It's not about who is nominally in charge of a company. That's always been a secondary matter.
It's who commands the respect within the company, and who gets listened to when he's got something to say.
If marketing listens when engineering says "uh, that's actually not a very good idea", then things work out just fine. Oh, btw. - and vice versa.
Problem with many CEOs, most C*Os and almost all management on the VP/director level is that they think they know everything, that business is a power game and that making your things happen is more important than making good things happen (or being unable to see that these are not identical).
I've seen my share of these. My general take is that most low management people are heroes, even if they're assholes at the same time. Lots of top-level management is bright and cares, though most will gladly stab you in the back if it gains them anything. But middle and middle-to-high management is where they dump all the idiots, psychopaths and outright dangerous people. If you find a good person there (and they exist, I know a couple!) by all means hold on to them, they're an endangered species.
So, Balmer, it's not what kind of people you put on what kind of chairs. It's if anyone listens to them, and that takes a lot more than giving them a nicer office.
The last few times things like this happened,/. was one of the places where you'd find list of mirrors, and every 3rd comment was someone posting his mirror.
No, seriously. Hate them all you want, but they got this part right. Maybe it's because they care about user experience, maybe it's just because Steve's ego wouldn't allow anyone else to be there when the system starts the first time. One way or the other, the end result is the same.
PC makers? Wrong address. None of those guys have gotten anything right for at least 20 years.
You have no idea what fame does to sex appeal. Women are all over famous people, even if they're ugly.
Women are also in man who are (or appear to be) working for a common good, share their personal goals and visions, and are a bit foreign and mysterious.
We're not talking about keeping the biggest five Internet companies connected. They have enough brains and money to worry about that problem themselves.
We're talking about keeping the simple end-users connected, who largely have neither.
This is not about a 100% government-resistant solution. It's about finding a way where the government doesn't have one single "kill switch" for your entire communications.
Phone networks work that way. By design, there is no single point where you can cut it all off. That doesn't mean you can't take it down, but it does take some more effort.
The Internet was originally designed to be that way. Then commercial interests joined in. Commercially, large central hubs are better than a distributed mesh.
Okay, first of all. Things in science are not "proven" in the sense that there is some point when you say "Well, that's 100% positive". As much as any theory can be proven evolution has been proven.
I think that's another strawman.
Nowhere in life do we request or expect 100% positive proof, except as a dialectical tool. We even put people behind bars (or, in some countries, on death row) without 100% proof. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a very common standard, even outside the courtroom. Why should science have to satisfy requirements higher than a death sentence has to?
I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind?
That's a common misconception.
Yes, science is about being open to falsification and proof to the contrary.
That does not mean being bogged down in the same discussion again and again and again.
When a matter is new, it is usually on those who came up with the theory to show some evidence towards it. When the evidence is convincing, the theory gets tested further, and then adapted. Once a theory is generally accepted, the burden of proof to dislodge it is on those who doubt it.
ID was indeed being taken seriously by the scientific community when it first appeared. Its claims were considered valid criticism on the theory of evolution and were investigated. Many were debunked, a few lead to better insights and improvements of the theory of evolution (see other comments for some examples, like irreducable complexity) and that was it. The criticism was taken into account, the theory of evolution survived, ID did not.
Those still pushing it today are simply the guys who don't give up because science is not their agenda, religion is. And in religion, being proven wrong means absolutely nothing at all. You simply go on. And on. And on.
So add a "Pseudoscience" class to the curriculum. We could really, really need it. In there, teach kids about all the bullshit they'll encounter in their lifes and how to identify the nonsense.
Teach them about astrology and horoscopes, about people who speak to the dead, miracles cures and all the other things where others will try to take advantage of them.
It is sorely needed. You don't even have to get controversial, there's more than enough utter and total bullshit to fill a class.
Does anyone still actually believe that science coursework below graduate-level material has anything beyond peripheral involvement with the proper growth of scientists?
Absolutely, yes. Has it ever occured to you that there is something called "learning"? Your first steps in something new will almost always have not so much in common with what the real thing looks like. Your first steps in driving or flying are a few minutes or hours of theory, far away from a car.
Presenting children with "real science" would very likely not teach them much. Real science is, first of all, fantastically boring to anyone who isn't already fascinated by the subject matter. Days, weeks, months - sometimes years of repeating the same thing over and over again, followed by long hours sifting through statistics? There's a reason scientists are rarely TV heroes, and it's got nothing to do with the current anti-science climate.
"Real science" is a lot like real army duty doesn't resemble an FPS and involves a lot of really, really boring stuff.
I don't expect "real science" in schools any more than I expect the real England to be around for english class. You are not taught science, you are taught the basics about science.
And don't forget you're being taught in a class where everyone has to do it, while on any given subject, at least half the class would rather do something else. So there's another compromise right there.
It's one thing for people to choose not to have vaccines, that is a right and it would be an assault on their person to force it upon them.
It gets a bit trickier when people decide not for themselves, but for others - namely their children.
People can also beat themselves up all they want, or have others beat them up. We accept that and call it SM. But beating up your child we call child abuse. And rightly so, for it's not the same thing.
I did not say that they were "not religious"; even Apple customers are religious. I said that they did not agree with Christian dogma and theology. Therefore, you cannot convince them by arguing about, ridiculing, or saying anything else about Christian dogma and theology.
You were talking about dogma, I wasn't. I ridicule all religion equally, and I don't care if someone believes in the virgin birth, the apocalypse, the trinity or whatever else he picked and chose. It's all equally ridiculous. You can not take any part of the christian religion seriously, and that is the only effective defense against their "pick and choose" approach.
That's also why I've said several times now that "convincing" them doesn't work. For one it's faith and even a perfect argument would just be a "test of faith" if everything else fails, and two it's christianity, they'll happily declare that particular part of their holy book as not being valid anymore and it won't bother them the least.
since people who "pick and choose" their religious dogma are essentially unassailable in their beliefs by any means.
As you see, we agree on that.:-)
You don't seriously believe that the biggest political force in Germany is just going to watch its number decline year after year without using its power to stop it?
As said many times in this discussion: No I don't, which is exactly why I think it needs to be actively opposed.
We don't disagree in the goal, never have. We just disagree on the means. I believe that any serious engagement with the church is a losing proposition unless you are in an exceptionally good starting position. A head-on confrontation is something people like Dawkins can do, because they are established and attacking them would only strengthen their position. For you and I, a confrontation with the church - well, let's put it this way: How much would it really bother you if that fruit fly over there starts to hate you and goes full-out aggro on your butt?
A direct confrontation, whether in the form of public attacks, rational discourse or such like is simply not an effective means for any of us.
My approach is to get people I talk to to see how ridiculous this whole religion thing is. Religion currently has a protective shield of respect around it. And the church profits massively from that. Everyone treats carefully when it comes to religion.
My purpose is dismantling that shield, or at least a small corner of it.
You may think other approaches work better. Hey, I'm not stopping you, do what you feel like doing. I just don't believe it's the better way. As long as "faith" is somehow treated with respect and care even though the proper treatment is psychotherapy, the church can hide behind this respect and do all its horrible deeds while nobody dares calling them what they are.
It's a slow process, but it does show some signs of progress. For the first time in my life, I've seen journalists wonder in their articles why pedophile priests are treated differently from other child rapists.
I don't delude myself into thinking I will see a 1500 year old organisation crumble within my lifetime. And yes, it is not a constant process and Merkel and Wulff bother me to no end (Wulff a lot more than Merkel, actually, she's an incredibly hollow person and I strongly believe she'd be an atheist tomorrow if that were the only way to stay in power).
But, back to the original argument, I don't see the Kirchensteuer as the root of all evil, but as a symptom. I don't see a few missing paragraphs in the constitution as the root of all evil, but as another symptom. And I'll happily agree that there are lots of those symptoms.
But my interest in curing the symptoms is small. My interest is curing the disease. And every single person that I can bring to stop being religious or stop treating religion in other people as something that deserves respect,
Compared to that a road or railroad is almost invisible.
While it may harm your sense of esthetics, I'm sure the animals and plants actually living in the area mind a lot less.
The impact zone of a highway is about two miles in every direction. That is a major cut you're making into the landscape. It's not just the paving itself, you know? It's the noise, the change in animal paths, erosion patterns and a hundred other things.
but for the most part such a cargoway will only add another exchange point where goods must be unloaded and reloaded which costs time and money.
Newsflash: That is how airports, railroads and even a lot of trucks already work.
Also there's very little flexibility, with trucks or trains you can run more or less and even sell parts of it if things are slow. With this you have almost only fixed costs and if you hit the capacity limit it's a very hard limit.
You can certainly put more or less containers on the rope, and since most of your power consumption goes for moving mass around, less mass equals less power. The really fixed amount of moving the cable around is probably tiny compared to the load.
Almost all modern logistics are network-based already. The truck that comes over to pick up your UPS package is not really the same truck that delivers it at the destination.
Imagine a network of such transport cables alongside the most common routes, and loading stations at the end points and maybe intermediate points.
How many trucks drive the same route along the same interstate every day? How many of them already pick up their stuff at a loading bay and deliver it to a loading bay? All you'd need is move your loading bay to the new facility, and keep your local delivery vehicles, but you'd eliminate all the intermediate trucking.
When (not if!) one ropeway breaks down, what do you do ? Reroute onto roads ? Wait ?
Same problem as with railroads today. Same solution: Wait or take a different route through the network.
Frankly, it sucks. I never liked the intermediate one with the collapsed stories and frankenstein threading, so I compare to the classic layout:
The new one is a horrible step backwards. In pretty much all respects. My input window for this posting is so tiny, I wonder if you even want people to comment anymore. Threads look horrible, footer texts have massive linespacing, buttons that belong together are broken up by linebreaks, there's useless information taking up space all over the site (yeah, I really need the number of comments in a huge grey font, it is so important to me). The user page is a mess. In the list of my own comments, the headers are now the same background as the comment lines, which makes it hard to see which comments belong to which story.
Frankly, please someone tell me there's a way to get back to the classic layout. This one is a failure. Don't force me to beta-test it if it isn't ready. Take it back to the drawing board and don't come back until it's done, and actually an improvement.
In Germany, churches have rights and resources that are guaranteed by the state and that are independent of their membership numbers.
On paper, yes. If you really think that your reductio ad absurdum scenario could come true, I can't help. Of course those rights and privileges exist, yes. But they need a base to stand upon, as they are constantly being questioned and attacked. Without popular support, the church could not maintain them.
In Germany, in contrast, many people give both money and political support (through membership numbers) to churches even though they are not actually active participants; that's because the lack of separation of church and state in Germany has, among other things, as a consequence that it's both easy and considered a social norm in Germany to stay a member of a church even if you don't really believe; many people erroneously think that their church taxes are actually used by German churches to help people (they are not; they are mostly spent on administration, buildings, publicity, and proselytizing).
Agreed, but again too simple. Many people intentionally stay in the church because of marriage and funeral. I've already pointed that out twice before, please
You, in fact, acknowledge that fact: these people call themselves "Christian", but they don't actually agree with Christian theology and dogma, they "pick and choose". And why do they do that? Because most modern, educated people realize that actual Christian theology and dogma are bullshit and don't make any sense.
We're not talking about people with brains, we are talking about religious people. Even the most religious, fanatic biblethumber uses a pick and choose approach to his bible. It's not a sign of having abandoned the faith.
And that is why your notion that you simply have to convince people that Christianity is irrational and wrong won't work:
Please follow your own advise and don't read things I didn't write. In fact, I've already said plainly that "convincing" as in rational demonstration, proving it wrong, etc. is not the way. Religious faith is above falsification.
And, more importantly, churches in Germany have managed to implant the idea in people's heads that they are a strong force for social justice, support for the disadvantaged, and morality and that you should support them even if you don't believe their theology. That is the idea you need to dispell.
Oh, I agree. But that's being done already. There is a reason exits from the church are at an all-time high.
That is what separation of church and state means: the state does not give churches the authority or resources to mess with education, health care, and politics. They can influence those things only by convincing people one-by-one to follow their teachings.
Oh, please. That's a naive view. Do you really think that the entire lobbying industry has remained magically invisible to the church? That an organisation with this amount of resources, an unbending desire to control everything, and almost two millenia of experience in doing so, is in the least disturbed by a bit of fancy legalese? You are massively underestimating the enemy, my friend.
In Germany, most people have stopped believing,
But they are still giving the church power and money. If most people had stopped already, how could it be that the number of people leaving the church has risen to an all-time high, again? Numbers of exits have increased by 80 % after one of the recent scandals. There is a lot of people who are still backing the church. The importance of religion has dramatically fallen, but for many people not below the threshold. Plus as I said many postings ago: Many are hedging their bets because they want a church wedding and funeral.
If that were the case, then churches (=the organizations) should have less political power in Germany than in the US, Germans being far less religious than Americans. But the opposite is the case. While religion is a powerful political force in the US, churches as organizations are not (if not for any other reason than that there are so many of them).
You can not make the direct comparison on only one data point. The churches have a more direct influence in Germany than in the US. However, Germans are less religious than Americans. These are two counter-acting forces, and at least in part they balance each other out. It is not false to say that churches have more influence in Germany, while religion has more influence in the US. It is false to see these two as being two entirely seperate entities. The driving force behind both is religious powermongering. And it will take whatever form is best for the given environment. In Germany, that is institutional, in the US it is propaganda, brainwashing, lobbyism, whatever you want to call it.
most Germans already reject Christian dogma and theology.
I wish that were true. Germany has been the hotbed of the 30 year war, and most regions of Germany have been both catholic and protestant at least for a short time each. Which is why you may see one trait very prominently in Germany that has become typical for christianity in general: The "pick and choose" method. Whatever you like about the bible is what you quote and claim as literal truth directly from the creators mouth in person, and whatever you don't like or doesn't fit the current social climate needs to be taken figuratively, allegorically or is simply ignored (or, alternatively, claimed to have been "overridden" by the new testament). That's typical christian weaseling. I'm pretty sure there's not one word in the bible that every christian agrees about whether it's really serious or not quite so much.
because churches only have influence to the degree that they have actual believers.
It's not that simple. In both Germany and the US there are a lot of people who are christians mostly at christmas and some other dates, or who go to church as a habit, or out of social commitment. True believers are a small part, even in the US, of the number of people who support the church/religion power in one way or the other.
Religion is about faith and belief only for the lambs, never for the butcher. The heads of major religions actually believing the stuff they preach? I'm with Frazer on that, it's probably been 20,000 years since that's been the case.
If you read between the lines, then obviously "spreading the gospel" is the only reason a devout cathaholic should have of being online. At least according to the pope.
Wake me when they've left Lalaland and become more than old men with funny hats. Until then, go teach them about Eris and the FSM.
It's separation of church and state, not separation of religion and state. Churches and religion are two very different concepts.
True, but incomplete. Christianity is a religion that is strongly linked to churches, unlike, say, Hinduism which has a more private concept of religion. As such, while you are technically correct that they are different entities, they are not independent from each other and discussing one without discussing the other is leaving out a big part of the whole. It's like discussing politics without discussing the government, or vice versa.
In contrast, the German government strongly favors, supports, and promotes two churches (Catholics and Lutherans); they get vast sums of public funding, control of parts of the educational system, control of a large part of the health care system, automatic access to political decision making, and significant influence on the media.
Correct, but incomplete. That same influence is there in many other countries with a stronger seperation. It is, however, less public and official.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree that a stronger seperation would be better. But I don't think the letter of the law is the source of the problem, I think it is a symptom. The problem is that religion has way too much influence on our society despite having been debunked. Seperation or no is one of the symptoms of this underlying problem.
I think we don't really disagree all that much, except on our respective interpretations of what the source problem and what the symptoms of the problem are.
One of the reasons is that the russians have many, many terrorist attacks. We just hardly ever hear about it in the west. There was one where over 300 children died when terrorists stormed an elementary school.
You can't do anything about terrorism, really. That's the main problem, and that's why it causes so much panic - the feeling of being helpless about it. Fighting it only makes it worse, ignoring it means the terrorists continue, I bet even giving in to their demans would not make them go away.
I didn't say Germany had total constitutional separation. I said that Germany has failed even to implement its own limited constitutionally mandated provisions. All major German parties are actively and deliberately flaunting the German constitution.
True. I'm a big proponent of the "three strikes you're out" version for politicians - if they support three/five/whatever-the-number unconstitutional laws, they lose their position. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the proposal to implement this as law was rejected not after, but from debate - it was never even discussed. Self-serving assholes.
Most other western nations have been able to separate church and state far more effectively, against a much more powerful church.
On paper. That is my point. Sure they have the laws. But how much does it really do? Just take the example I already mentioned - the US has a very strong seperation in its constitution, but I don't see the religious influence being any less, on the contrary.
I said that the status of religion in Germany is a symptom of deep-seated problems of German democracy. Those problems go far beyond issues of separation of church and state. You're not going to fix those problems by getting rid of religion.
Ah. Got you now. No, I won't, mostly because it isn't my goal. I'm a paying member of the Pirate Party because that's the closest we currently have to make a better political system without a bloody revolution, but aside from that politics is something I stay away from today. It's not something an honest man would want to be associated with. My focus is on religion, which is a lot longer-lasting and more damaging than the current political system which is mostly busy unravelling itself.
Yes, if you want to fix politics, religion is a bad place to start. But if you want to fix religion, politics is a bad place to start, either.
So, what are we supposed to be, great leader? Automatically submit to authority no matter what just so we can earn its favor and maybe some cash too?
You didn't get it.
There is a very important difference between being "good" and being "unique". When everyone is "unique", the term loses all meaning. It becomes a triviality. And besides, it matters little. What matters is if you're ok, good, a positive being. So what if everyone else is also ok?
That, in a nutshell, is the problem of american culture. That it isn't sufficient to be good at something, you have to be exceptional. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you aren't unique and special, you don't count. That creates a culture of opposition and hostility, because you can't accept that someone else is also good - it would devalue you.
In reality, this system of thought continually devalues you, because no matter who you are and how good you are, you will always find someone who is better at something. Subscribing to this belief is setting yourself up for disappointment.
The other mindset, the more asian one, is that it matters how good you are, and if someone else is also good, or even better, that's ok. You may strive to become as good if he's better, but it doesn't reduce your own value - you are still good.
Basically, americans consider personal value to be a relative measure - how you relate to others. If someone else is 2 points ahead of you, your value is -2. If someone else is 10 points behind you, your value is +10. Asians (and some europeans, though the number is decreasing) see personal value is an absolute measure - how you relate to the world. If you are a 15, then you are always a 15, no matter how others score. Seeing that someone else is a 17 makes it clear that you can do better, but you are still a 15, not a -2. Likewise, seeing that everyone else is a 5 makes it clear that you are indeed very good, but your personal value isn't +10, it is still 15.
None of the systems is perfect. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages we found out about the hard way is that the relative system combined with the demand to be special and unique leads to frustration, depression and low self-esteem. Because you're putting up a goal that is impossible to reach. If the goal is to be among the top 1% in anything, then automatically 99% of the participants will fail no matter how well they do.
Unfortunately, that's not true anymore. We've taken in too much of the shallow, entertainment culture. German kids today don't dream about being a scientist or an astronaut, they dream about being a rock or movie star.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about who is nominally in charge of a company. That's always been a secondary matter.
It's who commands the respect within the company, and who gets listened to when he's got something to say.
If marketing listens when engineering says "uh, that's actually not a very good idea", then things work out just fine. Oh, btw. - and vice versa.
Problem with many CEOs, most C*Os and almost all management on the VP/director level is that they think they know everything, that business is a power game and that making your things happen is more important than making good things happen (or being unable to see that these are not identical).
I've seen my share of these. My general take is that most low management people are heroes, even if they're assholes at the same time. Lots of top-level management is bright and cares, though most will gladly stab you in the back if it gains them anything. But middle and middle-to-high management is where they dump all the idiots, psychopaths and outright dangerous people. If you find a good person there (and they exist, I know a couple!) by all means hold on to them, they're an endangered species.
So, Balmer, it's not what kind of people you put on what kind of chairs. It's if anyone listens to them, and that takes a lot more than giving them a nicer office.
The last few times things like this happened, /. was one of the places where you'd find list of mirrors, and every 3rd comment was someone posting his mirror.
Now, it's all complaining, whining, and crying.
It may finally be time to let this site die.
If you're looking for a lay, skanks are exactly what you're looking for.
Apple
No, seriously. Hate them all you want, but they got this part right. Maybe it's because they care about user experience, maybe it's just because Steve's ego wouldn't allow anyone else to be there when the system starts the first time. One way or the other, the end result is the same.
PC makers? Wrong address. None of those guys have gotten anything right for at least 20 years.
You have no idea what fame does to sex appeal. Women are all over famous people, even if they're ugly.
Women are also in man who are (or appear to be) working for a common good, share their personal goals and visions, and are a bit foreign and mysterious.
We're not talking about keeping the biggest five Internet companies connected. They have enough brains and money to worry about that problem themselves.
We're talking about keeping the simple end-users connected, who largely have neither.
Power can be generated decentralized.
This is not about a 100% government-resistant solution. It's about finding a way where the government doesn't have one single "kill switch" for your entire communications.
Phone networks work that way. By design, there is no single point where you can cut it all off. That doesn't mean you can't take it down, but it does take some more effort.
The Internet was originally designed to be that way. Then commercial interests joined in. Commercially, large central hubs are better than a distributed mesh.
Okay, first of all. Things in science are not "proven" in the sense that there is some point when you say "Well, that's 100% positive". As much as any theory can be proven evolution has been proven.
I think that's another strawman.
Nowhere in life do we request or expect 100% positive proof, except as a dialectical tool. We even put people behind bars (or, in some countries, on death row) without 100% proof. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a very common standard, even outside the courtroom. Why should science have to satisfy requirements higher than a death sentence has to?
I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind?
That's a common misconception.
Yes, science is about being open to falsification and proof to the contrary.
That does not mean being bogged down in the same discussion again and again and again.
When a matter is new, it is usually on those who came up with the theory to show some evidence towards it. When the evidence is convincing, the theory gets tested further, and then adapted. Once a theory is generally accepted, the burden of proof to dislodge it is on those who doubt it.
ID was indeed being taken seriously by the scientific community when it first appeared. Its claims were considered valid criticism on the theory of evolution and were investigated. Many were debunked, a few lead to better insights and improvements of the theory of evolution (see other comments for some examples, like irreducable complexity) and that was it. The criticism was taken into account, the theory of evolution survived, ID did not.
Those still pushing it today are simply the guys who don't give up because science is not their agenda, religion is. And in religion, being proven wrong means absolutely nothing at all. You simply go on. And on. And on.
So add a "Pseudoscience" class to the curriculum. We could really, really need it. In there, teach kids about all the bullshit they'll encounter in their lifes and how to identify the nonsense.
Teach them about astrology and horoscopes, about people who speak to the dead, miracles cures and all the other things where others will try to take advantage of them.
It is sorely needed. You don't even have to get controversial, there's more than enough utter and total bullshit to fill a class.
Does anyone still actually believe that science coursework below graduate-level material has anything beyond peripheral involvement with the proper growth of scientists?
Absolutely, yes. Has it ever occured to you that there is something called "learning"? Your first steps in something new will almost always have not so much in common with what the real thing looks like. Your first steps in driving or flying are a few minutes or hours of theory, far away from a car.
Presenting children with "real science" would very likely not teach them much. Real science is, first of all, fantastically boring to anyone who isn't already fascinated by the subject matter. Days, weeks, months - sometimes years of repeating the same thing over and over again, followed by long hours sifting through statistics? There's a reason scientists are rarely TV heroes, and it's got nothing to do with the current anti-science climate.
"Real science" is a lot like real army duty doesn't resemble an FPS and involves a lot of really, really boring stuff.
I don't expect "real science" in schools any more than I expect the real England to be around for english class. You are not taught science, you are taught the basics about science.
And don't forget you're being taught in a class where everyone has to do it, while on any given subject, at least half the class would rather do something else. So there's another compromise right there.
It's one thing for people to choose not to have vaccines, that is a right and it would be an assault on their person to force it upon them.
It gets a bit trickier when people decide not for themselves, but for others - namely their children.
People can also beat themselves up all they want, or have others beat them up. We accept that and call it SM. But beating up your child we call child abuse. And rightly so, for it's not the same thing.
I did not say that they were "not religious"; even Apple customers are religious. I said that they did not agree with Christian dogma and theology. Therefore, you cannot convince them by arguing about, ridiculing, or saying anything else about Christian dogma and theology.
You were talking about dogma, I wasn't. I ridicule all religion equally, and I don't care if someone believes in the virgin birth, the apocalypse, the trinity or whatever else he picked and chose. It's all equally ridiculous. You can not take any part of the christian religion seriously, and that is the only effective defense against their "pick and choose" approach.
That's also why I've said several times now that "convincing" them doesn't work. For one it's faith and even a perfect argument would just be a "test of faith" if everything else fails, and two it's christianity, they'll happily declare that particular part of their holy book as not being valid anymore and it won't bother them the least.
since people who "pick and choose" their religious dogma are essentially unassailable in their beliefs by any means.
As you see, we agree on that. :-)
You don't seriously believe that the biggest political force in Germany is just going to watch its number decline year after year without using its power to stop it?
As said many times in this discussion: No I don't, which is exactly why I think it needs to be actively opposed.
We don't disagree in the goal, never have. We just disagree on the means. I believe that any serious engagement with the church is a losing proposition unless you are in an exceptionally good starting position. A head-on confrontation is something people like Dawkins can do, because they are established and attacking them would only strengthen their position. For you and I, a confrontation with the church - well, let's put it this way: How much would it really bother you if that fruit fly over there starts to hate you and goes full-out aggro on your butt?
A direct confrontation, whether in the form of public attacks, rational discourse or such like is simply not an effective means for any of us.
My approach is to get people I talk to to see how ridiculous this whole religion thing is. Religion currently has a protective shield of respect around it. And the church profits massively from that. Everyone treats carefully when it comes to religion.
My purpose is dismantling that shield, or at least a small corner of it.
You may think other approaches work better. Hey, I'm not stopping you, do what you feel like doing. I just don't believe it's the better way. As long as "faith" is somehow treated with respect and care even though the proper treatment is psychotherapy, the church can hide behind this respect and do all its horrible deeds while nobody dares calling them what they are.
It's a slow process, but it does show some signs of progress. For the first time in my life, I've seen journalists wonder in their articles why pedophile priests are treated differently from other child rapists.
I don't delude myself into thinking I will see a 1500 year old organisation crumble within my lifetime. And yes, it is not a constant process and Merkel and Wulff bother me to no end (Wulff a lot more than Merkel, actually, she's an incredibly hollow person and I strongly believe she'd be an atheist tomorrow if that were the only way to stay in power).
But, back to the original argument, I don't see the Kirchensteuer as the root of all evil, but as a symptom. I don't see a few missing paragraphs in the constitution as the root of all evil, but as another symptom. And I'll happily agree that there are lots of those symptoms.
But my interest in curing the symptoms is small. My interest is curing the disease. And every single person that I can bring to stop being religious or stop treating religion in other people as something that deserves respect,
Compared to that a road or railroad is almost invisible.
While it may harm your sense of esthetics, I'm sure the animals and plants actually living in the area mind a lot less.
The impact zone of a highway is about two miles in every direction. That is a major cut you're making into the landscape. It's not just the paving itself, you know? It's the noise, the change in animal paths, erosion patterns and a hundred other things.
but for the most part such a cargoway will only add another exchange point where goods must be unloaded and reloaded which costs time and money.
Newsflash: That is how airports, railroads and even a lot of trucks already work.
Also there's very little flexibility, with trucks or trains you can run more or less and even sell parts of it if things are slow. With this you have almost only fixed costs and if you hit the capacity limit it's a very hard limit.
You can certainly put more or less containers on the rope, and since most of your power consumption goes for moving mass around, less mass equals less power. The really fixed amount of moving the cable around is probably tiny compared to the load.
Almost all modern logistics are network-based already. The truck that comes over to pick up your UPS package is not really the same truck that delivers it at the destination.
Imagine a network of such transport cables alongside the most common routes, and loading stations at the end points and maybe intermediate points.
How many trucks drive the same route along the same interstate every day? How many of them already pick up their stuff at a loading bay and deliver it to a loading bay? All you'd need is move your loading bay to the new facility, and keep your local delivery vehicles, but you'd eliminate all the intermediate trucking.
When (not if!) one ropeway breaks down, what do you do ? Reroute onto roads ? Wait ?
Same problem as with railroads today. Same solution: Wait or take a different route through the network.
Frankly, it sucks. I never liked the intermediate one with the collapsed stories and frankenstein threading, so I compare to the classic layout:
The new one is a horrible step backwards. In pretty much all respects. My input window for this posting is so tiny, I wonder if you even want people to comment anymore. Threads look horrible, footer texts have massive linespacing, buttons that belong together are broken up by linebreaks, there's useless information taking up space all over the site (yeah, I really need the number of comments in a huge grey font, it is so important to me).
The user page is a mess. In the list of my own comments, the headers are now the same background as the comment lines, which makes it hard to see which comments belong to which story.
Frankly, please someone tell me there's a way to get back to the classic layout. This one is a failure. Don't force me to beta-test it if it isn't ready. Take it back to the drawing board and don't come back until it's done, and actually an improvement.
In Germany, churches have rights and resources that are guaranteed by the state and that are independent of their membership numbers.
On paper, yes. If you really think that your reductio ad absurdum scenario could come true, I can't help. Of course those rights and privileges exist, yes. But they need a base to stand upon, as they are constantly being questioned and attacked. Without popular support, the church could not maintain them.
In Germany, in contrast, many people give both money and political support (through membership numbers) to churches even though they are not actually active participants; that's because the lack of separation of church and state in Germany has, among other things, as a consequence that it's both easy and considered a social norm in Germany to stay a member of a church even if you don't really believe; many people erroneously think that their church taxes are actually used by German churches to help people (they are not; they are mostly spent on administration, buildings, publicity, and proselytizing).
Agreed, but again too simple. Many people intentionally stay in the church because of marriage and funeral. I've already pointed that out twice before, please
You, in fact, acknowledge that fact: these people call themselves "Christian", but they don't actually agree with Christian theology and dogma, they "pick and choose". And why do they do that? Because most modern, educated people realize that actual Christian theology and dogma are bullshit and don't make any sense.
We're not talking about people with brains, we are talking about religious people. Even the most religious, fanatic biblethumber uses a pick and choose approach to his bible. It's not a sign of having abandoned the faith.
And that is why your notion that you simply have to convince people that Christianity is irrational and wrong won't work:
Please follow your own advise and don't read things I didn't write. In fact, I've already said plainly that "convincing" as in rational demonstration, proving it wrong, etc. is not the way. Religious faith is above falsification.
And, more importantly, churches in Germany have managed to implant the idea in people's heads that they are a strong force for social justice, support for the disadvantaged, and morality and that you should support them even if you don't believe their theology. That is the idea you need to dispell.
Oh, I agree. But that's being done already. There is a reason exits from the church are at an all-time high.
That is what separation of church and state means: the state does not give churches the authority or resources to mess with education, health care, and politics. They can influence those things only by convincing people one-by-one to follow their teachings.
Oh, please. That's a naive view. Do you really think that the entire lobbying industry has remained magically invisible to the church? That an organisation with this amount of resources, an unbending desire to control everything, and almost two millenia of experience in doing so, is in the least disturbed by a bit of fancy legalese? You are massively underestimating the enemy, my friend.
In Germany, most people have stopped believing,
But they are still giving the church power and money. If most people had stopped already, how could it be that the number of people leaving the church has risen to an all-time high, again? Numbers of exits have increased by 80 % after one of the recent scandals. There is a lot of people who are still backing the church. The importance of religion has dramatically fallen, but for many people not below the threshold. Plus as I said many postings ago: Many are hedging their bets because they want a church wedding and funeral.
If that were the case, then churches (=the organizations) should have less political power in Germany than in the US, Germans being far less religious than Americans. But the opposite is the case. While religion is a powerful political force in the US, churches as organizations are not (if not for any other reason than that there are so many of them).
You can not make the direct comparison on only one data point. The churches have a more direct influence in Germany than in the US. However, Germans are less religious than Americans. These are two counter-acting forces, and at least in part they balance each other out. It is not false to say that churches have more influence in Germany, while religion has more influence in the US. It is false to see these two as being two entirely seperate entities.
The driving force behind both is religious powermongering. And it will take whatever form is best for the given environment. In Germany, that is institutional, in the US it is propaganda, brainwashing, lobbyism, whatever you want to call it.
most Germans already reject Christian dogma and theology.
I wish that were true. Germany has been the hotbed of the 30 year war, and most regions of Germany have been both catholic and protestant at least for a short time each. Which is why you may see one trait very prominently in Germany that has become typical for christianity in general: The "pick and choose" method. Whatever you like about the bible is what you quote and claim as literal truth directly from the creators mouth in person, and whatever you don't like or doesn't fit the current social climate needs to be taken figuratively, allegorically or is simply ignored (or, alternatively, claimed to have been "overridden" by the new testament).
That's typical christian weaseling. I'm pretty sure there's not one word in the bible that every christian agrees about whether it's really serious or not quite so much.
because churches only have influence to the degree that they have actual believers.
It's not that simple. In both Germany and the US there are a lot of people who are christians mostly at christmas and some other dates, or who go to church as a habit, or out of social commitment. True believers are a small part, even in the US, of the number of people who support the church/religion power in one way or the other.
Religion is about faith and belief only for the lambs, never for the butcher. The heads of major religions actually believing the stuff they preach? I'm with Frazer on that, it's probably been 20,000 years since that's been the case.
You're using an actual e-mail address for forum signups? How often do you change it?
I've been using throwaway addresses for everything that I don't a) trust and/or b) intend to stay with for a while.
Note what it's aiming at.
If you read between the lines, then obviously "spreading the gospel" is the only reason a devout cathaholic should have of being online. At least according to the pope.
Wake me when they've left Lalaland and become more than old men with funny hats. Until then, go teach them about Eris and the FSM.
It's separation of church and state, not separation of religion and state. Churches and religion are two very different concepts.
True, but incomplete. Christianity is a religion that is strongly linked to churches, unlike, say, Hinduism which has a more private concept of religion. As such, while you are technically correct that they are different entities, they are not independent from each other and discussing one without discussing the other is leaving out a big part of the whole. It's like discussing politics without discussing the government, or vice versa.
In contrast, the German government strongly favors, supports, and promotes two churches (Catholics and Lutherans); they get vast sums of public funding, control of parts of the educational system, control of a large part of the health care system, automatic access to political decision making, and significant influence on the media.
Correct, but incomplete. That same influence is there in many other countries with a stronger seperation. It is, however, less public and official.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree that a stronger seperation would be better. But I don't think the letter of the law is the source of the problem, I think it is a symptom. The problem is that religion has way too much influence on our society despite having been debunked. Seperation or no is one of the symptoms of this underlying problem.
I think we don't really disagree all that much, except on our respective interpretations of what the source problem and what the symptoms of the problem are.
One of the reasons is that the russians have many, many terrorist attacks. We just hardly ever hear about it in the west. There was one where over 300 children died when terrorists stormed an elementary school.
You can't do anything about terrorism, really. That's the main problem, and that's why it causes so much panic - the feeling of being helpless about it. Fighting it only makes it worse, ignoring it means the terrorists continue, I bet even giving in to their demans would not make them go away.
I didn't say Germany had total constitutional separation. I said that Germany has failed even to implement its own limited constitutionally mandated provisions. All major German parties are actively and deliberately flaunting the German constitution.
True. I'm a big proponent of the "three strikes you're out" version for politicians - if they support three/five/whatever-the-number unconstitutional laws, they lose their position. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the proposal to implement this as law was rejected not after, but from debate - it was never even discussed. Self-serving assholes.
Most other western nations have been able to separate church and state far more effectively, against a much more powerful church.
On paper. That is my point. Sure they have the laws. But how much does it really do? Just take the example I already mentioned - the US has a very strong seperation in its constitution, but I don't see the religious influence being any less, on the contrary.
I said that the status of religion in Germany is a symptom of deep-seated problems of German democracy. Those problems go far beyond issues of separation of church and state. You're not going to fix those problems by getting rid of religion.
Ah. Got you now. No, I won't, mostly because it isn't my goal. I'm a paying member of the Pirate Party because that's the closest we currently have to make a better political system without a bloody revolution, but aside from that politics is something I stay away from today. It's not something an honest man would want to be associated with. My focus is on religion, which is a lot longer-lasting and more damaging than the current political system which is mostly busy unravelling itself.
Yes, if you want to fix politics, religion is a bad place to start. But if you want to fix religion, politics is a bad place to start, either.
So, what are we supposed to be, great leader? Automatically submit to authority no matter what just so we can earn its favor and maybe some cash too?
You didn't get it.
There is a very important difference between being "good" and being "unique". When everyone is "unique", the term loses all meaning. It becomes a triviality. And besides, it matters little. What matters is if you're ok, good, a positive being. So what if everyone else is also ok?
That, in a nutshell, is the problem of american culture. That it isn't sufficient to be good at something, you have to be exceptional. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you aren't unique and special, you don't count. That creates a culture of opposition and hostility, because you can't accept that someone else is also good - it would devalue you.
In reality, this system of thought continually devalues you, because no matter who you are and how good you are, you will always find someone who is better at something. Subscribing to this belief is setting yourself up for disappointment.
The other mindset, the more asian one, is that it matters how good you are, and if someone else is also good, or even better, that's ok. You may strive to become as good if he's better, but it doesn't reduce your own value - you are still good.
Basically, americans consider personal value to be a relative measure - how you relate to others. If someone else is 2 points ahead of you, your value is -2. If someone else is 10 points behind you, your value is +10.
Asians (and some europeans, though the number is decreasing) see personal value is an absolute measure - how you relate to the world. If you are a 15, then you are always a 15, no matter how others score. Seeing that someone else is a 17 makes it clear that you can do better, but you are still a 15, not a -2. Likewise, seeing that everyone else is a 5 makes it clear that you are indeed very good, but your personal value isn't +10, it is still 15.
None of the systems is perfect. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages we found out about the hard way is that the relative system combined with the demand to be special and unique leads to frustration, depression and low self-esteem. Because you're putting up a goal that is impossible to reach. If the goal is to be among the top 1% in anything, then automatically 99% of the participants will fail no matter how well they do.
Unfortunately, that's not true anymore. We've taken in too much of the shallow, entertainment culture. German kids today don't dream about being a scientist or an astronaut, they dream about being a rock or movie star.