The religious argument is quite appropriate here in light of the worldview conflict. Dostoevsky said it best: "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable."
Untrue. If that were true, then I, as someone who does not believe in God, would be willing to do anything to anyone. This is not true, not because of God, but because that I care about other people as human beings. I don't have the threat of eternal punishment held to my head when I decide not to kill that person, or not to rob my neighbor. I decide not to do that because I care about people.
It doesn't take God, it just takes Empathy.
If it pleases me to say, kill Peter Singer because I disagree with him, and there is no God, no objective right and wrong, why shouldn't I do it?
Because killing him is totally out of proportion to his "crime", which is a difference in ethics or opinion. How do we judge what is out of proportion, in a world without God? By measuring the impact someone has on humanity. The child's phrase "Sticks and stones..." is remarkably non-theist.
On the issue of America losing its freedom because Singer feels threatened: America is a free country, and Singer is free to speak in marked and unguarded classrooms. He has chosen instead to act as a coward. Those that proclaim truth seldom do so with cowardice, those that believe it never do.
This is remarkable... A man's life is threatened for expressing an opinion, and he is the coward?
Katz further falls victim to the idea that all ideas are created equal. They are not. Singer's ideas devalue humanity and are not equal in value to say, Mother Theresa's.
Incorrect, I would say that Singer's ideas on mercy have more value than Mother Teresa's ideas on keeping birth control out of the hands of poor, third-world women at all cost.
The press, society, and yes, even discussion groups are working properly when they supress the propagation of ideas and values that are evil or harmful.
And how, as a society, are we to properly judge "harmful" and "evil" without discussion? At one time, freeing slaves was seen as "harmful"; were it not for people bringing this value out for open discussion, we would undoubtedly continue to think of it as "harmful" and slavery as "harmless."
A quick check with m-w.com shows a definition of murder as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought".
Then Singer's ideas certainly do not fit this definition, because he does not sanction anyone doing this "unlawfully." Rather, he would have the law changed to give parents the option of euthanizing such stricken children.
I think most would go further and say that a component of murder would be that the person killed (and it must be a person, despite what Singer says) is not maliciously endangering the life of the person doing the killing - thus the "self-defense" exception.
Then an abortion is most assuredly murder, even when the life of the mother is at stake. After all, the fetus is not "maliciously" endangering the mother's life.
Disabled infants or inconvenient elders (remember, you may be one some day, especially if you haven't taught your children the value of life) may indeed cause extreme hardship and inconvenience, but there is certainly no malice in their hearts driving their condition, and so killing them would, by any reasonable standard, be murder.
Ah, the straw man argument of "inconvenient elderly." As if poor, robust 60-year-olds were being prepped for the oven. As the daughter of two elderly parents who strongly support euthanasia, I find that argument particularly offensive. It's like telling them, "You have control over the manner of your life, but when it comes to a point where you are in so much pain that you wish to choose the manner of your death, you cannot be trusted with a choice in the matter."
All ideas are clearly NOT equal. If we begin to treat them as if they are, we will make some very bad choices indeed. Some ideas are worthy of a serious discussion. Peter Singer's are not that kind.
That's your opinion. I beg to differ.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." -- On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
Yeesh, people can claim to be anything that they want. Don't take it at face value. KKK members are not christians because they do not follow the precepts taught by Christ. In order to be a CHRISTian you must follow the teachings of CHRIST.
What about the teachings of St. Paul? Or St. Peter? What about the teachings of the Old Testament? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live...
Fact is, even Christians can't agree on who is or isn't Christian. Pat Robertson doesn't believe Methodists are Christian, but you can damn well bet that they do. So what chance do non-Christians have of being able to tell?
Linux is highly reliable, but ext2 is fragile as hell. The last time I complained about this, someone said, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, I just used [some disk utility] and restored the 16th copy of the superblock and all was well. You must be a moron."
Wow, that is pretty bad. I would never say that, I would probably just say, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, because any machine that I've got important stuff on, I stick on a UPS. You must be a moron."
Well, I wouldn't say the last part, but I was trying to keep the point consistent.
Oh, please Mr. Government, take my tax money and spend it on yet another pseudo-DARE campaign. After all, you know how great it's been so far in keeping kids from using drugs...
And since when is spam the "modern-day equivalent of prank telephone calls"? I'm sorry, the internet community is currently using that word, please don't redefine it.
As for the mascot, maybe they can get Sexual Harrassment Panda (excuse me, Don't-Sue-People Panda) to become No Hacking Panda, and sing about the evils of hacking to all the good little boys and girls.
I, personally, am reasonably bitter towards the US in this. Whilst you were having grief with your CDA, people -all around the world- were turning their pages black, and protesting quite vocally
All of which, while quite nice, really meant squat in the legal arena. The CDA was defeated because the US has constitutionally protected certain forms of speech, and because we have groups (such as the ACLU, EFF, and ALA) who will fight to defend that speech. It may seem like a never-ending fight at times, but we have legal and constitutional recourse.
Fact is, some people in the US have been and are now supporting the Australians (those who care, anyway) in their fight against net censorship. Your bitterness serves you poorly, and only alienates potential allies.
Our company just switched to Linux servers, away from NT. NT was excessively difficult to remotely administer and install, and we found it to be very cumbersome, with very high overhead. Linux has so far been an absolute dream to remotely administer, and our server implementations have yet to crash or even require a reboot. Now that we have all our configuration files completed, installation is very fast and simple, leaving more time for testing any new changes. I apologize if this sounds bad, but it is a very bad business decision to change your platform based on a single benchmark. NT is more costly, both in cost and administration. My company's experience with it has been very poor. If you're having trouble convincing your clients of this, just point them at the Kirsch Paper. It worked for us.
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The religious argument is quite appropriate here in light of the worldview conflict. Dostoevsky said it best: "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable."
Untrue. If that were true, then I, as someone who does not believe in God, would be willing to do anything to anyone. This is not true, not because of God, but because that I care about other people as human beings. I don't have the threat of eternal punishment held to my head when I decide not to kill that person, or not to rob my neighbor. I decide not to do that because I care about people.
It doesn't take God, it just takes Empathy.
If it pleases me to say, kill Peter Singer because I disagree with him, and there is no God, no objective right and wrong, why shouldn't I do it?
Because killing him is totally out of proportion to his "crime", which is a difference in ethics or opinion. How do we judge what is out of proportion, in a world without God? By measuring the impact someone has on humanity. The child's phrase "Sticks and stones..." is remarkably non-theist.
On the issue of America losing its freedom because Singer feels threatened: America is a free country, and Singer is free to speak in marked and unguarded classrooms. He has chosen instead to act as a coward. Those that proclaim truth seldom do so with cowardice, those that believe it never do.
This is remarkable... A man's life is threatened for expressing an opinion, and he is the coward?
Katz further falls victim to the idea that all ideas are created equal. They are not. Singer's ideas devalue humanity and are not equal in value to say, Mother Theresa's.
Incorrect, I would say that Singer's ideas on mercy have more value than Mother Teresa's ideas on keeping birth control out of the hands of poor, third-world women at all cost.
The press, society, and yes, even discussion groups are working properly when they supress the propagation of ideas and values that are evil or
harmful.
And how, as a society, are we to properly judge "harmful" and "evil" without discussion? At one time, freeing slaves was seen as "harmful"; were it not for people bringing this value out for open discussion, we would undoubtedly continue to think of it as "harmful" and slavery as "harmless."
A quick check with m-w.com shows a definition of murder as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought".
Then Singer's ideas certainly do not fit this definition, because he does not sanction anyone doing this "unlawfully." Rather, he would have the law changed to give parents the option of euthanizing such stricken children.
I think most would go further and say that a component of murder would be that the person killed (and it must be a person, despite what Singer says) is not maliciously endangering the life of the person doing the killing - thus the "self-defense" exception.
Then an abortion is most assuredly murder, even when the life of the mother is at stake. After all, the fetus is not "maliciously" endangering the mother's life.
Disabled infants or inconvenient elders (remember, you may be one some day, especially if you haven't taught your children the value of life) may indeed cause extreme hardship and inconvenience, but there is certainly no malice in their hearts driving their condition, and so killing them would, by any reasonable standard, be murder.
Ah, the straw man argument of "inconvenient elderly." As if poor, robust 60-year-olds were being prepped for the oven. As the daughter of two elderly parents who strongly support euthanasia, I find that argument particularly offensive. It's like telling them, "You have control over the manner of your life, but when it comes to a point where you are in so much pain that you wish to choose the manner of your death, you cannot be trusted with a choice in the matter."
All ideas are clearly NOT equal. If we begin to treat them as if they are, we will make some very bad choices indeed. Some ideas are worthy of a serious discussion. Peter Singer's are not that kind.
That's your opinion. I beg to differ.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." -- On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
Yeesh, people can claim to be anything that they want. Don't take it at face value. KKK members are not christians because they do not follow the precepts taught by Christ. In order to be a CHRISTian you must follow the teachings of CHRIST.
What about the teachings of St. Paul? Or St. Peter? What about the teachings of the Old Testament? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live...
Fact is, even Christians can't agree on who is or isn't Christian. Pat Robertson doesn't believe Methodists are Christian, but you can damn well bet that they do. So what chance do non-Christians have of being able to tell?
I've never seen a group of WMCs become violent,
anywhere.
I have; I've seen a group of WMCs and WFCs protesting a peaceful meeting of Pagans, and throwing rocks at the Pagans and their small children.
Not to say that Christians are more likely, on average, to be violent, just that they aren't all "saints" by any stretch of the imagination.
Linux is highly reliable, but ext2 is fragile as hell. The last time I complained about this, someone said, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, I just used [some disk utility] and restored the 16th copy of the superblock and all was well. You must be a moron."
Wow, that is pretty bad. I would never say that, I would probably just say, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, because any machine that I've got important stuff on, I stick on a UPS. You must be a moron."
Well, I wouldn't say the last part, but I was trying to keep the point consistent.
Oh, please Mr. Government, take my tax money and spend it on yet another pseudo-DARE campaign. After all, you know how great it's been so far in keeping kids from using drugs...
And since when is spam the "modern-day equivalent of prank telephone calls"? I'm sorry, the internet community is currently using that word, please don't redefine it.
As for the mascot, maybe they can get Sexual Harrassment Panda (excuse me, Don't-Sue-People Panda) to become No Hacking Panda, and sing about the evils of hacking to all the good little boys and girls.
Whether you agreed with him or not, the man knew his stuff and was Unix to the bone.
:)
Maybe in tribute, we can all pour a Jolt (or caffeinated beverage of choice) on the sidewalk in his honor.
I, personally, am reasonably bitter towards the US in this. Whilst you were having grief with your CDA, people -all around the world- were turning their pages black, and protesting quite vocally
All of which, while quite nice, really meant squat in the legal arena. The CDA was defeated because the US has constitutionally protected certain forms of speech, and because we have groups (such as the ACLU, EFF, and ALA) who will fight to defend that speech. It may seem like a never-ending fight at times, but we have legal and constitutional recourse.
Fact is, some people in the US have been and are now supporting the Australians (those who care, anyway) in their fight against net censorship. Your bitterness serves you poorly, and only alienates potential allies.
Of course Senator Palpatine == Emperor Palpatine == Darth Sidious. Just check out his entry at starwars.com.
Our company just switched to Linux servers, away from NT. NT was excessively difficult to remotely administer and install, and we found it to be very cumbersome, with very high overhead. Linux has so far been an absolute dream to remotely administer, and our server implementations have yet to crash or even require a reboot. Now that we have all our configuration files completed, installation is very fast and simple, leaving more time for testing any new changes.
I apologize if this sounds bad, but it is a very bad business decision to change your platform based on a single benchmark. NT is more costly, both in cost and administration. My company's experience with it has been very poor.
If you're having trouble convincing your clients of this, just point them at the Kirsch Paper. It worked for us.