children. If he left no children, and his parents are the only inheritors, the mother gets one-third. If he has siblings, then the mother gets one-sixth. All this, after fulfilling any will the deceased has left, and after paying off all debts. When it comes to your parents and your children, you do not know which of them is really the best to you and the most beneficial. This is GOD's law. GOD is Omniscient, Most Wise.
[4:12] You get half of what your wives leave behind, if they had no children. If they had children, you get one-fourth of what they leave. All this, after fulfilling any will they had left, and after paying off all debts. They get one-fourth of what you leave behind, if you had no children. If you had children, they get one-eighth of what you bequeath. All this, after fulfilling any will you had left, and after paying off all debts. If the deceased man or woman was a loner, and leaves two siblings, male or female, each of them gets one-sixth of the inheritance. If there are more siblings, then they equally share one-third of the inheritance. All this, after fulfilling any will, and after paying off all debts, so that no one is hurt. This is a will decreed by GOD. GOD is Omniscient, Clement.
This is a dead mistake. How do you divide the inheritance of a man with 3 daughters, a wife and 2 surviving parents ? (most combinations are inconsistent, this is just one example)
3 daughters : 2/3rd of inheritance
Mother : 1/6th
Father : 1/6th
Wife : 1/4th
Sum : 5/4th.
Now this sum is a major oops, isn't it ?
The fact is the bible is very consistent with science. One example is the differing values of pi that are mentioned in the bible, they are acknowledged to be approximations :
according to Solomon the value of pi is "about 3". According to the scriptures following the pentateuch, it is "divided closely to how 22 is divided to 7", which is accurate enough to erect complex buildings.
As such the bible acknowledges for example, both the value of measuring, the possibility of improving upon previous data, and acknowledges that not all that is in the bible are exact figures. They also explicitly leave room, and encourage christians, to improve upon the values and details specified. (but within the rules that human life is sacred, leading to the stemcell debacle, the abortion issues, euthanasia, ...)
There is an entire theory about agriculture in the bible, that one, too specifies rather explicitly that more research is needed to cultivate "other lands". At another point the desert is mentioned to b
The problem with scientific skepticism has long been discovered, and is trivially simple :
most things in the world are not explained by the current state of science. Worse, as Godel discovered : even maths does not explain all properties of numbers.
Worse : it will never explain all properties of numbers.
Worse : it is not possible to "unite" science. There is no way to derive physics from maths, there is no way to derive chemistry from physics there is no way to derive biology from chemistry and physics and there is no way to derive psychology from biology.
Oops.
The huge problem with the current state of science is that it's fundamentally incomplete, and cannot be completed, not in a finite amount of time, nor even in an infinite amount of time. Even though, yes, we're making quite a few advances in a few areas, fundamental science is stuck, and has been stuck for close to 50 years now.
Therefore anyone who "only believes what is proven" believes ...
nothing at all.
Come to Ontario.
That is the solution.
We will give Israel a block of land to form a new homeland. It will be lush, resource rich and surrounded and protected by friends.
That's not true.
At the end of WWII such a question was posed to every state in the world, including Ontario. They denied the request.
Before WWI the ottoman empire responded in the positive and gave "palestine" (the current states of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the Sinai and a large part of Saudi Arabia and even a piece of Iraq were all part of Palestine) to the Zionists. That's why in 1948 there was such a large presence of Jews in Israel.
The only reason Israel fails is that they're holding back.
The only reason palestine fails is that they're powerless assholes, who can only feel good about themselves by stoning women.
3 guesses what's going to happen, in the long term ...
That's basically it, isn't it. Religions in particular, and active ideologies (that seek to recruit followers) in general, are destructive towards those who don't comply. It's part of the vileness of those who invented them, whether out of involuntary insanity, or careful pla
If the idea of applying "evolution-theory" ideas to memes has any value, this is exactly what ANY SUCCESSFULL ideology will do. The actual contents of the ideologies matter little. IF they grow, they will "be destructive towards those who don't comply". Until they have a hugely comfortable position in the world, which seems to be that they control at least half of it, and christianity controlled about 70% of the planet in 1930, and did indeed become a peaceful ideology.
Just like successfull genes are "destructive" towards those with different genes. The very reason we die "of natural causes" is that we are killed by our own genes to give better chances to those with better DNA (ie : our, or someone else's children). (See : "Sex and the Origin of Death" by William R. Clark, for example : not all organisms can die of natural causes)
Do you believe in evolution ? How could you possibly expect anything else to happen ?
The only chance for world peace, if evolution theory indeed applies to "memes", is that one religion/ideology wins, with however many casualties that requires. And even that would be a temporary "fix" : eventually the winning ideology would diverge into multiple branches and restart the conflict. Just like you see in the "muslim world" : they're killing amongst themselves even more than they're killing jews. The only peaceful periods in muslim history are those when massive, successfull "jihads" were executed against their neighbours. Those only brought temporary internal stability, the longest of those peaceful periods lasted about 30 years.
The only reason that there is peace in America is the extremely homogenous ideology that is there. Of course, everybody seems to be trying to fight that homogenity. That "tolerance" (a misnomer if there ever was one) will not lead to peace, it will lead to war.
This of course means that as "atheism" (or any other ideology) grows, it will, inevitably, become violent. I daresay you're already seeing huge signs of that on the internet, and in universities (at least in mine).
If it indeed conquers the planet, violently, it may, after reaching a certain size, become peaceful again, as has happened with christianity. But that will not last. Not for any ideology.
Of course this also means that unless the massive inroads and challenges made to christianity stop before a certain amount of damage is done (that seems hugely unlikely), christianity will resume being a violent ideology, through natural selection : only violent christianity will grow. And soon it will take over the rest of christianity. Given how widespread it is, and how much technology it controls, I highly doubt anything will be able to challenge christianity the next time it tries to conquer the planet.
In 200 years there will be a huge christmas tree, imported at great cost from some exotic location, right in the middle of mecca. In the white house, the duma and shangai alike you will be fired for merely thinking about abortion. And there will be world peace, for a while.
The basic mechanism of evolution is conflict. Conflict by competing for resources (ie. letting the other starve) or direct conflict : killing eachother.
No there are not. Rocket defense systems, like they are installed on carrier groups for example, protect tiny areas against threats fired from a huge area, with an absolutely enormous area of "neutral ground" that can absorb any amount of battering (ie. the sea).
First imagine the path of a rocket that is intended to strike a ship in a carrier group : it is a very direct, ever so slightly curved path that goes over water. So what do rocket defense systems do at a base level : they simply slow down the rocket. The rocket still does a little bit less damage, but does it to the ocean surface, which can take any amount of battering.
Suppose a rocket in a freefall trajectory were to strike a carrier group. By the time the rocket is in range of the defensive systems it is "hanging" (falling, but not infinitely fast) right above the ship. Any bullet, rocket or whatever fired at such a rocket will ultimately hit the ship. So what do carrier groups do if someone tries this ? Simple : they move themselves.
Israel does not have a "sea" buffer zone between itself and hamas, devoid of life, devoid of humans. If they were to down hamas rockets directly over their launch site, they would fall on the schools, hospitals, etc were hamas fires them. Downing them a little bit further in their path and the downed rockets would fall on a palestinian city. A little bit further still and it falls on an Israeli city.
No matter how or where you down hamas' rockets : there will be victims, who have done nothing wrong other than being in the path of a randomly fired rocket.
Therefore the defense against terrorist rockets, fired from populated areas, must be the prevention of those rockets ever being fired in the first place. Once fired, once merely the fuse is lit, casualties cannot be avoided (though one can try to make the people firing them the victims. Of course in palestine, the director of one of the UN schools was firing rockets, straight from the edge of a playground, filled to the brim with children. If you "prevent that rocket from reaching its target", you will have killed a lot of children using your "high tech" system. Even if you're using a laser to detonate the rocket at a great distance, those children will be blased with shrapnel, that was intended to kill jews. Now given that their parents are very much aware of that school being used as a rocket launch site you could say ...
However the point I'm trying to make is simple : "High tech" is not some magic miracle that can solve any problem just like that.
And even if these considerations are solved, there is still the price. It costs about $12000 to down a single rocket. Which is a great defense against $200000 sidewinder rockets, but a horrible idea against $200 qassams.
*cough* http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2006-April/001057.html
Even though islam comes close with 1,2 billion dead, not a single religion has ever killed anywhere near the amount of death dealt out by the leaders of atheism. By the leaders of socialism. By "the will of the people". By "social justice".
Some billion people total were killed by atheists in the last 100 years. Several hundred million merely for their faith (confucianists in China for example) by these atheists. From Berlin to Hong Kong to East Timor millions have been killed by people looking to "eradicate" religion.
And islam comes close to atheist ideologies in deaths caused by religious persecution. But it took muslims a millenium to kill almost the amount of people the "socialist" atheists killed in less than 100 years.
Some ideologies are genuinly peaceful. And some are not. Amongst the peaceful ideologies you will find multiple religions and some atheists and amongst the massacres you will find religionists and the large mass of atheists.
So unfortunately this whole "it's god" is bullshit. Yes some gods like allah demand rivers of blood, but so does the "will of the people, free from god" as illustrated undeniably by recent history.
The problem is, quite simply, that some people feel themselves better than the rest. Feel themselves superior to others. And frankly, even though I consider myself atheist, there are plenty of atheists that I don't consider good company. Atheists are certainly not tolerant of christians in America and neither are the atheists of china tolerant of the remaining religious peoples there. Standing in the camp of atheists feels almost as dirty as defending hamas.
And what ... exactly ... is the alternative ? Here's the demand of hamas. Note that it's a repeat of an islamic "holy" text :
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
This is the constitution of hamas. The constitution every Gazan lives under. The constitution over 70% of Gazans have willingly accepted.
What, exactly, is your response to a statement like this, backed up with rockets ? Do tell what the alternative course of action is for israel.
And don't say "talking". They've been "talking" since 1948. Talking is something hamas only does when they're losing the war, and they never keep their promises. In fact since 1948 it's progressively gotten worse for Israel. Right now there are constant attacks on Israeli citizens. EVERY SINGLE DAY rockets rain down on sderot and other Israeli cities.
"Putting the parties down to talk it out" is dependant on there not being ANY group ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD that will not talk. If there is even one such group, no matter how small, that controls a state or even a city, the policy of "talking" is doomed. It can only work between civilized people. What do civilized people do ? First and foremost, they are true to their word.
Just because the overwhelming majority of Americans are reasonable people, true to their words, does not mean that every last human is reasonable. Just read the comments in this story made by muslims and my point will be amply supported.
Hamas does not keep to treaties. Nor does any other neighbour of Israel. The only muslim country that has EVER shown to keep to international treaties when under the slightest bit of pressure is Turkey, and that era in Turkey is coming to an end.
*And* FreeBSD easily beats linux in the networking speeds and firewalling departments. Of course they're lagging behind in hardware support.
Linux is becoming the new windows
Why don't you tell me under exactly what conditions christians live in Egypt ?
After all, it couldn't possibly be that agreement, since "everyone thinks it's a fraud", right ?
And yes, again, technically you're correct. Not "all" muslims believe in it. Only Sunni. That basically means everyone except Iran, which is technically not "all" of them, just > 95%.
Why don't you check whether you're right first, then start insulting people ? You know, you might actually learn something.
But of course like all progressives, you're bound to learn something you won't like at all.
You're extremely deluded to think that perhaps 50 million (neo)nazis are responsible for the crimes of perhaps 100.000 of them 50 years in the past.
So why do you discriminate against nazi's ? Why would you go against them just because they hate (and sometimes try to kill) gays ? That's just ... discrimination. You're not ready to support a nazi president ? That's racist !
Not every nazi, you know, feels the same way. Some don't want to kill ALL blacks. You're just a mean racist for discriminating against nazis just because they hate gays, blacks, and so on.
I hope you can see the sarcasm in this and the problem with your point of view.
I wonder if you'd apply the same standard to nazis. After all, the nazis of today aren't the ones that gassed Jews. The KKK members of today aren't the ones that hanged Blacks. One can fill this list.
I assume you're perfectly tolerant of these ideologies too. And just because they scream "we'll burn your houses down in the night", in no way makes any black person nervous.
We should be tolerant.
"kill all blacks" should sound in every night. "Gas the Jews" should be allowed to be blown out of loudspeakers over every neighbourhood. Nazi propaganda should be spread on television.
Preventing that, after all, would be racist against KKK members and Nazis. (and yes freedom of political opinion and spreading said opinion is part of the human rights).