The fact that it's "recent" is revealing in and of itself; it's a clear attempt to draw moral equivalence between the founders of the US and the oppressive theocratic fanatics butchering people in the middle east.
By "recent", I mean after the formation of the American national mythology, and that means works of history from long before America's problems with the Middle East. It's hard to call a 1940s historian's recounting of the burning of Loyalist homes (one Wikipedia citation for the event) as "a clear attempt to draw moral equivalence between the founders of the US and the oppressive theocratic fanatics butchering people in the middle east."
It's tiresome that any attempt to show the full picture of early American history is attacked as sympathy with America's enemies.
Which homes? How many? Why, in particular was each of those homes targeted? Was it a matter of policy, or an occasional slip?
A matter of policy. Look to the tarring and feathering activities of the Sons of Liberty. Many of the men who supported these actions were later Founding Fathers. The Committees of Safety that superseded the Sons of Liberty were even worse.
If you're fighting for "freedom" then you restrict yourself to legitimate military targets
Once you strip back the national mythology, many supposedly admirable revolutions in history had the underdogs going after targets with only a tangential connection to the military. Much recent scholarship on the American Revolution, for example, has focused on how the revolutionaries terrorized those they considered Loyalists. Homes were burned down and innocent people were hanged simply for being insufficiently enthusiastic about independence from Britain.
Perhaps there is a line between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter", but it's awfully hard to draw without losing a rosy view of one's own country's history.
You're positing this question on a site where people get their rocks off writing httpd daemons in PostScript...
You really think that Slashdot attracts the same demographic as years ago? The user id of my original Slashdot account is as slow as yours (around 30000) and I think it's obvious that the level of hacker skills now present on Slashdot is nowhere near what it was a decade ago.
That explanation is an urban legend. That Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days is a tradition that goes back to the undivided Church of the first millennium (the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox maintain it, while Roman Catholicism blows hot and cold on it).
They... prefer to follow a much older Jewish text that hinted at being gay was a bad thing and made eating meat on a friday a sin.... Read up on your Old Testament while I chow down on some nice barbecued ribs.
Care to point to the Old Testament passage that mandates no meat on Fridays?
That's the only real reason private libraries could not make money.
There are plenty of private libraries around the world. The city library of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is private, for example. You have to pay an annual fee and then sometimes an individual fee for borrowing. It's just like a video rental shop (a pretty mainstream sort of business), but for books and CDs.
Look, to do any meaningful reflection on the sciences and philosophy these days requires an immense amount of background reading, and constantly trying to keep up with the latest scholarship. No, a random net denizen is not going to be able to argue at the level of those who do this as a day job. The best laymen can do is point to academia.
By "most common arguments" I mean the arguments I hear every day from theists of all sorts, including noted academics (like, say, William Lane Craig).
William Lane Craig is the theist equivalent of Richard Dawkins. He's an embarassment and it's a pity that he's so visible to the public.
I'm also much more interested in having an actual discussion with actual arguments than in trading citations.
You think a Slashdot discussion is going to come up with something new that hasn't already been argued in publications?
It's also interesting that you're basically making an argument from authority here
Argument from authority is only a fallacy if all parties to the discussion are equally educated and equally committed to the pursuit of philosophy. It's reasonable to expect laymen to accept the consensus of the academy that philosophy of religion is a worthwhile endeavour.
I will point out that it seems very telling that the most common arguments for the existence of anything like God are also the arguments which tell us the least about the potential nature of God -- they claim to establish a being, and then define that being as God, but they remain so very far away from establishing that this God they've defined is anything like the God people worship.
You evidently haven't read much about the philosophy of religion. There's a long tradition of theist thinkers going onward from the traditional arguments for the existence of God to exploring how the basic tenets of Christianity (or other religions) can be defended. Richard Swinburne, for example, after several years of working with basic theist arguments, wrote a series of monographs on the Christian God specifically (four volumes published by Oxford University Press, starting with Responsibility and Atonement
I'd take that as a positive thing. Biology is the study of something real. The philosophy of religion is the study of something which, while real itself, is based in pure fantasy.
The vast majority of philosophers recognize the validity of philosophy of religion. There is no area where human beings should not practice inquiry.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. What rules?
You don't speak directly to the public about an academic matter unless you can also keep up with the process within the academy as well. If you turn away from the academy as Dawkins as done, then it seems like you are running away from challenges to your work by seeking a mass audience who aren't informed enough to judge the merits of your arguments. Science popularizers like Michio Kaku get lots of flack for making extravagant claims to the public even though they are no longer closely involved in science. Dawkins does the same, with the difference that he was never very involved in philosophy to begin with.
You have no idea whether that is true. Maybe he re-examines them every day, and finds that they are still as logical as ever?
Where are Dawkins' publications in peer-reviewed philosophy journals that cite the most recent theist responses to his claims? He simply repeats the same things he's said for decades instead of participating in the dialogue of philosophy. Meanwhile atheist philosophers of religion participate in the give-and-take.
Mr. Richard Dawkins might disagree with you, my friend
Richard Dawkins isn't a philosopher of religion. He's a biologist. When he gets involved in claims about religion, he transgresses the rules of inquiry and fails to continually re-examine his own arguments. Just compare the sincerity and humility of his late friend, atheist philosopher of religion J.L. Mackie, with Dawkins' wild demagoguery.
That you can possibly find a label willing to sign "just" distribution?
It happens quite often. When Warren Defever of His Name is Alive left the independent label 4AD a few years ago, he started his own label and signed with Sony just for distribution.
In fact, before 4AD and some other British independent labels were distributed worldwide, it was quite common for their artists to sign a deal with a US major label just for distribution in the US.
When automation reduced industrial jobs, people could move into the service economy. But now automation is reducing service economy jobs. Where will they move to?
While there's always some room for innovation, it's not impossible that we may reach a point where the majority of unemployed people simply cannot "move somewhere else".
Many people, who accept, that there are no inalienable right, just arbitary rules, actually consider these rules a genuinely good idea and are willingly following them.
Then they are looking at things from a utilitarian perspective instead of a natural rights perspective, and though they may agree with the Founding Fathers in some respects, they should take other statements from those men with a grain of salt.
Do FB Notes appear on people's news feed if they aren't tagged in it? I thought that Notes were only written for oneself and whoever was tagged, and other users couldn't see them unless they purposely went looking for them.
(Yes, I know that an outside RSS feed can be linked to Notes, but I thougth this was a half-assed attempt at making them useful.)
What a strange position, since atheists and agnostics tend to be far more pro-liberty than your average theist.
And that's what's so weird. J. L. Mackie, one of the foremost atheist philosophers of religion, also wrote an excellent book on metaethics where he makes the case that, in the absence of a deity, no one has an inalienable right to anything. It's all arbitrary rules made up by society. Many who would accept Mackie's arguments in philosophy of religion are, for some reason, unwilling to follow through to the ramifications for ethics and the relationship between individual and state or society.
But hey, blaming non-believers for the failure of a nation... To me, however, it looks like you're just a bigoted piece of rat shit.
I must have missed where I castigated anyone for their beliefs whether theist or atheist. I simply noted that the beliefs of the American Founding Fathers are widely considered superseded by schools of thought that arose in the 18th century and they should not be considered the last word on politics.
There was this brief period during the fallout from the Enlightenment when great men believed that liberty was worth the additional dangers it might add.
The Founding Fathers believed that liberty was paramount because God endowed men with natural rights. Now that the existence of a deity is not taken for granted (and is in fact expressly rejected by many on this site), the only defensible political system seems to be some form of utilitarianism: you can have only so much freedom as others are willing to allow you in their pursuit of what they believe is the common good.
The meaning of words is determined by usage, and usage naturally changes over time. This has been recognized for over a century now, ever since Saussure discovered l'arbitraire du signe. If the majority of people are saying "chomping at the bit", that doesn't mean that they are idiots, it just means that the English language is changing like all languages do.
Oh, look, it's the chiro-troll again. (Other readers should look at his posting history to understand -- and dismiss -- the point he makes.)
Re:it already is almost dead due to ISP's
on
BitTorrent Turns 10
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's more than a couple countries in Europe. I live in a small town in Romania, for years already we have fiber to the door and 1 Mbps down on torrents with no throttling. Of course, when I go to Finland several times a year for work, things get even better, but even the European backwoods is better than what you get in most US metropolitan areas.
A buck per track is still too much. If the prices for audio files are so high, I'd rather pirate in the short-term and, in the long term, save up money and buy CDs for a couple of dollars more so that I get the physical artifact (looks nice on my shelves, serves as a backup).
Slashdot Mirror
By "recent", I mean after the formation of the American national mythology, and that means works of history from long before America's problems with the Middle East. It's hard to call a 1940s historian's recounting of the burning of Loyalist homes (one Wikipedia citation for the event) as "a clear attempt to draw moral equivalence between the founders of the US and the oppressive theocratic fanatics butchering people in the middle east."
It's tiresome that any attempt to show the full picture of early American history is attacked as sympathy with America's enemies.
A matter of policy. Look to the tarring and feathering activities of the Sons of Liberty. Many of the men who supported these actions were later Founding Fathers. The Committees of Safety that superseded the Sons of Liberty were even worse.
Once you strip back the national mythology, many supposedly admirable revolutions in history had the underdogs going after targets with only a tangential connection to the military. Much recent scholarship on the American Revolution, for example, has focused on how the revolutionaries terrorized those they considered Loyalists. Homes were burned down and innocent people were hanged simply for being insufficiently enthusiastic about independence from Britain.
Perhaps there is a line between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter", but it's awfully hard to draw without losing a rosy view of one's own country's history.
You really think that Slashdot attracts the same demographic as years ago? The user id of my original Slashdot account is as slow as yours (around 30000) and I think it's obvious that the level of hacker skills now present on Slashdot is nowhere near what it was a decade ago.
That explanation is an urban legend. That Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days is a tradition that goes back to the undivided Church of the first millennium (the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox maintain it, while Roman Catholicism blows hot and cold on it).
Care to point to the Old Testament passage that mandates no meat on Fridays?
It does test what it's supposed to test: driving safety. It additionally tests ecological driving knowledge.
There are plenty of private libraries around the world. The city library of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is private, for example. You have to pay an annual fee and then sometimes an individual fee for borrowing. It's just like a video rental shop (a pretty mainstream sort of business), but for books and CDs.
Look, to do any meaningful reflection on the sciences and philosophy these days requires an immense amount of background reading, and constantly trying to keep up with the latest scholarship. No, a random net denizen is not going to be able to argue at the level of those who do this as a day job. The best laymen can do is point to academia.
William Lane Craig is the theist equivalent of Richard Dawkins. He's an embarassment and it's a pity that he's so visible to the public.
You think a Slashdot discussion is going to come up with something new that hasn't already been argued in publications?
Argument from authority is only a fallacy if all parties to the discussion are equally educated and equally committed to the pursuit of philosophy. It's reasonable to expect laymen to accept the consensus of the academy that philosophy of religion is a worthwhile endeavour.
You evidently haven't read much about the philosophy of religion. There's a long tradition of theist thinkers going onward from the traditional arguments for the existence of God to exploring how the basic tenets of Christianity (or other religions) can be defended. Richard Swinburne, for example, after several years of working with basic theist arguments, wrote a series of monographs on the Christian God specifically (four volumes published by Oxford University Press, starting with Responsibility and Atonement
).
The vast majority of philosophers recognize the validity of philosophy of religion. There is no area where human beings should not practice inquiry.
You don't speak directly to the public about an academic matter unless you can also keep up with the process within the academy as well. If you turn away from the academy as Dawkins as done, then it seems like you are running away from challenges to your work by seeking a mass audience who aren't informed enough to judge the merits of your arguments. Science popularizers like Michio Kaku get lots of flack for making extravagant claims to the public even though they are no longer closely involved in science. Dawkins does the same, with the difference that he was never very involved in philosophy to begin with.
Where are Dawkins' publications in peer-reviewed philosophy journals that cite the most recent theist responses to his claims? He simply repeats the same things he's said for decades instead of participating in the dialogue of philosophy. Meanwhile atheist philosophers of religion participate in the give-and-take.
Richard Dawkins isn't a philosopher of religion. He's a biologist. When he gets involved in claims about religion, he transgresses the rules of inquiry and fails to continually re-examine his own arguments. Just compare the sincerity and humility of his late friend, atheist philosopher of religion J.L. Mackie, with Dawkins' wild demagoguery.
It happens quite often. When Warren Defever of His Name is Alive left the independent label 4AD a few years ago, he started his own label and signed with Sony just for distribution.
In fact, before 4AD and some other British independent labels were distributed worldwide, it was quite common for their artists to sign a deal with a US major label just for distribution in the US.
When automation reduced industrial jobs, people could move into the service economy. But now automation is reducing service economy jobs. Where will they move to? While there's always some room for innovation, it's not impossible that we may reach a point where the majority of unemployed people simply cannot "move somewhere else".
That's more comparable to a microblogging feature than a blog.
Then they are looking at things from a utilitarian perspective instead of a natural rights perspective, and though they may agree with the Founding Fathers in some respects, they should take other statements from those men with a grain of salt.
Do FB Notes appear on people's news feed if they aren't tagged in it? I thought that Notes were only written for oneself and whoever was tagged, and other users couldn't see them unless they purposely went looking for them. (Yes, I know that an outside RSS feed can be linked to Notes, but I thougth this was a half-assed attempt at making them useful.)
I mean in the 19th century/1800s. Sorry.
And that's what's so weird. J. L. Mackie, one of the foremost atheist philosophers of religion, also wrote an excellent book on metaethics where he makes the case that, in the absence of a deity, no one has an inalienable right to anything. It's all arbitrary rules made up by society. Many who would accept Mackie's arguments in philosophy of religion are, for some reason, unwilling to follow through to the ramifications for ethics and the relationship between individual and state or society.
But hey, blaming non-believers for the failure of a nation ... To me, however, it looks like you're just a bigoted piece of rat shit.
I must have missed where I castigated anyone for their beliefs whether theist or atheist. I simply noted that the beliefs of the American Founding Fathers are widely considered superseded by schools of thought that arose in the 18th century and they should not be considered the last word on politics.
The Founding Fathers believed that liberty was paramount because God endowed men with natural rights. Now that the existence of a deity is not taken for granted (and is in fact expressly rejected by many on this site), the only defensible political system seems to be some form of utilitarianism: you can have only so much freedom as others are willing to allow you in their pursuit of what they believe is the common good.
The meaning of words is determined by usage, and usage naturally changes over time. This has been recognized for over a century now, ever since Saussure discovered l'arbitraire du signe. If the majority of people are saying "chomping at the bit", that doesn't mean that they are idiots, it just means that the English language is changing like all languages do.
Oh, look, it's the chiro-troll again. (Other readers should look at his posting history to understand -- and dismiss -- the point he makes.)
It's more than a couple countries in Europe. I live in a small town in Romania, for years already we have fiber to the door and 1 Mbps down on torrents with no throttling. Of course, when I go to Finland several times a year for work, things get even better, but even the European backwoods is better than what you get in most US metropolitan areas.
A buck per track is still too much. If the prices for audio files are so high, I'd rather pirate in the short-term and, in the long term, save up money and buy CDs for a couple of dollars more so that I get the physical artifact (looks nice on my shelves, serves as a backup).
Nah, we're in the golden age. In the time of Napster, you got low-bitrate MP3s often lacking metadata. Now, you can get FLACs with scanned artwork.