Well, I just re-read it and realized that if by "higher power" you don't necessarily mean a sentient higher power, then you could still be an agnostic. (At first I read "higher power" as a euphamism for "god", since most people use it that way, but I see that you might not have been trying to do that.)
If you do believe in a god, but you just aren't defining WHAT that god is actually like (other than the definitionally minimal properties that it is a higher power of some sort, and that it is sentient), then you aren't an agnostic. Agnosticism doesn't mean "belief in a fuzzily-defined god".
You scare me. Some people don't need force to be nice to each other. Some people have a conscience. The view you present is extremely pessimistic about humanity. (And still doesn't fix the problem I mentioned, that even if there is an absolute morality in God, if you believe human reasoning to be faulty then you still have the problem that you have no choice but to use human reasoning to try to figure out what your god wants you to do, and therfore in the end your own morality is still just as relative and non-absolute as the non-believer's is.)
Your "every scrap of historical and literary evidence" amounts to a few testimonies written after the alleged events were about a century old, that were chosen to be preserved by the Council of Nicea and subsequently were bound together into a book called "Bible". Anything contradictory would be long gone by now.
Historians generally don't go on something that flimsy and call it 'fact'.
In the end of the 1980's, Russia existed. Nuclear submarines existed. The CIA existed. The United States existed. There are documented cases of people defecting from Russia to the United States. Submarines would 'see' using sonar. The Russians often tried nagivating deep trenches in the atlantic with their submarines to evade notice. Therefore The Hunt For Red October must be a true story, right?
That doesn't make you an agnostic. You might not follow any particular religion, but that's not relevant to the definition of "agnostic". After all, an agnostic could be a member of The Universal Life Church, for example, and so therefore not being religious does not imply agnosticism. (I'm not saying you're not an agnostic, just that if you are, it's certainly not for the reason you stated.)
Webster's in in the minority in that definition of atheism. Look in other dictionaries and the definition THEY use also allows for a less active witholding of belief in god. Webster's is also in direct opposition to the defintion used by atheists themselves.
Nope, Atheist are more anti-god, stating firmly that god doesn't exist.
Not according to atheists themselves. There is no need to state firmly that god doesn't exist, since nonexistance of a thing is the default hypothesis for ANY proposed thing. (Becuase it's the only reasonably falsifiable hypothesis. If a thing exists, evidence can be found in theory (if not then that is functionally equivilent to not existing). If a thing doesn't exist, evidence can't demonstrate it - things that don't exist don't leave behind evidence. So the hypothesis that god is existant is not falsifiable, but the hypothesis that god doesn't exist *is* falsifiable.
So, in other words, atheism isn't a belief becuase the burden of proof is 100% on the one who believes in god. Atheism is merely the default stance.
And your post conflates religion with belief in god. They are not the same thing. Buddhism is a religion, but doesn't require belief in god. And someone who believes in god, but doesn't follow any one of the standard organized groups that are dedicated to that purpose is theistic, but not religious.
I have a severe dislike of the attitude that "whatever God says is unquestionably good" because it ignores one VERY important point - even if (unlike me) you believe that there is a god, and even if you believe that this god is all good, YOU are still a human being and YOU are still capable of getting it wrong when you interpret what you thought this god said. So your own perception of what is moral is still just as tainted by the problems of relative morality as anyone else's - because you still have to use your own mind to figure out what god wants of you. Well, that would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that you don't *believe* your morality is relative, and thus you end up with a morality that, despite being relative, you will believe unquestioningly.
Thusly do people do evil things and remain convinced they are doing good.
If you have no choice but to involve your own mind in the process of deciding what is good, even just as a means of figuring out what your god wants of you, then you'd better engage ALL of your mind in that process, including the emotional part that hesitates at doing certain deeds. To tell yourself that you should ignore that part and subjugate it is (in my opinion) extremely dangerous.
The origins of satire was as a means of saying politically dangerous things. The goal was to find that delicate balance where the people you are imitating don't notice they are being mocked, while everyone opposed to them does notice that your imitation is a mockery. (Contrast that with the infantile practice of modern internet trolling, which has the much easier goal of trying to be mistaken as the real thing by *everybody*, not just those you are trying to imitate, but also (and more importantly) those who oppose those whom you imitate.).)
So, using animation works because it makes people think you're just kidding.
If you look at stuff said by people like Mark Twain or George Benard Shaw, you can see a very definite undertone of anger at certain of their contemporaries, lightly disguised as humor.
But: 1) Wouldn't the end of the ice age be a slow process, rather than the sort of thing that would look like a flood? and 2) The flood myths don't all point to the same time. A simpler explanation is just that:
2.a) - A flood is a scary thing that you can't fight, and so people will tend to tell legends of it when it happens.
2.b) - Flooding could happen just about anywhere, and so is more globally omnipresent than some other disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, or volcanos.
So the plausable explanation for all the different flood myths is that they were triggered by different floods.
At a previous place of employment, they had collectively developed a standardized test to check for UNIX and C knowlege (and later, a Windows section too, oh well). The test was put together by the programming staff themselves, for use in interviews. The idea was that if you're interviewing people during the technical portion of their battery of questions, you're supposed to take the test with you and then use it to check the candidate's knowledge. Some of us complained that some of the questions on the test had ambiguous multiple choice answers, and that in those cases, often the answer that would be given by the less savvy person would be the 'right' one. They said, "well the test is just a guide. Use it to help talk to the interviewee, don't take the grade literally." But the problem is, more and more often, the person doing the technical interview *would* just believe the answers and not realize that the test was a problem.
Me, I was lucky. When I was first going there as a prospective interviewee, it just so happens my technical interviewer was the one guy who really disliked the test the most - so when I (during the interview) gave some caveats on my answers to the ambiguous questions, he liked this and gave me a really good recommendation. (He liked the fact that I was confused on the bad questions. He said afterward, that he uses the flaws in the test as his own sort of mini-test. The candidates that don't notice anything is wrong with the test (or don't have the guts to say anything about it) don't get as high a recommendation from him.)
Not that I'd recommend this - it's a bit deceptive (because the test is given in an environment in which the candidate might think that rocking the boat would ruin his chances) - but the guy said it was the one way he could salvage something useful out of the unfair test he didn't like to use.
You are apparently operating under the false impression that I support the response my government has given. I do not. That's why I ignored the rest of your post. When someone makes a strawman argument about you, all you need to do is point out the strawman error and not bother responding to the points that are predicated upon that strawman.
In the alternate universe where I said I supported the response of my government, your other points would have been relevant. This is not that universe.
All I advocated was that respoding to terrorism with stubborn refusal to change is a good idea, even if that change would otherwise have been a good idea under other circumstances. That is not the same thing as supporting the decision to hold people without a trial or official charge of any kind. Here's a free clue - there were no suspects held at Guantanomo Bay *before* 9/11. Therefore the Guantanomo Bay issue is NOT an example of stubborn refusal to change (what I was advocating). It was not a pre-existing condition that the terrorists were trying to change. It was a stupid response that involved a CHANGE which was a response to the terrorism, which made the situation worse - which if you take off your predjudice blinders you will see I never advocated. I advocated NOT making changes.
Something tells me that you will be a great parent someday. When your kid rebels against you, your solution will be to avoid change and to visit punishment for the rebellion.
You have two choices: 1 - Show me where I said punish instead of just refusal to change, or 2 - admit that you lied.
Take your pick. I do not tolerate poeple who lie about me.
Military occupations are not terrorism. Terrorism is the desperate act of attacking against soft civilian targets while AVOIDING the military, because you don't have the capacity to win against the military so you attack against whom you *can*.
If there's something you are doing somewhere that is causing terrorists to come and attack you, then not changing what you are doing is not only childish and stubborn, but plain stupid.
The unstated premise you have is that appeasing them will make them stop using terrorism as a tool. It won't. Deal with it.
what do you do if their grievances are right?
That's a tough one. Thankfully, in this case they aren't, so it's not so tough. In this case the political aims of the terrorists is to have a draconian theocracy. Just as I oppose Bush's delusions that life would be grand under a theocracy, I also oppose Bin Laden's similar delusions.
Look at the rhetoric of Al Queda - the whole isreal/palestine thing (in which I agree the US is in the wrong) is just a mere footnote. Their primary complaint is that the U.S. influence is getting in the way of their dream of a rule by islamic law.
[...] show that they are not going to take the plane for a final ride. Seems prudent to me.
Seems impossible to me. Whenever someone institutes a law that is obviously incapable of doing what it claims to do, I get suspicious and start looking for the *real* reason for the law. (For example, the DMCA doesn't have any effect on protecting copyright, so what's it *really* there for - to protect established business cartels from sources of upstart competition.)
Since the goal of terrorism is getting countries to change their policies, If a country changes its policies in response to a terror attack, as you recommend, that sends the message "Hey, terrorism worked really well as a tool. Please feel free to try it again in the future."
Once a group uses terrorist tactics to convince a country to make a change, that country cannot afford to make that change, even if they otherwise would have. Stubborn refusal to change is the safest long-term response to terrorism. Anything else will give the appearance of appeasement, even if it otherwise would have been a good idea.
Ask me to change my mind and I might. Threaten to kill me if I don't change my mind and you've just put me into a position where I have to make damn sure I *don't* change my mind for a while, just to communicate the message that threatening me is not an effective way to get what you want from me.
Threatening to kill American civilians if the US doesn't change it's policies in the middle east is a tactic where it would be dangerous for us to let it be effective. Is the US policy in the middle east unfair and draconian? Absolutely. If you'd asked me before 9/11 if it should change, I would have said yes. But now we're stuck having to wait until Al-Queda is no longer effective before we can ever consider making those changes. Is that childish and stubborn? Yes. But it's also exactly the right response under the circumstances.
That's something the Russians experienced firsthand trying to diffuse that theatre hostage situation in moscow a couple years ago. Not enough dosage and a groggy terrorist might still be awake enough to pull triggers or set off an explosive. Too much dosage, and some of the people inside will die.
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Well, I just re-read it and realized that if by "higher power" you don't necessarily mean a sentient higher power, then you could still be an agnostic. (At first I read "higher power" as a euphamism for "god", since most people use it that way, but I see that you might not have been trying to do that.)
If you do believe in a god, but you just aren't defining WHAT that god is actually like (other than the definitionally minimal properties that it is a higher power of some sort, and that it is sentient), then you aren't an agnostic. Agnosticism doesn't mean "belief in a fuzzily-defined god".
I have no idea what other word to use, though.
You scare me. Some people don't need force to be nice to each other. Some people have a conscience. The view you present is extremely pessimistic about humanity. (And still doesn't fix the problem I mentioned, that even if there is an absolute morality in God, if you believe human reasoning to be faulty then you still have the problem that you have no choice but to use human reasoning to try to figure out what your god wants you to do, and therfore in the end your own morality is still just as relative and non-absolute as the non-believer's is.)
Your "every scrap of historical and literary evidence" amounts to a few testimonies written after the alleged events were about a century old, that were chosen to be preserved by the Council of Nicea and subsequently were bound together into a book called "Bible". Anything contradictory would be long gone by now.
Historians generally don't go on something that flimsy and call it 'fact'.
In the end of the 1980's, Russia existed. Nuclear submarines existed. The CIA existed. The United States existed. There are documented cases of people defecting from Russia to the United States. Submarines would 'see' using sonar. The Russians often tried nagivating deep trenches in the atlantic with their submarines to evade notice.
Therefore The Hunt For Red October must be a true story, right?
Yeah, but in case you hadn't noticed, the topic was about the WORLDWIDE abundance of flood myths. The black sea flood wouldn't account for that.
I qualify as agnostic. I belive their must be a higher power that helped shape/mold the universe.
Those two sentences are mutually contradictory.
That doesn't make you an agnostic. You might not follow any particular religion, but that's not relevant to the definition of "agnostic". After all, an agnostic could be a member of The Universal Life Church, for example, and so therefore not being religious does not imply agnosticism. (I'm not saying you're not an agnostic, just that if you are, it's certainly not for the reason you stated.)
Webster's in in the minority in that definition of atheism. Look in other dictionaries and the definition THEY use also allows for a less active witholding of belief in god. Webster's is also in direct opposition to the defintion used by atheists themselves.
Nope, Atheist are more anti-god, stating firmly that god doesn't exist.
Not according to atheists themselves. There is no need to state firmly that god doesn't exist, since nonexistance of a thing is the default hypothesis for ANY proposed thing. (Becuase it's the only reasonably falsifiable hypothesis. If a thing exists, evidence can be found in theory (if not then that is functionally equivilent to not existing). If a thing doesn't exist, evidence can't demonstrate it - things that don't exist don't leave behind evidence. So the hypothesis that god is existant is not falsifiable, but the hypothesis that god doesn't exist *is* falsifiable.
So, in other words, atheism isn't a belief becuase the burden of proof is 100% on the one who believes in god. Atheism is merely the default stance.
And your post conflates religion with belief in god. They are not the same thing. Buddhism is a religion, but doesn't require belief in god. And someone who believes in god, but doesn't follow any one of the standard organized groups that are dedicated to that purpose is theistic, but not religious.
I have a severe dislike of the attitude that "whatever God says is unquestionably good" because it ignores one VERY important point - even if (unlike me) you believe that there is a god, and even if you believe that this god is all good, YOU are still a human being and YOU are still capable of getting it wrong when you interpret what you thought this god said. So your own perception of what is moral is still just as tainted by the problems of relative morality as anyone else's - because you still have to use your own mind to figure out what god wants of you. Well, that would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that you don't *believe* your morality is relative, and thus you end up with a morality that, despite being relative, you will believe unquestioningly.
Thusly do people do evil things and remain convinced they are doing good.
If you have no choice but to involve your own mind in the process of deciding what is good, even just as a means of figuring out what your god wants of you, then you'd better engage ALL of your mind in that process, including the emotional part that hesitates at doing certain deeds. To tell yourself that you should ignore that part and subjugate it is (in my opinion) extremely dangerous.
The burden of proof is NEVER on the skeptic. EVER. That's not how rational thought works.
The fact that they retain their Christianity is proof they didn't really reason throught it, as far as I'm concerned.
The origins of satire was as a means of saying politically dangerous things. The goal was to find that delicate balance where the people you are imitating don't notice they are being mocked, while everyone opposed to them does notice that your imitation is a mockery. (Contrast that with the infantile practice of modern internet trolling, which has the much easier goal of trying to be mistaken as the real thing by *everybody*, not just those you are trying to imitate, but also (and more importantly) those who oppose those whom you imitate.).)
So, using animation works because it makes people think you're just kidding.
If you look at stuff said by people like Mark Twain or George Benard Shaw, you can see a very definite undertone of anger at certain of their contemporaries, lightly disguised as humor.
But:
1) Wouldn't the end of the ice age be a slow process, rather than the sort of thing that would look like a flood?
and
2) The flood myths don't all point to the same time. A simpler explanation is just that:
2.a) - A flood is a scary thing that you can't fight, and so people will tend to tell legends of it when it happens.
2.b) - Flooding could happen just about anywhere, and so is more globally omnipresent than some other disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, or volcanos.
So the plausable explanation for all the different flood myths is that they were triggered by different floods.
At a previous place of employment, they had collectively developed a standardized test to check for UNIX and C knowlege (and later, a Windows section too, oh well). The test was put together by the programming staff themselves, for use in interviews. The idea was that if you're interviewing people during the technical portion of their battery of questions, you're supposed to take the test with you and then use it to check the candidate's knowledge. Some of us complained that some of the questions on the test had ambiguous multiple choice answers, and that in those cases, often the answer that would be given by the less savvy person would be the 'right' one. They said, "well the test is just a guide. Use it to help talk to the interviewee, don't take the grade literally." But the problem is, more and more often, the person doing the technical interview *would* just believe the answers and not realize that the test was a problem.
Me, I was lucky. When I was first going there as a prospective interviewee, it just so happens my technical interviewer was the one guy who really disliked the test the most - so when I (during the interview) gave some caveats on my answers to the ambiguous questions, he liked this and gave me a really good recommendation. (He liked the fact that I was confused on the bad questions. He said afterward, that he uses the flaws in the test as his own sort of mini-test. The candidates that don't notice anything is wrong with the test (or don't have the guts to say anything about it) don't get as high a recommendation from him.)
Not that I'd recommend this - it's a bit deceptive (because the test is given in an environment in which the candidate might think that rocking the boat would ruin his chances) - but the guy said it was the one way he could salvage something useful out of the unfair test he didn't like to use.
You are apparently operating under the false impression that I support the response my government has given. I do not. That's why I ignored the rest of your post. When someone makes a strawman argument about you, all you need to do is point out the strawman error and not bother responding to the points that are predicated upon that strawman.
In the alternate universe where I said I supported the response of my government, your other points would have been relevant. This is not that universe.
All I advocated was that respoding to terrorism with stubborn refusal to change is a good idea, even if that change would otherwise have been a good idea under other circumstances. That is not the same thing as supporting the decision to hold people without a trial or official charge of any kind. Here's a free clue - there were no suspects held at Guantanomo Bay *before* 9/11. Therefore the Guantanomo Bay issue is NOT an example of stubborn refusal to change (what I was advocating). It was not a pre-existing condition that the terrorists were trying to change. It was a stupid response that involved a CHANGE which was a response to the terrorism, which made the situation worse - which if you take off your predjudice blinders you will see I never advocated. I advocated NOT making changes.
Something tells me that you will be a great parent someday. When your kid rebels against you, your solution will be to avoid change and to visit punishment for the rebellion.
You have two choices: 1 - Show me where I said punish instead of just refusal to change, or 2 - admit that you lied.
Take your pick. I do not tolerate poeple who lie about me.
Military occupations are not terrorism. Terrorism is the desperate act of attacking against soft civilian targets while AVOIDING the military, because you don't have the capacity to win against the military so you attack against whom you *can*.
If there's something you are doing somewhere that is causing terrorists to come and attack you, then not changing what you are doing is not only childish and stubborn, but plain stupid.
The unstated premise you have is that appeasing them will make them stop using terrorism as a tool. It won't. Deal with it.
what do you do if their grievances are right?
That's a tough one. Thankfully, in this case they aren't, so it's not so tough. In this case the political aims of the terrorists is to have a draconian theocracy. Just as I oppose Bush's delusions that life would be grand under a theocracy, I also oppose Bin Laden's similar delusions.
Look at the rhetoric of Al Queda - the whole isreal/palestine thing (in which I agree the US is in the wrong) is just a mere footnote. Their primary complaint is that the U.S. influence is getting in the way of their dream of a rule by islamic law.
Your post which I cannot understand was not +5 insightful. Do you enjoy lying?
[...] show that they are not going to take the plane for a final ride. Seems prudent to me.
Seems impossible to me.
Whenever someone institutes a law that is obviously incapable of doing what it claims to do, I get suspicious and start looking for the *real* reason for the law. (For example, the DMCA doesn't have any effect on protecting copyright, so what's it *really* there for - to protect established business cartels from sources of upstart competition.)
Wow. The Missisippi is a pretty honkin' huge river, miles across in spots, but you don't need an airplane to get across it.
Since the goal of terrorism is getting countries to change their policies, If a country changes its policies in response to a terror attack, as you recommend, that sends the message "Hey, terrorism worked really well as a tool. Please feel free to try it again in the future."
Once a group uses terrorist tactics to convince a country to make a change, that country cannot afford to make that change, even if they otherwise would have. Stubborn refusal to change is the safest long-term response to terrorism. Anything else will give the appearance of appeasement, even if it otherwise would have been a good idea.
Ask me to change my mind and I might. Threaten to kill me if I don't change my mind and you've just put me into a position where I have to make damn sure I *don't* change my mind for a while, just to communicate the message that threatening me is not an effective way to get what you want from me.
Threatening to kill American civilians if the US doesn't change it's policies in the middle east is a tactic where it would be dangerous for us to let it be effective. Is the US policy in the middle east unfair and draconian? Absolutely. If you'd asked me before 9/11 if it should change, I would have said yes. But now we're stuck having to wait until Al-Queda is no longer effective before we can ever consider making those changes. Is that childish and stubborn? Yes. But it's also exactly the right response under the circumstances.
That's something the Russians experienced firsthand trying to diffuse that theatre hostage situation in moscow a couple years ago. Not enough dosage and a groggy terrorist might still be awake enough to pull triggers or set off an explosive. Too much dosage, and some of the people inside will die.
If we can support Israel building a wall,
We don't. It's one of the few topics where the US is actually openly critical of Israel.
You apparently are incapable of comprehending this simple point: there is a huge difference between a program and a packaged product.
Yes, I have great difficulty understanding made-up bullshit.