At My Lai between 350 and 510 civilians were killed, so the Hue/Tet killings were much bloodier and more orchestrated, so why is My Lai always brought up when the Communists killed more?
Because US soldiers didn't kill them and we're not in Vietnam discussing the Vietnamese government? Amazing isn't it, when discussing the potential consequences of something regarding the US military we look at past actions by the US military and not some other group... simply amazing.
I don't think that a drug like this will be used to facilitate war crimes because a Military needs discipline and rape/murder goes against discipline.
Why? Soldiers kill all the time, they are ordered to and do so.
An Army is a mob and shows some mob behaviors which are tempered in a military unit by training, routine and dispiline, the US military, NATO, Russian, Israeli and those militaries which closely follow these doctrines will not allow a drug which breaks down the discipline to be dispensed.
This will reinforce discipline, your logic is actually proving how useful this would be. Your well trained army can be ordered to kill civilians, assuming it is trained well enough. However, some may feel remorse and this will cause long term problems (for the army as a whole and for the individual soldiers). Now with a magic pill, this problem is solved. They can order as many killings as they want without any of those nasty consequences. Of course, as soon as such usage becomes public knowledge recruitment numbers would probably plummet but that wasn't what you were arguing.
It costs roughly the same to have either 1 RAID box, or 2 separate servers without RAID
No, it costs quite a bit more:
-If you use raid 1 (two hard drives): software raid in linux is good from what I hear and since you don't need cutting edge performance you can use it. As such you only need one server and two hard drives, instead of two server and two hard drives. You save yourself the cost of the server.
-If you use raid 5 (Y >2 hard drives, let's say X are used for redundancy): You now do need a raid controller, however you only need Y hard drives. With two servers you need 2*(Y-X) which is usually quite a bit more than Y, probably more than enough to offset the cost of the controller. You again save yourself the cost of a server.
The best you can get right now to send things into space, using Russian rockets, is around $1000 to $1500 per pound. So for $50k, you get to send half to a third of a person one way into space with no accommodations. Not exactly what I'd consider fun.
The cost and complexity starts to go up as you add re-entry mechanisms, life support and so on. Probably millions per person if not much more, yhe Russians I believe charge 20 million for a week on the ISS. That is not counting the billions probably needed to build and research the thing in the first place.
Keep in mind that the only thing making this even feasible is because governments already spent billions figuring out many of the problems, such as how to properly make a zero-g toilet.
First of all, you seem to lack English skills so the question posed was: what type of additional network based device with raid (and smb) is best for sharing my files between multiple computers (and providing backup).
1) Worried about it that much? Bolt it to the floor. Or put it in a safe since you do not need physical access to it. 2) Don't use a $15 PSU, you pay for what you get. 3) If you live in a lightning prone area you should invest in some good protection (line conditioner for example). 4) Point. 5) What do you think the R is RAID is for? Redundancy. You'd need some horribly catastrophic odds to lose all the redundant hard drives before you replace any. 6) Your data is still there.
1) As noted above this was the question, and why the heck wouldn't you have raid in your backup machine? Your hard drive dies and you need to spend time rebuilding the backup, re-imaging the os back on and so on. Downright stupid. 2) Sound advice. 3) There are lots of ways to backup. 4) Sound advice. 5) Sound advice.
And what would they show the rest of the time? Reruns? (ever watch the channel during the day?)
These movies make them MONEY, they're cheap to make and get good ratings. Without money they can't make any series/movies period, and it's not like these movies are all they show. They fill in the voids where they can't put in a better show, and do better than yet more reruns.
Don't like them? Then don't watch them (if they weren't made, other shit would be put in those time slots), althrough without them you also wouldn't have as many good shows since the channel would have less money overall.
I may have gotten the following wrong, please correct me if I did.
See that is the difference between MS and linux vendors. Red Hat provides the user with a lot of software, it's on the cd and as such it is the direct provider of the software. MS doesn't, the windows cd includes windows and some other MS software but nothing like what you would find on the Red Hat cds/dvds.
In this case, MS didn't provide users with the broken flash plugin, they downlaoded it themselves from Macromedia. Red Hat hwever did provide that plugin directly with it's OS.
They tried fixing education (specifically regarding gifted students) in the 80s, they got a half assed solution in place (in numerous states) before the media got bored and people stopped caring.
Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world.
Schools aren't the problem, it is society. Parents don't give a damn too often or think their kids are a gift from god and can never do wrong. There is little societal push for education, look at Asians and how much their whole society pushes for education.
Part of the problem is that we have it too good, no desire or perceived need for education in too much of the population.
Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle
Sadly some areas are lacking teachers period, throw out the bad ones and no one is left to teach the kids.
Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.
Ah, yes the reason half the schools don't teach anything useful anymore. Any sort of standardized test creates the following problem: the test is the only thing that matters, the test's structure is pre-known, teaching for the test and only the test is the most efficient use of time.
I'm sure in the long term it could lead to some fun systems: kid gets 99% on test in grade x but is bored, he is expected to get a 80% on the test in grade x+1, most efficient method: keep the kid in grade x so he pulls the average up.
Also, current standardized tests are a joke for anyone with any intelligence and they will always be so since lowering standards keeps the bottom 50% from being indefinitely held back. I mean, it took me a whole 2 weeks (of mostly not studying) to learn the physics that NY State regards as sufficient for a High School diploma.
HArd drives are far from the main source of power drain in a computer, and they're not the part which is causing the ever rising power requirements. Then again, those req. are only if you go for the uber comps, you can do quite well (and cheaply) with under 150W (without the crappy performence of mini-ITX).
I hopefully haven't confused myself here; please correct me if I have.
To add to what the other poster said, the GPL clearly grants rights beyond copyright law. The MS EULA however REMOVES rights which you would otherwise have, for example it restricts how you may USE the product not just how you may DISTRIBUTE the product. The difference is that the EULA is a "contract" (or so those who use it wish it to be) while the GPL is a "license." As such you need to specifically agree to the MS EULA to use the product, while this is not true for the GPL (if you don't then you default to copyright law, which if I understand correctly lets you use the product as you "own" it but you cannot distribute it).
In a more sane world (ie: one where corporate lawyers do not rule), one would have to agree (probably sign) the EULA before buying the software. If you consider them in this light then it is easy to see that they are two very different creatures.
That has been well known for a while; you get some bad PR and a potential lack of good PR but little else. See it's not cheap to sue people and I doubt linux using companies see much advantage in funding it, sending cease and desist letters doesn't matter unless there is bite behind them. Someone really should show some teeth, however I doubt it will ever happen.
My point was more along the lines of it seeming like an utterly idiotic business decision in this case. They sell hardware, not software (in the later case I can at least understand why they don't release the source, although of course don't agree with it). The software seems to have bugs, why the heck don't they release the source so other people create fixes for them for free (or whole new versions). It's like "stupid management 101" or something; probably some guy in charge is paranoid about giving anything away and as a result is hurting their own sales. Maybe they don't release the source code because if the public version is too good, the software company may lose their contract.
Yes, if I violate the EULA there is a risk that MS will sue me or cause other problems. In addition there is a risk that some people may nag at me. If I was a company or working for one then the risk is much higher. Please do post in any decent computer related forum that you use pirated software for a company (or doing any other real EULA breaking), and enjoy the 50 replies making fun of you (and the 5 trying to find which company it is so they can report you).
You break the law, for whatever reason, you must accept the consequences. This does brings up the question of exactly how legal a EULA is in the first place however either way there is a chance of lawsuit/bad press no matter what you personally believe about its legality. Granted, if you're smart you will probably not admit any of this if you are caught, since it would probably hurt your case.
I don't see what the problem is, the GPL isn't very strict and you simply need to release the source code. If you don't want to then there are other solutions, free and otherwise (BSD comes to mind, Windows CE probably does as well). If you wish to fight the legality of the GPL have fun, although keep in mind that it grants you rights in addition to those of copyright and if you strike it down you won't be able to distribute the software anyway.
I wouldn't really care, welcome to the internet. Well actually I would in a way since I don't think I've been called that one before, so I'd reply and note so.
The examples you gave are simply people creating a bunch of dumb laws and then *calling* it a religion. A real religion comes from God and has love as its guiding principle. Without love, what a person is doing is definitely *not* religion.
No, it's you redefining religion for your own purposes. Those are much religions as anything else.
Well, as I understand it, the point of reincarnation was that the human form was the highest form and that any sin committed as a human had to be then later experienced as a receiver *in human form*. In any event, if you think that you're going to return as a bug, you're believing the same type of nonsense that you criticized in your previous section. And any religion that says that your life's decisions don't count, or can be forgiven after your dead, is wasting their life.
I always find people like you funny. I never said I believe so, I'm simply pointing out examples from other religions. Amazingly enough unlike you I don't have to believe things to know about them at anything more than a cursory level.
And of course, what you do matters in Buddhism that is WHY you become a bug. The whole point of existence is to reach enlightenment, which in general only a human can do or at least it is much easier for a human to do. They also have around a dozen hells, quasi-heavens in addition to coming back as an animal. The only difference from Christianity really is that Buddhism doesn't say "too bad, you went to Hell have fun" but rather "too bad, you went to Hell; hope you learn something at a subconscious level and do better next time" (Hell is temporary in Buddhism).
The atheist said to the Sufi, "What do you take me for, a fool? Trees cannot turn themselves into a bridge." To which the Sufi replies, "And so your unbelievably complex body didn't have a designer and builder?"
Of course I do, then again I don't need to deal with metaphors since I understand enough biology to see the process as amusingly likely (granted it does remove meaning from our lives since we're simply on of many potential results). At least you didn't mention the "airlines assembling itself during a tornado" story. Also human bodies don't assemble themselves; we're the result of billions of years of processes which slowly build more and more complex structures.
It's like saying the Greek could never build a stone arch because they could never lift all the stones into place at once (while ignoring the fact that support structures could first be built and the stones put on one by one).
That's not true. We have far greater capabilities; specifically, we have the capability to differentiate, and therefore choose, between good and evil. Nothing an animal ever does is evil; it is only for their survival or needs-of-the-moment, never with ill-will or malice.
How do you define ill-will or malice? A cat can attack other cats, is that ill-will?
This is a universal law and resides within all religions, though with varying degrees of comprehension. "As ye sow so shall ye reap". The laws that govern what a human being receives for its actions are independent of any one religion; they are like the Law of Universal Gravitation when experienced on different planets.
You mean like religions which had human sacrifice, or do you mean the ones where killing people in war is your way into heaven? Or ones which talk about mass suicide?
See, such religions simply don't last long although it says nothing about some universal law. It simply says that human groups which don't have certain laws governing their behavior don't last long. Animal groups have similar behaviors so it's nothing religious.
Reincarnation is a trick of the devil to make human beings believe that their life means nothing ~ there is no do-over. It's one and out. Think about it logically: where are all these human souls coming from, seeing as how there were only 50 million people on earth 2000 years ago? It doesn't make sense. We get one shot, and everything counts.
Sure it does, you're simply not reading what I wrote. I guess your own beliefs are blinding you. Reincarnation, as I specifically said in Buddhism, need not be into a human form and indeed one of the main concepts is that if you're bad enough you come back as an animal. Do you wish to count how many bugs there were x years ago? Also, nothing says you get reincarnated right away.
You think this beautiful creation that is our body and its cognitive senses are an accident? We all have a purpose, and the universe itself is designed both as the means to help us attain that information and as an obstacle to achieiving our potential. It is all up to our choices and desires.
Yes we're probably an accident, and as people like yourself (and me as well in a way) show most humans simply cannot comprehend the fact that their lives are utterly meaningless outside their own definition. From personal experience it only seems to matter during philosophical discussions, most everyday functions can be done perfectly normally no matter how you view your existence.
To add to what the other poster said, I see religion as a way of justifying already existing or emerging morals. There are many different religions however the general moral codes stay rather similar.
What shapes society is also irrelevant, it's already been shaped. Just because thousands of years of belief in spirits/demons, ruthless dictators, and wars shaped society doesn't mean we need all of them for society to exist (we're just very likely to keep getting them). I'm sure Christians would be quite happy if I told them we need pagan beliefs because otherwise society will collapse.
I said religion isn't specifically required, not that our current human population doesn't require it. Not everyone is an atheist, and the genetics or situations (extremely poor... hmm that is another good justification for religion: keeps suicide rates down) of many people may require religion for them to function. A society of real atheists would be interesting and probably functional assuming the correct people are chosen (genetics is a bitch), however it wouldn't be modern society nor can it be.
In the end I don't see much to worry about really; religion will not cease existing until the people who require it cease to exist and naturally they never will. You can't force atheism; at best you can get rid of showy "religious" displays (see China or USSR).
Except the Chinese weren't killed for being theists but mostly for other reasons, so your comparison is apples to oranges.
If you wish to compare killing under atheist regimes then you need to compare it to every single act of mass death under a religious leadership (which as I said includes pretty much every single government). This includes every genocide in Africa for example, and yes it includes wars as well since they were fought between religious leaders.
If you count people killed by atheist REGIMES and not due to atheism itself, then you must compare it to every single death from non-atheist regimes not simply those directly caused by religion. I think that would include pretty much every single war in human history.
Specifically, though, the difference is that we have a free will
So does a cat, at least as much as a human. It can decide what to do just as well as a human.
we fall under the Law of Karma while living, and, after death, get judged for what we have done with our tremendous human abilities.
Which religion's system of Karma is this? Buddhism (or at least some schools of it) for example says that your actions after being reincarnated as an animal are just like those of a human, although humans have various advantages (achieving enlightenment for example).
Control in a way, and I wouldn't say invented. There is strong evidence that our brains are wired for religion. In other words, religion helped early humans in some way probably by letting them explain the world around them and explaining why certain social norms should be followed. In other words it's the flip side of rationality and logic.
Now that in itself says nothing about it being required or useful in the modern day (or counterproductive). However, one of the above has been replaced with science and the other isn't required (atheists aren't all moraless bastards).
Evolution: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new specie"
I'd love to see how you apply that to the creation of life, you know with the whole "no genetic materials existing yet" part. Or do you mean that god poofed everything into existence one day (or six) and put all the fossils in the ground to trick us?
For those wondering, evolution strictly speaking says what happened after the first cell existed not how it came into being (although natural selection can be applied to that as well depending on which theory you subscribe to).
Science is the process by which we make better theories and disprove current ones (and find better ones). We will almost never be perfectly right, although this process does lead in general to better models of the world. Also theories don't need to be always right to be usable, see Newton. I'm sure people in hurricane prone areas would love if you told them to stop listening to the hurricane warning because we can't perfectly predict where the storm will go.
We don't know everything, we base our decisions on what we do know and hope it works out correctly. There is little else we can do.
Pretty much every drug you have ever taken is the result of public funding of scientific research. It does suck at making finished products, and companies suck at doing the basic research.
Your tax dollars don't pay for perfect results, they pay for incremental improvements which will lead to better theories.
Exactly, I believe the current theory (based on genetic evidence among other things) is that some (relatively) small group of chimp/human ancestors got isolated from the rest of the population. This group promptly fucked each other a lot and over time became a separate species.
As a result when they finally managed to start expanding into other areas they could no longer successfully mate with the remaining population (ie: the one which wasn't isolated).
As such you can say where this group got isolated and as such where they came from, assuming you have a single point of origin. Some theories claim multiple points of origin, and as such you can't say "we started out here." Although evidence points strongly at a single origin, usually in Africa.
There are already a number of backup GPS sats in orbit, and baring some really high failure rates the current rate of replacement will nicely deal with the failures that do happen (in the sense of sticking another backup into orbit to replace the one that replaced the dead sat). It's stupid to put sats into orbit faster than they fall down, you lose money in the long term for no benefit (sats begin aging as soon as you send them up, sending them up too soon means you will need to send up another sooner as well, etc.).
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At My Lai between 350 and 510 civilians were killed, so the Hue/Tet killings were much bloodier and more orchestrated, so why is My Lai always brought up when the Communists killed more?
Because US soldiers didn't kill them and we're not in Vietnam discussing the Vietnamese government? Amazing isn't it, when discussing the potential consequences of something regarding the US military we look at past actions by the US military and not some other group... simply amazing.
I don't think that a drug like this will be used to facilitate war crimes because a Military needs discipline and rape/murder goes against discipline.
Why? Soldiers kill all the time, they are ordered to and do so.
An Army is a mob and shows some mob behaviors which are tempered in a military unit by training, routine and dispiline, the US military, NATO, Russian, Israeli and those militaries which closely follow these doctrines will not allow a drug which breaks down the discipline to be dispensed.
This will reinforce discipline, your logic is actually proving how useful this would be. Your well trained army can be ordered to kill civilians, assuming it is trained well enough. However, some may feel remorse and this will cause long term problems (for the army as a whole and for the individual soldiers). Now with a magic pill, this problem is solved. They can order as many killings as they want without any of those nasty consequences. Of course, as soon as such usage becomes public knowledge recruitment numbers would probably plummet but that wasn't what you were arguing.
It costs roughly the same to have either 1 RAID box, or 2 separate servers without RAID
No, it costs quite a bit more:
-If you use raid 1 (two hard drives): software raid in linux is good from what I hear and since you don't need cutting edge performance you can use it. As such you only need one server and two hard drives, instead of two server and two hard drives. You save yourself the cost of the server.
-If you use raid 5 (Y >2 hard drives, let's say X are used for redundancy): You now do need a raid controller, however you only need Y hard drives. With two servers you need 2*(Y-X) which is usually quite a bit more than Y, probably more than enough to offset the cost of the controller. You again save yourself the cost of a server.
The best you can get right now to send things into space, using Russian rockets, is around $1000 to $1500 per pound. So for $50k, you get to send half to a third of a person one way into space with no accommodations. Not exactly what I'd consider fun.
The cost and complexity starts to go up as you add re-entry mechanisms, life support and so on. Probably millions per person if not much more, yhe Russians I believe charge 20 million for a week on the ISS. That is not counting the billions probably needed to build and research the thing in the first place.
Keep in mind that the only thing making this even feasible is because governments already spent billions figuring out many of the problems, such as how to properly make a zero-g toilet.
First of all, you seem to lack English skills so the question posed was: what type of additional network based device with raid (and smb) is best for sharing my files between multiple computers (and providing backup).
1) Worried about it that much? Bolt it to the floor. Or put it in a safe since you do not need physical access to it.
2) Don't use a $15 PSU, you pay for what you get.
3) If you live in a lightning prone area you should invest in some good protection (line conditioner for example).
4) Point.
5) What do you think the R is RAID is for? Redundancy. You'd need some horribly catastrophic odds to lose all the redundant hard drives before you replace any.
6) Your data is still there.
1) As noted above this was the question, and why the heck wouldn't you have raid in your backup machine? Your hard drive dies and you need to spend time rebuilding the backup, re-imaging the os back on and so on. Downright stupid.
2) Sound advice.
3) There are lots of ways to backup.
4) Sound advice.
5) Sound advice.
And what would they show the rest of the time? Reruns? (ever watch the channel during the day?)
These movies make them MONEY, they're cheap to make and get good ratings. Without money they can't make any series/movies period, and it's not like these movies are all they show. They fill in the voids where they can't put in a better show, and do better than yet more reruns.
Don't like them? Then don't watch them (if they weren't made, other shit would be put in those time slots), althrough without them you also wouldn't have as many good shows since the channel would have less money overall.
I may have gotten the following wrong, please correct me if I did.
See that is the difference between MS and linux vendors. Red Hat provides the user with a lot of software, it's on the cd and as such it is the direct provider of the software. MS doesn't, the windows cd includes windows and some other MS software but nothing like what you would find on the Red Hat cds/dvds.
In this case, MS didn't provide users with the broken flash plugin, they downlaoded it themselves from Macromedia. Red Hat hwever did provide that plugin directly with it's OS.
They tried fixing education (specifically regarding gifted students) in the 80s, they got a half assed solution in place (in numerous states) before the media got bored and people stopped caring.
Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world.
Schools aren't the problem, it is society. Parents don't give a damn too often or think their kids are a gift from god and can never do wrong. There is little societal push for education, look at Asians and how much their whole society pushes for education.
Part of the problem is that we have it too good, no desire or perceived need for education in too much of the population.
Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle
Sadly some areas are lacking teachers period, throw out the bad ones and no one is left to teach the kids.
Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.
Ah, yes the reason half the schools don't teach anything useful anymore. Any sort of standardized test creates the following problem: the test is the only thing that matters, the test's structure is pre-known, teaching for the test and only the test is the most efficient use of time.
I'm sure in the long term it could lead to some fun systems: kid gets 99% on test in grade x but is bored, he is expected to get a 80% on the test in grade x+1, most efficient method: keep the kid in grade x so he pulls the average up.
Also, current standardized tests are a joke for anyone with any intelligence and they will always be so since lowering standards keeps the bottom 50% from being indefinitely held back. I mean, it took me a whole 2 weeks (of mostly not studying) to learn the physics that NY State regards as sufficient for a High School diploma.
HArd drives are far from the main source of power drain in a computer, and they're not the part which is causing the ever rising power requirements. Then again, those req. are only if you go for the uber comps, you can do quite well (and cheaply) with under 150W (without the crappy performence of mini-ITX).
I hopefully haven't confused myself here; please correct me if I have.
To add to what the other poster said, the GPL clearly grants rights beyond copyright law. The MS EULA however REMOVES rights which you would otherwise have, for example it restricts how you may USE the product not just how you may DISTRIBUTE the product. The difference is that the EULA is a "contract" (or so those who use it wish it to be) while the GPL is a "license." As such you need to specifically agree to the MS EULA to use the product, while this is not true for the GPL (if you don't then you default to copyright law, which if I understand correctly lets you use the product as you "own" it but you cannot distribute it).
In a more sane world (ie: one where corporate lawyers do not rule), one would have to agree (probably sign) the EULA before buying the software. If you consider them in this light then it is easy to see that they are two very different creatures.
That has been well known for a while; you get some bad PR and a potential lack of good PR but little else. See it's not cheap to sue people and I doubt linux using companies see much advantage in funding it, sending cease and desist letters doesn't matter unless there is bite behind them. Someone really should show some teeth, however I doubt it will ever happen.
My point was more along the lines of it seeming like an utterly idiotic business decision in this case. They sell hardware, not software (in the later case I can at least understand why they don't release the source, although of course don't agree with it). The software seems to have bugs, why the heck don't they release the source so other people create fixes for them for free (or whole new versions). It's like "stupid management 101" or something; probably some guy in charge is paranoid about giving anything away and as a result is hurting their own sales. Maybe they don't release the source code because if the public version is too good, the software company may lose their contract.
Yes, if I violate the EULA there is a risk that MS will sue me or cause other problems. In addition there is a risk that some people may nag at me. If I was a company or working for one then the risk is much higher. Please do post in any decent computer related forum that you use pirated software for a company (or doing any other real EULA breaking), and enjoy the 50 replies making fun of you (and the 5 trying to find which company it is so they can report you).
You break the law, for whatever reason, you must accept the consequences. This does brings up the question of exactly how legal a EULA is in the first place however either way there is a chance of lawsuit/bad press no matter what you personally believe about its legality. Granted, if you're smart you will probably not admit any of this if you are caught, since it would probably hurt your case.
I don't see what the problem is, the GPL isn't very strict and you simply need to release the source code. If you don't want to then there are other solutions, free and otherwise (BSD comes to mind, Windows CE probably does as well). If you wish to fight the legality of the GPL have fun, although keep in mind that it grants you rights in addition to those of copyright and if you strike it down you won't be able to distribute the software anyway.
What if they call you a fascist?
I wouldn't really care, welcome to the internet. Well actually I would in a way since I don't think I've been called that one before, so I'd reply and note so.
The examples you gave are simply people creating a bunch of dumb laws and then *calling* it a religion. A real religion comes from God and has love as its guiding principle. Without love, what a person is doing is definitely *not* religion.
No, it's you redefining religion for your own purposes. Those are much religions as anything else.
Well, as I understand it, the point of reincarnation was that the human form was the
highest form and that any sin committed as a human had to be then later experienced
as a receiver *in human form*. In any event, if you think that you're going to return
as a bug, you're believing the same type of nonsense that you criticized in your previous
section. And any religion that says that your life's decisions don't count, or can be
forgiven after your dead, is wasting their life.
I always find people like you funny. I never said I believe so, I'm simply pointing out examples from other religions. Amazingly enough unlike you I don't have to believe things to know about them at anything more than a cursory level.
And of course, what you do matters in Buddhism that is WHY you become a bug. The whole point of existence is to reach enlightenment, which in general only a human can do or at least it is much easier for a human to do. They also have around a dozen hells, quasi-heavens in addition to coming back as an animal. The only difference from Christianity really is that Buddhism doesn't say "too bad, you went to Hell have fun" but rather "too bad, you went to Hell; hope you learn something at a subconscious level and do better next time" (Hell is temporary in Buddhism).
The atheist said to the Sufi, "What do you take me for, a fool? Trees cannot turn themselves into a bridge." To which the Sufi replies, "And so your unbelievably complex body didn't have a designer and builder?"
Of course I do, then again I don't need to deal with metaphors since I understand enough biology to see the process as amusingly likely (granted it does remove meaning from our lives since we're simply on of many potential results). At least you didn't mention the "airlines assembling itself during a tornado" story. Also human bodies don't assemble themselves; we're the result of billions of years of processes which slowly build more and more complex structures.
It's like saying the Greek could never build a stone arch because they could never lift all the stones into place at once (while ignoring the fact that support structures could first be built and the stones put on one by one).
That's not true. We have far greater capabilities; specifically, we have
the capability to differentiate, and therefore choose, between good and
evil. Nothing an animal ever does is evil; it is only for their survival
or needs-of-the-moment, never with ill-will or malice.
How do you define ill-will or malice? A cat can attack other cats, is that ill-will?
This is a universal law and resides within all religions, though with varying
degrees of comprehension. "As ye sow so shall ye reap". The laws that govern
what a human being receives for its actions are independent of any one religion;
they are like the Law of Universal Gravitation when experienced on different
planets.
You mean like religions which had human sacrifice, or do you mean the ones where killing people in war is your way into heaven? Or ones which talk about mass suicide?
See, such religions simply don't last long although it says nothing about some universal law. It simply says that human groups which don't have certain laws governing their behavior don't last long. Animal groups have similar behaviors so it's nothing religious.
Reincarnation is a trick of the devil to make human beings believe that their
life means nothing ~ there is no do-over. It's one and out. Think about it
logically: where are all these human souls coming from, seeing as how there
were only 50 million people on earth 2000 years ago? It doesn't make sense.
We get one shot, and everything counts.
Sure it does, you're simply not reading what I wrote. I guess your own beliefs are blinding you. Reincarnation, as I specifically said in Buddhism, need not be into a human form and indeed one of the main concepts is that if you're bad enough you come back as an animal. Do you wish to count how many bugs there were x years ago? Also, nothing says you get reincarnated right away.
You think this beautiful creation that is our body and its cognitive senses are an accident? We all have a purpose, and the universe itself is designed both as the means to help us attain that information and as an obstacle to achieiving our potential. It is all up to
our choices and desires.
Yes we're probably an accident, and as people like yourself (and me as well in a way) show most humans simply cannot comprehend the fact that their lives are utterly meaningless outside their own definition. From personal experience it only seems to matter during philosophical discussions, most everyday functions can be done perfectly normally no matter how you view your existence.
To add to what the other poster said, I see religion as a way of justifying already existing or emerging morals. There are many different religions however the general moral codes stay rather similar.
What shapes society is also irrelevant, it's already been shaped. Just because thousands of years of belief in spirits/demons, ruthless dictators, and wars shaped society doesn't mean we need all of them for society to exist (we're just very likely to keep getting them). I'm sure Christians would be quite happy if I told them we need pagan beliefs because otherwise society will collapse.
I said religion isn't specifically required, not that our current human population doesn't require it. Not everyone is an atheist, and the genetics or situations (extremely poor... hmm that is another good justification for religion: keeps suicide rates down) of many people may require religion for them to function. A society of real atheists would be interesting and probably functional assuming the correct people are chosen (genetics is a bitch), however it wouldn't be modern society nor can it be.
In the end I don't see much to worry about really; religion will not cease existing until the people who require it cease to exist and naturally they never will. You can't force atheism; at best you can get rid of showy "religious" displays (see China or USSR).
Except the Chinese weren't killed for being theists but mostly for other reasons, so your comparison is apples to oranges.
If you wish to compare killing under atheist regimes then you need to compare it to every single act of mass death under a religious leadership (which as I said includes pretty much every single government). This includes every genocide in Africa for example, and yes it includes wars as well since they were fought between religious leaders.
If you count people killed by atheist REGIMES and not due to atheism itself, then you must compare it to every single death from non-atheist regimes not simply those directly caused by religion. I think that would include pretty much every single war in human history.
Specifically, though, the difference is that we have a free will
So does a cat, at least as much as a human. It can decide what to do just as well as a human.
we fall under the Law of Karma while living, and, after death, get judged for what we have done with our tremendous human abilities.
Which religion's system of Karma is this? Buddhism (or at least some schools of it) for example says that your actions after being reincarnated as an animal are just like those of a human, although humans have various advantages (achieving enlightenment for example).
Control in a way, and I wouldn't say invented. There is strong evidence that our brains are wired for religion. In other words, religion helped early humans in some way probably by letting them explain the world around them and explaining why certain social norms should be followed. In other words it's the flip side of rationality and logic.
Now that in itself says nothing about it being required or useful in the modern day (or counterproductive). However, one of the above has been replaced with science and the other isn't required (atheists aren't all moraless bastards).
Evolution: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new specie"
I'd love to see how you apply that to the creation of life, you know with the whole "no genetic materials existing yet" part. Or do you mean that god poofed everything into existence one day (or six) and put all the fossils in the ground to trick us?
For those wondering, evolution strictly speaking says what happened after the first cell existed not how it came into being (although natural selection can be applied to that as well depending on which theory you subscribe to).
Science is the process by which we make better theories and disprove current ones (and find better ones). We will almost never be perfectly right, although this process does lead in general to better models of the world. Also theories don't need to be always right to be usable, see Newton. I'm sure people in hurricane prone areas would love if you told them to stop listening to the hurricane warning because we can't perfectly predict where the storm will go.
We don't know everything, we base our decisions on what we do know and hope it works out correctly. There is little else we can do.
Pretty much every drug you have ever taken is the result of public funding of scientific research. It does suck at making finished products, and companies suck at doing the basic research.
Your tax dollars don't pay for perfect results, they pay for incremental improvements which will lead to better theories.
Nothing is permanent, it's only around until it gets changed. So what should they me made based on? A pair of dice?
Exactly, I believe the current theory (based on genetic evidence among other things) is that some (relatively) small group of chimp/human ancestors got isolated from the rest of the population. This group promptly fucked each other a lot and over time became a separate species.
As a result when they finally managed to start expanding into other areas they could no longer successfully mate with the remaining population (ie: the one which wasn't isolated).
As such you can say where this group got isolated and as such where they came from, assuming you have a single point of origin. Some theories claim multiple points of origin, and as such you can't say "we started out here." Although evidence points strongly at a single origin, usually in Africa.
And it proves the grandparent's point perfectly, The Office was created by BBC.
There are already a number of backup GPS sats in orbit, and baring some really high failure rates the current rate of replacement will nicely deal with the failures that do happen (in the sense of sticking another backup into orbit to replace the one that replaced the dead sat). It's stupid to put sats into orbit faster than they fall down, you lose money in the long term for no benefit (sats begin aging as soon as you send them up, sending them up too soon means you will need to send up another sooner as well, etc.).