The inevitable result would be more casualties, and market forces would only show up after the fact.
To say nothing of the difficulties in relying on market forces when consumers lack any clear way of judging the safety of a flight they are planning to buy a ticket on.
This is made even worse by most people's completely incompetence when judging danger. For example, travelling by train in Britain is MUCH safer than travelling by car, but whenever there is a railway accident hordes of idiots switch to cars because they think trains are dangerous. Yes, I do know about people preferring dangers they have a feeling of control over, but it only makes me think them even more idiotic.
If we ever relied on market forces to promote safety, it would merely lead to a lot of resources being spent on marketing (rather than achieving) safety, and even more misinformation being spread.
You are certain some Absolute Moral exists beyond genes and game theory, but can't give arguments or examples. You can't even make an good case about rape!!
Hold on, you want me to make a case for regarding rape a wrong? What sort of example do you want. I would say it is evident that rape is absolutely wrong, and those societies that condoned it were wrong to do so. That is an example.
But we both do, or are you active against e.g. this or Sudan?
You mean you think it morally acceptable? Failing to take action against something is different from advocating it - I suggest you use a dictionary when reading (that way you might learn to spell "moral" as well).
In a few decades, the obvious moral answer to what I'd guess a future morale is -- "What, not your country? What has that to do with anything?!" I'd guess that the next logical step is to take responsibility for more than your own country. Then they will argue that is the Absolute morale.
What is that supposed to mean?
My honest opinion is that you just don't have the mental tools to discuss the subject
That would make sense if your own argument was more coherent. You do not even seem to have noticed that your last comments contradicts your position in a previous one. I think you lack the mental tools to understand a simple argument - like many people with fixed ideas you interpret what people say as meaning what you think they ought to be saying.
The point of morale is that it is adjusted after the technical reality (population density etc gave very different cultures) -- perfect for a generalist species living in. That is why it is so fluid and change so much.
So why did you previously agree that it would be immoral to change human nature? By the time the technology arrives we our morals will have changed anyway - in fact I would say that it looks like we are seeing such a shift.
They didn't have the luxury to choose as much as we do
It would help if you read more carefully and understood my points, and stopped conflating my arguments with those of Lewis.
I have a new technical name for Absolute Morale arguments -- "nearsightedness"!
That would only be true if we claimed to be able to exactly lay out the absolute morality. Given that we (Lewis says so in one of his books, I agree) accept that we might be mistaken about particular points of morality (and,no doubt, are) the accusation fails.
Philosophers discuss and write papers about these kinds of problems in generations -- I am not surprised if someone from outside the field writing popular books don't impress even me
If you take that to its logical conclusion, you will end up ruling out reading popular books altogether. Even popular books by professionals in the field are often superficial (Freakonomics for example).
Lewis is certainly not as good in many respects as a professional philosopher or theologian (something he accepted), however he is a lot more readable and has a broader perspective (often the advantage of the amateur). This is, of course, beside the point in terms of proof or disproof.
You brought rape up as an example of something that was an obvious part of absolute morale while CS Lewis didn't even see it in his own society for some cases!!
Assuming that he knew about the law, and that he did not object to it, neither of which has been established. You do not appear to have read what I said. In any case this is irrelevant because he did not claim perfect knowledge of moral absolutes.
First, did CSL really limit the argument to modern societies like you do here
No he did not, quite the opposite. Where did I say so? I am pointing out an inconsistency in the arguments of moral relativists, not extending Lewis's argument. Please do not assume that I mean more than I say.
Societies that accept rape and war generally do that because it works better than if they don't.
So would you advocate rape if you a set of circumstances arose in which it worked better?
That is because they can afford better morals.
What do you mean by better?
Before the modern state, clan societies ruled. Read up on how they "worked" in the police department and you'll understand why war and other atrocities were natural for them.
That explains the the difference. However I would say that that makes modern society morally better than those societies in that respect (we are probably worse in others. Your position implies that both are equally valid, and there is no way of making a moral comparison and say one is better.
Morale has to work -- I have already argued that some morale is built into both genes and culture -- for game theoretical reasons. My point is that if you study morals, it is less universal than what you and CS Lewis seems to think. (-: To get dizzy, read up on random drift in Selfish Gene or some other evol book -- then consider cultures and morals.
I am aware of random drift, and I do not disagree that morals are partly genetic. My position is that there is a right and wrong that is more fundamental the genetic and cultural factors in our behaviour. This means it is meaningful to say that some things that our genes pre-dispose us to do are morally wrong - what Christians call original sin.
I might agree that it is reasonable thinking about "rules to build a good society"
To take us back to one of Lewis's points, what happens when we get the technology to engineer human nature. We will be able to make people pre-disposed to be happy, and filter out genes likely to make criminals, dissidents and misfits. Obviously it is the right thing to do, as it will make everyone happier, right?
That is because you are missing my point. My point is NOT that this somehow proves the universal absolute morality. My point is merely that there is a large gap between the morality and instinct - i.e. instinct is not the fundamental basis of morality. I understood you to be saying that if there is a shared morality, then it is based on genetics.
The rape issue was brought up by me, not CS Lewis, so it is a bit unfair to blame him for not trying to change it. In Britain hardly anyone even seemed to know about the exemption for marital rape until it hit the newspaper when a court ruling changed the law in 1991.
As for the acceptability of rape in some societies, I would say that those societies are simply wrong. This brings us to the nub of the issue. A moral relativist would say that it is right in the context of those societies.
I think very few people are moral relativists to the extent of agreeing that such actions are OK in any modern society, however culturally different. So where does their morality come from?
What Lewis does do is to make a connection between absolute morality and opposition to changing human nature.
I read The Selfish Gene twenty years ago and I cannot remember much of it. I was very put off Dawkins by the last thing of his I read, a very silly article in the New Scientist that summarised the argument he made in The Blind Watchmaker. That is not a reason to read a book as well regarded as the Selfish Gene, the fact that there is a lot of other stuff I want to read, some of it that I have already bought, means I am unlikely to read it any time soon.
The book does not claim to present a proof of God's existence - it argues for an absolute against a purely relative morality. This is a related, but separate argument - it is perfectly possible to believe in an absolute morality without believing in God.
My point was only that the writer of "Mere Assertions" was raising objections that had been answered in "The Abolition of Man".
From some fast skimming of the book and reviews, it fails to realize that the sum of morals has evolved genetically as well as culturally -- so its absolute moral is a slowly moving target
That is true if you think the absolute morality does have a primarily genetic base. I am not convinced. This is primarily because I believe in God, and therefore something beyond the natural universe. A secondary reason is the mismatch between what is generally regarded as moral and the best behaviour for survival. Many behaviours that are good at spreading your genes around (e.g. rape) are undoubtedly immoral, and many moral behaviours (like altruism taken to the extent suggested by the Christian idea of Agape, or the Buddhist vision of compassion) are not survival behaviours.
I can agree with that it would be really dangerous, immoral and illegal to mess with the basic design of emotions!
At least you agree with him (and me for that matter) about the danger, and the undesirability of this, if not with all the reasoning. He also puts his fears of what could happen into a fictional framework (a fantasy to boot) in "That Hideous Strength".
And another question -- as I understand, you claim that your belief in Oden is based on an intellectual argument and not hearing voices like Son of Sam
Oden?? Taking that to mean God, quite the opposite in fact, although I would dismiss an experience like hearing voices as a mere hallucination. I am talking about certain types of experience. Googling for "religious experience" found a lot of stuff, I am talking largely about what the wikipedia on the subject entry calls "numinous".
The point, when I wrote "let us trust a literary professor on science and mathematical models of morals", was that Lewis was not only light years outside his domain of expertise when he discussed human behaviour and morals in different cultures (anthropology and evolutionary biology) -- but that even most of the relevant research was done far after the book was written.
I know, I just sometimes cannot resist a smart-alec reply....
Incidentally, I came was convinced an essentially literary and psychological argument for accepting the Gospel of St John as the most accurate account of the life of Jesus in a book by a physicist (Russell Stannard).
The particular argument Lewis makes for absolute morality (at least in The Abolition of Man, which I am familiar with) is not really likely to be that affected by those advances. It rests on on the intrinsic contradition in moral relativism, the way in which arguments for any particular position develop, and similarities between moral teachings in different cultures, religions and times.
How does he answer the basic problem of theology -- why accept something for true without any reason?
Not without reason - see my other comments on this thread and below.
Consider that (a) there are innumerable theories
That used to bother me, but was one of the reasons I was an agnostic. I changed by mind for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the fact that there are numerous conflicting theories does not prove that they are all false - only that they cannot all be right.
and (b) a very small percentage of people brought up in a religion switches
It does show that some people are indoctrinated, however, it does not show that all are indoctrinated - many do "switch", often despite pressures not to. I think what it shows most strongly is that most people are not that interested in finding the truth per se. I do not think that this is only evident in matter of religion - consider how easily people accept junk science, political promises that are not credible etc.
and most I've seen haven't been that mentally stable
Not in my experience. I suspect you see a biased sample, because it is fairly extreme types that make the biggest fuss about conversion. Most people assume that my wife was "always" Christian because she does not talk about the conversion experience - she was brought up Buddhist. Of course my experience may be biased the other way by meeting people in mainstream churches that tend not to attract the nutters.
I remember that I wasn't impressed by his reasoning.
It was reasoning, even if flawed. He did not believe for no reason.
But maybe I should read C S Lewis
Certainly. Given you very un-Slashdot reasoned arguments, you are probably past the stage where you would learn the most from him (he most influenced me as a teenager), but he is still interesting. He is also interesting on some other topics - one of my favourites is a collection of essays, "Of This and Other Worlds", on everything from science fiction, to an attack on literary critics attempts to infer how and why books were written.
The evidence is that I have directly experienced God's presence. So have a lot of other people.
I do not believe it is a hallucination, because it is too different from normal life to be derived from other experiences or from the normal functioning of the brain. Also, the majority of people who report such experiences are otherwise perfectly sane. We are drawn from a huge range of cultures, religious backgrounds, social and personal circumstances and historical periods, which also argues against it being a delusion (of the kind suffered by "UFO abductees" for example).
On the other hand I am beginning to wonder is Slashdot is a hallucination - it is certainly weird enough.
I do think that people who do not have a real reason for belief can only honestly be agnostic (or perhaps atheist). I used to be agnostic myself.
Oh yeah, let us trust a literary professor on science and mathematical models of morals which were invented far after he wrote the book!:-)
Well, we Christians, prefer evidence and logic, and leave appeals to authority to you athiests;-). Judge the arguments not the man.
The Mere Assertions article is grossly unfair. Lewis uses analogies - but to illuminate, not to blur. His argument about a moral law is made at greater length in another book which implicitly answers these criticisms. Moral law is NOT Lewis's reason for belief or faith. The other thing is that Mere Christianity cover a lot of ground, and a lot of things in it are discussed in more detail elsewhere by Lewis (in "The Abolition of Man" in the case of absolute vs relative morality) or by other writers.
Finally, I am fan of CS Lewis, and I was one even when I was an agnostic, because his books taught me to the value of intellectual honesty, in particular the importance of accepting the conclusion of a logical argument even if it is not what you want to believe.
And if you want to e.g. argue that war has always been seen as "necessary evil" and not a standard way of doing "business", then read up on clan societies and the old Asa (Norse, for English speaking) religion with holmgång and heaven only for those dead in battle!
CS Lewis was very fond of Norse mythology, as was his friend JRR Tolkien. If you read his books he even makes many references to it. I think he would anwer you by pointing out that this is not a complete departure from the natural law, most people would accept that people can do heroic and admirable things in war. This is an exaggeration of one aspect (courage) that neglects other aspects (not harming others).
Are you sure you are not confusing "Mere Christianity", with "The Abolition of Man". I am not sure if the argument is in the former, but it is certainly presented very well in the latter.
He also does not argue that it is a reason for believing in Christianity, he argues for absolute morality against moral relativism - his basic point is that moral relativism always relies on some part of the innate morality, it connot work by itself.
Like most arguments I hear from MacOS advocates, these are all advantage of not using Windows - I get them with a decent desktop Linux. Dependency hell is a thing of the past for me (its been a while since apt-get failed to resolve dependencies automatically for me), and install/uninstall in a nice GUI in Synpatic also seems to me to be as good as trashing the program icon.
This is the most honest and insightful comment on this story so far. I was not going to bother with yet another pointless Slashdot discussion on religion but you changed my mind.
You can never prove or disprove anything by explaining why people want to believe it - otherwise you just get pointless name calling: "you only say that because you are a Christian/Buddhist/communist/capitalist/liberal/co nservative". You are completely correct that this evidence does not get us anywhere.
Now, from the point of view of someone who is a Christian, I would say that for most people being an agnostic is the most rational belief on the available evidence. Without having personal experience of God (i.e. direct revelation), all you can know is:
1) Lots of perfectly rational people claim to have experienced God's presence. The phenomenon covers a huge range of cultures, historical periods, etc. Lots of "eyewitnesses" is evidence for. 2) On the other hand, people interpret the experience differently (different religions) and it is very hard to be convinced by evidence that you apparently cannot see for yourself.
I think that God shows himself to people when they need it. I remember an article by an agnostic journalist in Catholic magazine. He was sympathetic and would have liked to believe but he did not. He is probably progressing towards God as well as many of us who do believe.
Belief might actually make things harder for some people, by making choices between God and the world too stark. I use the phrase "the world" in the traditional Christian moralists sense of the pressures by society to do things that clash with what God wants us to do. In the modern world this primarily means the greed induced by consumer capitalism.
I sometimes wonder if those guys are the majority of the IT employees in the United Stats. Guys that use the company's money to hire other people to do their jobs. The only reason they get away with it is because their boss is even MORE clueless about how IT should work.
Why only in the US? It is global!
I have certainly seen a lot clueless IT people, at all levels, in Britain.
Yes, I make a point of trying the other search engines occaisionaly. So far:
1) All three usually produce similar results 2) When there is a significant difference, Google usually produces the best results 3) Yahoo sometimes produces the best results 4) MSN search rarely produces the best results.
Yahoo did at one time have a beta of a search with a slider that could be used to tilt the search towards e-commerce or information sites. If they had kept that available, I would probably use Yahoo as my primary search engine.
No, it proves that open source is a good business model that is becoming widely accepted.
Incidentally, why is this supposed to be news - I thought that any one who knew anything about open source knew this, and that only stupid journalists get it wrong
Well the percentages may be because of the strong wording - "not at all" and "no sympathy" - may be a lot of the rest felt there was "little justification/insufficient justification" and had "little sympathy".
Except that you don't get to define what open source means. The Open Source Initiative has that luxury. IIRC, they went to great lengths to differentiate Open Source and Free Software as two distinct entities. Open Source means you get the code and nothing more. No guarantee that you can redistribute
Completely and utterly wrong - and you still get modded +5 insightful!
Read the introduction to the Open Source Initiative's definition of open source - it says "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code"
Then read the first clause. See the title "Free Redistribution"? Guess what that means. While you are about it take a look at clause 3 "Derived Works".
I also did not like Gnome hat much - and I agree that mounting remote servers does not work very well.
So I just opened Synaptic (one of the Ubuntu prgrams that Kubuntu users should install, btw) and installed kubuntu-desktop. No problems with that.
Gnome is very easy to use for everyday things - the difference is exemplifed by the difference between K3B and the Nautilus CD burner. Both work well, but whereas the former gives you every possible option, the latter is simpler and relies on sensible defaults.
Of course what happens when someone who wants something like K3B uses Gnome, they end up installing a less well supported Gtk CD burner and unhappy.
1. A group of people no one has ever heard of releases a press release, that has a sort-of point (patents need to know about games consoles' capabilities) 2. Some web site picks it up and hypes it a bit more, smears the group responsible a bit. 3. Slashdot picks up the story, and produces a nice flamebait summary. 4. Profit!
we the minority are putting the christian majority down
I have never lived in a Christian majority country, and both the countries I have lived it to some extent a disadvantage to be a Christian.
Non-religious people never have to take crap from overly religious fundamentalists
This is irrelevant UNLESS you are equating religious with fundamentalist - which would prove my point. As a matter of fact, the rest of your post assumes that Christians as all fundamentalists - in other words you are a bigot.
I simply find bigots obnoxious, as I do fundamentalists of ANY religion (or even none). Thanks for proving my point.
You are an agnostic, and therefore open to the possibility that there is a God - but you do not care about the beliefs of the religious - even though you think they may turn out to be right.
But when you start trying to force your beliefs down my throat
How am I doing that? I am definitely opposed to teaching creationism in schools and would not allow my daughter to go to a school that did. I would also object to ID being taught in science classes, and even if it was taught in a religion class, I would only be happy if the objectiosn to it (both scientific and theological) were also taught - i.e. I think its OK for children to be taught that some people are convinced by the rather weak and very non-mainstream argument.
Slashdot Mirror
This is made even worse by most people's completely incompetence when judging danger. For example, travelling by train in Britain is MUCH safer than travelling by car, but whenever there is a railway accident hordes of idiots switch to cars because they think trains are dangerous. Yes, I do know about people preferring dangers they have a feeling of control over, but it only makes me think them even more idiotic.
If we ever relied on market forces to promote safety, it would merely lead to a lot of resources being spent on marketing (rather than achieving) safety, and even more misinformation being spread.
That would only be true if we claimed to be able to exactly lay out the absolute morality. Given that we (Lewis says so in one of his books, I agree) accept that we might be mistaken about particular points of morality (and,no doubt, are) the accusation fails.
If you take that to its logical conclusion, you will end up ruling out reading popular books altogether. Even popular books by professionals in the field are often superficial (Freakonomics for example).
Lewis is certainly not as good in many respects as a professional philosopher or theologian (something he accepted), however he is a lot more readable and has a broader perspective (often the advantage of the amateur). This is, of course, beside the point in terms of proof or disproof.
Assuming that he knew about the law, and that he did not object to it, neither of which has been established. You do not appear to have read what I said. In any case this is irrelevant because he did not claim perfect knowledge of moral absolutes.
No he did not, quite the opposite. Where did I say so? I am pointing out an inconsistency in the arguments of moral relativists, not extending Lewis's argument. Please do not assume that I mean more than I say.
So would you advocate rape if you a set of circumstances arose in which it worked better?
What do you mean by better?
That explains the the difference. However I would say that that makes modern society morally better than those societies in that respect (we are probably worse in others. Your position implies that both are equally valid, and there is no way of making a moral comparison and say one is better.
I am aware of random drift, and I do not disagree that morals are partly genetic. My position is that there is a right and wrong that is more fundamental the genetic and cultural factors in our behaviour. This means it is meaningful to say that some things that our genes pre-dispose us to do are morally wrong - what Christians call original sin.
To take us back to one of Lewis's points, what happens when we get the technology to engineer human nature. We will be able to make people pre-disposed to be happy, and filter out genes likely to make criminals, dissidents and misfits. Obviously it is the right thing to do, as it will make everyone happier, right?
The rape issue was brought up by me, not CS Lewis, so it is a bit unfair to blame him for not trying to change it. In Britain hardly anyone even seemed to know about the exemption for marital rape until it hit the newspaper when a court ruling changed the law in 1991.
As for the acceptability of rape in some societies, I would say that those societies are simply wrong. This brings us to the nub of the issue. A moral relativist would say that it is right in the context of those societies.
I think very few people are moral relativists to the extent of agreeing that such actions are OK in any modern society, however culturally different. So where does their morality come from?
What Lewis does do is to make a connection between absolute morality and opposition to changing human nature.
I read The Selfish Gene twenty years ago and I cannot remember much of it. I was very put off Dawkins by the last thing of his I read, a very silly article in the New Scientist that summarised the argument he made in The Blind Watchmaker. That is not a reason to read a book as well regarded as the Selfish Gene, the fact that there is a lot of other stuff I want to read, some of it that I have already bought, means I am unlikely to read it any time soon.
The book does not claim to present a proof of God's existence - it argues for an absolute against a purely relative morality. This is a related, but separate argument - it is perfectly possible to believe in an absolute morality without believing in God.
My point was only that the writer of "Mere Assertions" was raising objections that had been answered in "The Abolition of Man".
That is true if you think the absolute morality does have a primarily genetic base. I am not convinced. This is primarily because I believe in God, and therefore something beyond the natural universe. A secondary reason is the mismatch between what is generally regarded as moral and the best behaviour for survival. Many behaviours that are good at spreading your genes around (e.g. rape) are undoubtedly immoral, and many moral behaviours (like altruism taken to the extent suggested by the Christian idea of Agape, or the Buddhist vision of compassion) are not survival behaviours.
At least you agree with him (and me for that matter) about the danger, and the undesirability of this, if not with all the reasoning. He also puts his fears of what could happen into a fictional framework (a fantasy to boot) in "That Hideous Strength".
Oden?? Taking that to mean God, quite the opposite in fact, although I would dismiss an experience like hearing voices as a mere hallucination. I am talking about certain types of experience. Googling for "religious experience" found a lot of stuff, I am talking largely about what the wikipedia on the subject entry calls "numinous".I know, I just sometimes cannot resist a smart-alec reply....
Incidentally, I came was convinced an essentially literary and psychological argument for accepting the Gospel of St John as the most accurate account of the life of Jesus in a book by a physicist (Russell Stannard).
The particular argument Lewis makes for absolute morality (at least in The Abolition of Man, which I am familiar with) is not really likely to be that affected by those advances. It rests on on the intrinsic contradition in moral relativism, the way in which arguments for any particular position develop, and similarities between moral teachings in different cultures, religions and times.
Not without reason - see my other comments on this thread and below.
That used to bother me, but was one of the reasons I was an agnostic. I changed by mind for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the fact that there are numerous conflicting theories does not prove that they are all false - only that they cannot all be right.
It does show that some people are indoctrinated, however, it does not show that all are indoctrinated - many do "switch", often despite pressures not to. I think what it shows most strongly is that most people are not that interested in finding the truth per se. I do not think that this is only evident in matter of religion - consider how easily people accept junk science, political promises that are not credible etc.
Not in my experience. I suspect you see a biased sample, because it is fairly extreme types that make the biggest fuss about conversion. Most people assume that my wife was "always" Christian because she does not talk about the conversion experience - she was brought up Buddhist. Of course my experience may be biased the other way by meeting people in mainstream churches that tend not to attract the nutters.
It was reasoning, even if flawed. He did not believe for no reason.
Certainly. Given you very un-Slashdot reasoned arguments, you are probably past the stage where you would learn the most from him (he most influenced me as a teenager), but he is still interesting. He is also interesting on some other topics - one of my favourites is a collection of essays, "Of This and Other Worlds", on everything from science fiction, to an attack on literary critics attempts to infer how and why books were written.They are different: it is literally illegal if I do something, but only figuratively illegal if the government does.
The evidence is that I have directly experienced God's presence. So have a lot of other people.
I do not believe it is a hallucination, because it is too different from normal life to be derived from other experiences or from the normal functioning of the brain. Also, the majority of people who report such experiences are otherwise perfectly sane. We are drawn from a huge range of cultures, religious backgrounds, social and personal circumstances and historical periods, which also argues against it being a delusion (of the kind suffered by "UFO abductees" for example).
On the other hand I am beginning to wonder is Slashdot is a hallucination - it is certainly weird enough.
I do think that people who do not have a real reason for belief can only honestly be agnostic (or perhaps atheist). I used to be agnostic myself.
Well, we Christians, prefer evidence and logic, and leave appeals to authority to you athiests ;-). Judge the arguments not the man.
The Mere Assertions article is grossly unfair. Lewis uses analogies - but to illuminate, not to blur. His argument about a moral law is made at greater length in another book which implicitly answers these criticisms. Moral law is NOT Lewis's reason for belief or faith. The other thing is that Mere Christianity cover a lot of ground, and a lot of things in it are discussed in more detail elsewhere by Lewis (in "The Abolition of Man" in the case of absolute vs relative morality) or by other writers.
Finally, I am fan of CS Lewis, and I was one even when I was an agnostic, because his books taught me to the value of intellectual honesty, in particular the importance of accepting the conclusion of a logical argument even if it is not what you want to believe.
CS Lewis was very fond of Norse mythology, as was his friend JRR Tolkien. If you read his books he even makes many references to it. I think he would anwer you by pointing out that this is not a complete departure from the natural law, most people would accept that people can do heroic and admirable things in war. This is an exaggeration of one aspect (courage) that neglects other aspects (not harming others).Are you sure you are not confusing "Mere Christianity", with "The Abolition of Man". I am not sure if the argument is in the former, but it is certainly presented very well in the latter.
He also does not argue that it is a reason for believing in Christianity, he argues for absolute morality against moral relativism - his basic point is that moral relativism always relies on some part of the innate morality, it connot work by itself.
Conservapedia have done it, they have beaten wikipedia!
Yes, Wikipedia are no-longer the least authoritative source of information on the internet.
Like most arguments I hear from MacOS advocates, these are all advantage of not using Windows - I get them with a decent desktop Linux. Dependency hell is a thing of the past for me (its been a while since apt-get failed to resolve dependencies automatically for me), and install/uninstall in a nice GUI in Synpatic also seems to me to be as good as trashing the program icon.
This is the most honest and insightful comment on this story so far. I was not going to bother with yet another pointless Slashdot discussion on religion but you changed my mind.
o nservative". You are completely correct that this evidence does not get us anywhere.
You can never prove or disprove anything by explaining why people want to believe it - otherwise you just get pointless name calling: "you only say that because you are a Christian/Buddhist/communist/capitalist/liberal/c
Now, from the point of view of someone who is a Christian, I would say that for most people being an agnostic is the most rational belief on the available evidence. Without having personal experience of God (i.e. direct revelation), all you can know is:
1) Lots of perfectly rational people claim to have experienced God's presence. The phenomenon covers a huge range of cultures, historical periods, etc. Lots of "eyewitnesses" is evidence for.
2) On the other hand, people interpret the experience differently (different religions) and it is very hard to be convinced by evidence that you apparently cannot see for yourself.
I think that God shows himself to people when they need it. I remember an article by an agnostic journalist in Catholic magazine. He was sympathetic and would have liked to believe but he did not. He is probably progressing towards God as well as many of us who do believe.
Belief might actually make things harder for some people, by making choices between God and the world too stark. I use the phrase "the world" in the traditional Christian moralists sense of the pressures by society to do things that clash with what God wants us to do. In the modern world this primarily means the greed induced by consumer capitalism.
In that case they should not be using the second website to verify online prices!
Why only in the US? It is global!
I have certainly seen a lot clueless IT people, at all levels, in Britain.
Yes, I make a point of trying the other search engines occaisionaly. So far:
1) All three usually produce similar results
2) When there is a significant difference, Google usually produces the best results
3) Yahoo sometimes produces the best results
4) MSN search rarely produces the best results.
Yahoo did at one time have a beta of a search with a slider that could be used to tilt the search towards e-commerce or information sites. If they had kept that available, I would probably use Yahoo as my primary search engine.
Incidentally, why is this supposed to be news - I thought that any one who knew anything about open source knew this, and that only stupid journalists get it wrong
Well the percentages may be because of the strong wording - "not at all" and "no sympathy" - may be a lot of the rest felt there was "little justification/insufficient justification" and had "little sympathy".
Completely and utterly wrong - and you still get modded +5 insightful!
Read the introduction to the Open Source Initiative's definition of open source - it says "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code"
Then read the first clause. See the title "Free Redistribution"? Guess what that means. While you are about it take a look at clause 3 "Derived Works".
I also moved from Mandriva to Ubuntu.
I also did not like Gnome hat much - and I agree that mounting remote servers does not work very well.
So I just opened Synaptic (one of the Ubuntu prgrams that Kubuntu users should install, btw) and installed kubuntu-desktop. No problems with that.
Gnome is very easy to use for everyday things - the difference is exemplifed by the difference between K3B and the Nautilus CD burner. Both work well, but whereas the former gives you every possible option, the latter is simpler and relies on sensible defaults.
Of course what happens when someone who wants something like K3B uses Gnome, they end up installing a less well supported Gtk CD burner and unhappy.
http://popey.com/The_Truth_About_Switching
I would love to buy one - but they are only available in the US.
On the other hand Dell sells everywhere.
1. A group of people no one has ever heard of releases a press release, that has a sort-of point (patents need to know about games consoles' capabilities)
2. Some web site picks it up and hypes it a bit more, smears the group responsible a bit.
3. Slashdot picks up the story, and produces a nice flamebait summary.
4. Profit!
Note, no missing step: hype + flamebait = page impressions = profit
I have never lived in a Christian majority country, and both the countries I have lived it to some extent a disadvantage to be a Christian.
This is irrelevant UNLESS you are equating religious with fundamentalist - which would prove my point. As a matter of fact, the rest of your post assumes that Christians as all fundamentalists - in other words you are a bigot.
I simply find bigots obnoxious, as I do fundamentalists of ANY religion (or even none). Thanks for proving my point.
Good, I think God intends most people to be agnostics (at least in this life), and that it is the most reasonable position for most people.
You are an agnostic, and therefore open to the possibility that there is a God - but you do not care about the beliefs of the religious - even though you think they may turn out to be right.
How am I doing that? I am definitely opposed to teaching creationism in schools and would not allow my daughter to go to a school that did. I would also object to ID being taught in science classes, and even if it was taught in a religion class, I would only be happy if the objectiosn to it (both scientific and theological) were also taught - i.e. I think its OK for children to be taught that some people are convinced by the rather weak and very non-mainstream argument.
I misunderstood you - there are plenTy of atheists like that (see other comments)