Buddhism denies the importance of the existence of anything remotely classifiable as "the divine." It is a philosophy, not a religion.
Its both, actually. Just as is Christianity. With Christianity, the religious structure greatly overshadows the philosophy, whereas with Buddhism the philosophy is more well known than the religious structure. But Buddhism very much so is a religion, just not a theistic one. And I would argue that Nirvana could very easily be classified as divine. Not a divine being such as Christianity has, but a divine state of being.
Individual salvation is utterly different from enlightenment. Salvation assumes there is something to be forgiven, and someone to be saved. Buddhism rejects both notions.
Right, Christian salvation is different than Buddhist salvation, no doubt. And Buddhism doesn't use the word salvation the way Christianity does, instead they use enlightenment. I was just being lazy and using one word to describe the fact that both religions have an ultimate spiritual goal: Christianity seeks perfection of the self through sublimation in Christ, Buddhism seeks perfection of the self by following the path to Enlightenment (yes, I have simplified that as well, but I don't see a need to get into the Middle Way, the Eightfold path, etc.) In both cases, though, it is the individual that determines his own salvation/enlightenment through his own actions. No human intermediary required.
I have never been directly harmed by religion, which is perhaps why I can see the harm it causes others so clearly.
Again, absolutely a lot of people have been harmed by religion. And a lot of people have been helped. This is pretty much true of science, love, governments, the Boy Scouts and tupperware. Just b/c some people are harmed by religion doesn't make it a universal damager. It's perfectly possible to be a better person b/c of religion.
Almost by definition, a person has to mentally damaged in order to accept religion.
Really? There are an awful lot of incredibly brilliant people, current and past, that are/were very religious. And aside from that, how is belief in God logically better than non-belief? Neither position has ever been logically proven or disproven, despite a lot of very intelligent people arguing on both sides.
They become cattle for the priestly class which profit from their mental enslavement. Religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they need a higher power, always speaking to them through a human intermediary, in order to know how to live correctly.
Wow, for someone decrying religious cattle mentality, you sure have bought directly into the anti-religion party line. Maybe you had a bad experience with one of the many scams masquerading as religion. You obviously haven't studied very many religions, or very many religious people. Some of the biggest religions, Christianity and Buddhism that I know of, actually teach individual salvation/enlightenment and individual knowledge of the divine. Sure, people have used bunk versions of these religions to scam others, but people use bunk science the same way. Do you dismiss all science (and scientists) b/c of Fleischman and Pons (for example)?
Well,practically speaking, if you can probabilistically guess with 100% accuracy on 100% of events, I would call that omniscience. But ok, I'll accept that omniscience as applied to God doesn't mean that. But there still seems to be a double standard in play. From your example, you and I know that Oswald didn't get drunk and break his neck a year before shooting Kennedy. Assuming you believe he had free will in that act, why doesn't our knowledge of his choice indicate he in fact had no choice? The only argument I can see is that our position in the temporal dimension, relative to Oswald, allows us knowledge of his actions without depriving him of choice. But, if time affects the manner in which knowledge effects free-will, how does that apply to a being that is outside the temporal dimension?
IF you have a choice THEN
--nobody else (including God) can predict what it will be
ENDIF
That's what "choice" means.
No, that is not what choice means. That is what "random" means. If you think choice means random, implying that free-will requires randomness, I can see why you think knowledge and free-will are mutually exclusive. People predict which choices others will make all the time - I just recently predicted that all 12 people on that side road would choose to stop at the red light rather than plow through it and run into my car. Based on that prediction, I chose to drive through the intersection. Are you suggesting that those people had no choice but to stop since I accurately predicted they would?
I am not really trying to argue one way or the other re: God's omniscience vs. free-will, but the assertion that the ability to accurately predict how someone will choose negates their free-will is absurd.
So if I offer you a choice between $1 million, and a swift kick in the nads, the fact that I know which one you will choose implies you didn't really have a choice at all? Or does it imply that I have a good enough understanding of your nature to know how you will choose to react to certain stimuli?
Roman soldiers were forbidden from interfering with each other and were also forbidden from interfering with themselves
Not being familiar with this particular use of the word interfere, my first thought was "That's pretty cool that they were forbidden to interfere with their mates, but themselves? Why would you need a rule to keep dudes from cock-blocking their own game?"
Marketing, in the form of "junk mail", saves me $100 or more a year. When I see something on sale that I want at a store I normally wouldn't visit, I go there and save money.
Ah, but how much money does it cost you to deal with the enormous amounts of trash junk mail creates each year? Do you buy an extra $10 worth of trash bags b/c of the extra volume? Does your city trash charge you $15 more each year b/c of the total volume they have to deal with? How much time do you spend sorting out the junk mail from your bills? Ever accidentally thrown away a bill that got hidden in the junk and had to pay a late fee?
If you truly save $100/year, and are happy with receiving junk mail, then good for you, as it is likely to continue. Just make sure you are factoring everything into your $100 savings calculation.
Heh, but that would require understanding, which can't be bought. If a solution can't be bought (preferably from a contributor or powerful constituency) then Congress is seldom interested. Spending other people's money is much easier than spending your own time to engage in that most suspect of practices, thoughtful consideration.
Very few parents would enjoy hearing that their darling is a vicious little bully.
Well, true, few parents would enjoy hearing that. However, most of them would not take their displeasure out on their little terror. Nope, in my years as a teacher's husband, what I have seen is that 50% don't care, and 49% blame the teachers, the school, or the other students for any misbehavior their little darlings are participating in. Seriously, not quite the same thing, but just last week, my wife called a parent to inform her that "Little Johnny" was failing her class b/c he didn't do his work and slept thru class. If you guessed that the parent promised to make sure little Johnny got enough sleep and started doing his homework, bzzzzt. "Well, he is probably just intimidated by you. Maybe you should try to be more approachable." We'll ignore the fact that my wife is a mild-mannered, 5'6" 125 lb woman (the kid is on the football team), and just skip straight to , even if true, WTF does that have to do w/ not doing work and sleeping in class?
Nope, parents won't enjoy hearing their kids are bullying others (except for the assclowns that think that demonstrates some sort of admirable toughness), but most of them will simply want to know why the school doesn't do something about it, not actually volunteer to parent their child themselves.
Less than a year after our second one was born, my wife was back at the same weight she was when we met (100 pounds). And she did *nothing* to achieve that. No dieting. No exercise. Nothing.
Obviously, I don't know if she did or not, but if your wife breast-fed the infants, then she did way more than nothing. Breast-feeding (or rather, producing the milk, which soon stops if you don't breast feed) burns up a lot of a new mother's calories.
As an aside, I just noticed that my original, non-informed post containing amateur guesses has been modded informative. I must have been unfairly modded Troll in a former lifetime...:-)
I'm also not a doctor, so perhaps I should wait for someone more informed to respond
Hey, I'm not gonna complain. Intelligent, reasonable responses are rare enough; I'm not so greedy as to expect actual expertise as well.:-)
As for the blood brain barrier being less effective at blocking larger particles, I'm not sure I get that. My understanding is that it is basically a porous membrane that filters the blood. How can it filter smaller particles while letting larger particles through?
TFA mentioned the bot traveling through arteries, so I assumed it wouldn't be big enough to block blood flow. But maybe vessels into the brain are much smaller?
I'm not a doctor, and have no official medical training. But I believe the blood brain barrier tends to prevent this sort of thing. Also, TFA doesn't mention the composition of the bot, but it could theoretically be built using materials that eventually breakdown in the body, further reducing this risk.
completely useless observation.
Based on your say so? Hmm.
No, it is not useless b/c I say so, I say so b/c it is useless. Or do you see a value in observing the consequences of a scenario that presupposes a complete change of human nature?
The part about patented drugs being developed with taxpayers funding the vast majority of the research (if not all of it?)
Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs that were developed based mostly on public funding, and I will agree with you that something is wrong there.
I think you and I both know I didn't say that drugs should be free. They should be reasonably priced based on the actual costs instead of artificially inflated because of patent protection.
And if you throw out patent protection, the actual costs become the marginal costs of production, b/c a third party that did not invest in the R&D can come along and produce the drugs. So, while MegaChemCorp has to try and recoup the millions/billions they invested in R&D, CompanyB can undercut their price on the drug due to their lack of sunk cost. This will inevitably put MegaChemCorp out of the market for the very drug they invented, reducing their incentive to invent any new drugs. Eventually, no one will try to develop new drugs, resulting in you not getting that miracle cure at any price.
The public funds most of the real nasty stuff while the drug companies fund "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra and other vanity drugs....I have zero respect for pharmaceutical companies that charge US consumers 10 times what they charge consumers in Canada or other countries. Legalized mugging.
I'm confused. If these companies are only producing "lifestyle" drugs, where is the "Legal mugging"? Are you saying that you now have some natural right to rock hard erections that last hours?
Profit guarantees are good for one thing; to ensure that costs rise to meet them. Nothing breeds waste as good as protection from competition.
Yeah, I worded that poorly. Of course IP law doesn't actually give a profit guarantee. It guarantees a specific environment which provides the opportunity for a profit, which wouldn't exist if someone who had not sunk any investment into R&D could come along and compete on a level playing field against your product. Regardless of how much $$ you actually spend on R&D ($50 million, $1 billion, $5 billion) if you have to recoup that expense in order to make a profit, and your competitor does not, you have no realistic chance of profit. I should have said "guaranteed chance of profit", "not guaranteed profit".
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
A technically correct, but completely useless observation. Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
Absolutely. And it is attitudes like yours ("I have the right to any knowledge you create, you have no right to keep secrets from me") that make these protections necessary. The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion and you getting the new drug for free. The choices are you paying for the drug, or the drug not existing. It goes back to motivations. Yes, it would be great if those who can afford to finance billion dollar research did so out the goodness of their hearts, and released the miracle cures to the world. But they won't, so we're stuck with figuring out how to convince them to A) do the research, and B) share their research so future researchers don't have to tread the same ground again. Profit guarantees have proven pretty effective at this.
Slashdot Mirror
Buddhism denies the importance of the existence of anything remotely classifiable as "the divine." It is a philosophy, not a religion.
Its both, actually. Just as is Christianity. With Christianity, the religious structure greatly overshadows the philosophy, whereas with Buddhism the philosophy is more well known than the religious structure. But Buddhism very much so is a religion, just not a theistic one. And I would argue that Nirvana could very easily be classified as divine. Not a divine being such as Christianity has, but a divine state of being.
Individual salvation is utterly different from enlightenment. Salvation assumes there is something to be forgiven, and someone to be saved. Buddhism rejects both notions.
Right, Christian salvation is different than Buddhist salvation, no doubt. And Buddhism doesn't use the word salvation the way Christianity does, instead they use enlightenment. I was just being lazy and using one word to describe the fact that both religions have an ultimate spiritual goal: Christianity seeks perfection of the self through sublimation in Christ, Buddhism seeks perfection of the self by following the path to Enlightenment (yes, I have simplified that as well, but I don't see a need to get into the Middle Way, the Eightfold path, etc.) In both cases, though, it is the individual that determines his own salvation/enlightenment through his own actions. No human intermediary required.
I have never been directly harmed by religion, which is perhaps why I can see the harm it causes others so clearly.
Again, absolutely a lot of people have been harmed by religion. And a lot of people have been helped. This is pretty much true of science, love, governments, the Boy Scouts and tupperware. Just b/c some people are harmed by religion doesn't make it a universal damager. It's perfectly possible to be a better person b/c of religion.
Almost by definition, a person has to mentally damaged in order to accept religion.
Really? There are an awful lot of incredibly brilliant people, current and past, that are/were very religious. And aside from that, how is belief in God logically better than non-belief? Neither position has ever been logically proven or disproven, despite a lot of very intelligent people arguing on both sides.
They become cattle for the priestly class which profit from their mental enslavement. Religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they need a higher power, always speaking to them through a human intermediary, in order to know how to live correctly.
Wow, for someone decrying religious cattle mentality, you sure have bought directly into the anti-religion party line. Maybe you had a bad experience with one of the many scams masquerading as religion. You obviously haven't studied very many religions, or very many religious people. Some of the biggest religions, Christianity and Buddhism that I know of, actually teach individual salvation/enlightenment and individual knowledge of the divine. Sure, people have used bunk versions of these religions to scam others, but people use bunk science the same way. Do you dismiss all science (and scientists) b/c of Fleischman and Pons (for example)?
Well,practically speaking, if you can probabilistically guess with 100% accuracy on 100% of events, I would call that omniscience. But ok, I'll accept that omniscience as applied to God doesn't mean that. But there still seems to be a double standard in play. From your example, you and I know that Oswald didn't get drunk and break his neck a year before shooting Kennedy. Assuming you believe he had free will in that act, why doesn't our knowledge of his choice indicate he in fact had no choice? The only argument I can see is that our position in the temporal dimension, relative to Oswald, allows us knowledge of his actions without depriving him of choice. But, if time affects the manner in which knowledge effects free-will, how does that apply to a being that is outside the temporal dimension?
IF you have a choice THEN --nobody else (including God) can predict what it will be ENDIF That's what "choice" means.
No, that is not what choice means. That is what "random" means. If you think choice means random, implying that free-will requires randomness, I can see why you think knowledge and free-will are mutually exclusive. People predict which choices others will make all the time - I just recently predicted that all 12 people on that side road would choose to stop at the red light rather than plow through it and run into my car. Based on that prediction, I chose to drive through the intersection. Are you suggesting that those people had no choice but to stop since I accurately predicted they would?
I am not really trying to argue one way or the other re: God's omniscience vs. free-will, but the assertion that the ability to accurately predict how someone will choose negates their free-will is absurd.
So if I offer you a choice between $1 million, and a swift kick in the nads, the fact that I know which one you will choose implies you didn't really have a choice at all? Or does it imply that I have a good enough understanding of your nature to know how you will choose to react to certain stimuli?
Roman soldiers were forbidden from interfering with each other and were also forbidden from interfering with themselves
Not being familiar with this particular use of the word interfere, my first thought was "That's pretty cool that they were forbidden to interfere with their mates, but themselves? Why would you need a rule to keep dudes from cock-blocking their own game?"
You people are on crack.
/. all day.
Most insightful thing I've seen on
Hmmm, that is a very interesting thought I hadn't considered. Junk mail is subsidizing my letters to Hustler :)
Marketing, in the form of "junk mail", saves me $100 or more a year. When I see something on sale that I want at a store I normally wouldn't visit, I go there and save money.
Ah, but how much money does it cost you to deal with the enormous amounts of trash junk mail creates each year? Do you buy an extra $10 worth of trash bags b/c of the extra volume? Does your city trash charge you $15 more each year b/c of the total volume they have to deal with? How much time do you spend sorting out the junk mail from your bills? Ever accidentally thrown away a bill that got hidden in the junk and had to pay a late fee?
If you truly save $100/year, and are happy with receiving junk mail, then good for you, as it is likely to continue. Just make sure you are factoring everything into your $100 savings calculation.
who believe that somehow segregation is okay as long as it's self imposed
Completely off-topic, but I'm curious. The tone of your post implies you believe self-imposed segregation is NOT okay. Why not?
Reading thru all the responses to your post reminded me of this.
Heh, but that would require understanding, which can't be bought. If a solution can't be bought (preferably from a contributor or powerful constituency) then Congress is seldom interested. Spending other people's money is much easier than spending your own time to engage in that most suspect of practices, thoughtful consideration.
I know this might be hard to grasp,
Probably b/c he's poor.
I love to have a nice cup of coffee to relax before going to bed
I am very amused that this was posted at 4am...
Very few parents would enjoy hearing that their darling is a vicious little bully.
Well, true, few parents would enjoy hearing that. However, most of them would not take their displeasure out on their little terror. Nope, in my years as a teacher's husband, what I have seen is that 50% don't care, and 49% blame the teachers, the school, or the other students for any misbehavior their little darlings are participating in. Seriously, not quite the same thing, but just last week, my wife called a parent to inform her that "Little Johnny" was failing her class b/c he didn't do his work and slept thru class. If you guessed that the parent promised to make sure little Johnny got enough sleep and started doing his homework, bzzzzt. "Well, he is probably just intimidated by you. Maybe you should try to be more approachable." We'll ignore the fact that my wife is a mild-mannered, 5'6" 125 lb woman (the kid is on the football team), and just skip straight to , even if true, WTF does that have to do w/ not doing work and sleeping in class?
Nope, parents won't enjoy hearing their kids are bullying others (except for the assclowns that think that demonstrates some sort of admirable toughness), but most of them will simply want to know why the school doesn't do something about it, not actually volunteer to parent their child themselves.
Less than a year after our second one was born, my wife was back at the same weight she was when we met (100 pounds). And she did *nothing* to achieve that. No dieting. No exercise. Nothing.
Obviously, I don't know if she did or not, but if your wife breast-fed the infants, then she did way more than nothing. Breast-feeding (or rather, producing the milk, which soon stops if you don't breast feed) burns up a lot of a new mother's calories.
Tits and donkeys? Based on the few Aussies I know, that actually sounds about right.
212 Fahrenheit is the boiling point of water. My office coffee is nowhere near that hot.
As an aside, I just noticed that my original, non-informed post containing amateur guesses has been modded informative. I must have been unfairly modded Troll in a former lifetime... :-)
Got it, thanks!
I'm also not a doctor, so perhaps I should wait for someone more informed to respond
:-)
Hey, I'm not gonna complain. Intelligent, reasonable responses are rare enough; I'm not so greedy as to expect actual expertise as well.
As for the blood brain barrier being less effective at blocking larger particles, I'm not sure I get that. My understanding is that it is basically a porous membrane that filters the blood. How can it filter smaller particles while letting larger particles through?
TFA mentioned the bot traveling through arteries, so I assumed it wouldn't be big enough to block blood flow. But maybe vessels into the brain are much smaller?
I'm not a doctor, and have no official medical training. But I believe the blood brain barrier tends to prevent this sort of thing. Also, TFA doesn't mention the composition of the bot, but it could theoretically be built using materials that eventually breakdown in the body, further reducing this risk.
completely useless observation. Based on your say so? Hmm.
No, it is not useless b/c I say so, I say so b/c it is useless. Or do you see a value in observing the consequences of a scenario that presupposes a complete change of human nature?
The part about patented drugs being developed with taxpayers funding the vast majority of the research (if not all of it?)
Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs that were developed based mostly on public funding, and I will agree with you that something is wrong there.
I think you and I both know I didn't say that drugs should be free. They should be reasonably priced based on the actual costs instead of artificially inflated because of patent protection.
And if you throw out patent protection, the actual costs become the marginal costs of production, b/c a third party that did not invest in the R&D can come along and produce the drugs. So, while MegaChemCorp has to try and recoup the millions/billions they invested in R&D, CompanyB can undercut their price on the drug due to their lack of sunk cost. This will inevitably put MegaChemCorp out of the market for the very drug they invented, reducing their incentive to invent any new drugs. Eventually, no one will try to develop new drugs, resulting in you not getting that miracle cure at any price.
The public funds most of the real nasty stuff while the drug companies fund "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra and other vanity drugs....I have zero respect for pharmaceutical companies that charge US consumers 10 times what they charge consumers in Canada or other countries. Legalized mugging.
I'm confused. If these companies are only producing "lifestyle" drugs, where is the "Legal mugging"? Are you saying that you now have some natural right to rock hard erections that last hours?
Profit guarantees are good for one thing; to ensure that costs rise to meet them. Nothing breeds waste as good as protection from competition.
Yeah, I worded that poorly. Of course IP law doesn't actually give a profit guarantee. It guarantees a specific environment which provides the opportunity for a profit, which wouldn't exist if someone who had not sunk any investment into R&D could come along and compete on a level playing field against your product. Regardless of how much $$ you actually spend on R&D ($50 million, $1 billion, $5 billion) if you have to recoup that expense in order to make a profit, and your competitor does not, you have no realistic chance of profit. I should have said "guaranteed chance of profit", "not guaranteed profit".
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
A technically correct, but completely useless observation. Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
Absolutely. And it is attitudes like yours ("I have the right to any knowledge you create, you have no right to keep secrets from me") that make these protections necessary. The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion and you getting the new drug for free. The choices are you paying for the drug, or the drug not existing. It goes back to motivations. Yes, it would be great if those who can afford to finance billion dollar research did so out the goodness of their hearts, and released the miracle cures to the world. But they won't, so we're stuck with figuring out how to convince them to A) do the research, and B) share their research so future researchers don't have to tread the same ground again. Profit guarantees have proven pretty effective at this.