I'm going to be having a kid soon, so this is a great news. I'll be getting a Wii once I finish up some contract work and get paid, and being able to enjoy it with my young child, or even giving it to them when a newer version comes out, sounds great.
And, really, this is the strength of the Wii and why it's so hard to keep on the shelves. My parents, who've never played a computer game in their lives, are talking about getting a Wii. While Microsoft and Sony were focusing on the hardcore gamers, Nintendo developed a system that casual gamers and new gamers can get into because the system is intuitive and fun to play. No memorizing button combinations, more non-violent games with intriguing gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a market for systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3 and games like Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto. But there are only so many teenage and college boys out there. Going after an underserved market with a compelling product has reinvigorated Nintendo.
Yes, but the expressive nature of Ruby is incredibly addictive. I've used both Python and Ruby, and I'd prefer Ruby any day because the syntax matches my thought processes more than Python. Also, I'm not quibbling over invisible things like newlines and tabs.
These things are qualitative rather than quantitative, and I might get used to Python as I work with it over the year, since it's my next Language of the Year.
Without an effective anti-asteroidal defense, we're boned.
Also, there's nothing stopping a black hole or brown dwarf from rampaging through the solar system and casting our planet of into space in the next thousand years. And it would happen without warning.
There's so many things that could go wrong that the only way to ensure survival until the heat death of the universe (a couple trillion years off, enough time to find a solution to it) is to become a space-faring species.
The idea that you can "run out" of resources is ridiculous. Silicon, the most plentiful element in the crust of our planet, can be used to harness solar power and convert it into electricity. This electricity can be used to harvest other raw materials or recycle those that have already been utilized. It can also be used to crack water and create rocket fuel. This rocket can then be used to harvest other materials from the inner solar system.
Through effective recycling and fusion power the solar system can support 100 trillion people. Sure, we might not be able to fund a generation ship, but a mission to mars or pulling an asteroid into earth orbit to harvest minerals is within the realm of a medium-sized government or large corporation.
Adam, Noah, Moses and others lived over 900 years.
I see the crux of our misunderstanding. You believe the Bible to be literally true. I see it as no more true than All Quiet on the Western Front or The Red Badge of Courage. It's historical fiction to me, with a heaping load of allegory from the point of view of Bronze Age shepherds.
And the idea that someone not involved gets an STD? Sometimes sin is communal. Take some benzene and pour it out. The dog drinks it, and gets lukemia. It's the same thing. Our intended life doesn't NEED benzene.
So we should tear down all our houses, dismantle all our cars, and return to living in roving tribes? After all, very little of what we do now is what was "intended" for us.
Benzene is an important chemical in making plastics. Some of the plastics that are used in hospitals to saved lives. Is it a good thing then? Chlorine is used to disinfect water supplies to save millions of people from dysentery, and it has been used to gas people in wars. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Should we stop chlorinating water supplies just because it could also be used to gas people?
Look at all you know; cheating on a wife...lying..."what comes around goes around"...isn't it clear almost all suffering is done at our own hands?
I'd say it's about 50/50. Earthquakes, tsunamis, diseases, and hurricanes kill millions of people every year. Thousands of children are stillborn or die because of congenital problems. My brother-in-law is wasting away because of muscular dystrophy. This is an inherited disease that cannot be controlled and there is no cure for it. God allowed it to happen. All I'm asking is why.
I'll look up the film, if only to give me something to blog about.
I'm certain OpenID would be more widely adopted, if actually setting it up weren't such a PITA. I've tried it twice, and at least for the PHP libraries, there are numerous inconsistencies, lack of documentation and version conflicts, that unless you're devoted to the idea, the approach of "heck, why not, it's nice to have" doesn't give you enough incentive to get it done.
I think I see your problem. PHP libraries have numerous inconsistenceis, lack documentation, and have version conflicts.
Sorry to say it, but having a single mother doesn't preclude someone from having a good life. The standard of living for children in Scandinavian countries is significantly higher than in the US. And they've got more single parents and fewer married couples. So the data doesn't support your assertion that single motherhood is necessarily a bad thing.
And where is your evidence that mankind is supposed to live for 800 - 1000 years?
And my explanation of STDs (that there are microbes who take advantage of the messy way we procreate) is much better than yours. You can contract an infection from a toilet seat and pass it along to your spouse sexually, making it an STD. This is even though you've never had sex outside of your marriage. If STDs were a punishment for deviation, why would God allow people who don't deviate to get them through other means. That is, of course, unless using the wrong toilet is a condemnable sin.
And what about congenital defects or the malaria parasite. Mankind didn't bring those things upon itself. Under your theology, God created these horrible things that kill millions of people. Is living in a place where there are mosquitoes a sin? All I'm asking is: Why do such horrible things if he supposedly loves us?
Mankind, unlike all other animals in nature has no special tools- no claws, scales, wings, etc. It's the most incapable design in the animal world. Unlike the creation of all the other animals, he wasn't going to cheer.
You've got a rather low opinion of humanity. We're an incredibly capable design, if flawed in some cases. We've got impressive endurance even though we can't maintain more than 10mph for a few seconds. We've also got a brain that allows us to do all kinds of crazy things that animals can't fathom.
And to say there's a natural order is inaccurate. While there are things we should or should not do, mostly for reasons of societal harmony or improving the chances of survival for our progeny, if we had stuck to our "natural order" we'd still be beating antelope to death with sticks. Every piece of technology removed us from the "natural order."
And it doesn't make sense why God allows evil in the world if he loves us. We don't choose who gets horrible congenital diseases. There are two choices: Either God allows millions to die who haven't had the chance to do anything wrong, or he's not there and they simply got the short end of the stick and there's no God to blame for it.
The former is far too depressing for me to consider, so I have to accept the latter.
Re:Before trying to send colonists to another syst
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Absolutely correct. There's enough material in our solar system to support hundreds of trillions of human beings. Thinking about sending giant arks to other star systems over several hundred years does seem to be putting the cart before the horse.
If that's your attitude, you should just kill yourself right now and save the waste of living until you die of a horrible disease or something.
Why should we spread out amongst the stars? Because the alternative is death. Who knows, maybe by spreading out we discover some way to escape the destruction of the universe.
Besides, we've got a trillion years till the hydrogen runs out.
But you don't need faith to know that you should feed the hungry. If the only reason you're giving to a soup kitchen is because Jesus says it's a good thing, that doesn't make you a good person. You do need faith, however, to think that one group of people should kill to protect "their" land that was given to them by "their" god.
In other words, if you took faith out of the world, the hungry would still be fed, but the religious wars in the Middle East would be over.
I'm tall, like my dad and his dad, and have his ears and eyes and build. I look very much like my grandfather did at my age, except I've got my mom's brown eyes.
That's inaccurate. The example of you having "faith" that your parents are your parents is not the same as having faith in God. You can see evidence of your parents being your parents. You might have your dad's nose or your mom's eyes or your Uncle Ernie's ears. That's evidence that supports your assertion that your parents are, in fact, your parents.
Now, if you were blue eyed, blond haired, and tall and your parents were both brown eyed, brown haired and short, then you would have less evidence. You wouldn't love them any less, but you wouldn't be as sure that they were your biological parents.
The same goes for things you read. A book on cosmology by Stephen Hawking is automatically, by virtue of his career and previous, more trustworthy than a book on cosmology by some kook from the backwoods of Tennessee. But if the subject was how to make the best moonshine or the history of the backwoods of Tennessee, I'd trust the kook more than Stephen Hawking.
Trust or credibility is absolutely NOT the same thing as faith. Faith, by its nature, lacks evidence. Trust and credibility are earned through previous encounters, which provide the evidence used to justify that trust.
That little old lady down the street who takes in lost kitties and bakes you cookies has faith. Every night, she sits down with a cup of hot cocoa and watches the 700 Club or John Hagee and then picks up the phone and sends those theocratic fascists money because they're asking for it on behalf of Jesus.
They, in turn, take it and give it to groups who fund fundamentalist Jewish groups that want to reclaim Israel. Why? Because once all the Jews move back to Israel, Jesus comes back. (They neglect to tell these Jewish folks that 2/3 of them will be sent to hell, according to Revelation.) Then, these groups decide that a foresaken patch of dirt is theirs and not the property of the Palestinian family living on it and bulldozes their house, killing a small child.
Then the guy who runs the 7/11, a recent Pakistani immigrant, who gives the old lady cat food at a discount because she takes in the lost kitties sees the Palestinian homes being bulldozed and donates money to a group who says they're providing support to Palestinians who have been displaced.
This group buys some C4 and straps it to the back of the kid whose house was bulldozed and promises him 72 virgins if he walks into a market and blows himself up. The kid does.
Both people think they're doing something nice to support other people of faith. They're little bit of faith, which everybody admires, turned into a horrible expression. And they both think that the actions of the groups they support are justified by their faith. But, the thing is, THEY'RE BOTH WRONG.
So, you see, it's not about our extremists being tough against their extremists. It's about people putting up faith as a virtue and then it being twisted to suit political and ideological goals.
The only way to stop this is to denigrate faith as the weakness it is. It clouds judgement and stops a thinking mind. If the shopkeeper and little old lady would pull their heads out of their respective holy books, they'd realize that REAL PEOPLE ARE DYING.
But they don't, and the killing continues. And people like me, who see the sheer idiocy of the whole thing are dismissed as "hate-filled atheists."
So faith isn't about refusing to question something, it's about making shit up and then justifying your conclusion in the face of contradictory evidence.
But understand that this is different from all other scientific finds: it's an eternal quantity. If you see a unicorn, -> there it is. Take a photo, get a witness, get it notarized. Christianity is different; *you* have to go looking for him, and empirical proof isn't available.
But there will never be "proof", other than a boatload of evidence. If you had proof, faith wouldn't have any meaning, now, would it?
Then I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for faith. I'm looking for proof. I figure that, if I find proof, then the arguments are settled, at least on that matter, and we're closer to true peace.
An answer to prayer. Mine was being transferred, the next DAY to a better job.
I've had prayers answered. I've had prayers not answered. Then I did an experiment and realized it was just my way of looking at things that changed when I prayed. Also, nothing out of the ordinary happened when I prayed for things out of the ordinary (like a miraculous healing for a terminally ill patient in my family). Science, however, puts out some pretty repeatable and accurate predictions. In my life, at least, god can't compete.
A permanent change in yourself.
I had a permanent change in myself when I gave up on the notion of God. It was liberating. The thorn in my paw of "why is there evil in the world if god supposedly loves us" was gone. The feeling of "if only I do this, good things will start happening all the time instead of some of the time" was gone. Faith was replaced with knowledge. Fear was replaced with confidence. It's not for everybody, but it's right for me.
A hunger for the word. Instead of tuning past the sermons, you'll realize that there's all kinds of information there, you just need to get it.
I've listened to those guys. They're mostly about "Yay God! Boo liberals! Send money!"
It's a peace you can't get anywhere else, and it extinguishes the desire to find "that thing"...the thing most people try to fill with booze, sex, violence, or drugs.
I'm not quite ready to have my desire extinguished, and I don't think I'll ever be. The void I feel is being filled, slowly, with information and knowledge. The kind of stuff that can be empirically measured. And also some booze and sex.
I'm happy you've found peace, and I'm flattered you like me enough to try and help me, but I'm not a person who puts much stock in faith, and, to be honest, thinks people who think they've found the solution in an infinity are, well, wrong.
And if you really don't want people to call you those names, try keeping your compatriots from being intolerant, cruel and blind. If the general perception of a Christian was "gentle, quiet, and humble," you wouldn't get so much flack.
And the kind of evidence you demand may not be available, if the "larger intelligence" elects not to provide it.
Then, like my imaginary friend Larry and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the invisible purple dinosaur in my basement and the celestial teapot, this "larger intelligence" is of no consequence to my existence.
That's not faith. It's fear, of their husbands, of not being able to take care of the kids as a single mom, and of loneliness. "Faith" is just how they rationalize it.
You've obviously not been around a woman like that. When they talk about their husband, they actually get happy and hopeful that he'll stop mistreating them. It's not fear, it's faith and their religious disinformation regarding divorce.
Four out of five suicide-bombing Muslim extremists disagree.
True, and a bad example on my part. A better one would be those suicide bombers. Their faith in their book is so strong that they'll destroy themselves and others over it.
Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll are not the only way to enjoy life.
I never said they were. However, to close your mind to the glory around you by viewing your very existence as flawed ("sinful," in the terms of the faithful) is a sure fire way to make your life into a living hell. And all because you've got faith in the validity of your book.
Now, I'm not saying that faith is always 100% good or 100% bad. It's a tool, of a sort, that can be used to increase the joy in your life or to piss you off at the world.
Faith stops questions. If I'm sure of something, why would I question it? And if I have faith, it would be destroyed by asking too many questions. (It sure was for me, anyway.)
So faith is good for people who don't want explanations for things. Just like the poster in a video posted earlier: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it!" That's the best definition of faith that I've ever seen.
The problem is that moderate people who value faith let extremists off the hook. If faith is a good thing, then extreme faith must be extremely good, even if it's destructive.
The appendix must have survival value, but we remove them all the time. Why should faith be any different?
I can try new things without faith. All I need is for my curiosity to overwhelm my fear of the unknown. I can face disease without faith. I am aware of the power of our medical system, and if I'm beyond help, then I'll die, just like billions before me. I'm working to make the world a better place. I don't need faith. Any progress made in overcoming the great evils of the world is a good thing.
So maybe faith is a way for people to overcome fear and do things that need done. If Og the caveman didn't have faith that the sun would rise the next day, he'd be paralyzed with fear. But if he made up a sun God and said "I have faith that the sun god will haul the sun across the sky again tomorrow," he'd be able to concern himself with surviving until tomorrow. Is it any suprise that many religions have festivals at the winter solstice?
Maybe, like our appendix, we've developed beyond the need for faith. Maybe the tool of faith is as antiquated as a stone axehead.
If you've made contact with a larger intelligence it's your duty to your species to provide evidence of this intelligence.
Otherwise, your "larger intelligence" is no more real than my imaginary friend, Larry, except that other people don't look at you weird when you talk to him.
The default position is atheism, insofar as atheism means "not believing in a god." Since there's no evidence, there's no reason to assume God exists and, therefore, no reason to believe in one. I mean, you're an atheist with respect to Odin and Zeus and Ra, correct?
Look at it another way: The default position on the invisible purple dinosaur that lives in my basement is to no accept it until there's evidence. You can't disprove it because I can merely make more things up that you can't disprove. So you'd be an "atheist" with respect to the invisible purple dinosaur that lives in my basement.
The problem is that the word atheist has come to mean, through efforts from the theists and mistakes made by vocal atheists, "I think you're dumb for believing in a god."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to be having a kid soon, so this is a great news. I'll be getting a Wii once I finish up some contract work and get paid, and being able to enjoy it with my young child, or even giving it to them when a newer version comes out, sounds great.
And, really, this is the strength of the Wii and why it's so hard to keep on the shelves. My parents, who've never played a computer game in their lives, are talking about getting a Wii. While Microsoft and Sony were focusing on the hardcore gamers, Nintendo developed a system that casual gamers and new gamers can get into because the system is intuitive and fun to play. No memorizing button combinations, more non-violent games with intriguing gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a market for systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3 and games like Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto. But there are only so many teenage and college boys out there. Going after an underserved market with a compelling product has reinvigorated Nintendo.
230,000 people were killed because of the 2005 tsunami. Was this man's fault or god's fault?
Yes, but the expressive nature of Ruby is incredibly addictive. I've used both Python and Ruby, and I'd prefer Ruby any day because the syntax matches my thought processes more than Python. Also, I'm not quibbling over invisible things like newlines and tabs.
These things are qualitative rather than quantitative, and I might get used to Python as I work with it over the year, since it's my next Language of the Year.
Without an effective anti-asteroidal defense, we're boned.
Also, there's nothing stopping a black hole or brown dwarf from rampaging through the solar system and casting our planet of into space in the next thousand years. And it would happen without warning.
There's so many things that could go wrong that the only way to ensure survival until the heat death of the universe (a couple trillion years off, enough time to find a solution to it) is to become a space-faring species.
The idea that you can "run out" of resources is ridiculous. Silicon, the most plentiful element in the crust of our planet, can be used to harness solar power and convert it into electricity. This electricity can be used to harvest other raw materials or recycle those that have already been utilized. It can also be used to crack water and create rocket fuel. This rocket can then be used to harvest other materials from the inner solar system.
Through effective recycling and fusion power the solar system can support 100 trillion people. Sure, we might not be able to fund a generation ship, but a mission to mars or pulling an asteroid into earth orbit to harvest minerals is within the realm of a medium-sized government or large corporation.
I see the crux of our misunderstanding. You believe the Bible to be literally true. I see it as no more true than All Quiet on the Western Front or The Red Badge of Courage. It's historical fiction to me, with a heaping load of allegory from the point of view of Bronze Age shepherds.
So we should tear down all our houses, dismantle all our cars, and return to living in roving tribes? After all, very little of what we do now is what was "intended" for us.
Benzene is an important chemical in making plastics. Some of the plastics that are used in hospitals to saved lives. Is it a good thing then? Chlorine is used to disinfect water supplies to save millions of people from dysentery, and it has been used to gas people in wars. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Should we stop chlorinating water supplies just because it could also be used to gas people?
I'd say it's about 50/50. Earthquakes, tsunamis, diseases, and hurricanes kill millions of people every year. Thousands of children are stillborn or die because of congenital problems. My brother-in-law is wasting away because of muscular dystrophy. This is an inherited disease that cannot be controlled and there is no cure for it. God allowed it to happen. All I'm asking is why.
I'll look up the film, if only to give me something to blog about.
I think I see your problem. PHP libraries have numerous inconsistenceis, lack documentation, and have version conflicts.
Sorry to say it, but having a single mother doesn't preclude someone from having a good life. The standard of living for children in Scandinavian countries is significantly higher than in the US. And they've got more single parents and fewer married couples. So the data doesn't support your assertion that single motherhood is necessarily a bad thing.
And where is your evidence that mankind is supposed to live for 800 - 1000 years?
And my explanation of STDs (that there are microbes who take advantage of the messy way we procreate) is much better than yours. You can contract an infection from a toilet seat and pass it along to your spouse sexually, making it an STD. This is even though you've never had sex outside of your marriage. If STDs were a punishment for deviation, why would God allow people who don't deviate to get them through other means. That is, of course, unless using the wrong toilet is a condemnable sin.
And what about congenital defects or the malaria parasite. Mankind didn't bring those things upon itself. Under your theology, God created these horrible things that kill millions of people. Is living in a place where there are mosquitoes a sin? All I'm asking is: Why do such horrible things if he supposedly loves us?
You've got a rather low opinion of humanity. We're an incredibly capable design, if flawed in some cases. We've got impressive endurance even though we can't maintain more than 10mph for a few seconds. We've also got a brain that allows us to do all kinds of crazy things that animals can't fathom.
And to say there's a natural order is inaccurate. While there are things we should or should not do, mostly for reasons of societal harmony or improving the chances of survival for our progeny, if we had stuck to our "natural order" we'd still be beating antelope to death with sticks. Every piece of technology removed us from the "natural order."
And it doesn't make sense why God allows evil in the world if he loves us. We don't choose who gets horrible congenital diseases. There are two choices: Either God allows millions to die who haven't had the chance to do anything wrong, or he's not there and they simply got the short end of the stick and there's no God to blame for it.
The former is far too depressing for me to consider, so I have to accept the latter.
Absolutely correct. There's enough material in our solar system to support hundreds of trillions of human beings. Thinking about sending giant arks to other star systems over several hundred years does seem to be putting the cart before the horse.
If that's your attitude, you should just kill yourself right now and save the waste of living until you die of a horrible disease or something.
Why should we spread out amongst the stars? Because the alternative is death. Who knows, maybe by spreading out we discover some way to escape the destruction of the universe.
Besides, we've got a trillion years till the hydrogen runs out.
But you don't need faith to know that you should feed the hungry. If the only reason you're giving to a soup kitchen is because Jesus says it's a good thing, that doesn't make you a good person. You do need faith, however, to think that one group of people should kill to protect "their" land that was given to them by "their" god.
In other words, if you took faith out of the world, the hungry would still be fed, but the religious wars in the Middle East would be over.
I'm tall, like my dad and his dad, and have his ears and eyes and build. I look very much like my grandfather did at my age, except I've got my mom's brown eyes.
That's inaccurate. The example of you having "faith" that your parents are your parents is not the same as having faith in God. You can see evidence of your parents being your parents. You might have your dad's nose or your mom's eyes or your Uncle Ernie's ears. That's evidence that supports your assertion that your parents are, in fact, your parents.
Now, if you were blue eyed, blond haired, and tall and your parents were both brown eyed, brown haired and short, then you would have less evidence. You wouldn't love them any less, but you wouldn't be as sure that they were your biological parents.
The same goes for things you read. A book on cosmology by Stephen Hawking is automatically, by virtue of his career and previous, more trustworthy than a book on cosmology by some kook from the backwoods of Tennessee. But if the subject was how to make the best moonshine or the history of the backwoods of Tennessee, I'd trust the kook more than Stephen Hawking.
Trust or credibility is absolutely NOT the same thing as faith. Faith, by its nature, lacks evidence. Trust and credibility are earned through previous encounters, which provide the evidence used to justify that trust.
You're not getting what I'm saying.
That little old lady down the street who takes in lost kitties and bakes you cookies has faith. Every night, she sits down with a cup of hot cocoa and watches the 700 Club or John Hagee and then picks up the phone and sends those theocratic fascists money because they're asking for it on behalf of Jesus.
They, in turn, take it and give it to groups who fund fundamentalist Jewish groups that want to reclaim Israel. Why? Because once all the Jews move back to Israel, Jesus comes back. (They neglect to tell these Jewish folks that 2/3 of them will be sent to hell, according to Revelation.) Then, these groups decide that a foresaken patch of dirt is theirs and not the property of the Palestinian family living on it and bulldozes their house, killing a small child.
Then the guy who runs the 7/11, a recent Pakistani immigrant, who gives the old lady cat food at a discount because she takes in the lost kitties sees the Palestinian homes being bulldozed and donates money to a group who says they're providing support to Palestinians who have been displaced.
This group buys some C4 and straps it to the back of the kid whose house was bulldozed and promises him 72 virgins if he walks into a market and blows himself up. The kid does.
Both people think they're doing something nice to support other people of faith. They're little bit of faith, which everybody admires, turned into a horrible expression. And they both think that the actions of the groups they support are justified by their faith. But, the thing is, THEY'RE BOTH WRONG.
So, you see, it's not about our extremists being tough against their extremists. It's about people putting up faith as a virtue and then it being twisted to suit political and ideological goals.
The only way to stop this is to denigrate faith as the weakness it is. It clouds judgement and stops a thinking mind. If the shopkeeper and little old lady would pull their heads out of their respective holy books, they'd realize that REAL PEOPLE ARE DYING.
But they don't, and the killing continues. And people like me, who see the sheer idiocy of the whole thing are dismissed as "hate-filled atheists."
So faith isn't about refusing to question something, it's about making shit up and then justifying your conclusion in the face of contradictory evidence.
Faith is the act of accepting something without evidence. How is that any different?
If it's their only tool, then I've got an obligation to them to give them a better tool.
If I see someone trying to dig a well with a spoon, I've got an obligation to give them a shovel.
Then I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for faith. I'm looking for proof. I figure that, if I find proof, then the arguments are settled, at least on that matter, and we're closer to true peace.
I've had prayers answered. I've had prayers not answered. Then I did an experiment and realized it was just my way of looking at things that changed when I prayed. Also, nothing out of the ordinary happened when I prayed for things out of the ordinary (like a miraculous healing for a terminally ill patient in my family). Science, however, puts out some pretty repeatable and accurate predictions. In my life, at least, god can't compete.
I had a permanent change in myself when I gave up on the notion of God. It was liberating. The thorn in my paw of "why is there evil in the world if god supposedly loves us" was gone. The feeling of "if only I do this, good things will start happening all the time instead of some of the time" was gone. Faith was replaced with knowledge. Fear was replaced with confidence. It's not for everybody, but it's right for me.
I've listened to those guys. They're mostly about "Yay God! Boo liberals! Send money!"
I'm not quite ready to have my desire extinguished, and I don't think I'll ever be. The void I feel is being filled, slowly, with information and knowledge. The kind of stuff that can be empirically measured. And also some booze and sex.
I'm happy you've found peace, and I'm flattered you like me enough to try and help me, but I'm not a person who puts much stock in faith, and, to be honest, thinks people who think they've found the solution in an infinity are, well, wrong.
And if you really don't want people to call you those names, try keeping your compatriots from being intolerant, cruel and blind. If the general perception of a Christian was "gentle, quiet, and humble," you wouldn't get so much flack.
Then, like my imaginary friend Larry and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the invisible purple dinosaur in my basement and the celestial teapot, this "larger intelligence" is of no consequence to my existence.
But I thought faith was a good thing?
You've obviously not been around a woman like that. When they talk about their husband, they actually get happy and hopeful that he'll stop mistreating them. It's not fear, it's faith and their religious disinformation regarding divorce.
True, and a bad example on my part. A better one would be those suicide bombers. Their faith in their book is so strong that they'll destroy themselves and others over it.
I never said they were. However, to close your mind to the glory around you by viewing your very existence as flawed ("sinful," in the terms of the faithful) is a sure fire way to make your life into a living hell. And all because you've got faith in the validity of your book.
Faith stops questions. If I'm sure of something, why would I question it? And if I have faith, it would be destroyed by asking too many questions. (It sure was for me, anyway.)
So faith is good for people who don't want explanations for things. Just like the poster in a video posted earlier: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it!" That's the best definition of faith that I've ever seen.
The problem is that moderate people who value faith let extremists off the hook. If faith is a good thing, then extreme faith must be extremely good, even if it's destructive.
The appendix must have survival value, but we remove them all the time. Why should faith be any different?
I can try new things without faith. All I need is for my curiosity to overwhelm my fear of the unknown. I can face disease without faith. I am aware of the power of our medical system, and if I'm beyond help, then I'll die, just like billions before me. I'm working to make the world a better place. I don't need faith. Any progress made in overcoming the great evils of the world is a good thing.
So maybe faith is a way for people to overcome fear and do things that need done. If Og the caveman didn't have faith that the sun would rise the next day, he'd be paralyzed with fear. But if he made up a sun God and said "I have faith that the sun god will haul the sun across the sky again tomorrow," he'd be able to concern himself with surviving until tomorrow. Is it any suprise that many religions have festivals at the winter solstice?
Maybe, like our appendix, we've developed beyond the need for faith. Maybe the tool of faith is as antiquated as a stone axehead.
If you've made contact with a larger intelligence it's your duty to your species to provide evidence of this intelligence.
Otherwise, your "larger intelligence" is no more real than my imaginary friend, Larry, except that other people don't look at you weird when you talk to him.
The default position is atheism, insofar as atheism means "not believing in a god." Since there's no evidence, there's no reason to assume God exists and, therefore, no reason to believe in one. I mean, you're an atheist with respect to Odin and Zeus and Ra, correct?
Look at it another way: The default position on the invisible purple dinosaur that lives in my basement is to no accept it until there's evidence. You can't disprove it because I can merely make more things up that you can't disprove. So you'd be an "atheist" with respect to the invisible purple dinosaur that lives in my basement.
The problem is that the word atheist has come to mean, through efforts from the theists and mistakes made by vocal atheists, "I think you're dumb for believing in a god."