Passions come to people unexpectedly. We should deal with the fact that more people are passionate about topics like Art and Humanities than Math and Computer Science. It's just the reality of academia right now.
Isn't his point that we don't really know if that's true, since math isn't taught in a way to inspire passion? That if more people were able to glimpse some of the beauty and creativity in it, there might be more interest in it?
Well if you're not asking for teachers needing to be professional published mathematicians, what was that paragraph about?
I agree we can't expect every teacher to be awe-inspiring; even getting (and retaining) enough marginally competent teachers is a challenge. However, you needn't be a university-level mathematics professor to know some of what he's suggested. For example, public school teachers are supposed to have Master's degrees, right? Now, isn't there something funny about the fact that teachers will go and get their BS in the subject they will teach, but get their Master's degree in "education"? Cue the "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds" quotes. I'd think that teachers might be better served by a decent master's degree in their field of teaching, rather than "education". That would allow them the opportunity to study the history and philosophy of their subject, get a grasp of recent developments (maybe not in all subjects, but they could at least be able to pick up journals), etc. The really good ones could even get published (I just got my Master's degree, and was able to get a paper published, so yes, it's possible).
Unless you have an account with a bank, they won't do it.
Not true. I paid a security deposit with a cashier's check I got by walking up to a bank where I did not have an account and handing the teller $2800 in cash. There is a fee involved, though.
I agree carrying that much cash isn't the wisest thing to do, but unfortunately, the way the banks are, cash gets an IMMEDIATE credit to your account whereas a check, regardless of who issues it, means at least a ten day hold on the funds.
If your bank holds funds you have deposited via check for 10 days, you should get a new bank. I typically have access to funds deposited by check by the next day, two days at the most, without any holds.
How can a "American Civil Liberties Union" that is really interested in protecting said liberties take a "neutral" stance on one of my liberties... and more often than not, an anti-liberty stance, in that case?
Well, they do have to pick their battles. Also, nothing is stopping you from being a member (or just supporting) both the ACLU and the NRA (other than the perhaps strange looks you would get from people in both groups).
And as you note, a CMIR only apply when you transport over $10k in or out of the U.S. Sounds like the Ron Paul staffer would have been on a domestic flight, so that should not have even been an issue.
First, that doesn't mean a regulated utility shouldn't have to go through a specific procedure before disconnection, as opposed to disconnecting people at will.
Secondly, while it's true you don't need internet to survive, I can totally see a state legislature arguing that the Internet is necessary for economic development and business interests, and pushing through regulation about disconnection that way. Just because they'd do it doesn't mean it has to make sense!
Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.
You're absolutely right. All the politics and euphemisms aside, the difference between physical and digital goods is fundamental - one is rival, the other is not. It's really hard to hide that fact, since so much of computers and the Internet are designed to exploit it. So these campaigns to "change hearts and minds" end up trying to convince people that the sky is green.
Now you can argue all day long about how to deal with the differences in rivalry, and underproduction of public goods, tragedy of the commons, etc., and those are important debates to have; but in the end, you still have to face the fact that no matter how much you'd like, digital goods are fundamentally different than physical ones. Those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads don't face that fact, because as we all know, if you could download a car, you would.
The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city, you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses. It's actually kind of eerie. Hell, even if you take Amtrak and go past Charm City, you'll see lots of houses that are in dismal shape (but nevertheless, sadly, are still occupied).
If it's a regulated utility, however, various governments could pass bills requiring certain procedures before disconnection, or even prohibiting disconnection under certain circumstances. Lots of (colder) states do this with gas/electric to prevent people from losing heat during the winter.
The bill would let the god-awful FCC control ISP's. You think there is a single regulator at the FCC that's NOT already paid for by TimeWarner?
I agree with that evaluation of the FCC, but the article talks about the FTC, which is significantly different (and better in the respect of being in bed with lobbyists).
As I noted in another comment, it's not the FCC, it's the FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
PS, nice job getting modded up twice for essentially the same comment. Maybe it'll happen to me too:-)
Of course, the bill would not prohibit caps, it would make ISPs get FCC approval for caps, which might reduce the imposition of caps, or it might mean that those that have the most political pull would get their caps approved, while those with less pull would not.
Not FCC, FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
FWIW, I got their business-class internet and have been pretty happy with it. You pay a small premium over the consumer-oriented service (no 6 month introductory rate, and $17 / mo higher than the standard consumer rate), but they specifically told me there's no cap (and I haven't had any issues with that). Customer service is also separate from home users, which is great - short hold times, when I once had a problem, they sent someone out the next morning to fix it.
FYI, this is a pretty nifty tool that pulls drive information from Newegg and calculates the best price/size so you can quickly find out the best deal.
3. I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
What are you planning on filling it with? And isn't detecting this sort of thing simply a matter of knowing the purity (and thus density) of what the gold is supposed to be, then measuring the actual density? It's not like you're the first to think up the idea of tampering with gold (remember the story of Archimedes?)
If there's one thing I've learned from my years on/., it's not to take trolls like you too seriously. You sound like an intelligent person, but your inability to stop yourself from sprinkling unwarranted personal attacks throughout your prose, as well as your occasional failures in reading comprehension, make it a complete waste of my time to ever respond to you again.
So, they're "despicable", yet the primary agent behind the coverups is A OK in your book. And then you try to shunt it off to your red herring "celibacy" bullshit.
Case in point with the reading comprehension issue - where did I say Ratzinger was "A OK"? Hmm, that's right, nowhere. Unless you consider clarifying your purposefully inflammatory statement that he was a "Nazi" to be saying he is "A OK." As for the celibacy bit, if you fail to see why a policy that requires priests to be celibate might not be something worth keeping around in the wake of massive sexual abuse scandals, and instead label it a red herring, you're obviously more concerned with insulting me than with having a conversation.
Truly amazing how delusional and out of touch with reality religious nutters will go to justify their evil.
Really, this would be funny if it weren't so sad. I already told you I'm not Catholic, and you have no idea what, if any, religious beliefs I may or may not hold.
I'm disgusted by you and what you're defending. Until you understand at a deep level why decent people find you disgusting, you'll continue to be a monstrosity.
At this point, I've begun to lose track of who you're talking to. Ratzinger? Me? Or our club of Nazi child rapists? Oops, I wasn't supposed to talk about that! Damn it.
Seriously, get a grip. You don't know me, and a rational person should be able to look back over our correspondence and gather that on the whole, I'm not defending the Church so much as I am pointing some of the good things people in the Church have managed to accomplish. But apparently factual details like the latter don't sit well with you.
Also, as far as I know, decent people don't find me disgusting (though in your book, I suppose that'd be because I'm either a sociopath and so lack the ability to discern that sort of thing, or because I simply don't know any decent people).
By defending such sickeningly evil nonsense by claiming that their brand marketing is somehow positive while failing to notice that that's their profit center only makes you look really dumb. It doesn't do anything positive for you.
Again, not sure exactly how I've been defending these things (or what "brand marketing" is supposed to mean), but I think that if you look back at this conversation after some time has passed, you'll realize who appears in a more positive light. I only hope that your elevated blood pressure from typing such vitriolic replies hasn't killed you first. Have a good one.
Yeah, AT&T has done the same thing. I got an SE Z750 from AT not only did the AT&T branded OS look like shit for the 5 minutes I used it (some crappy orange AT&T color scheme), but AT&T's firmware disables the included GPS. In this case I think it's because they want to sell higher-end phones to people who want GPS (I payed $10 for this phone after a $60 rebate). Anyway, a quit trip to DaVinci team and less than $15, and I had restored an unbranded firmware that enabled GPS functionality.
It's really sad that not only do carriers take decent phones and make them worse, but then you end up having to pay to get back features that the phone originally had. Kind of like when you could pay Dell not to install all their crapware on new computers (is that still around?).
We're talking almost 2000 years of history backing up my position and a few isolated, overshadowed events backing yours.
I'd hardly call Catholic Relief Services, which is one of the larger and more effective humanitarian organizations in the world, an "isolated, overshadowed event." There are plenty of other important examples, such as Catholicism's (and particularly John Paul II's) role in the Solidarity movement in Poland, but now's not the time for a history lesson.
The current pope was a nazi who made his name covering up the rape of children to protect the church's monetary interests.
From what I understand, Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth in Germany at a time when that was required of all young Germans, and was an "unenthusiastic" member; he was later drafted into the army and deserted. That hardly makes him a "Nazi" in the sense of the word you are trying to evoke. On the other hand, yes, the Church's sexual abuse scandals are despicable, and something you'd think they'd take into account when considering celibacy requirements for priests.
Hot tip, they actively worked covering up their rape of children to keep their power. That you think somehow this is indicative of an organization with a concept of morality or ethics, let alone one that would prevent them from making a few more people suffer if they can benefit thereby demonstrates a deep personal failure of ethics, morality, and basic common sense on your part.
The difference between you and me is that you seem to think every single Catholic clergyman either was molesting boys, or at least knew about it and did nothing or covered it up; whereas I think that while there was a sickening amount of sexual abuse in the Church, as well as practices that had the effect of perpetuating and defending it, there were and are also some decent people in the Church. Like most things, it's a mixed bag.
Also, there's no need to resort to personal attacks. I'm not Catholic; I'm not going to sit here and defend the Church from any sort of attack, or say that it's done no wrong. But I know enough about it to know that people like you, who seem to think it's the most evil organization on the planet, are painting with too broad of strokes.
For example, did you know that John Paul II campaigned for restrictions on intellectual property in order to facilitate access to medicines? His envoys to the WTO consistently sought to temper TRIPS provisions with this in mind. That's hardly the sort of behavior I'd expect from a man dedicated to keeping the lives of the poor miserable.
The church's policy on contraception alone proves beyond possibility of a doubt that you are dead wrong.
Those policies are actively used for the purpose of keeping the poor poor
There's a saying that goes something like, "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity," and I think it's on the right track. I think the official Catholic position on contraception is irresponsibly (perhaps even unforgivably) stupid, but I don't think it's malicious.
What these companies should be selling is a connection and that's it. It should be completely separate from the hardware, and they should not be able to dictate what hardware is allowed on their service, or what you do with your hardware.
Hm, why does that sound so familiar? I sometimes shudder to think of what the market would look like if decisions like that one were being made today. Then again, who knows? Maybe they are and we don't even realize it.
Most of their wacky policies are to help force there to be more poor suffering people who they can leech off of. It's basic survival instinct and quite obviously what they've done for centuries.
I think that's a pretty cynical way of looking at it. Maybe if you were trying to paint the effects of the institution as a whole you could say that, but there are people in and of the Church who are genuinely working to reduce poverty and suffering - e.g., Catholic Relief Services and Gustavo Gutierrez.
Granted in the past there were some pretty fucked up popes who probably actively thought about ways they could exploit people, but I think today you will have a hard time finding Mr. Burns style, finger-tapping bishops and cardinals who think "how can I best keep the poor downtrodden?"
The problem with this statement is that it makes it seem as though the point of religion was the development of science, medicine, and the arts.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of my statement, since I said "played a very large part in encouraging the development." And I mostly agree that science and medicine won't be furthered by religion anymore (though that might not be the case were the Muslim world to undergo some sort of revival of the old medieval spirit toward science). But my main point was that the OP dismissed religion too easily as being a complete impediment to science and medicine - I don't think the problem is religion inherently, but the type and quality of religion.
I don't understand the Pope's objection. The body is nothing more than a meat machine that holds the soul.
That's definitely not a position held by the Catholic church, so that might have something to do with the Pope's position.
Now we have the technology to improve the lives of all future children it would be a crime not to remove genetic diseases.
As I mentioned in another comment, one of the dangers is inadvertent selection against beneficial traits, and the reduction of genetic diversity. But I agree, for things like Tay-Sachs, where the birth is going to have minimal quality of life, it's hard to argue against selecting out those embryos.
Why does the church insist on allowing unnecessary suffering just so that they can provide comfort to the person who is suffering? Wouldn't it be better to eradicate the suffering in the first place?
I don't think that's a fair evaluation of the Church's position. In some cases, though, the positions they take on moral grounds seems to perpetuate suffering - e.g., the whole no-condoms deal.
Once more, religion gets in the way of science.
Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Historically speaking, the Church (Galileo notwithstanding!) and Islam during the medieval period played a very large part in encouraging the development of science, medicine, and the arts. It varied by time period and region, but the link can't be denied.
Second, one thing that confuses me about these sorts of statements is this - presumably, you think religion is just some nonsense that stupid people latch on to. But even if you get rid of religion, people are still going to be stupid. What makes you think that these stupid people won't find something else to latch on to that has the same sort of negative effects as religion? In fact, getting rid of religion might leave a vacuum that could be filled by something worse...
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Passions come to people unexpectedly. We should deal with the fact that more people are passionate about topics like Art and Humanities than Math and Computer Science. It's just the reality of academia right now.
Isn't his point that we don't really know if that's true, since math isn't taught in a way to inspire passion? That if more people were able to glimpse some of the beauty and creativity in it, there might be more interest in it?
Well if you're not asking for teachers needing to be professional published mathematicians, what was that paragraph about?
I agree we can't expect every teacher to be awe-inspiring; even getting (and retaining) enough marginally competent teachers is a challenge. However, you needn't be a university-level mathematics professor to know some of what he's suggested. For example, public school teachers are supposed to have Master's degrees, right? Now, isn't there something funny about the fact that teachers will go and get their BS in the subject they will teach, but get their Master's degree in "education"? Cue the "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds" quotes. I'd think that teachers might be better served by a decent master's degree in their field of teaching, rather than "education". That would allow them the opportunity to study the history and philosophy of their subject, get a grasp of recent developments (maybe not in all subjects, but they could at least be able to pick up journals), etc. The really good ones could even get published (I just got my Master's degree, and was able to get a paper published, so yes, it's possible).
Unless you have an account with a bank, they won't do it.
Not true. I paid a security deposit with a cashier's check I got by walking up to a bank where I did not have an account and handing the teller $2800 in cash. There is a fee involved, though.
I agree carrying that much cash isn't the wisest thing to do, but unfortunately, the way the banks are, cash gets an IMMEDIATE credit to your account whereas a check, regardless of who issues it, means at least a ten day hold on the funds.
If your bank holds funds you have deposited via check for 10 days, you should get a new bank. I typically have access to funds deposited by check by the next day, two days at the most, without any holds.
How can a "American Civil Liberties Union" that is really interested in protecting said liberties take a "neutral" stance on one of my liberties ... and more often than not, an anti-liberty stance, in that case?
Well, they do have to pick their battles. Also, nothing is stopping you from being a member (or just supporting) both the ACLU and the NRA (other than the perhaps strange looks you would get from people in both groups).
And as you note, a CMIR only apply when you transport over $10k in or out of the U.S. Sounds like the Ron Paul staffer would have been on a domestic flight, so that should not have even been an issue.
First, that doesn't mean a regulated utility shouldn't have to go through a specific procedure before disconnection, as opposed to disconnecting people at will.
Secondly, while it's true you don't need internet to survive, I can totally see a state legislature arguing that the Internet is necessary for economic development and business interests, and pushing through regulation about disconnection that way. Just because they'd do it doesn't mean it has to make sense!
Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.
You're absolutely right. All the politics and euphemisms aside, the difference between physical and digital goods is fundamental - one is rival, the other is not. It's really hard to hide that fact, since so much of computers and the Internet are designed to exploit it. So these campaigns to "change hearts and minds" end up trying to convince people that the sky is green.
Now you can argue all day long about how to deal with the differences in rivalry, and underproduction of public goods, tragedy of the commons, etc., and those are important debates to have; but in the end, you still have to face the fact that no matter how much you'd like, digital goods are fundamentally different than physical ones. Those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads don't face that fact, because as we all know, if you could download a car, you would.
Detroit (Homicide rate of 47.5%
Wow! With that homicide rate, we don't even have to worry about razing the city, there'll be practically no one left in a few years anyway.
The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city, you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses. It's actually kind of eerie. Hell, even if you take Amtrak and go past Charm City, you'll see lots of houses that are in dismal shape (but nevertheless, sadly, are still occupied).
If it's a regulated utility, however, various governments could pass bills requiring certain procedures before disconnection, or even prohibiting disconnection under certain circumstances. Lots of (colder) states do this with gas/electric to prevent people from losing heat during the winter.
The bill would let the god-awful FCC control ISP's. You think there is a single regulator at the FCC that's NOT already paid for by TimeWarner?
I agree with that evaluation of the FCC, but the article talks about the FTC, which is significantly different (and better in the respect of being in bed with lobbyists).
As I noted in another comment, it's not the FCC, it's the FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
PS, nice job getting modded up twice for essentially the same comment. Maybe it'll happen to me too :-)
Of course, the bill would not prohibit caps, it would make ISPs get FCC approval for caps, which might reduce the imposition of caps, or it might mean that those that have the most political pull would get their caps approved, while those with less pull would not.
Not FCC, FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
FWIW, I got their business-class internet and have been pretty happy with it. You pay a small premium over the consumer-oriented service (no 6 month introductory rate, and $17 / mo higher than the standard consumer rate), but they specifically told me there's no cap (and I haven't had any issues with that). Customer service is also separate from home users, which is great - short hold times, when I once had a problem, they sent someone out the next morning to fix it.
FYI, this is a pretty nifty tool that pulls drive information from Newegg and calculates the best price/size so you can quickly find out the best deal.
I also can't decide if it'd be worse to have the machine eat your $100,000, or return it to you in quarters.
3. I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
What are you planning on filling it with? And isn't detecting this sort of thing simply a matter of knowing the purity (and thus density) of what the gold is supposed to be, then measuring the actual density? It's not like you're the first to think up the idea of tampering with gold (remember the story of Archimedes?)
If there's one thing I've learned from my years on /., it's not to take trolls like you too seriously. You sound like an intelligent person, but your inability to stop yourself from sprinkling unwarranted personal attacks throughout your prose, as well as your occasional failures in reading comprehension, make it a complete waste of my time to ever respond to you again.
So, they're "despicable", yet the primary agent behind the coverups is A OK in your book. And then you try to shunt it off to your red herring "celibacy" bullshit.
Case in point with the reading comprehension issue - where did I say Ratzinger was "A OK"? Hmm, that's right, nowhere. Unless you consider clarifying your purposefully inflammatory statement that he was a "Nazi" to be saying he is "A OK." As for the celibacy bit, if you fail to see why a policy that requires priests to be celibate might not be something worth keeping around in the wake of massive sexual abuse scandals, and instead label it a red herring, you're obviously more concerned with insulting me than with having a conversation.
Truly amazing how delusional and out of touch with reality religious nutters will go to justify their evil.
Really, this would be funny if it weren't so sad. I already told you I'm not Catholic, and you have no idea what, if any, religious beliefs I may or may not hold.
I'm disgusted by you and what you're defending. Until you understand at a deep level why decent people find you disgusting, you'll continue to be a monstrosity.
At this point, I've begun to lose track of who you're talking to. Ratzinger? Me? Or our club of Nazi child rapists? Oops, I wasn't supposed to talk about that! Damn it.
Seriously, get a grip. You don't know me, and a rational person should be able to look back over our correspondence and gather that on the whole, I'm not defending the Church so much as I am pointing some of the good things people in the Church have managed to accomplish. But apparently factual details like the latter don't sit well with you.
Also, as far as I know, decent people don't find me disgusting (though in your book, I suppose that'd be because I'm either a sociopath and so lack the ability to discern that sort of thing, or because I simply don't know any decent people).
By defending such sickeningly evil nonsense by claiming that their brand marketing is somehow positive while failing to notice that that's their profit center only makes you look really dumb. It doesn't do anything positive for you.
Again, not sure exactly how I've been defending these things (or what "brand marketing" is supposed to mean), but I think that if you look back at this conversation after some time has passed, you'll realize who appears in a more positive light. I only hope that your elevated blood pressure from typing such vitriolic replies hasn't killed you first. Have a good one.
Yeah, AT&T has done the same thing. I got an SE Z750 from AT not only did the AT&T branded OS look like shit for the 5 minutes I used it (some crappy orange AT&T color scheme), but AT&T's firmware disables the included GPS. In this case I think it's because they want to sell higher-end phones to people who want GPS (I payed $10 for this phone after a $60 rebate). Anyway, a quit trip to DaVinci team and less than $15, and I had restored an unbranded firmware that enabled GPS functionality.
It's really sad that not only do carriers take decent phones and make them worse, but then you end up having to pay to get back features that the phone originally had. Kind of like when you could pay Dell not to install all their crapware on new computers (is that still around?).
We're talking almost 2000 years of history backing up my position and a few isolated, overshadowed events backing yours.
I'd hardly call Catholic Relief Services, which is one of the larger and more effective humanitarian organizations in the world, an "isolated, overshadowed event." There are plenty of other important examples, such as Catholicism's (and particularly John Paul II's) role in the Solidarity movement in Poland, but now's not the time for a history lesson.
The current pope was a nazi who made his name covering up the rape of children to protect the church's monetary interests.
From what I understand, Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth in Germany at a time when that was required of all young Germans, and was an "unenthusiastic" member; he was later drafted into the army and deserted. That hardly makes him a "Nazi" in the sense of the word you are trying to evoke. On the other hand, yes, the Church's sexual abuse scandals are despicable, and something you'd think they'd take into account when considering celibacy requirements for priests.
Hot tip, they actively worked covering up their rape of children to keep their power. That you think somehow this is indicative of an organization with a concept of morality or ethics, let alone one that would prevent them from making a few more people suffer if they can benefit thereby demonstrates a deep personal failure of ethics, morality, and basic common sense on your part.
The difference between you and me is that you seem to think every single Catholic clergyman either was molesting boys, or at least knew about it and did nothing or covered it up; whereas I think that while there was a sickening amount of sexual abuse in the Church, as well as practices that had the effect of perpetuating and defending it, there were and are also some decent people in the Church. Like most things, it's a mixed bag.
Also, there's no need to resort to personal attacks. I'm not Catholic; I'm not going to sit here and defend the Church from any sort of attack, or say that it's done no wrong. But I know enough about it to know that people like you, who seem to think it's the most evil organization on the planet, are painting with too broad of strokes.
For example, did you know that John Paul II campaigned for restrictions on intellectual property in order to facilitate access to medicines? His envoys to the WTO consistently sought to temper TRIPS provisions with this in mind. That's hardly the sort of behavior I'd expect from a man dedicated to keeping the lives of the poor miserable.
The church's policy on contraception alone proves beyond possibility of a doubt that you are dead wrong. Those policies are actively used for the purpose of keeping the poor poor
There's a saying that goes something like, "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity," and I think it's on the right track. I think the official Catholic position on contraception is irresponsibly (perhaps even unforgivably) stupid, but I don't think it's malicious.
What these companies should be selling is a connection and that's it. It should be completely separate from the hardware, and they should not be able to dictate what hardware is allowed on their service, or what you do with your hardware.
Hm, why does that sound so familiar? I sometimes shudder to think of what the market would look like if decisions like that one were being made today. Then again, who knows? Maybe they are and we don't even realize it.
Most of their wacky policies are to help force there to be more poor suffering people who they can leech off of. It's basic survival instinct and quite obviously what they've done for centuries.
I think that's a pretty cynical way of looking at it. Maybe if you were trying to paint the effects of the institution as a whole you could say that, but there are people in and of the Church who are genuinely working to reduce poverty and suffering - e.g., Catholic Relief Services and Gustavo Gutierrez.
Granted in the past there were some pretty fucked up popes who probably actively thought about ways they could exploit people, but I think today you will have a hard time finding Mr. Burns style, finger-tapping bishops and cardinals who think "how can I best keep the poor downtrodden?"
In fact, it already is.
The problem with this statement is that it makes it seem as though the point of religion was the development of science, medicine, and the arts.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of my statement, since I said "played a very large part in encouraging the development." And I mostly agree that science and medicine won't be furthered by religion anymore (though that might not be the case were the Muslim world to undergo some sort of revival of the old medieval spirit toward science). But my main point was that the OP dismissed religion too easily as being a complete impediment to science and medicine - I don't think the problem is religion inherently, but the type and quality of religion.
I don't understand the Pope's objection. The body is nothing more than a meat machine that holds the soul.
That's definitely not a position held by the Catholic church, so that might have something to do with the Pope's position.
Now we have the technology to improve the lives of all future children it would be a crime not to remove genetic diseases.
As I mentioned in another comment, one of the dangers is inadvertent selection against beneficial traits, and the reduction of genetic diversity. But I agree, for things like Tay-Sachs, where the birth is going to have minimal quality of life, it's hard to argue against selecting out those embryos.
Why does the church insist on allowing unnecessary suffering just so that they can provide comfort to the person who is suffering? Wouldn't it be better to eradicate the suffering in the first place?
I don't think that's a fair evaluation of the Church's position. In some cases, though, the positions they take on moral grounds seems to perpetuate suffering - e.g., the whole no-condoms deal.
Once more, religion gets in the way of science. Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Historically speaking, the Church (Galileo notwithstanding!) and Islam during the medieval period played a very large part in encouraging the development of science, medicine, and the arts. It varied by time period and region, but the link can't be denied.
Second, one thing that confuses me about these sorts of statements is this - presumably, you think religion is just some nonsense that stupid people latch on to. But even if you get rid of religion, people are still going to be stupid. What makes you think that these stupid people won't find something else to latch on to that has the same sort of negative effects as religion? In fact, getting rid of religion might leave a vacuum that could be filled by something worse...