Atheists probably value personal choice more than ANY other group of people. Nobody says "You cannot teach that religion" except other religions. Atheists say "You can teach all religions - including atheism and agnosticism and pastafarianism - fairly, inside a religious studies class".
You obviously don't value personal choice since you already accept the idea that a single curriculum should be imposed on everybody, you just quibble about the details of that curriculum. Valuing personal choice means letting people make bad choices. It means letting parents make the choice of having their kids taught creationism in school even though it is objectively wrong. That is what "valuing personal choice" actually means.
What utter bullshit. By that argument, schools should be forced to conduct white supremacist classes because some parents are neo nazi scum.
It is entirely reasonable for society's wishes about how and what to teach children to override the deranged beliefs of some idiotic parents.
everyone talking about science believes creationism is wrong because God hasn't been scientifically observed, falsely concluding that this disproves his existence rather than fails to demonstrate it experimentally
No, most atheists would be happy with any sort of evidence that God exists. Atheists do not need to prove a negative, since it is by definition impossible.
However, someone saying "I have felt the presence of God, therefore He exists" or "I have faith in God, therefore He exists, although I have no experience of Him myself is not evidence.
This is what I think the Garden of Eden story is about: I think it's saying that the kind of "paradise" where you sit around all day without working or suffering is incompatible with human freedom. The experience (aka "knowledge") of both good and evil is a consequence of human choice. We might be better off in some ways living in a kind of Cosmic kennel, but we wouldn't have any of the richness and meaning of human life without the experience of good and evil.
It also conveniently answers the "if God is so good and all-powerful, why is there evil/pointless pain in the world" argument people not unsurprisingly use when their child dies of brain cancer.
Yes indeed, without your child dying in agony you wouldn't appreciate the good things in life so much. It's just odd that everyone isn't regularly stricken down by God as a way to help them enjoy life, and downright perverse when mere human beings try to alleviate suffering by using pain killers and other medicine.
Yes, there is a set of people who will never be convinced no matter how persuasive your argument is. A much larger group of people sit somewhere towards the middle who very well may be persuaded ever so slightly by a well reasoned and well presented argument.
Anyone who thinks (like the OP) that the Big Bang theory is rubbish because it was never directly observed is beyond rational debate.
You're at "electricity doesn't exist because I can't see it" levels of stupidity here.
If you genocided a country that nuked one of your cities... who is going to try and stop you?
For a start, you would lose all your allies, and no one would trade with you. I know the US is powerful, but it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together.
In case you hadn't noticed, genocide is not looked on as a legitimate strategy any more.
Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
So why didn't the US kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What's so special about one city being nuked that it deserves total obliteration of your enemy?
I'm not saying you shouldn't react, but surely the point of MAD is that the enemy is going to wipe out your whole civilisation, not just one city?
Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
No one would have predicted that following 9/11 the US would go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, for the simple reason that it made no logical sense whatsoever. 9/11 was carried out primarily by Saudi Arabians, no Afghan citizens were involved as far as I've heard.
The Taliban certainly seem to have let Osama bin Laden stay in Afghanistan, and it was unlikely they would ever have extradited him to the US, but that is a police/law enforcement issue, not a casus belli. Anyway, on that basis the US should later have invaded Pakistan too.
How about Mac OS X? It was released in this century, and against the backdrop of Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS 9, it absolutely counted as "stunning."
With MacOS 9 they were starting with an extremely low bar.
An MS-DOS 5.0 OS with a UI based on Microsoft Bob would have seemed stunning by comparison.
Re:I'm loving the future thing !!!
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WWDC 2015 Roundup
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· Score: 1
I really love how we'll be able to turn the dial and see the future. This will be especially powerful when combined with the News app. See what next week's stock market will look like or who will win the next election. Of course, if we know the future it will potentially change the future. This means that the "futures" markets will change depending on the present which depends on the future depending on the present depending on the future which.... Oh, never mind.
You seem to have overlooked the killer app - seeing next week's Lotto results.
We're all going to be rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (aka capital, hence the name). Last I checked, you guys have that in full force in Germany just the same. You tax the produced wealth more and use it to fund public welfare, which mitigates most of the more egregious excesses of capitalism (which largely boil down to income inequality), but that is still capitalism.
No one in Europe (whether pro- or anti-capitalist) would say otherwise. It's only really Americans who think that Europe is some sort of federation of extreme socialists.
Ukraine isn't in NATO and we have less of a strategic interest there than Russia does.
Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia border Ukraine, and they are all in NATO. Europe is an inter-connected network of countries. It is absurd to say that there is no strategic interest for the US there.
The truth of the matter is that the West is wary or weary of wars at the moment and won't risk starting one with Russia, especially if the ISIL situation worsens and we have to start doing something serious militarily there.
There is no real advantage to having genders in a language. If cat is feminine and dog is masculine, you still need to have a way of indicating whether it is in fact a male cat or female dog.
And there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having a third neuter gender, especially when it leads to your word for girl being neuter.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously don't value personal choice since you already accept the idea that a single curriculum should be imposed on everybody, you just quibble about the details of that curriculum. Valuing personal choice means letting people make bad choices. It means letting parents make the choice of having their kids taught creationism in school even though it is objectively wrong. That is what "valuing personal choice" actually means.
What utter bullshit. By that argument, schools should be forced to conduct white supremacist classes because some parents are neo nazi scum.
It is entirely reasonable for society's wishes about how and what to teach children to override the deranged beliefs of some idiotic parents.
everyone talking about science believes creationism is wrong because God hasn't been scientifically observed, falsely concluding that this disproves his existence rather than fails to demonstrate it experimentally
No, most atheists would be happy with any sort of evidence that God exists. Atheists do not need to prove a negative, since it is by definition impossible.
However, someone saying "I have felt the presence of God, therefore He exists" or "I have faith in God, therefore He exists, although I have no experience of Him myself is not evidence.
Anything presented in PowerPoint is easy enough to ignore, dismiss, or sleep through.
Is it specifically PowerPoint that you object to, or is it any form of slide show presentation?
This is what I think the Garden of Eden story is about: I think it's saying that the kind of "paradise" where you sit around all day without working or suffering is incompatible with human freedom. The experience (aka "knowledge") of both good and evil is a consequence of human choice. We might be better off in some ways living in a kind of Cosmic kennel, but we wouldn't have any of the richness and meaning of human life without the experience of good and evil.
It also conveniently answers the "if God is so good and all-powerful, why is there evil/pointless pain in the world" argument people not unsurprisingly use when their child dies of brain cancer.
Yes indeed, without your child dying in agony you wouldn't appreciate the good things in life so much. It's just odd that everyone isn't regularly stricken down by God as a way to help them enjoy life, and downright perverse when mere human beings try to alleviate suffering by using pain killers and other medicine.
That's cute, but you do realize that Catholicism is perfectly okay with Evolution as valid science, right?
The joke is against believing in God, not evolution. Clue: the guy meeting the pope is an atheist, not an evolutionary biologist.
So now you move from ad hominem attacks to conflation, associating rejection of evolution with flat earth and alien abductions.
You're right, that's a bit hard on the flat earth and alien abduction guys.
Yes, there is a set of people who will never be convinced no matter how persuasive your argument is. A much larger group of people sit somewhere towards the middle who very well may be persuaded ever so slightly by a well reasoned and well presented argument.
Anyone who thinks (like the OP) that the Big Bang theory is rubbish because it was never directly observed is beyond rational debate.
You're at "electricity doesn't exist because I can't see it" levels of stupidity here.
Attacking his every statement with an ad hominem only hurts your argument.
When someone says a series of incredibly stupid things, it's perfectly legitimate to point out their incredible stupidity.
If you genocided a country that nuked one of your cities... who is going to try and stop you?
For a start, you would lose all your allies, and no one would trade with you. I know the US is powerful, but it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together.
In case you hadn't noticed, genocide is not looked on as a legitimate strategy any more.
Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
So why didn't the US kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What's so special about one city being nuked that it deserves total obliteration of your enemy?
I'm not saying you shouldn't react, but surely the point of MAD is that the enemy is going to wipe out your whole civilisation, not just one city?
Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
No one would have predicted that following 9/11 the US would go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, for the simple reason that it made no logical sense whatsoever. 9/11 was carried out primarily by Saudi Arabians, no Afghan citizens were involved as far as I've heard.
The Taliban certainly seem to have let Osama bin Laden stay in Afghanistan, and it was unlikely they would ever have extradited him to the US, but that is a police/law enforcement issue, not a casus belli. Anyway, on that basis the US should later have invaded Pakistan too.
Or do you just mean that the people walking around inside aren't armed, which would be what you expect if you're not on operations somewhere?
North Korea has nuclear weapons and will soon have the ability to deliver one to the west coast of the USA
On what evidence is this striking assertion based?
On an unrelated note, is anyone interested in buying a barely used and a slightly dusty 3D printer?
Why don't you 3D print a copy of it and I'll take it off your hands for the costs of the materials?
You are absolutely right, you can't make raw materials out of thin air
Not yet, maybe, but in five years' time...
I had actually assumed that slashdot had gone full Onion and this was satire.
How about Mac OS X? It was released in this century, and against the backdrop of Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS 9, it absolutely counted as "stunning."
With MacOS 9 they were starting with an extremely low bar.
An MS-DOS 5.0 OS with a UI based on Microsoft Bob would have seemed stunning by comparison.
I really love how we'll be able to turn the dial and see the future. This will be especially powerful when combined with the News app. See what next week's stock market will look like or who will win the next election. Of course, if we know the future it will potentially change the future. This means that the "futures" markets will change depending on the present which depends on the future depending on the present depending on the future which .... Oh, never mind.
You seem to have overlooked the killer app - seeing next week's Lotto results.
We're all going to be rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
God, it sounds almost as bad as Italy.
And we were all doing so well not mentioning the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
Bearing in mind that Germany settled up for the devestation they caused with a "soz" and a bag of apples, they have a point.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (aka capital, hence the name). Last I checked, you guys have that in full force in Germany just the same. You tax the produced wealth more and use it to fund public welfare, which mitigates most of the more egregious excesses of capitalism (which largely boil down to income inequality), but that is still capitalism.
No one in Europe (whether pro- or anti-capitalist) would say otherwise. It's only really Americans who think that Europe is some sort of federation of extreme socialists.
Ukraine isn't in NATO and we have less of a strategic interest there than Russia does.
Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia border Ukraine, and they are all in NATO. Europe is an inter-connected network of countries. It is absurd to say that there is no strategic interest for the US there.
The truth of the matter is that the West is wary or weary of wars at the moment and won't risk starting one with Russia, especially if the ISIL situation worsens and we have to start doing something serious militarily there.
It's a lot easier to learn German from a German girlfriend than it is to learn it from Berlitz.
Translation for slashdotters: start listening to the dialogue in all the German porn films you watch.
And there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having a third neuter gender, especially when it leads to your word for girl being neuter.