I've responded to this in my journal because it is so far off topic here.:) You're welcome (and encouraged) to keep up the discussion there, or by email at [my first name]@starvale.net.
Before our universe exsisted you have two possibilities, a, there was something before it or b there was nothing. Which one you choose isn't terribly relevant though, because in anycase it wasn't our universe. This is important because only a certain subset of possible universes would not allow the creation of matter from nothing, the same would go for a start from nothing. I could argue this point very long, but then I'd suggest going to some IRC channel or so for this. If so I'm open to suggestion where.
Interesting viewpoint you have here. I'd respond, but I think you're right--other avenues are more appropriate for this discussion than here. I've never done IRC; but if you'd like to pursue this discussion, feel free to email me at [my first name]@starvale.net. Or maybe I ought to figure out the "journal" feature on my user account (never used that, either) and talk about stuff like this there.:)
Thanks for your detailed reply! I am enjoying this debate, even if it is offtopic.:) I'll attempt to do your reply justice here...
One doesn't need to believe in God in order to have a belief that some actions are objectively good and some are objectively evil. For example, my moral beliefs are a (probably not entirely consistent) mish-mash of "The Golden Rule" (which Jesus espoused but did not invent), evolution, extreme skepticism, and game theory. God never enters into it.
Where did "The Golden Rule" come from?
...Therefore, if I value my own needs and feelings, I should value those of others.
Well, there's a definition of relativism. If I say that murder is good and that I need to murder in order to achieve self actualization, then according to your viewpoint you msut value my needs and feelings.
Inflicting pain on others is therefore bad, and bringing joy to others is therefore good. Thus, it seems clear to me that the Golden Rule can be part of an "objective" morality.
We agree that the Golden Rule is a part, or guideline, of objective morality. We disagree when it comes to where that rule itself comes from. You do not address where the Golden Rule comes from, because it comes from the standards of morality set forth by God.
...there is an undeniable baseline morality which every society adheres to....The fact that these rules exist everywhere, along with the evolutionary principle that these sort of rules tend to persist when they provide competitive advantages to the society as a whole, would indicate that these universals are a serviceable basis for an objective morality.
You were going strong up until the "serviceable basis" part. You have made an excellent argument for my view that absolute standards exist and are set in place by God. Standards don't just happen to come along by themselves! We seem to entirely agree that an objective morality exists. Suppose we were debating in person--we'd both be standing on the same ground. We agree that we're both standing, but you're trying to say that the ground doesn't exist. You understand the result, which is objective morality. But you do not understand the means by which those results were achieved.
You're arguing that morality is set by what is good for society as a whole. Or, in your words, "competitive advantages to the society as a whole." Competing against what? What are these competitive advantages? Wouldn't these "competitive advantages" change in a changing environment? If so, we're back to relativism. On the other hand, it might be better for society as a whole to control who is allowed to reproduce based on their genetic makeup. Is that then morally right?
Extreme skepticism: Any action based on a faulty understanding of the world around me can have serious and negative consequences. Therefore, believing something just because it's comforting to do so is immoral.
I agree that believing something just because it's comforting to do so is wrong. That does not mean your beliefs cannot comfort you. I believe that God sovereignly chooses to save whom He will, and he chooses to damn whom He will, and I believe that because that is what He tells us in His holy Word. He is ultimately sovereign. This greatly comforts me. It strikes many others as a very uncomfortable view, but I will hold to it, because it is what God has revealed in the Bible.
Every belief must be provisional, and following this principle gives me the ability to adapt myself to new knowledge.
So you can never be sure of anything. In your world, there cannot be any such thing as an absolute truth, because as you say, every belief must be provisional. You have no anchor, because who knows? Things might change tomorrow.
Game theory: Decisions which might seem advantageous in the short run may lead to non-optimal outcomes in the long run. Further, the advantages
Well you're certaintly making some logical fallacies in your statements here. The first is, that even by stating that god is eternal, you refrain to explaining why his exsistance is more likely then say the eternal exsistance of our current universe.
God is eternal because He tells us so in His Word. I don't pretend to know how, because that is not one of the things God has revealed to us. I will, however, offer a couple of reasons why the eternal existence of our current universe doesn't work. First and foremost is that God says it isn't.:) Since I doubt that will strike you as a sufficient answer, another reason is the second law of thermodynamics coupled with the observations we make around us. I'm not a scientist, but entropy does not seem to allow for eternity as I understand it. And tying it back to morality, morals are not eternal because they are a subset of a temporal creation. On the other hand, one might argue that to some extent, morals are eternal, because they are laws of God, and God does not change. But either way, morals do not exist outside of God's presence, alone and by themselves. It doesn't make any sense to say that they do. I mean, why don't animals follow them, if they exist in a vacuum? They're not a function of intelligence.
Secondly your statement that you can't get anything from nothing is only correct as long as your thinking of certain types of universes, now if you started from a null point, there would be no universe. So obviously the rules of our universe don't apply there.
Not sure I follow what you're trying to say here. In which universes can you get something from nothing? Are you trying to say that if our universe hadn't been created the way it was, then maybe some rules could have been set to allow for creation of something out of nothing? This strikes me as irrelevant, becaues that's obviously not the way things are. But please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.
Thirdly, your idea that you can't have absolute statements is quite incorrect up to a point atleast. Because you cans till argue from a biological perspective that something like killing will evolutionarily destroy itself. As such it's a bad thing because it can't continue itself to later generations very well. As such there is a way to argue it without your relativistic explanation.
So what if killing might evolutionarily destory itself? Does rape? Rape would actually tend to produce *more* people, right? Does stealing? How about lying? There are plenty of other examples that we would agree are morally wrong, but do not evolutionarily destroy themselves. So why do we all believe they're wrong? Why does everybody except a rapist consider rapists to be moral deviants? Because we all have a moral absolute we appeal to, whether we acknowledge it or not. And that moral absolute was set in place by the triune God. The absolute cannot exist without the presence of that triune God.
I hope this helps make things clear, though I'll admit I'm not a really good explainer, so I might be leaving holes in my arguments.
I echo your sentiments here.:) But that is one of the benefits of debate; it allows us to hash out our ideas, refine our arguments, and perhaps rethink our worldviews.
Why? One could believe in the spontaneous creation of the Universe, as the enlightened AC pointed out.
And what triggered the spontaneity? Where did the "stuff" come from? How can you have a creation without a Creator? "Stuff" does not simply materialize out of nothing, all by itself. If you acknowledge there was some kind of matter in the universe and then it spontaneously became the universe as we know it, then you're just back to a different flavor of evolutionism.
The reason that you cannot have moral absolutism without appealing to God is that I can disagree with you, and you have no basis with which to refute me. Suppose that you say murder is evil. Suppose that I were to argue that no, murder is good! Without any absolute standard, we could argue all day back and forth about it, and neither of us would be any more right than the other, because we're both just humans. It's the old, "What is right for you might not be right for me" business. "Who are you to say that murder is bad? I say I'm the exception, and my opionion is just as valid as yours!" We know that this is wrong, because we do have moral absolutes set out for us. It's just that not all of us recognize where those absolutes came from.
No it doesn't. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Nothing more, nothing less.
I should have worded my thoughts before better. You are correct, atheism itself just believes there is no God. But you cannot believe something in a vacuum, all by itself. If you are to remain consistent, atheism requires you to believe in a multitude of other things, because a multitude of other things are dependent upon God. So by not believing in God, you must take on a plethora of other beliefs, by default. Otherwise, as I already stated, you quickly become very inconsistent.
Who created God? That such morals were created by an entity is as much a supposition as there being a creater of God.
Nobody created God, He is eternal. You are setting up a false comparison here. Morals are not equal to God. Morals have no conscious thought, they do not live, they are just a set of rules. Morals, just like the universe, do not simply appear out of nowhere.
Gah! Why why why? You don't offer up any argument for this! Besides, that's a contradictary statement, as "God" is an absolute!
I hope I've made my arguments clear above. It boils down to who's going to set the standards. Humans can argue back and forth all day long, and all you'll have is moral relativism. You might say that a majority of humans decides on what is moral, but if you think long enough about it I don't think you really want to follow that road. Even a majority of humans is still fallen and sinful. Witness any of the immoral wars in the past, that the majority of people at that time supported. Did that make them right? Witness the French Revolution, where the majority of people decided it was okay to murder the aristocracy. Did that make them right? If not, why not? Who says?
And as to your last statement, of course God is absolute! He is also eternal, uncreated, and sovereign. Only He has the power to set absolutes, because he is himself absolute and omnipotent. My statement above was meant to be taken in the context of setting moral absolutes.
And if you still think you can have absolutes without having God to define them, then please, by all means, tell me who does define them. In the world of atheism, we're all just atoms banging around. Thought becomes nothing more than exercise in chemical reactions, producing nothing but brain gas. Who's to say your brain gas is more right than mine?:) The fact that we are even debating this proves that we both assume the existence of God. Otherwise, there would be no point--if you really followed atheistic beliefs through to their logical conclusion, then you'd also be a relativist, and would acknowledge that my views are just as valid and true as yours, and not bother trying to debate about it. What's the point of just passing brain gas back and forth?:)
...Atheism has no position on morality (except so far as an atheist cannot logically follow the "divine command" principle of morality).
That is a position on morality.
It has no opinion on abortion. It has no opinion on evolution. Atheism does not require belief in the Big Bang, or moral relativism, or the existence of the soul. Given non-belief in a God, some positions appear more likely than others, but none are required.
To the contrary, one is required. You are required to *not* believe in God. You are required to *not* believe in creation ex nihilo because that would require the existence of God. You are required to *not* believe in moral absolutism, because absolutes in morality requires a God to set them. Atheism does have opinions on all of the things you mentioned. This world is actually quite binary in a great many things, and this is one of them. By not believing in the triune God, you wall yourself into believing many other things. There is no such thing as neutrality.
I can be a pro-life, anti-evolution, moral objectivist who believes that he will be reincarnated as Steven Segal after he dies, and still be an atheist.
Not true. At the very least, you will be a very inconsistent person relying heavily on Trinitarian morality while at the same time trying to deny that it exists. The most obvious problem here, and the only one I'll spend time on, is your moral objectivist part. What sort of objectivity will to appeal to in your morals? Your own? That would make it relativism again. Who gets to set the morals? You cannot have an absolute without having God to set that absolute. Any sort of appeal to "human morality" ultimately boils down to an appeal to relativism, which is then consistent with atheism.
Glad that's cleared up.
Me too.:) Now, on to the topic at hand!
Now, if "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" somehow supports the atheist "religion," what else is it implicitly endorsing through its silence? Well, it doesn't say anything against child-mulching machines, so it must be implying that they should be built and used to keep down the population. It doesn't say "one nation, with no nuclear strikes called in on Lindon, Utah," so the pledge is implicitly endorsing the annihilation of SCO's headquarters. To which I say, "Rock on!"
I agree with you that you cannot read something into the text that you cannot read out of it. You cannot read out of the pledge anything about child-mulching machines. Likewise, I believe that if you look at the roots of the pledge itself, you cannot in good conscience read Christian values into it. I am a devout Christian, and I do not want the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. "Under God" refers not to the Triune God, but to the false god of pluralism that our society panders to. At any rate, I want to get rid of the "under God" because I want to throw out the rest of the Pledge of Allegiance with it. See below.
"Under God" doesn't belong in the pledge, and removing it simply remedies an inappropriate use of government power to promote a sectarian agenda.
This is the ultimate irony. You agree that to use government power to promote a sectarian agenda is wrong. Now go read about the history of the pledge, and tell me with a straight face that it wasn't designed to promote a sectarian agenda. It was written by a socialist, Francis Bellamy, and designed to promote socialism. Along with government schools, its aim was to indoctrinate our children. This is why I would love to do away with the pledge (and especially government schools) entirely. Not to mention the false propaganda put forth by the statement "one nation, indivisible"...
Alas, it is because now our world makes litigation profitable. It often doesn't matter anymore whether or not the cause is just--many victims of lawsuits cannot afford to defend themselves properly. I speak from experience; my father was sued for supposed poor working conditions (he owned an orchard). The claims were outright false, and most people involved knew it, but he settled instead of going to court, because the settlement was cheaper than paying the legal fees.
In my opinion, the vast majority of baseless civil litigation would be eliminated by simply changing the system in the following manner: if a plaintiff loses his case, he should be required to pay the defendant's legal fees (or some portion thereof). That would eliminate cases (such as my father's) that were filed knowing that the defendant would rather settle than fight it. It would do this while not impacting the legitimate suits that are filed. Plus, our court systems would be less bogged down and everything would work better and more quickly.
My two cents' worth. And now, back to doing what I'm paid to do.:)
Another thing, your board frys. You loose all your data.
Well of course! This is why you back up all your data to DVD-RW! And make sure to put then in a safe (provided by ABIT--patent pending), so that in order to read them, the RIAA and government will have to steal the entire safe! RIAA will probably never get into it, and it'll take the government spooks weeks to break open!
Good grief! With comments like "there is nowhere to hide", or, "If you have an active internet address or connection and you are actively sharing files, our spiders will find you", these people are sounding like power-tripped teenagers! It really makes you kind of sick to see the apparent pleasure these people derive from doing this. They are proud of infiltrating your computer and gathering your personal information in order to bully you into submission. *shudder* I guess that's the sort of personality that it takes to accept a job like that in the first place.
If a normal neighborhood had 2 stationary panels on each home's roof pointed south that backfed to the utility power and they did the storage, it could be a reality right now.
Who's going to pay for them?
The homeowner? Not me, thank you very much. I am happy with my current power prices, and I don't see conventional solar power becoming cost effective for me.
The power companies? Yeah, right. My local public utility district is already raising rates just to cover costs; I'm not interested in paying another surcharge just to make my power solar.
The taxpayers? Not if I can help it. Again, why should I be willing to pay more for power, when I (and many others like me) don't believe there is such a thing as "global warming" to be worrying about?
Anyone here can easily reduce their power consumption to 1/10th of what they use now. Couple that with a city wide solar network with some wind plants like in Macinaw city or out west and you can easily have clean power.
How? I already use energy-efficient light bulbs, hot water heater, etc. Should I keep the lights off all the time? Take cold showers and wash my dishes in cold water? Stop using my computer? Perhaps not heat my house in the wintertime? No thanks. I'm not willing to revert back to 18th century living just to keep environmentalists happy. I am willing to pay for the service of electricity, and it improves my standard of living. The idea of cutting my usage by 90% is ridiculous.
[...]
Changing to non polluting power will be more difficult than getting bill gates to embrace and use linux.
And the reason for that is that people on the whole are not willing to pay more for the same service just to get a warm fuzzy about cleaning up the environment. Make it economically feasible, and cheaper than current alternatives, then I'll be interested.
I don't have a clue how many people the Tele-hacks employ, but I sure know that they never get any business from me. By using this list, I am saving them time - increasing their profits!
In that sense, yes. But in another sense, you may be decreasing the value of their lists when it comes to selling names and numbers. I agree with you entirely that it can't possibly be as big as they're making it out to be, and I don't know how valuable those lists normally are, but that's an aspect that everybody seems to be missing. I do know that the value is significant--I have friends who work for a company that puts on conferences, and one of the company's policies is to try and make sure everybody that attends signs in w/ name and contact info. That information, even in small amounts, is worth a significant amount of money to marketers. This aspect is one of the only reasons I see that even looks vaguely logical for why the telemarketers would be making such a big deal about this. Less numbers == less valuable calling lists.
Of course, conversely, you could also look at it as being less numbers, but a more valuable list (i.e. greater percentage of people willing to buy products). *shrug* It's logical, but has yet to be proven here, so maybe that's why telemarketers are taking pre-emptive action.
Do they honestly expect to get any cash out of a 13 year old kid in his basement, trading 50 cent and Shakira tracks?
That's something that I've pondered through this all. A vast majority of these lawsuits surely surely must be costing the RIAA dearly in legal fees that won't be recouped in damages collected from the average victim. They're making a rather expensive point, and a foolish one in my opinion, but it's their money...
I realize these lawsuits are meant to target the 'worst' of the filetraders, but quantity shouldn't define level of illegality, should it?
In a technical sense, no, but in a practical sense, yes. Who do you expect to receive more attention from the police: the guy who ripped off $10 million from a bank in the middle of the night, or the guy who stole the TV set out of your living room? Both are guilty of burglary, but one is worth a lot more time and effort to track down.
In my opinion, as good as (or even better than) the interview itself was an article by Tim O'Reilly that he linked to in one of his answers: Piracy is Progressive Taxation". He has some excellent insights into piracy, and makes several very good points and some interesting comparisons. One of his main points is that free services have been historically replaced by higher quality paid services (ISPs being a prime example). Well worth the read.
I question the accuracy of the results. Even the article pointed out that the study may be flawed due to the assumptions made.
But really, in the end, why does it matter how many whales were hunted in the 18th century, when hunting them is already banned? We're not trying to make a case for banning hunting or anything...so I don't understand. Unless we're going to start talking about paying reparations to whales in compensation for their ancestors' loss and hardship. In which case we still have more serious things to worry about than 18th-century whale hunting.
You're absolutely right. I've found that by not installing or running any software, I can dramatically improve the performance and stability of Windows.
Fascinating...that's a very interesting twist of interpretation. That's yet another reason to pass as few laws as absolutely necessary, and make the necessary laws as clear and unambiguous as possible. Thanks for posting that! Somebody mod this fellow up "Informative"!:)
Wow! *runs to look up the current exchange rate* Good grief, if that's all you're paying, why is getting cheaper DSL even an issue for you people?!:) *Now* I'm going to have to question this whole topic from a different perspective--"how cheap does it have to get??":)
On the other hand, I'll just keep quiet. If cheap DSL is enough to keep Canadians happy with all the other stuff their government does, then far be it from me to rock the boat.:) LoL
I agree with you.:) I don't cry foul about Microsoft's actions, and I think the government should have stayed out of it. I harbor absolutely no good feelings toward Microsoft, but not because of their business model. Their business model was downright good. (Now, about their software...)
Yeah. At least they're consistent, I guess.:) I merely say that while I'd love to get cheaper DSL (who wouldn't?), I won't be on the bandwagon for getting it this way in the US.:)
The problem is we have almost no local phone company competition in Canada.
If I *were* to use sprint instead of Bell, I would not be able to have ADSL, I would need to have a bell local line.
That seems unfair does it not?
Oh, I agree entirely with you. That does seem very unfair. However, being "fair" does not always equal "doing good business". That's where I question a governmental agency coming in to interfere. I agree that this action is probably better for consumers. As such, I don't necessarily challenge it in particular. It's the principle behind the action--I do challenge the right of governmental agencies to come in and dictate how a private business is allowed to (or forced to) compete.
And their not deciding how they will compete, their forcing them to do so.
Well, by forcing them to do so, that is dictating how they operate their business. Certain things need to be regulated, others...I'm not so sure. It's easy in the case of big companies to dehumanize them and portray them as heartless and soulless, and sometimes that's true. But the principles of government that drove this action will also impact other future legislation on small business owners, and eventually (at the end of the slippery slope) you end up with a government-run, socialist state. Which I think is a Bad Thing(tm).
...by refusing to provide retail high-speed Internet services to competitors' customers, incumbent telephone companies are unjustly discriminating against their competitors and giving themselves an undue preference.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for more competition. But "unjustly discriminating against their competitors"? And "undue preference"? Since when is it bad to give your own company "preference", and who are they to say it is "undue"?
This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism. In the one hand, they uphold the virtues of competition, and in the other, they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete. *shrug*
Why is it the government's job to ensure "diversity" and "level the playing field" for new competition to move in? When last I checked, radio stations such as those owned by ClearChannel are business entities--they aren't like NPR or PBS, government-funded. If the government wants to enforce rules on what government-funded stations can do with their money, fine. But why should government have the authority to tell a company (large or small) how to do business?
ClearChannel is perhaps an example of a company that has successfully implemented the priciples of business that you'll learn in any decent college business course. I majored in a business degree at college, and among others, Porter's 5 Forces model was a big part of the instruction in several of my classes. While I won't explain it all here (the website does a better job than me anyway), it seems to me that ClearChannel has succeeded in raising barriers to entry and keeping its "supplier power" high. But this doesn't mean that there is no "buyer's power" in ClearChannel's business world--we, as listeners, constitute the "buyers" in the radio industry and if we decide that we're no longer happy with ClearChannel stations, we can still turn them off and go elsewhere.
From the article's outline of the bill:
This section prohibits any entity that owns radio stations, and concert promotion services or venues from acting in an anti-competitive manner.
"Anti-competitive manner"? Oh, yes, heaven forbid that we allow radio stations to select what to play of their own free will (including taking payments to play certain songs). Must give all the local musicians a fair chance, no matter how much the general populace likes them, is that the eventual idea? Our government is anti-business, because it leans socialist and will eventually turn outright communist. Any head sticking up above the rest must be chopped off. (Yes, I read the article and I know this isn't explicitly stated. I'm looking at the implications from the top of the slippery slope, so to speak.) The really amazing thing is that our government manages to be anti-business while pretending to forbid "anti-competitive" acts. In other words, be competitive, but don't excel. Makes me think of a corral full of rabid dachsunds, nipping at each other's heels and yipping their at the top of their lungs.
In the end, if you're not happy with what you hear on the radio, change the channel! Or just turn it off! If the public agrees with you and does the same, the radio stations will get the message when their advertising slots become worthless.
I find it striking that/.ers who are constantly railing against organizations like the RIAA trying to restrict what they listen to immediately turn around and applaud government for attempting to do the same type of thing. The difference is that we like the result of the latter case better than the former, but the principle is the same.
Alas, I was disappointed to find no easy money after investigating the X-Prize Guidelines. Specifically, item 5 seems to disqualify the capitalists among us who would be tempted to pay somebody $1 million just for taking a quick little ride in a craft that looks suspiciously like the ammunition for a very large-scale potato gun. Net gain of $8 million, minus what it took to construct the cannon and retrieve the projectile and clean it out for use by vict^H^H^H^Hbrave individual #2!
Slashdot Mirror
I've responded to this in my journal because it is so far off topic here. :) You're welcome (and encouraged) to keep up the discussion there, or by email at [my first name]@starvale.net.
Matt
Before our universe exsisted you have two possibilities, a, there was something before it or b there was nothing. Which one you choose isn't terribly relevant though, because in anycase it wasn't our universe. This is important because only a certain subset of possible universes would not allow the creation of matter from nothing, the same would go for a start from nothing. I could argue this point very long, but then I'd suggest going to some IRC channel or so for this. If so I'm open to suggestion where.
:)
Interesting viewpoint you have here. I'd respond, but I think you're right--other avenues are more appropriate for this discussion than here. I've never done IRC; but if you'd like to pursue this discussion, feel free to email me at [my first name]@starvale.net. Or maybe I ought to figure out the "journal" feature on my user account (never used that, either) and talk about stuff like this there.
Matt
Thanks for your detailed reply! I am enjoying this debate, even if it is offtopic. :) I'll attempt to do your reply justice here...
...Therefore, if I value my own needs and feelings, I should value those of others.
...there is an undeniable baseline morality which every society adheres to....The fact that these rules exist everywhere, along with the evolutionary principle that these sort of rules tend to persist when they provide competitive advantages to the society as a whole, would indicate that these universals are a serviceable basis for an objective morality.
One doesn't need to believe in God in order to have a belief that some actions are objectively good and some are objectively evil. For example, my moral beliefs are a (probably not entirely consistent) mish-mash of "The Golden Rule" (which Jesus espoused but did not invent), evolution, extreme skepticism, and game theory. God never enters into it.
Where did "The Golden Rule" come from?
Well, there's a definition of relativism. If I say that murder is good and that I need to murder in order to achieve self actualization, then according to your viewpoint you msut value my needs and feelings.
Inflicting pain on others is therefore bad, and bringing joy to others is therefore good. Thus, it seems clear to me that the Golden Rule can be part of an "objective" morality.
We agree that the Golden Rule is a part, or guideline, of objective morality. We disagree when it comes to where that rule itself comes from. You do not address where the Golden Rule comes from, because it comes from the standards of morality set forth by God.
You were going strong up until the "serviceable basis" part. You have made an excellent argument for my view that absolute standards exist and are set in place by God. Standards don't just happen to come along by themselves! We seem to entirely agree that an objective morality exists. Suppose we were debating in person--we'd both be standing on the same ground. We agree that we're both standing, but you're trying to say that the ground doesn't exist. You understand the result, which is objective morality. But you do not understand the means by which those results were achieved.
You're arguing that morality is set by what is good for society as a whole. Or, in your words, "competitive advantages to the society as a whole." Competing against what? What are these competitive advantages? Wouldn't these "competitive advantages" change in a changing environment? If so, we're back to relativism. On the other hand, it might be better for society as a whole to control who is allowed to reproduce based on their genetic makeup. Is that then morally right?
Extreme skepticism: Any action based on a faulty understanding of the world around me can have serious and negative consequences. Therefore, believing something just because it's comforting to do so is immoral.
I agree that believing something just because it's comforting to do so is wrong. That does not mean your beliefs cannot comfort you. I believe that God sovereignly chooses to save whom He will, and he chooses to damn whom He will, and I believe that because that is what He tells us in His holy Word. He is ultimately sovereign. This greatly comforts me. It strikes many others as a very uncomfortable view, but I will hold to it, because it is what God has revealed in the Bible.
Every belief must be provisional, and following this principle gives me the ability to adapt myself to new knowledge.
So you can never be sure of anything. In your world, there cannot be any such thing as an absolute truth, because as you say, every belief must be provisional. You have no anchor, because who knows? Things might change tomorrow.
Game theory: Decisions which might seem advantageous in the short run may lead to non-optimal outcomes in the long run. Further, the advantages
Well you're certaintly making some logical fallacies in your statements here. The first is, that even by stating that god is eternal, you refrain to explaining why his exsistance is more likely then say the eternal exsistance of our current universe.
:) Since I doubt that will strike you as a sufficient answer, another reason is the second law of thermodynamics coupled with the observations we make around us. I'm not a scientist, but entropy does not seem to allow for eternity as I understand it. And tying it back to morality, morals are not eternal because they are a subset of a temporal creation. On the other hand, one might argue that to some extent, morals are eternal, because they are laws of God, and God does not change. But either way, morals do not exist outside of God's presence, alone and by themselves. It doesn't make any sense to say that they do. I mean, why don't animals follow them, if they exist in a vacuum? They're not a function of intelligence.
:) But that is one of the benefits of debate; it allows us to hash out our ideas, refine our arguments, and perhaps rethink our worldviews.
God is eternal because He tells us so in His Word. I don't pretend to know how, because that is not one of the things God has revealed to us. I will, however, offer a couple of reasons why the eternal existence of our current universe doesn't work. First and foremost is that God says it isn't.
Secondly your statement that you can't get anything from nothing is only correct as long as your thinking of certain types of universes, now if you started from a null point, there would be no universe. So obviously the rules of our universe don't apply there.
Not sure I follow what you're trying to say here. In which universes can you get something from nothing? Are you trying to say that if our universe hadn't been created the way it was, then maybe some rules could have been set to allow for creation of something out of nothing? This strikes me as irrelevant, becaues that's obviously not the way things are. But please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.
Thirdly, your idea that you can't have absolute statements is quite incorrect up to a point atleast. Because you cans till argue from a biological perspective that something like killing will evolutionarily destroy itself. As such it's a bad thing because it can't continue itself to later generations very well. As such there is a way to argue it without your relativistic explanation.
So what if killing might evolutionarily destory itself? Does rape? Rape would actually tend to produce *more* people, right? Does stealing? How about lying? There are plenty of other examples that we would agree are morally wrong, but do not evolutionarily destroy themselves. So why do we all believe they're wrong? Why does everybody except a rapist consider rapists to be moral deviants? Because we all have a moral absolute we appeal to, whether we acknowledge it or not. And that moral absolute was set in place by the triune God. The absolute cannot exist without the presence of that triune God.
I hope this helps make things clear, though I'll admit I'm not a really good explainer, so I might be leaving holes in my arguments.
I echo your sentiments here.
Matt
Why? One could believe in the spontaneous creation of the Universe, as the enlightened AC pointed out.
:) The fact that we are even debating this proves that we both assume the existence of God. Otherwise, there would be no point--if you really followed atheistic beliefs through to their logical conclusion, then you'd also be a relativist, and would acknowledge that my views are just as valid and true as yours, and not bother trying to debate about it. What's the point of just passing brain gas back and forth? :)
And what triggered the spontaneity? Where did the "stuff" come from? How can you have a creation without a Creator? "Stuff" does not simply materialize out of nothing, all by itself. If you acknowledge there was some kind of matter in the universe and then it spontaneously became the universe as we know it, then you're just back to a different flavor of evolutionism.
The reason that you cannot have moral absolutism without appealing to God is that I can disagree with you, and you have no basis with which to refute me. Suppose that you say murder is evil. Suppose that I were to argue that no, murder is good! Without any absolute standard, we could argue all day back and forth about it, and neither of us would be any more right than the other, because we're both just humans. It's the old, "What is right for you might not be right for me" business. "Who are you to say that murder is bad? I say I'm the exception, and my opionion is just as valid as yours!" We know that this is wrong, because we do have moral absolutes set out for us. It's just that not all of us recognize where those absolutes came from.
No it doesn't. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Nothing more, nothing less.
I should have worded my thoughts before better. You are correct, atheism itself just believes there is no God. But you cannot believe something in a vacuum, all by itself. If you are to remain consistent, atheism requires you to believe in a multitude of other things, because a multitude of other things are dependent upon God. So by not believing in God, you must take on a plethora of other beliefs, by default. Otherwise, as I already stated, you quickly become very inconsistent.
Who created God? That such morals were created by an entity is as much a supposition as there being a creater of God.
Nobody created God, He is eternal. You are setting up a false comparison here. Morals are not equal to God. Morals have no conscious thought, they do not live, they are just a set of rules. Morals, just like the universe, do not simply appear out of nowhere.
Gah! Why why why? You don't offer up any argument for this! Besides, that's a contradictary statement, as "God" is an absolute!
I hope I've made my arguments clear above. It boils down to who's going to set the standards. Humans can argue back and forth all day long, and all you'll have is moral relativism. You might say that a majority of humans decides on what is moral, but if you think long enough about it I don't think you really want to follow that road. Even a majority of humans is still fallen and sinful. Witness any of the immoral wars in the past, that the majority of people at that time supported. Did that make them right? Witness the French Revolution, where the majority of people decided it was okay to murder the aristocracy. Did that make them right? If not, why not? Who says?
And as to your last statement, of course God is absolute! He is also eternal, uncreated, and sovereign. Only He has the power to set absolutes, because he is himself absolute and omnipotent. My statement above was meant to be taken in the context of setting moral absolutes.
And if you still think you can have absolutes without having God to define them, then please, by all means, tell me who does define them. In the world of atheism, we're all just atoms banging around. Thought becomes nothing more than exercise in chemical reactions, producing nothing but brain gas. Who's to say your brain gas is more right than mine?
Matt
...Atheism has no position on morality (except so far as an atheist cannot logically follow the "divine command" principle of morality).
:) Now, on to the topic at hand!
:)
That is a position on morality.
It has no opinion on abortion. It has no opinion on evolution. Atheism does not require belief in the Big Bang, or moral relativism, or the existence of the soul. Given non-belief in a God, some positions appear more likely than others, but none are required.
To the contrary, one is required. You are required to *not* believe in God. You are required to *not* believe in creation ex nihilo because that would require the existence of God. You are required to *not* believe in moral absolutism, because absolutes in morality requires a God to set them. Atheism does have opinions on all of the things you mentioned. This world is actually quite binary in a great many things, and this is one of them. By not believing in the triune God, you wall yourself into believing many other things. There is no such thing as neutrality.
I can be a pro-life, anti-evolution, moral objectivist who believes that he will be reincarnated as Steven Segal after he dies, and still be an atheist.
Not true. At the very least, you will be a very inconsistent person relying heavily on Trinitarian morality while at the same time trying to deny that it exists. The most obvious problem here, and the only one I'll spend time on, is your moral objectivist part. What sort of objectivity will to appeal to in your morals? Your own? That would make it relativism again. Who gets to set the morals? You cannot have an absolute without having God to set that absolute. Any sort of appeal to "human morality" ultimately boils down to an appeal to relativism, which is then consistent with atheism.
Glad that's cleared up.
Me too.
Now, if "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" somehow supports the atheist "religion," what else is it implicitly endorsing through its silence? Well, it doesn't say anything against child-mulching machines, so it must be implying that they should be built and used to keep down the population. It doesn't say "one nation, with no nuclear strikes called in on Lindon, Utah," so the pledge is implicitly endorsing the annihilation of SCO's headquarters. To which I say, "Rock on!"
I agree with you that you cannot read something into the text that you cannot read out of it. You cannot read out of the pledge anything about child-mulching machines. Likewise, I believe that if you look at the roots of the pledge itself, you cannot in good conscience read Christian values into it. I am a devout Christian, and I do not want the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. "Under God" refers not to the Triune God, but to the false god of pluralism that our society panders to. At any rate, I want to get rid of the "under God" because I want to throw out the rest of the Pledge of Allegiance with it. See below.
"Under God" doesn't belong in the pledge, and removing it simply remedies an inappropriate use of government power to promote a sectarian agenda.
This is the ultimate irony. You agree that to use government power to promote a sectarian agenda is wrong. Now go read about the history of the pledge, and tell me with a straight face that it wasn't designed to promote a sectarian agenda. It was written by a socialist, Francis Bellamy, and designed to promote socialism. Along with government schools, its aim was to indoctrinate our children. This is why I would love to do away with the pledge (and especially government schools) entirely. Not to mention the false propaganda put forth by the statement "one nation, indivisible"...
http://www.truthinhistory.org/pledge.htm (forgive the formatting; some people simply don't have taste in websites, even if they do have good writing.)
Matt
A prime example of this has been demonstrated to us previously...
Alas, it is because now our world makes litigation profitable. It often doesn't matter anymore whether or not the cause is just--many victims of lawsuits cannot afford to defend themselves properly. I speak from experience; my father was sued for supposed poor working conditions (he owned an orchard). The claims were outright false, and most people involved knew it, but he settled instead of going to court, because the settlement was cheaper than paying the legal fees.
:)
In my opinion, the vast majority of baseless civil litigation would be eliminated by simply changing the system in the following manner: if a plaintiff loses his case, he should be required to pay the defendant's legal fees (or some portion thereof). That would eliminate cases (such as my father's) that were filed knowing that the defendant would rather settle than fight it. It would do this while not impacting the legitimate suits that are filed. Plus, our court systems would be less bogged down and everything would work better and more quickly.
My two cents' worth. And now, back to doing what I'm paid to do.
Another thing, your board frys. You loose all your data.
Well of course! This is why you back up all your data to DVD-RW! And make sure to put then in a safe (provided by ABIT--patent pending), so that in order to read them, the RIAA and government will have to steal the entire safe! RIAA will probably never get into it, and it'll take the government spooks weeks to break open!
Good grief! With comments like "there is nowhere to hide", or, "If you have an active internet address or connection and you are actively sharing files, our spiders will find you", these people are sounding like power-tripped teenagers! It really makes you kind of sick to see the apparent pleasure these people derive from doing this. They are proud of infiltrating your computer and gathering your personal information in order to bully you into submission. *shudder* I guess that's the sort of personality that it takes to accept a job like that in the first place.
Who's going to pay for them?
Anyone here can easily reduce their power consumption to 1/10th of what they use now. Couple that with a city wide solar network with some wind plants like in Macinaw city or out west and you can easily have clean power.
How? I already use energy-efficient light bulbs, hot water heater, etc. Should I keep the lights off all the time? Take cold showers and wash my dishes in cold water? Stop using my computer? Perhaps not heat my house in the wintertime? No thanks. I'm not willing to revert back to 18th century living just to keep environmentalists happy. I am willing to pay for the service of electricity, and it improves my standard of living. The idea of cutting my usage by 90% is ridiculous.
[...] Changing to non polluting power will be more difficult than getting bill gates to embrace and use linux.
And the reason for that is that people on the whole are not willing to pay more for the same service just to get a warm fuzzy about cleaning up the environment. Make it economically feasible, and cheaper than current alternatives, then I'll be interested.
I don't have a clue how many people the Tele-hacks employ, but I sure know that they never get any business from me. By using this list, I am saving them time - increasing their profits!
In that sense, yes. But in another sense, you may be decreasing the value of their lists when it comes to selling names and numbers. I agree with you entirely that it can't possibly be as big as they're making it out to be, and I don't know how valuable those lists normally are, but that's an aspect that everybody seems to be missing. I do know that the value is significant--I have friends who work for a company that puts on conferences, and one of the company's policies is to try and make sure everybody that attends signs in w/ name and contact info. That information, even in small amounts, is worth a significant amount of money to marketers. This aspect is one of the only reasons I see that even looks vaguely logical for why the telemarketers would be making such a big deal about this. Less numbers == less valuable calling lists.
Of course, conversely, you could also look at it as being less numbers, but a more valuable list (i.e. greater percentage of people willing to buy products). *shrug* It's logical, but has yet to be proven here, so maybe that's why telemarketers are taking pre-emptive action.
Do they honestly expect to get any cash out of a 13 year old kid in his basement, trading 50 cent and Shakira tracks?
That's something that I've pondered through this all. A vast majority of these lawsuits surely surely must be costing the RIAA dearly in legal fees that won't be recouped in damages collected from the average victim. They're making a rather expensive point, and a foolish one in my opinion, but it's their money...
I realize these lawsuits are meant to target the 'worst' of the filetraders, but quantity shouldn't define level of illegality, should it?
In a technical sense, no, but in a practical sense, yes. Who do you expect to receive more attention from the police: the guy who ripped off $10 million from a bank in the middle of the night, or the guy who stole the TV set out of your living room? Both are guilty of burglary, but one is worth a lot more time and effort to track down.
Ugh! After this article, Slashdot needs a new mod category:
-1, Cliché
In my opinion, as good as (or even better than) the interview itself was an article by Tim O'Reilly that he linked to in one of his answers: Piracy is Progressive Taxation". He has some excellent insights into piracy, and makes several very good points and some interesting comparisons. One of his main points is that free services have been historically replaced by higher quality paid services (ISPs being a prime example). Well worth the read.
I question the accuracy of the results. Even the article pointed out that the study may be flawed due to the assumptions made.
But really, in the end, why does it matter how many whales were hunted in the 18th century, when hunting them is already banned? We're not trying to make a case for banning hunting or anything...so I don't understand. Unless we're going to start talking about paying reparations to whales in compensation for their ancestors' loss and hardship. In which case we still have more serious things to worry about than 18th-century whale hunting.
You're absolutely right. I've found that by not installing or running any software, I can dramatically improve the performance and stability of Windows.
Fascinating...that's a very interesting twist of interpretation. That's yet another reason to pass as few laws as absolutely necessary, and make the necessary laws as clear and unambiguous as possible. Thanks for posting that! Somebody mod this fellow up "Informative"! :)
Wow! *runs to look up the current exchange rate* Good grief, if that's all you're paying, why is getting cheaper DSL even an issue for you people?! :) *Now* I'm going to have to question this whole topic from a different perspective--"how cheap does it have to get??" :)
:) LoL
On the other hand, I'll just keep quiet. If cheap DSL is enough to keep Canadians happy with all the other stuff their government does, then far be it from me to rock the boat.
I agree with you. :) I don't cry foul about Microsoft's actions, and I think the government should have stayed out of it. I harbor absolutely no good feelings toward Microsoft, but not because of their business model. Their business model was downright good. (Now, about their software...)
Yeah. At least they're consistent, I guess. :) I merely say that while I'd love to get cheaper DSL (who wouldn't?), I won't be on the bandwagon for getting it this way in the US. :)
The problem is we have almost no local phone company competition in Canada. If I *were* to use sprint instead of Bell, I would not be able to have ADSL, I would need to have a bell local line. That seems unfair does it not?
Oh, I agree entirely with you. That does seem very unfair. However, being "fair" does not always equal "doing good business". That's where I question a governmental agency coming in to interfere. I agree that this action is probably better for consumers. As such, I don't necessarily challenge it in particular. It's the principle behind the action--I do challenge the right of governmental agencies to come in and dictate how a private business is allowed to (or forced to) compete.
And their not deciding how they will compete, their forcing them to do so.
Well, by forcing them to do so, that is dictating how they operate their business. Certain things need to be regulated, others...I'm not so sure. It's easy in the case of big companies to dehumanize them and portray them as heartless and soulless, and sometimes that's true. But the principles of government that drove this action will also impact other future legislation on small business owners, and eventually (at the end of the slippery slope) you end up with a government-run, socialist state. Which I think is a Bad Thing(tm).
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for more competition. But "unjustly discriminating against their competitors"? And "undue preference"? Since when is it bad to give your own company "preference", and who are they to say it is "undue"?
This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism. In the one hand, they uphold the virtues of competition, and in the other, they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete. *shrug*
ClearChannel is perhaps an example of a company that has successfully implemented the priciples of business that you'll learn in any decent college business course. I majored in a business degree at college, and among others, Porter's 5 Forces model was a big part of the instruction in several of my classes. While I won't explain it all here (the website does a better job than me anyway), it seems to me that ClearChannel has succeeded in raising barriers to entry and keeping its "supplier power" high. But this doesn't mean that there is no "buyer's power" in ClearChannel's business world--we, as listeners, constitute the "buyers" in the radio industry and if we decide that we're no longer happy with ClearChannel stations, we can still turn them off and go elsewhere.
From the article's outline of the bill:
"Anti-competitive manner"? Oh, yes, heaven forbid that we allow radio stations to select what to play of their own free will (including taking payments to play certain songs). Must give all the local musicians a fair chance, no matter how much the general populace likes them, is that the eventual idea? Our government is anti-business, because it leans socialist and will eventually turn outright communist. Any head sticking up above the rest must be chopped off. (Yes, I read the article and I know this isn't explicitly stated. I'm looking at the implications from the top of the slippery slope, so to speak.) The really amazing thing is that our government manages to be anti-business while pretending to forbid "anti-competitive" acts. In other words, be competitive, but don't excel. Makes me think of a corral full of rabid dachsunds, nipping at each other's heels and yipping their at the top of their lungs.
In the end, if you're not happy with what you hear on the radio, change the channel! Or just turn it off! If the public agrees with you and does the same, the radio stations will get the message when their advertising slots become worthless.
I find it striking that
TMF
Alas, I was disappointed to find no easy money after investigating the X-Prize Guidelines. Specifically, item 5 seems to disqualify the capitalists among us who would be tempted to pay somebody $1 million just for taking a quick little ride in a craft that looks suspiciously like the ammunition for a very large-scale potato gun. Net gain of $8 million, minus what it took to construct the cannon and retrieve the projectile and clean it out for use by vict^H^H^H^Hbrave individual #2!