It seems every half a year or so we have an article about the same boring shit - how digital data can be tragically lost. Cry me a river. I don't know about everyone else, but I've got all my personal files starting from 1996 just intact. If you care about your files, storing them forever is easy. Just get an external hard-drive and do regular incremental backups. Store all important files on CD/DVD four times a year. Do an off-site copy every 2 years (encrypt and pack all files using zip, copy to external HDD, go to a friend and copy to his computer). The cost of doing this is trivial (200$ for HDD amortized over 5 years) and the time is rather small (15 min/week for weekly backup, 2 hours for disk backup, 6 hours for offsite backup, for a total of 24 hours per year per household). This will virtually guarantee that all your files are intact for as long as you want. You can of course, spend less time with a little bit less safety.
Regarding the access, it's extremely simple. Don't use e-mail clients that store messages in proprietary formats (like Outlook), don't rip music to DRMed formats, save personal videos as DivX AVI and that's all.
Precisely. It makes perfect sense to you to wonder how many customers that visit your site use Firefox/IE/*.* Or how many page visits they make using each browser. Or, preferably, what is the share of Firefox users, IE users, Opera users, etc. in the sales of your company (assuming we are talking about commercial sites). But I see no reason why Firefox team/community/business analysts should care about the marketshare other than just for the fun of it.
This is just bullshit. All ISPs would just give you the gateway/DNS/IP settings if you ask and everything should work fine. It's not like it's still 1994 and you need to install Trumpet Winsock or something.:) Most cable/ADSL/whatever modems should work without any drivers just fine.
Yeah, many ISPs give you CDs, but you don't need to install anything, you know. And if there is an ISP which refuses to disclose any settings and makes its connection unusable without custom software, well, just chose another one. It's not like Firefox guys should care about such stupid ISP and its stupid users, which is probably only one in the world.
It's amazing how in the huge world of software everyone keeps talking about the same shit over and over again. Now we are doomed for 2-3 years to listen about desktop search on every occasion from every single company. "Hi, I am Gill Bates, the CEO of Useless Widget Software. We are planning to introduce desktop searching capability into the next version of our product for no apparent reason, just because it looks cool". Shit, I can understand why Google wants to create desktop search - they are a search company, after all, and they have a severe case of money-pocket-burnus. And of course Google is too cheap to create a desktop application using Windows API or even something cross-platform like Java, so they use browser to operate the search, which is just a pathetic hack. But why should Firefox do desktop search? Contrary to what many may think, searching personal computer files has nothing whatsoever to do with browser.
People often kick around various percentages that Firefox, supposedly, bit off Microsoft's IE. Some say Firefox has 3%, some say 6%, some say already 10%. But it's meaningless and pointless because: 1) It's a free product in a marketplace for free products. Opera is the only company that really needs to care about the marketshare, because each user is either 30$ for them, or a stream of advertising money. 2) All users are different. Do you count downloads, installations, number of users, number of people using, number of companies, number of page visits, number of hours spent using it, etc., etc.?
Because of 1) it doesn't really matter which indicator will you chose for 2), they are all pointless.
/. is not a noun, it's just a bunch of punctuation marks.
Re:No, A Dual Joystick Controller Really Is Better
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Halo 2 Released
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· Score: 1
1) Who needs mats with optical mice? Unless I get out of table error I don't care.:) Really, I have never ever noticed this problem, because lifting a mouse and moving it a bit is such an extremely easy task. 2) There are better keyboard layouts than WASD. Personally I use a very strange, but comfortable RMB-ADS. That is, I move with the right mouse button, strafe with A and S and move back with D. This is extremely comfortable, because I can move with mouse alone and because while I am strafing I can still use most of my left hand to reach half of the keyboard. If one really wants more freedom, one can bind strafe modifier to the middle mouse button and almost totally free the left hand (when need arises). 3) If you need, get a better mouse (a good mouse at 30-40$ is much cheaper than your DJC). I use the absolutely cheapest optical Logitech mouse (so cheap, it doesn't even have the Logitech logo) and it works perfectly. 4) There are some keyboards that can handle any combinations, but in any case, this isn't really a problem for FPS games. Fighting games have this problem, but not something as simple as Halo.
Very funny.:) No, I am not a manager, albeit I do have a BBA degree. Neither I ever was a manager, but I was a financial analyst in an investment bank and I know how much bullshit the reorganisations (merging, breaking up, etc.) can be. But I also know that all too often the organisation just hits a wall. It's clear that the potential is there, the market is ready, the products/services in the pipeline are good, there are good people, necessary assets, sufficient finance, but the organisational structure is deeply decayed.
One option is to force a change from the top through reengineering, but it's not always an option, especially when the top is relatively clueless about how to approach the problems. Often a good solution would be to do exactly what AOL is doing - to split the company, to let divisions that don't depend on each other too much to do what they think is best. It's entirely possible that a lot of AOL problems are caused by forcing all divisions to follow a misguided strategy instead of doing what they know is the best.
Yes, it's no silver bullet and no guarantee that AOL shareholders will benefit, but I can at least see the rationale behind this decision.
First, it's a common misconception that people believed in flat Earth. Yeah, there was a time when most people believed it, but it was in very primitive times, when people basically didn't really have an idea. In ancient world people (educated people, that is) knew basically that the world was probably round, and by 200 before our era we even knew it's circumference, thanks to the ingenious experiment by Eratosthenes.
I agree with your rough explanation of progression of our worldviews from simple to advanced, myth -> religion -> science. But your argument that religion is "better" in explaining the creation of the Universe than science is is flawed. To determine which is better you need to define the criteria. Time and time again it was shown that religious explanations are useless, pointless and simply wrong (there are countless examples, anyone can think of many).
The explanation that religion gives (God created the world) is pathetic. It is worse than no explanation at all, because it is wrong, confusing, full of inconsistencies, is not backed by any evidence whatsoever, useless, untestable, etc., etc.!
Not true. Yes, in the short run nothing happens after the reorganisation (except possibly layoffs). But in the longer term this allows a company to develop further, removing organisational roadblocks and stuff.
OK, then how about an application to record what happens on screen? I am not familiar with such apps on Linux, but there must be some (I know there are a lot of them on Windows). This way you can have an AVI the minute after the presentation ends. This AVI can be just dropped onto the timeline in the video editing software and it would be piece of cake to intersperse it with the video of the presenter. A side advantage is that the quality of the recording would be much better this way (I was watching a lot of MIT World videos (a cool site, BTW) and the quality of the slides is often very poor, because they use only one camera).
On a more serious note, there is no reason to waste the reputation in the process of converting it. Just like when you have a world-class research laboratory you don't convert it into money by selling everything as scrap metal.
You don't need to film the whole 2 hours of presentation. Just film the speaker and afterwards film 5 minutes of presentation (basically a few seconds per slide). It's not like there is usually animation or something. Alternatively, you can just save slides as images and insert them in the video timeline when you need them.
The big question is should I now switch from Opera? Or even should I download Firefox to try it and possibly compliment Opera?
I dunno, if Firefox is just a better, more secure and more usable IE/Netscape, I don't know what would I get. There was a comparision with Mozilla already in the thread, of course with IE too, but no mention of Opera. Can anyone "spread Firefox" for me? Do I need it as an Opera user?
1) Definitions of atheism that say it's a belief are (to use Wikipedia terminology) POV, i.e. biased. 2) I didn't mean short-term pleasure by happiness, I meant whatever you implied by that. If it's long-term happiness - fine. 3) But if you say religion is good because it gives you the maximum happiness, this is BS because there is no way to tell it. It's quite a statement - "I believe because that's what is the best for me"... Nonsense. How do you know it's true, did you already test all belief systems in the world, including a thousand or so religions? 4) I didn't mean that religion is always a post-hoc justification, just that it may be in your case. I don't know you personally, but I have an impression (perhaps not justified at all) that you wouldn't be that bad guy were you an atheist. 5) This is all irrelevant, however, because the main question is (going back to the rationality/irrationality roots of our discussion) - is there a god or not, and if yes, which one? If there is no god, believing in one is idiocy, even if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. 6) I didn't imply that your church uses this methods, god forbid.:) My point was that most religious people (and irrational people in general) can't be persuaded that there is no god (and so to become atheists). One of the reasons is that they are usually not interested in arguments and just repeat their "truths" (some oversimplification here). The only way to succeed is to hold their attention long enough and to use extra help of the special re-educational methods that many sects (I never called your church a sect) successfully use. That was an attempt at humour, although there was some serious point there as well.:) 7) An important distinction - not all atheists are rationalists. Now, to convince a rationalist is very easy if you can give some convincing evidence that god exists. If you give it, most would listen. So far I was not made aware of any evidence worth paper (disks) it's written on. Of course, if you have anything, by all means, go ahead and share it with me. 8) Nature magazine has a mission to promote science. The reference to this research is available in many places online and you can check the nature.com archive if you don't trust others. This may not be to your (and other religious guys) liking, but if it's published in Nature and for 6 years no flaws are found in the study, then it can be trusted as if it was the word of god.:) You can basically treat their conclusions as facts. 9) Your bullshit explanations are irrelevant. Check out the article in Nature and the discussion of the article (see a citation index) and find out that the main explanation is - good knowledge of science is generally incompatible with religious belief. 10) The IQ findings are not in this study, they are in several other studies, including those performed by Christian research institutions in the USA. Google for them, should be very easy to find. It's not a very big difference, but it's there. 11) In conclusion. a) There is no evidence that god exists. b) One can easily use irrational arguments to justify a belief in god. c) There is no evidence that religion is good, and plenty of evidence that it's bad (we haven't discussed it now, but it's there). d) There is ample evidence that the more a person knows and the more intelligent he is, the less likely he is to believe some crap about god. e) Most people who believe in gods are morons. f) Everyone should become an atheist, because it's the only rational decision for an intelligent person.
This doesn't work. You have probably seen this over and over again - a company builds a reputation, grows and is popular with its clients, but then decides it's not enough and starts doing crazy stunts like these. Of course, they forget that they didn't become what they are by creatively fighting 20% of their customers... You can't change them, they only way is to wait and hope they die a painless death as a business.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it.
I don't have a degree in marketing (although I do have a BBA), but don't they have something wrong with their positioning? If you are right about their target audience, why not call themselves "Gadget Heaven" or "Digital Lifestyle" or "Top Value for Top Price" and, you know, make it obvious who they are and what you, as a customer, would be getting there. It's not like Alienware is promising me best deals and cheapest stuff, no, they explicitly state that they sell to gadget freaks who want top performance for big $$$.
Best Buy really does want to "have its cake and eat it too" and that it wrong, not just because of ethical implications, but because it doesn't make business sense.
Look, you can call white "black" all day, but that won't add a single spot. Atheism is not faith in non-existence of god, this is an explicit lack of religious belief. Let's be nice and not ascribe new meanings to this word. Check any dictionary for the definition. Atheism is not faith, it's lack of religious faith. No matter how many times people repeat the tired old "atheism is just another religion", this nonsense doesn't start making sense. Now that we are done with this, I can continue reading your post.:)
Even strong atheism has nothing to do with faith. It's not faith, it's rational belief, expectations that you have about reality based on evidence (or lack thereof). Having said that, I am definitely a "strong atheist", or whatever you like to call it.
My contention that most scientists are atheists doesn't lack power. CHECK THE FUCKING FACTS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. There are probably hundreds of surveys that show the same thing. Scientists generally tend to not believe in gods, Nobel prize winners (in physics/medicine) tend to not believe in gods, and the higher your IQ is the less likely you are to believe in god. In the US National Academy of Science only 7 fucking percent believe in personal god.
Now I never claimed that my preference for atheists was based on any strong supportive evidence. I freely admit that it's just my assertion, that's what I think based on my worldview (and I may very well be wrong). Your arguments about decision making are very convincing and let me just reiterate that my claim was not intended as anything more than a personal opinion (alhtough one I hold dear to me).
But all that said, I honestly don't feel compelled to argue. With all respect that I have for you (and I do have some, as you are obviously somewhat intelligent and a professional in a relevant field), I just don't see a point in arguing with a religious (highly religious for that) guy. I understand very well the arguments for tolerance, dialog and stuff, but at some point I realised that it's basically crap. Religious people are morons (I know all about the defition, but the word has another meaning now, unlike "atheism", which you attempt to redefine) and that's basically it.
I am a very rational person, I was a winner of a national debate championship once, so believe me that I am being teared apart by this contradiction. On the one hand, I'd like to discuss this rationally, but on the other, I saw enough to know that it would be pointless. The only practical way to heal you from your delusion would be to use the very tools religious sects use. Incarceration, sleep deprivation, repetition, indoctrination, etc. Mild electric shocks may also help. After that it would be possible to start discussing it rationally.
There is a huge hole in your reasoning. Just because a principle makes you happier, doesn't mean it's true. There can be 100 principles contradicting each other, some of which may make you happier. It doesn't mean all of them are true (because only 1 can be). Furthermore, religious is used as a post-hoc justification for decent behaviour. You would be a happy and good person anyway, but because you are religious you argue that religion makes you happy and good. This is day-and-night different from the scientific method, as you must understand perfectly well (doublethink is invaluable to religions...).
I hope that was rational enough to you. I hope you will excuse the lack of decorum and the briefness of the argument, but as a person who believes (based on empirical evidence) that religious faith is bullshit and it's generally impossible to persuade religious people that it's so, I am not very compelled to waste my time doing just that.
Bullshit. I've been talking about these issues with really smart guys, renowned Islamic scholars and the like. It's not a strawman parody, this is just a very simplified version of what they really believe. Yeah, it's worded to show my lack of respect, but it does not differ from what they proclaim in any significant way. You may have a super-dooper worldview, which is much more complex, but forgive me for not knowing it, since I never had a chance to discuss it with you - must religious people, however, use the very same line of reasoning that I outlined (if at all).
As for hate speech bit, this is fucking bullshit. I know hate speech when I say it, and that wasn't it. Hate speech is when I argue that all clerics should be shot, mutilated and tortured. That's hate speech for you.
Lenin was right when he argued that the only valid form of atheism was militant atheism. Tolerance is not an option. If you don't believe me or Lenin, believe Voltaire or many other great people who understood it perfectly well centuries ago... Religious belief is a form of mental retardation, which must be eradicated from the face of Earth for the sake of the humankind.
This is the free-rider problem of public goods. Yeah, tell me. But the real problem is with public bads. You know, the crap that noone but the government and their buddies want.
Thanks for the restraint not modding me down and for the reply. It is absolutely possible for not atheists to make good decisions. But I would claim that the less religious a person is, the more likely he is to make good decisions, all other things equal.
Atheism is not irrational. By definition, atheism is lack of belief in god. Not having a belief is not irrational. Not acquiring a belief in something that may be irrational if there is evidence for that something. However, there is no serious evidence for the existence of any god or gods. "Holy books" that we have are not evidence, because it is well understood how mythological and religious beliefs emerged. The "beauty of the world" and other crap is also not evidence, just demagogy. Scientists, i.e. those who know the most about the world, are predominantly atheists (depends on the country and the field of science, of course).
Of course, I understand the opposite worldview - "We don't care about science, we believe because it feels right, there is a god and that's it", which is expressed by religious people (though sometimes in more refined wording, especially when it comes from religious "scholars"). I also understand I can't persuade these people who surrender their intelligence in favour of built-in axioms of questionable validity. But I think I am justified in simply thinking that their opinions and beliefs are crap, and they are morons (insert a necessary disclaimer here about how they still can be good fathers, great poets, even decent politicians sometimes, heck, even scientists from time to time, etc.).
* By rational I meant more that they should be rationalists, not that they should practice rational decision making in the economic sense (though to some extent that obviously follows).
P.S. This is an entirely different topic, but USA is simply a backward country in this regard. Not as backward as Iran or Brasil, but it is still not a secular state today, despite the Founding Fathers being mostly atheists, theists, agnostics and other decent rationalist folk. It's simple conditioning - from the childhood people are gently pushed to be believers (christians, jewish, muslims, doesn't matter). Heck, even some New Age Wicca crap is considered more "normal", more tolerable than atheism. This is just plain retarded, but there is little that can be done to radically change the situation today. And this is not flaimbait, just an candid comment based on very obvious observations.
I can take your misguided tolerance even further, by noting that Orrin Hatch is an avid supporter of stem-cell research. See, no black and white?... A less intelligent person would then argue that people should be tolerant, that each position should be respected, that one should not pretend he knows the truth, etc. But being a smart guy I am, I can see the big picture. And the big picture is that 95% of the people are morons and make their decisions semi-randomly. Thus every politician in power poses the danger of doing harm to the society, unless he is a) very intelligent b) very educated c) rational d) sceptical e) atheist f) generally a nice chap. I seriously doubt there are more than a few percent of legislators in Congress that qualify.
Re:Halo Myths: What PC Users Don't Get about Halo
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Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
I tend to agree. Compared with other PC sci-fi shooters like AvP 2, Halo felt like an arcade game. This was its advantage however - the gameplay was very simple, smooth and fun. Despite not being very advanced graphically or story-wise, the game was very enjoyable (except for the copy-pasted levels and running back). But in the end I would rather pick a PC FPS. Similarly, GTA3 was a very easy to play game, but it was definitely very "consolish" compared with Mafia, and simplistic in many respects (most of all, its feel and storywise).
Re:Halo Myths: What PC Users Don't Get about Halo
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Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
Unless a PS2 game is designed to be used with mouse, this is just a useless accessory. Games on consoles have autoaim and other crap. The controls are not designed for instant 180 degree turns and precise control. Using a mouse on PS2 with most games would feel like using a gamepad to control the cursor in Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems every half a year or so we have an article about the same boring shit - how digital data can be tragically lost. Cry me a river. I don't know about everyone else, but I've got all my personal files starting from 1996 just intact. If you care about your files, storing them forever is easy. Just get an external hard-drive and do regular incremental backups. Store all important files on CD/DVD four times a year. Do an off-site copy every 2 years (encrypt and pack all files using zip, copy to external HDD, go to a friend and copy to his computer). The cost of doing this is trivial (200$ for HDD amortized over 5 years) and the time is rather small (15 min/week for weekly backup, 2 hours for disk backup, 6 hours for offsite backup, for a total of 24 hours per year per household). This will virtually guarantee that all your files are intact for as long as you want. You can of course, spend less time with a little bit less safety.
Regarding the access, it's extremely simple. Don't use e-mail clients that store messages in proprietary formats (like Outlook), don't rip music to DRMed formats, save personal videos as DivX AVI and that's all.
Precisely. It makes perfect sense to you to wonder how many customers that visit your site use Firefox/IE/*.* Or how many page visits they make using each browser. Or, preferably, what is the share of Firefox users, IE users, Opera users, etc. in the sales of your company (assuming we are talking about commercial sites). But I see no reason why Firefox team/community/business analysts should care about the marketshare other than just for the fun of it.
This is just bullshit. All ISPs would just give you the gateway/DNS/IP settings if you ask and everything should work fine. It's not like it's still 1994 and you need to install Trumpet Winsock or something. :) Most cable/ADSL/whatever modems should work without any drivers just fine.
Yeah, many ISPs give you CDs, but you don't need to install anything, you know. And if there is an ISP which refuses to disclose any settings and makes its connection unusable without custom software, well, just chose another one. It's not like Firefox guys should care about such stupid ISP and its stupid users, which is probably only one in the world.
It's amazing how in the huge world of software everyone keeps talking about the same shit over and over again. Now we are doomed for 2-3 years to listen about desktop search on every occasion from every single company. "Hi, I am Gill Bates, the CEO of Useless Widget Software. We are planning to introduce desktop searching capability into the next version of our product for no apparent reason, just because it looks cool". Shit, I can understand why Google wants to create desktop search - they are a search company, after all, and they have a severe case of money-pocket-burnus. And of course Google is too cheap to create a desktop application using Windows API or even something cross-platform like Java, so they use browser to operate the search, which is just a pathetic hack. But why should Firefox do desktop search? Contrary to what many may think, searching personal computer files has nothing whatsoever to do with browser.
People often kick around various percentages that Firefox, supposedly, bit off Microsoft's IE. Some say Firefox has 3%, some say 6%, some say already 10%. But it's meaningless and pointless because:
1) It's a free product in a marketplace for free products. Opera is the only company that really needs to care about the marketshare, because each user is either 30$ for them, or a stream of advertising money.
2) All users are different. Do you count downloads, installations, number of users, number of people using, number of companies, number of page visits, number of hours spent using it, etc., etc.?
Because of 1) it doesn't really matter which indicator will you chose for 2), they are all pointless.
He-he. :) So Stalin was a "liberal conservative"?
/. is not a noun, it's just a bunch of punctuation marks.
1) Who needs mats with optical mice? Unless I get out of table error I don't care. :) Really, I have never ever noticed this problem, because lifting a mouse and moving it a bit is such an extremely easy task.
2) There are better keyboard layouts than WASD. Personally I use a very strange, but comfortable RMB-ADS. That is, I move with the right mouse button, strafe with A and S and move back with D. This is extremely comfortable, because I can move with mouse alone and because while I am strafing I can still use most of my left hand to reach half of the keyboard. If one really wants more freedom, one can bind strafe modifier to the middle mouse button and almost totally free the left hand (when need arises).
3) If you need, get a better mouse (a good mouse at 30-40$ is much cheaper than your DJC). I use the absolutely cheapest optical Logitech mouse (so cheap, it doesn't even have the Logitech logo) and it works perfectly.
4) There are some keyboards that can handle any combinations, but in any case, this isn't really a problem for FPS games. Fighting games have this problem, but not something as simple as Halo.
Very funny. :) No, I am not a manager, albeit I do have a BBA degree. Neither I ever was a manager, but I was a financial analyst in an investment bank and I know how much bullshit the reorganisations (merging, breaking up, etc.) can be. But I also know that all too often the organisation just hits a wall. It's clear that the potential is there, the market is ready, the products/services in the pipeline are good, there are good people, necessary assets, sufficient finance, but the organisational structure is deeply decayed.
One option is to force a change from the top through reengineering, but it's not always an option, especially when the top is relatively clueless about how to approach the problems. Often a good solution would be to do exactly what AOL is doing - to split the company, to let divisions that don't depend on each other too much to do what they think is best. It's entirely possible that a lot of AOL problems are caused by forcing all divisions to follow a misguided strategy instead of doing what they know is the best.
Yes, it's no silver bullet and no guarantee that AOL shareholders will benefit, but I can at least see the rationale behind this decision.
First, it's a common misconception that people believed in flat Earth. Yeah, there was a time when most people believed it, but it was in very primitive times, when people basically didn't really have an idea. In ancient world people (educated people, that is) knew basically that the world was probably round, and by 200 before our era we even knew it's circumference, thanks to the ingenious experiment by Eratosthenes.
I agree with your rough explanation of progression of our worldviews from simple to advanced, myth -> religion -> science. But your argument that religion is "better" in explaining the creation of the Universe than science is is flawed. To determine which is better you need to define the criteria. Time and time again it was shown that religious explanations are useless, pointless and simply wrong (there are countless examples, anyone can think of many).
The explanation that religion gives (God created the world) is pathetic. It is worse than no explanation at all, because it is wrong, confusing, full of inconsistencies, is not backed by any evidence whatsoever, useless, untestable, etc., etc.!
Not true. Yes, in the short run nothing happens after the reorganisation (except possibly layoffs). But in the longer term this allows a company to develop further, removing organisational roadblocks and stuff.
OK, then how about an application to record what happens on screen? I am not familiar with such apps on Linux, but there must be some (I know there are a lot of them on Windows). This way you can have an AVI the minute after the presentation ends. This AVI can be just dropped onto the timeline in the video editing software and it would be piece of cake to intersperse it with the video of the presenter. A side advantage is that the quality of the recording would be much better this way (I was watching a lot of MIT World videos (a cool site, BTW) and the quality of the slides is often very poor, because they use only one camera).
You've probably got a Harvard MBA, haven't you? :)
On a more serious note, there is no reason to waste the reputation in the process of converting it. Just like when you have a world-class research laboratory you don't convert it into money by selling everything as scrap metal.
You don't need to film the whole 2 hours of presentation. Just film the speaker and afterwards film 5 minutes of presentation (basically a few seconds per slide). It's not like there is usually animation or something. Alternatively, you can just save slides as images and insert them in the video timeline when you need them.
As for editing, it
The big question is should I now switch from Opera? Or even should I download Firefox to try it and possibly compliment Opera?
I dunno, if Firefox is just a better, more secure and more usable IE/Netscape, I don't know what would I get. There was a comparision with Mozilla already in the thread, of course with IE too, but no mention of Opera. Can anyone "spread Firefox" for me? Do I need it as an Opera user?
1) Definitions of atheism that say it's a belief are (to use Wikipedia terminology) POV, i.e. biased. :) My point was that most religious people (and irrational people in general) can't be persuaded that there is no god (and so to become atheists). One of the reasons is that they are usually not interested in arguments and just repeat their "truths" (some oversimplification here). The only way to succeed is to hold their attention long enough and to use extra help of the special re-educational methods that many sects (I never called your church a sect) successfully use. That was an attempt at humour, although there was some serious point there as well. :) :) You can basically treat their conclusions as facts.
2) I didn't mean short-term pleasure by happiness, I meant whatever you implied by that. If it's long-term happiness - fine.
3) But if you say religion is good because it gives you the maximum happiness, this is BS because there is no way to tell it. It's quite a statement - "I believe because that's what is the best for me"... Nonsense. How do you know it's true, did you already test all belief systems in the world, including a thousand or so religions?
4) I didn't mean that religion is always a post-hoc justification, just that it may be in your case. I don't know you personally, but I have an impression (perhaps not justified at all) that you wouldn't be that bad guy were you an atheist.
5) This is all irrelevant, however, because the main question is (going back to the rationality/irrationality roots of our discussion) - is there a god or not, and if yes, which one? If there is no god, believing in one is idiocy, even if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
6) I didn't imply that your church uses this methods, god forbid.
7) An important distinction - not all atheists are rationalists. Now, to convince a rationalist is very easy if you can give some convincing evidence that god exists. If you give it, most would listen. So far I was not made aware of any evidence worth paper (disks) it's written on. Of course, if you have anything, by all means, go ahead and share it with me.
8) Nature magazine has a mission to promote science. The reference to this research is available in many places online and you can check the nature.com archive if you don't trust others. This may not be to your (and other religious guys) liking, but if it's published in Nature and for 6 years no flaws are found in the study, then it can be trusted as if it was the word of god.
9) Your bullshit explanations are irrelevant. Check out the article in Nature and the discussion of the article (see a citation index) and find out that the main explanation is - good knowledge of science is generally incompatible with religious belief.
10) The IQ findings are not in this study, they are in several other studies, including those performed by Christian research institutions in the USA. Google for them, should be very easy to find. It's not a very big difference, but it's there.
11) In conclusion.
a) There is no evidence that god exists.
b) One can easily use irrational arguments to justify a belief in god.
c) There is no evidence that religion is good, and plenty of evidence that it's bad (we haven't discussed it now, but it's there).
d) There is ample evidence that the more a person knows and the more intelligent he is, the less likely he is to believe some crap about god.
e) Most people who believe in gods are morons.
f) Everyone should become an atheist, because it's the only rational decision for an intelligent person.
This doesn't work. You have probably seen this over and over again - a company builds a reputation, grows and is popular with its clients, but then decides it's not enough and starts doing crazy stunts like these. Of course, they forget that they didn't become what they are by creatively fighting 20% of their customers... You can't change them, they only way is to wait and hope they die a painless death as a business.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it.
I don't have a degree in marketing (although I do have a BBA), but don't they have something wrong with their positioning? If you are right about their target audience, why not call themselves "Gadget Heaven" or "Digital Lifestyle" or "Top Value for Top Price" and, you know, make it obvious who they are and what you, as a customer, would be getting there. It's not like Alienware is promising me best deals and cheapest stuff, no, they explicitly state that they sell to gadget freaks who want top performance for big $$$.
Best Buy really does want to "have its cake and eat it too" and that it wrong, not just because of ethical implications, but because it doesn't make business sense.
Look, you can call white "black" all day, but that won't add a single spot. Atheism is not faith in non-existence of god, this is an explicit lack of religious belief. Let's be nice and not ascribe new meanings to this word. Check any dictionary for the definition. Atheism is not faith, it's lack of religious faith. No matter how many times people repeat the tired old "atheism is just another religion", this nonsense doesn't start making sense. Now that we are done with this, I can continue reading your post. :)
Even strong atheism has nothing to do with faith. It's not faith, it's rational belief, expectations that you have about reality based on evidence (or lack thereof). Having said that, I am definitely a "strong atheist", or whatever you like to call it.
My contention that most scientists are atheists doesn't lack power. CHECK THE FUCKING FACTS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. There are probably hundreds of surveys that show the same thing. Scientists generally tend to not believe in gods, Nobel prize winners (in physics/medicine) tend to not believe in gods, and the higher your IQ is the less likely you are to believe in god. In the US National Academy of Science only 7 fucking percent believe in personal god.
Now I never claimed that my preference for atheists was based on any strong supportive evidence. I freely admit that it's just my assertion, that's what I think based on my worldview (and I may very well be wrong). Your arguments about decision making are very convincing and let me just reiterate that my claim was not intended as anything more than a personal opinion (alhtough one I hold dear to me).
But all that said, I honestly don't feel compelled to argue. With all respect that I have for you (and I do have some, as you are obviously somewhat intelligent and a professional in a relevant field), I just don't see a point in arguing with a religious (highly religious for that) guy. I understand very well the arguments for tolerance, dialog and stuff, but at some point I realised that it's basically crap. Religious people are morons (I know all about the defition, but the word has another meaning now, unlike "atheism", which you attempt to redefine) and that's basically it.
I am a very rational person, I was a winner of a national debate championship once, so believe me that I am being teared apart by this contradiction. On the one hand, I'd like to discuss this rationally, but on the other, I saw enough to know that it would be pointless. The only practical way to heal you from your delusion would be to use the very tools religious sects use. Incarceration, sleep deprivation, repetition, indoctrination, etc. Mild electric shocks may also help. After that it would be possible to start discussing it rationally.
There is a huge hole in your reasoning. Just because a principle makes you happier, doesn't mean it's true. There can be 100 principles contradicting each other, some of which may make you happier. It doesn't mean all of them are true (because only 1 can be). Furthermore, religious is used as a post-hoc justification for decent behaviour. You would be a happy and good person anyway, but because you are religious you argue that religion makes you happy and good. This is day-and-night different from the scientific method, as you must understand perfectly well (doublethink is invaluable to religions...).
I hope that was rational enough to you. I hope you will excuse the lack of decorum and the briefness of the argument, but as a person who believes (based on empirical evidence) that religious faith is bullshit and it's generally impossible to persuade religious people that it's so, I am not very compelled to waste my time doing just that.
Bullshit. I've been talking about these issues with really smart guys, renowned Islamic scholars and the like. It's not a strawman parody, this is just a very simplified version of what they really believe. Yeah, it's worded to show my lack of respect, but it does not differ from what they proclaim in any significant way. You may have a super-dooper worldview, which is much more complex, but forgive me for not knowing it, since I never had a chance to discuss it with you - must religious people, however, use the very same line of reasoning that I outlined (if at all).
As for hate speech bit, this is fucking bullshit. I know hate speech when I say it, and that wasn't it. Hate speech is when I argue that all clerics should be shot, mutilated and tortured. That's hate speech for you.
Lenin was right when he argued that the only valid form of atheism was militant atheism. Tolerance is not an option. If you don't believe me or Lenin, believe Voltaire or many other great people who understood it perfectly well centuries ago... Religious belief is a form of mental retardation, which must be eradicated from the face of Earth for the sake of the humankind.
This is the free-rider problem of public goods.
Yeah, tell me. But the real problem is with public bads. You know, the crap that noone but the government and their buddies want.
Thanks for the restraint not modding me down and for the reply. It is absolutely possible for not atheists to make good decisions. But I would claim that the less religious a person is, the more likely he is to make good decisions, all other things equal.
Atheism is not irrational. By definition, atheism is lack of belief in god. Not having a belief is not irrational. Not acquiring a belief in something that may be irrational if there is evidence for that something. However, there is no serious evidence for the existence of any god or gods. "Holy books" that we have are not evidence, because it is well understood how mythological and religious beliefs emerged. The "beauty of the world" and other crap is also not evidence, just demagogy. Scientists, i.e. those who know the most about the world, are predominantly atheists (depends on the country and the field of science, of course).
Of course, I understand the opposite worldview - "We don't care about science, we believe because it feels right, there is a god and that's it", which is expressed by religious people (though sometimes in more refined wording, especially when it comes from religious "scholars"). I also understand I can't persuade these people who surrender their intelligence in favour of built-in axioms of questionable validity. But I think I am justified in simply thinking that their opinions and beliefs are crap, and they are morons (insert a necessary disclaimer here about how they still can be good fathers, great poets, even decent politicians sometimes, heck, even scientists from time to time, etc.).
* By rational I meant more that they should be rationalists, not that they should practice rational decision making in the economic sense (though to some extent that obviously follows).
P.S. This is an entirely different topic, but USA is simply a backward country in this regard. Not as backward as Iran or Brasil, but it is still not a secular state today, despite the Founding Fathers being mostly atheists, theists, agnostics and other decent rationalist folk. It's simple conditioning - from the childhood people are gently pushed to be believers (christians, jewish, muslims, doesn't matter). Heck, even some New Age Wicca crap is considered more "normal", more tolerable than atheism. This is just plain retarded, but there is little that can be done to radically change the situation today. And this is not flaimbait, just an candid comment based on very obvious observations.
I can take your misguided tolerance even further, by noting that Orrin Hatch is an avid supporter of stem-cell research. See, no black and white?... A less intelligent person would then argue that people should be tolerant, that each position should be respected, that one should not pretend he knows the truth, etc. But being a smart guy I am, I can see the big picture. And the big picture is that 95% of the people are morons and make their decisions semi-randomly. Thus every politician in power poses the danger of doing harm to the society, unless he is a) very intelligent b) very educated c) rational d) sceptical e) atheist f) generally a nice chap. I seriously doubt there are more than a few percent of legislators in Congress that qualify.
I tend to agree. Compared with other PC sci-fi shooters like AvP 2, Halo felt like an arcade game. This was its advantage however - the gameplay was very simple, smooth and fun. Despite not being very advanced graphically or story-wise, the game was very enjoyable (except for the copy-pasted levels and running back). But in the end I would rather pick a PC FPS. Similarly, GTA3 was a very easy to play game, but it was definitely very "consolish" compared with Mafia, and simplistic in many respects (most of all, its feel and storywise).
Unless a PS2 game is designed to be used with mouse, this is just a useless accessory. Games on consoles have autoaim and other crap. The controls are not designed for instant 180 degree turns and precise control. Using a mouse on PS2 with most games would feel like using a gamepad to control the cursor in Windows.