Atheists, as a collective, do not preach. Neither does "Reverend Wright" or "Al Sharpton". That does not make them less dangerous or damaging to society. Nowhere do I state that they all hang out in the church of atheism. I will state that the messages they preach are the same, and their rhetorical methods are the same script.
You seem to understand very little about the lack of the connection between morals and theism in general.
Actually I have studied pretty heavily in morality. More than 2.5 decades of study so come back after you catch up a bit. There is a reason I mentioned the noble lie, and it pertains to much more than just "Christian" or "Muslim" beliefs. In fact it goes well beyond religion, period.
I think you need to look much more recently for the term "Survival of the Fittest", it's a much more recent term and has nothing to do with Napoleon, or the conquests/colonizations of Britain, France, Spain, etc...
Mao and Stalin destroyed anyone related to Churches that were not "of the Government". This is by design as dictated by the manifesto. So while not an act of atheism, being atheist meant it was no concern for them to murder millions.
Me thinks you should read the dictionary and read the words as literal instead of adjusting definition to suite your desires. That is the reason we have such things as dictionaries, you know, to keep track of the definitions for words.
I won't even bother to point you to a reference, since all reputable dictionaries have roughly the same definition for gnostic, atheist, and agnostic.
I don't mean to discount that many people that attend a religion are agnostic, I would agree with that statement fully.
I'm not sure how you can function believing that someone can be a gnostic atheist. The two definitions are exactly opposite. If you don't believe in the spirit how can you have spiritual knowledge? Living with that level of cognitive dissidence must be extremely difficult. There are of course gnostic theists and in fact it's required. Read the definition for "Gnostic" and "Theist", in fact one must be a theist to have a gnostic knowledge.
You are arguing two points at the same time. Corporations don't pay taxes, they avoid them, That statement is not a problem with the concept of Taxes, but rather an issue of legal loopholes which allow corporations to do such things. Fixing "Taxes" is not an issue of doing away with them, but fixing the problems which allow anyone to avoid paying. The fix, is to go back about 2 decades to Ross Perot and have a flat tax for everyone. The only scaling factor is the "type" of tax, be it "Heavy industry" or "Bank" or "Personal Income".
The second argument you make is no more correct than your first. The obvious answer is to tax the emissions Wrong, sorry it's plain old wrong. Lets look at heavy industry for a moment for an example of why. If I produce steel, of course my emissions is higher than a company producing chlorine. Does that mean that the Chlorine producer requires less regulation? Hardly, often times it requires more regulation. All heavy industry should have a tax which funds regulators and monitors for their industry. You can't base that on emissions, but rather the "type" of business.
I don't believe anyone implied that we push the guy out on the street and let them fend for themselves, I believe more it was implied that what we have is way too much and very costly.
Lets also remember that the media does try to make the President into a deity. Lots of people are foolish enough to believe the hype.
There is a much better solution: Eliminate corporate taxes
On the surface, this looks good. Reality is another problem to deal with however. The easiest example of reality (and by no means the only example) to give is that auditors and regulators which come at a cost. If there are no corporate taxes, who pays for them? Lets say you have a big manufacturing company polluting like mad (assume illegal pollution). Who pays for the testing, results, court costs, etc...? Fines can reimburse, but not cover initial expenses.
Thinking that all businesses are the same is foolish. Tax rates on heavy industry are always higher than on commercial businesses, intentionally.
The real problem is that we are voting people in to office that are not doing their jobs. Instead of finding and fining bad businesses, they get palms greased and give away money to their buddies. If we forced them to clean up their act, of course we could reduce corporate tax.. but not do away with it entirely.
In the US, the number of people killed by "LEGAL" guns is extremely low. What we have in high numbers are illegal guns used for illegal activities that cause the highest percentage of deaths by gun. Even with that said, the numbers are extremely bloated by media. More people are killed by accidental poisoning in the US than by gun shot.
I'm all for legal guns, I saw what happened in Australia after legal guns were banned and bad guys had a free for all on unarmed citizens. It's because so many people own guns in Norway that there is so little gun crime. Do I really want to try to break in to a home with a pistol when the home owner probably has a nice automatic waiting for me? Probably not...
Lastly, I'm not sure I agree with your last paragraph. Most of us are smart enough to know that guns are not the problem. Drug dealers use guns in crimes, which is not a "gun" problem but rather a drug problem. The media and politicians however won't look at the root cause, they simply blame the guns. What the media and politicians say is not the same as what the people believe, I'm sure that problem is not isolated to the US:)
This is a blatant fallacy, though I'm pretty sure you actually believe it. Not completely your fault since you are brainwashed in to believing this, as most of the public has been brainwashed. The brainwashing has been going on for at least as long as I've been paying attention, and probably more than that.
This problem is rooted in your education, or perhaps lack of education is a better phrase. Do you think it's unintentional that the US education system does not teach critical thinking? Do you think it's accidental that study of "The Republic" is not part of our standard education? Do you think it's accidental that main stream media only covers one or two people during the elections, and third parties are called crazy by media or portrayed as not having a chance in the election?
Hell, even my then 13 year old kid noticed how the media treated Ron Paul over the last election and of course this one was more blatant. I have been teaching him critical thinking since a pretty young age which helps, he also went to private school for all of his education so has better overall education than the average.
Your statement shows that the brain washing and education system is working. You are a sheople, and are not quick enough to realize it.
Yes. I strongly believe he is wrong on every substantial issue he raises
No wonder you posted anonymous. It's one thing to be biased, it's quite another to be a blithering idiot with access to the internet. Yes, even if you are lying. I may not agree with RMS's tone all the time, but usually he is correct in some regard.
Basically the Dash issue stopped us from looking at migrating from RH/Cent to Ubuntu. It's a dead issue. I'm not happy with some shit RH has done lately either.. but what RMS points at and Ubuntu did is not excusable.
What Canonical and RH need to remember is that the majority of their revenue does not come from Schleppy Code-a-GUI that may or may not buy a copy of their OS for his laptop, but rather that their revenue comes from businesses. Default packages and apps need to take that in to consideration, and, well.. WTF are they thinking with Dash?
If you knew back in NT 4.x times that Microsoft sucked your data off to a 3rd party would you have used it? Chances are, it would have hurt sales quite a bit. Canonical lacks the funds and clout of Microsoft, and can't keep this story from the Internet. It's going to hurt them plenty.
It's one thing to try and gear things for average users, but they should have made it very clear what they were doing and made a branch specifically geared toward the "Facebook Crowd". Instead, they screwed over anyone using the standard Ubuntu or investigating migrating.
Good lord people are pathetic sometimes, perhaps mom should have given them more attention? "Looks like home" in terms of space is a sad joke at best, and absolutely false at worse. We receive light from far out places, we don't actually "see" far away solar systems. Based on wobbles in the light we can guess on how many planets there are and what we think their sizes would be, but it's all hypothesis which could be found to be wrong on every account. Then based on those speculations, we guess at things like whether or not planets would be in habitable zones. It is all (yes, all of it) guess work!
I don't mean to rant only on the person posting TFA, I'm just tired of reading speculation presented as fact from so called "Scientists". I also don't mean to imply theories and speculation are bad since they are required for getting to the truth, but enough with the bull shitting already. Scientists are supposed to be the rational guys dealing with rational objects and data. What we see making media is anything and everything but rationality.
Your logic is broken. Your first statement claims a creator is impossible, your second states that it's improbable. I don't agree with either point, just like I don't agree with a person that claims there is absolutely their God. Neither side can be proven, both become an issue of faith.
The burden of proof is on the individual. If society dictates that one side should be presented, then all facts should be presented. That is not what we have, and not what we hear. We hear religions screaming one way, and atheists screaming another with both trying to drown each other out. Screaming should not be taken literally, but rather as a collection of rhetorical fallacies intended to win an argument without facts.
Quite honestly, I don't understand your notion that atheism is truth. For all I know one day we can all be caught with our knickers down when we do discover there is a supreme being of some sort, even if it could be a wanker like Q from star trek.
That would be agnostic, not atheist. I generally don't find to many agnostic's out evangelizing their beliefs. I do however find atheists and named religions out book thumping and ridiculing anyone that believes differently than them.
Well then, why a frog has a liver and a cow has a liver too? Why a frog's heart has three chambers, a crocodile's has "three and a half" and a cow's has four? Why Mendel's pea flowers were either white or purple but not something in between -except when they were?
Wrong wrong wrong. If you don't know what a liver is and are just learning what it does.. why the hell are you going to ask someone to waste time teaching how they are similar or different between species? Horrible horrible logic you have there. It's like claiming that you have to teach discuss every postulate and theorem in Geometry in order to study the Pythagorean theorem. It's plain old wrong, and nothing else works that way.
Do you have to force people to learn about transistors in order to teach them about electronics? Well, maybe if you were forcing them to learn Vacuum tubes you would, but that is absolutely not the case.
In other words, it's important because your belief system says' so.
Let me ask the obvious question. Was creation being taught in biology up until the new Law? The answer to that question will be "NO". If creation was not required, then neither is evolution. You are simply advocating teaching something that helps your belief system, not advocating a change to the education system replacing one teaching with another.
So if I say "All people that drink alcohol should be put in jail", I am not pushing an agenda of making alcohol illegal? I may not come right out and say "Drinking alcohol should be illegal", but the assumption is painfully obvious to anyone looking that cares to make the connection. Change alcohol to any other habit you may have that could be on an agenda, like fast food or pizza (hell there are lobbyists for and against both of those things in government).
How does that example differ from an atheist telling us "if you teach Religion you should lose your children"? Am I not pushing an agenda on a godless society?
Come on now, are you really so biased, ignorant, and or gullible that you can't see the point I originally made? If the poster matches your belief system, it's still a belief.
I agree with much of your points, but will pick at a couple since they are either wrong or do not exist.
My atheism isn't because it is the cause that gives my life meaning, my atheism simply arose because all alternatives look silly.
In simple terms, I agree that most Religions are at best.. silly. However we still have the nagging question of the origin of all things. If you choose not to look at the question, it's fine. But separate that question from Theology (my biggest argument for both atheists and named religions.) Neither side can ever know the truth of it, but both sides claim to know the answer and be right. It's to lengthy of a discussion to present here, I'm barely scratching the surface. But you can hopefully see the point I'm getting at.
Having said all that: evolution is a fact. Not teaching it is moronic and harmful.
To what degree is it fact? We have seen species vary, birds get different bills or feathers, etc... We have proven that pretty well. If you want to claim it's fact that humans evolved from an ape, I call bullshit. There is no proof at all that one species can evolve to become another. We hypothesize based on how we have seen birds beaks adapt in time, or feet adapt, or size adapt, etc.. but there is no proof. Before you Google for answers and post something I will scoff at, read the links. Even what people will claim is a new species is not (the best posted reference is a bird that they claim based on a beak variation is a new species, and looking at the birds there is no difference other than the beak.)
Now is it a good hypothesis? I think a fool would deny that, but at the same time we have no proof that an ape can evolve in to a human. In fact, there is enough evidence contradicting chance that we sill discuss it as a theory.
Now to the point about Religion being harmful, I call bullshit. Atheism teaches that survival of the fittest is the only rule. I'm bigger, I'm meaner, I have more money, so fuck you until you die. Such is the way of morality with atheism. It's not an immediate jump mind you, at least from where we are currently. But without Religious morality molding people within our society, we'd have killed each other long ago. If you deny it, you are either lying or extremely ignorant to history and human nature.
The "atheist agenda" tends to be encouraging and funding scientific research that would get us closer to a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Some theists are terrified of this because they think that it will convince people that there is no god and thus cause them to be damned to Hell.
Unfortunately that statement is not true. Atheists get paid to give speeches and denounce other Religions, they get paid to write books and paid for appearances telling others how to believe. It's not different than any other form of evangelism except for the belief they are being paid to push.
I agree with your first two paragraphs for the most part.
If I told you I was an a-unicorn-ist (that is, someone that doesn't believe in unicorns) would you think that I have some sort of agenda? Some sort of RELIGION?
Funny how most atheists make stuff like this up, then try and poke fun at someone that believes in God...[/sigh].. If you were absolutely correct, don't you think there would be a simple way of proving it?
Do you truly and profoundly understand "The Noble Lie" in concept and purpose? If so, the correlation between atheism and other religions should be more than possible. Think of what atheists preach and it will all become clear, then think of the damaging aspects of atheism and it becomes frightening. The hardest thing to do is drop your own bias, it took me over 10 years of work to get there.. and honestly I still struggle with it. We humans have a natural tendency for bias.
As to my comment regarding fright, consider the morality that atheism leads to. Ultimately survival of the fittest becomes the only morality. Falwell and Sharpe are nothing compared to Stalin and Mao to say the least.
You then are an idiot and should probably get a good understanding of "The Noble Lie" that Socrates discussed, Plato wrote about, countless Philosophers and Governments have expanded on and abused, and one can observe every day. You are lied to every day by Media and Politicians, most of it is fairy tales that make you support genocide and killing of humans.
Your post displays that are as gullible as they come, you show as much in your words. A complete lack of understanding for how the world is really working. Did it ever dawn on you that pushing atheism is an agenda? Probably not, welcome to being manipulated.
To be quite honest, I'm not advocating any religion. What I'm telling you is that atheism is the same as any other religion, used as a manipulation technique. It's ramifications are much worse than most religions teach for society. And spare me the nonsense of "so and so advocates killing", since showing me that you are more brainwashed will not help your cause.
I'm sure you will defend your beliefs, just like a Christian or Jew or Muslim will defend theirs. I'm sure you believe that your belief is better, and will never see it for what it really is.
The other thing windows has going for it is a massive library of software. Some vendors might be understanding and let you use your license on the other platform, others may not.
Not always true, you are making a huge assumption which anyone with knowledge knows is a false statement as given. Many apps will work sure, but not all of them. MS does care about backward compatibility, but it's not always possible. Maybe for games and such things will work, but higher end applications (generally with much higher price tags) will need to be re-purchased.
The first point you mention is false. It took years for Apple to switch from PPC to X86. Portability of applications and making sure things work was the premier reason for the timing. You are trying to make it sound like Apple with just swap architectures without a care, which is a complete fabrication.
Even changing their architecture, how would that change their OS? You are assuming 2 massive changes simultaneously, which again is a complete fabrication and FUD. And if you want to bitch about not being able to run your IOS for PPC apps on IOS for X86, make sure you bitch about not being able to run Windows for DEC on your Windows for X86.
I very much disagree, but perhaps have less ignorance than you on the subject. Redhat and Suse are known just for the Enterprise support. It's expensive, just like Microsoft.. but has patching, inventory, software management, etc.. just like you mention below. Ubuntu has LTS which is supposed to be similar, but I have no personal experience with their support.
ps. posting anon so I can spend mod points today. s.petry
Look, the commercials show a Apple knock off that relies on technology people generally don't have yet. The surface side of it may be interesting, but how many of us have touch displays at home? My guess is, not that many. So if I'm going to be looking at Windows 8 and it's price, I'm also going to be looking for new hardware to make use of some of the features. It prices me to an Apple system pretty quickly and what do I gain? Immature applications? Still the hassle of viruses and security? More lock in to a company that is shit? No thanks.
Windows 8 is having the same problems as Windows Phone. It's like an Apple device with the same price. Consumers may generally be stupid, but they are not that stupid.
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Atheists, as a collective, do not preach. Neither does "Reverend Wright" or "Al Sharpton". That does not make them less dangerous or damaging to society. Nowhere do I state that they all hang out in the church of atheism. I will state that the messages they preach are the same, and their rhetorical methods are the same script.
You seem to understand very little about the lack of the connection between morals and theism in general.
Actually I have studied pretty heavily in morality. More than 2.5 decades of study so come back after you catch up a bit. There is a reason I mentioned the noble lie, and it pertains to much more than just "Christian" or "Muslim" beliefs. In fact it goes well beyond religion, period.
I think you need to look much more recently for the term "Survival of the Fittest", it's a much more recent term and has nothing to do with Napoleon, or the conquests/colonizations of Britain, France, Spain, etc...
Mao and Stalin destroyed anyone related to Churches that were not "of the Government". This is by design as dictated by the manifesto. So while not an act of atheism, being atheist meant it was no concern for them to murder millions.
Me thinks you should read the dictionary and read the words as literal instead of adjusting definition to suite your desires. That is the reason we have such things as dictionaries, you know, to keep track of the definitions for words.
I won't even bother to point you to a reference, since all reputable dictionaries have roughly the same definition for gnostic, atheist, and agnostic.
I don't mean to discount that many people that attend a religion are agnostic, I would agree with that statement fully.
I'm not sure how you can function believing that someone can be a gnostic atheist. The two definitions are exactly opposite. If you don't believe in the spirit how can you have spiritual knowledge? Living with that level of cognitive dissidence must be extremely difficult. There are of course gnostic theists and in fact it's required. Read the definition for "Gnostic" and "Theist", in fact one must be a theist to have a gnostic knowledge.
You are arguing two points at the same time. Corporations don't pay taxes, they avoid them, That statement is not a problem with the concept of Taxes, but rather an issue of legal loopholes which allow corporations to do such things. Fixing "Taxes" is not an issue of doing away with them, but fixing the problems which allow anyone to avoid paying. The fix, is to go back about 2 decades to Ross Perot and have a flat tax for everyone. The only scaling factor is the "type" of tax, be it "Heavy industry" or "Bank" or "Personal Income".
The second argument you make is no more correct than your first. The obvious answer is to tax the emissions Wrong, sorry it's plain old wrong. Lets look at heavy industry for a moment for an example of why. If I produce steel, of course my emissions is higher than a company producing chlorine. Does that mean that the Chlorine producer requires less regulation? Hardly, often times it requires more regulation. All heavy industry should have a tax which funds regulators and monitors for their industry. You can't base that on emissions, but rather the "type" of business.
I don't believe anyone implied that we push the guy out on the street and let them fend for themselves, I believe more it was implied that what we have is way too much and very costly.
Lets also remember that the media does try to make the President into a deity. Lots of people are foolish enough to believe the hype.
There is a much better solution: Eliminate corporate taxes
On the surface, this looks good. Reality is another problem to deal with however. The easiest example of reality (and by no means the only example) to give is that auditors and regulators which come at a cost. If there are no corporate taxes, who pays for them? Lets say you have a big manufacturing company polluting like mad (assume illegal pollution). Who pays for the testing, results, court costs, etc...? Fines can reimburse, but not cover initial expenses.
Thinking that all businesses are the same is foolish. Tax rates on heavy industry are always higher than on commercial businesses, intentionally.
The real problem is that we are voting people in to office that are not doing their jobs. Instead of finding and fining bad businesses, they get palms greased and give away money to their buddies. If we forced them to clean up their act, of course we could reduce corporate tax.. but not do away with it entirely.
Good lord, someone used logic! Thank you!
In the US, the number of people killed by "LEGAL" guns is extremely low. What we have in high numbers are illegal guns used for illegal activities that cause the highest percentage of deaths by gun. Even with that said, the numbers are extremely bloated by media. More people are killed by accidental poisoning in the US than by gun shot.
I'm all for legal guns, I saw what happened in Australia after legal guns were banned and bad guys had a free for all on unarmed citizens. It's because so many people own guns in Norway that there is so little gun crime. Do I really want to try to break in to a home with a pistol when the home owner probably has a nice automatic waiting for me? Probably not...
Lastly, I'm not sure I agree with your last paragraph. Most of us are smart enough to know that guns are not the problem. Drug dealers use guns in crimes, which is not a "gun" problem but rather a drug problem. The media and politicians however won't look at the root cause, they simply blame the guns. What the media and politicians say is not the same as what the people believe, I'm sure that problem is not isolated to the US :)
This is a blatant fallacy, though I'm pretty sure you actually believe it. Not completely your fault since you are brainwashed in to believing this, as most of the public has been brainwashed. The brainwashing has been going on for at least as long as I've been paying attention, and probably more than that.
This problem is rooted in your education, or perhaps lack of education is a better phrase. Do you think it's unintentional that the US education system does not teach critical thinking? Do you think it's accidental that study of "The Republic" is not part of our standard education? Do you think it's accidental that main stream media only covers one or two people during the elections, and third parties are called crazy by media or portrayed as not having a chance in the election?
Hell, even my then 13 year old kid noticed how the media treated Ron Paul over the last election and of course this one was more blatant. I have been teaching him critical thinking since a pretty young age which helps, he also went to private school for all of his education so has better overall education than the average.
Your statement shows that the brain washing and education system is working. You are a sheople, and are not quick enough to realize it.
Yes. I strongly believe he is wrong on every substantial issue he raises
No wonder you posted anonymous. It's one thing to be biased, it's quite another to be a blithering idiot with access to the internet. Yes, even if you are lying. I may not agree with RMS's tone all the time, but usually he is correct in some regard.
Basically the Dash issue stopped us from looking at migrating from RH/Cent to Ubuntu. It's a dead issue. I'm not happy with some shit RH has done lately either.. but what RMS points at and Ubuntu did is not excusable.
What Canonical and RH need to remember is that the majority of their revenue does not come from Schleppy Code-a-GUI that may or may not buy a copy of their OS for his laptop, but rather that their revenue comes from businesses. Default packages and apps need to take that in to consideration, and, well.. WTF are they thinking with Dash?
If you knew back in NT 4.x times that Microsoft sucked your data off to a 3rd party would you have used it? Chances are, it would have hurt sales quite a bit. Canonical lacks the funds and clout of Microsoft, and can't keep this story from the Internet. It's going to hurt them plenty.
It's one thing to try and gear things for average users, but they should have made it very clear what they were doing and made a branch specifically geared toward the "Facebook Crowd". Instead, they screwed over anyone using the standard Ubuntu or investigating migrating.
Good lord people are pathetic sometimes, perhaps mom should have given them more attention? "Looks like home" in terms of space is a sad joke at best, and absolutely false at worse. We receive light from far out places, we don't actually "see" far away solar systems. Based on wobbles in the light we can guess on how many planets there are and what we think their sizes would be, but it's all hypothesis which could be found to be wrong on every account. Then based on those speculations, we guess at things like whether or not planets would be in habitable zones. It is all (yes, all of it) guess work!
I don't mean to rant only on the person posting TFA, I'm just tired of reading speculation presented as fact from so called "Scientists". I also don't mean to imply theories and speculation are bad since they are required for getting to the truth, but enough with the bull shitting already. Scientists are supposed to be the rational guys dealing with rational objects and data. What we see making media is anything and everything but rationality.
Your logic is broken. Your first statement claims a creator is impossible, your second states that it's improbable. I don't agree with either point, just like I don't agree with a person that claims there is absolutely their God. Neither side can be proven, both become an issue of faith.
The burden of proof is on the individual. If society dictates that one side should be presented, then all facts should be presented. That is not what we have, and not what we hear. We hear religions screaming one way, and atheists screaming another with both trying to drown each other out. Screaming should not be taken literally, but rather as a collection of rhetorical fallacies intended to win an argument without facts.
Quite honestly, I don't understand your notion that atheism is truth. For all I know one day we can all be caught with our knickers down when we do discover there is a supreme being of some sort, even if it could be a wanker like Q from star trek.
That would be agnostic, not atheist. I generally don't find to many agnostic's out evangelizing their beliefs. I do however find atheists and named religions out book thumping and ridiculing anyone that believes differently than them.
Well then, why a frog has a liver and a cow has a liver too? Why a frog's heart has three chambers, a crocodile's has "three and a half" and a cow's has four? Why Mendel's pea flowers were either white or purple but not something in between -except when they were?
Wrong wrong wrong. If you don't know what a liver is and are just learning what it does.. why the hell are you going to ask someone to waste time teaching how they are similar or different between species? Horrible horrible logic you have there. It's like claiming that you have to teach discuss every postulate and theorem in Geometry in order to study the Pythagorean theorem. It's plain old wrong, and nothing else works that way.
Do you have to force people to learn about transistors in order to teach them about electronics? Well, maybe if you were forcing them to learn Vacuum tubes you would, but that is absolutely not the case.
In other words, it's important because your belief system says' so.
Let me ask the obvious question. Was creation being taught in biology up until the new Law? The answer to that question will be "NO". If creation was not required, then neither is evolution. You are simply advocating teaching something that helps your belief system, not advocating a change to the education system replacing one teaching with another.
So if I say "All people that drink alcohol should be put in jail", I am not pushing an agenda of making alcohol illegal? I may not come right out and say "Drinking alcohol should be illegal", but the assumption is painfully obvious to anyone looking that cares to make the connection. Change alcohol to any other habit you may have that could be on an agenda, like fast food or pizza (hell there are lobbyists for and against both of those things in government).
How does that example differ from an atheist telling us "if you teach Religion you should lose your children"? Am I not pushing an agenda on a godless society?
Come on now, are you really so biased, ignorant, and or gullible that you can't see the point I originally made? If the poster matches your belief system, it's still a belief.
I agree with much of your points, but will pick at a couple since they are either wrong or do not exist.
My atheism isn't because it is the cause that gives my life meaning, my atheism simply arose because all alternatives look silly.
In simple terms, I agree that most Religions are at best.. silly. However we still have the nagging question of the origin of all things. If you choose not to look at the question, it's fine. But separate that question from Theology (my biggest argument for both atheists and named religions.) Neither side can ever know the truth of it, but both sides claim to know the answer and be right. It's to lengthy of a discussion to present here, I'm barely scratching the surface. But you can hopefully see the point I'm getting at.
Having said all that: evolution is a fact. Not teaching it is moronic and harmful.
To what degree is it fact? We have seen species vary, birds get different bills or feathers, etc... We have proven that pretty well. If you want to claim it's fact that humans evolved from an ape, I call bullshit. There is no proof at all that one species can evolve to become another. We hypothesize based on how we have seen birds beaks adapt in time, or feet adapt, or size adapt, etc.. but there is no proof. Before you Google for answers and post something I will scoff at, read the links. Even what people will claim is a new species is not (the best posted reference is a bird that they claim based on a beak variation is a new species, and looking at the birds there is no difference other than the beak.)
Now is it a good hypothesis? I think a fool would deny that, but at the same time we have no proof that an ape can evolve in to a human. In fact, there is enough evidence contradicting chance that we sill discuss it as a theory.
Now to the point about Religion being harmful, I call bullshit. Atheism teaches that survival of the fittest is the only rule. I'm bigger, I'm meaner, I have more money, so fuck you until you die. Such is the way of morality with atheism. It's not an immediate jump mind you, at least from where we are currently. But without Religious morality molding people within our society, we'd have killed each other long ago. If you deny it, you are either lying or extremely ignorant to history and human nature.
The "atheist agenda" tends to be encouraging and funding scientific research that would get us closer to a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Some theists are terrified of this because they think that it will convince people that there is no god and thus cause them to be damned to Hell.
Unfortunately that statement is not true. Atheists get paid to give speeches and denounce other Religions, they get paid to write books and paid for appearances telling others how to believe. It's not different than any other form of evangelism except for the belief they are being paid to push.
I agree with your first two paragraphs for the most part.
If I told you I was an a-unicorn-ist (that is, someone that doesn't believe in unicorns) would you think that I have some sort of agenda? Some sort of RELIGION?
Funny how most atheists make stuff like this up, then try and poke fun at someone that believes in God...[/sigh].. If you were absolutely correct, don't you think there would be a simple way of proving it?
And you believe that atheism is not a noble lie? How naive.. sorry, honesty is not always painless.
Do you truly and profoundly understand "The Noble Lie" in concept and purpose? If so, the correlation between atheism and other religions should be more than possible. Think of what atheists preach and it will all become clear, then think of the damaging aspects of atheism and it becomes frightening. The hardest thing to do is drop your own bias, it took me over 10 years of work to get there.. and honestly I still struggle with it. We humans have a natural tendency for bias.
As to my comment regarding fright, consider the morality that atheism leads to. Ultimately survival of the fittest becomes the only morality. Falwell and Sharpe are nothing compared to Stalin and Mao to say the least.
You then are an idiot and should probably get a good understanding of "The Noble Lie" that Socrates discussed, Plato wrote about, countless Philosophers and Governments have expanded on and abused, and one can observe every day. You are lied to every day by Media and Politicians, most of it is fairy tales that make you support genocide and killing of humans.
Your post displays that are as gullible as they come, you show as much in your words. A complete lack of understanding for how the world is really working. Did it ever dawn on you that pushing atheism is an agenda? Probably not, welcome to being manipulated.
To be quite honest, I'm not advocating any religion. What I'm telling you is that atheism is the same as any other religion, used as a manipulation technique. It's ramifications are much worse than most religions teach for society. And spare me the nonsense of "so and so advocates killing", since showing me that you are more brainwashed will not help your cause.
I'm sure you will defend your beliefs, just like a Christian or Jew or Muslim will defend theirs. I'm sure you believe that your belief is better, and will never see it for what it really is.
The other thing windows has going for it is a massive library of software. Some vendors might be understanding and let you use your license on the other platform, others may not.
Not always true, you are making a huge assumption which anyone with knowledge knows is a false statement as given. Many apps will work sure, but not all of them. MS does care about backward compatibility, but it's not always possible. Maybe for games and such things will work, but higher end applications (generally with much higher price tags) will need to be re-purchased.
The first point you mention is false. It took years for Apple to switch from PPC to X86. Portability of applications and making sure things work was the premier reason for the timing. You are trying to make it sound like Apple with just swap architectures without a care, which is a complete fabrication.
Even changing their architecture, how would that change their OS? You are assuming 2 massive changes simultaneously, which again is a complete fabrication and FUD. And if you want to bitch about not being able to run your IOS for PPC apps on IOS for X86, make sure you bitch about not being able to run Windows for DEC on your Windows for X86.
I very much disagree, but perhaps have less ignorance than you on the subject. Redhat and Suse are known just for the Enterprise support. It's expensive, just like Microsoft.. but has patching, inventory, software management, etc.. just like you mention below. Ubuntu has LTS which is supposed to be similar, but I have no personal experience with their support.
ps. posting anon so I can spend mod points today. s.petry
Look, the commercials show a Apple knock off that relies on technology people generally don't have yet. The surface side of it may be interesting, but how many of us have touch displays at home? My guess is, not that many. So if I'm going to be looking at Windows 8 and it's price, I'm also going to be looking for new hardware to make use of some of the features. It prices me to an Apple system pretty quickly and what do I gain? Immature applications? Still the hassle of viruses and security? More lock in to a company that is shit? No thanks.
Windows 8 is having the same problems as Windows Phone. It's like an Apple device with the same price. Consumers may generally be stupid, but they are not that stupid.
Both?