I've tasted debian before, but subsequently tried redhat just to see what all the fuss was about. I appreciate the role redhat has been playing, with getting the bugs in front of so many eyeballs, as it were.;-) I think, though, that when Slink is finally released I'm going to find a permanent home with debian.
The Merced's inability to cope w/ existing 32-bit code could signal it's demise...Intel may be putting its eggs in the wrong basket on this one.
If that is actually Merced's achilles-heel, wouldn't that make a native 64-bit operating-system the right basket?
Compiler teams are all fouled up right now b/c they have no idea what the Merced actually looks like. Oh sure, we've seen the "projected" specs and sheets... but where are the details?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the compiler team will benefit from the NDA in this respect.
Well, a bunch of lamers could come out of the woodwork to whine about what other people do with GPL'd software. Face it, the licensing terms for linux allow this kind of commercialism, regardless of how rediculous it seems to you.
This is not a flame. I'm just letting you know that so long as the GPL is not violated, I don't give a rat's ass what you think. I'm sure you feel similarly about my opinion; that's cool with me.
If you're going to set arbitrary thresholds, you should justify them. Why >50%, and not >49%. What's not "prevalent" about a meme that lives in a mere 49% of the brains in a localized geographic region?
What you fail to understand is that a meme without positive/negative feedback to the survival of the monkey can still have shitloads of positive/negative feedback towards the survival of the meme itself. You really should read some of Dawkins original stuff. Start with "The Selfish Gene".
Fine then. Name one (1) way that the atheist meme or how the idea of atheism is in anyway exclusive to a group increases the groups survival rate and increases propogation of the meme.
It doesn't have to effect the survival of the population in order to propagate. Take, for example, the meme of wearing your baseball cap backwards. It doesn't help the survival rate of the infected. It's just a matter of "monkey see, monkey do", and the meme propagates ruthlessly without aiding in the monkey's survival.
Can you give a specific number for the minimum requirements for being "prevalent"? Apparently common-use isn't enough. So what, then, is the requirement? Must it be as pervasive as the meme "my set of semantic bindings are right and yours are wrong"?
I've been thinking all day that the "fine example of religious zealotry" post was directed at me. Now I see that I've misread it. I feel somewhat uplifted now that I know that I'm not my own god. 8^)
On a different note, I looked up dogma in an unabridged dictionary, and there is, indeed, an alternate semantic binding: a statement taken to be true a priori. I've met such atheists, but I guess they're not really atheists because they merely believe there is no god, rather than failing to believe there is one. It's now much more clear to me. Hurray!
You win the argument. Clearly atheists are religious people and atheism is a religion, because you define it to be.
I did not engage in this debate with the expectation of win or loss, nor do I have any emotional attatchment to any particular set of semantic bindings. I think that improving sets of semantic bindings is a noble quest. I won't debate your proposed binding for the word "you", as that pronoun is relative to the user, meaning that I'm not the only one who must suffer the pejorative intent.:-)
I'm glad. I don't have any hard feelings. I found this discussion to be fascinating. As for the validity of what you said: When you said that I am my own "god", were you using the dictionary definition? 8^)
All definitions are made up by someone at some time. It is no crime to introduce new useage, although it obviously can be a source of irritation for some.
I disagree with rightness/wrongness of definitions. I am using a definition with which you disagree, but am capable of entertaining any that you wish to propose. (In the interest of not falling prey to the One True(tm) mentality.) Let me entertain yours.
By your definition, a person who holds the statement "there is no god" to be true is not an atheist. Conversely, a person who refuses to believe the statement "god exists" is an atheist. I'm one of this latter category, so obviously I would agree that it is possible to adopt atheism areligiously.
My claim is that both of the following statements are untrue: 1) Atheism is a religion. 2) Atheism is not a religion.
To elaborate, my claim is that the mechanism by which one comes to hold statements to be true is what defines the nature of religion. Religion is a property of how memes are adopted, not a property of the memes themselves.
So? Is person P religious? No. Atheism isn't a religion. Nothing you have said shows that atheism is a religion. In case you've forgotten this is the argument.
It is I who have been bringing us back to this point: the defining characteristic of "religion" is the uncritical transmission of articles of faith. I would say that, yes, P is accepting the statement religiously.
I never said I didn't think the Internet will be good for meme transmission. I just don't think that atheism is a good meme for transmission.
You seem to have missed my acknowledgement that the atheism meme, by itself, is not particularly effective in terms of raw survival-value. But the loosely-aggregated complex of memes that form the meme-colony in the mind of actual atheists, does have a collective structure that aids in the propagation of said meme. This is nothing new: the belief that jesus is the son of god, by itself, has no particular survival-value either. But bundled with the threat of hellfire, and the promise of eternal life it sure spreads like wildfire!
Actually, I can restate my claim without using the word dogma, but you'll have to hold, for argument's sake, my definition of atheism. When I use the word, I mean that person P is an atheist if P holds the statement "god does not exist" to be true. I will impose no other qualifications for person P. If P also believes that there is no gravity, and that the moon is held in orbit by an invisible pegasus tethered to said orb, then P is still an atheist. Yes, it's absurd, but if you're going to be so rigid about the definition of "dogma", it's fair play to be as rigid about the definition of "atheist". As you're fond of saying, "look it up".
Atheism, as defined above, is a meme that is transmittable by mere, mindless parental-programming. Never mind that it's unlikely. Never mind if one ought/ought-not do it. It simply can happen. I call such mindless-transmission "dogma". You don't, but the use of that particular word is irrelevant.
Yes, I still think it's dubious, and this brings us full-circle back to the context of the book review: that the pervasiveness of the internet will have a significant impact on meme-transmission. I think we'll see the internet mitigate the effects of parental-transmission of memes. Time will tell.
"Dogma" is a set of rules of a faith. Atheism has no rules.
I realize that is the traditional definition of dogma, and I have been using the word in a sense that differs slightly. While I do view dogma as a set of rules of a faith, I think that the set can (and usually does) include rules that are tacit: not explicitly codified. As a biologist, one gets nowhere by prescribing a definition of a species. The science works much better on a descriptive level, through observation of instances. It would be foolish to claim first that all frogs are spotless, because one must then try to eschew the new discovery of a spotted frog by saying "ah, it's not a frog. It has spots."
Meme-complexes should be studied in the same way.
I also think that your focus of a meme's effect on birthrate is dubious. A meme can be virulent without having any such effect.
Ok, I have to learn to preview my posts. This is an exciting discussion. I apologize for my careless typing. Here's a corrected version...
...which is precisely why atheism isn't a religion. Every religion in the world has the "One True(TM)" theme, except atheism.
I offer this very discussion as evidence to the contrary!
Let's fix an abstract individual, J. Random Atheist, who believes that there is no god as a mere article of faith. Let's assume that J holds this belief because his parents told him that this was the case, and that J has no other thoughts on the matter. (In J's defense, let's assume that the subject merely never comes up.) It appears, to me, that people are saying that J is not a true atheist, because he holds the view dogmatically. That's a pointlessly divisive way to cleave the category, IMO.
Whether or not Atheism is a religion in a question that probably cannot be answered in the abstract. Rather, it depends upon the characteristics of the atheism meme-complex in the mind of the person who holds those views.
When you say that "there is no dogma of atheism", you are incorrect. It is possible for atheism to be held and propagated based upon shallow dogma. I know this to be true because I've met dogmatic atheists before.
On the other hand, there are atheists who, rather than being dogmatic, have a policy of not entertaining nondisprovable hypotheses, which means that the god-question doesn't pass muster for consideration. The link in the above paragraph asks, at the end, whether or not science is a virus of the mind. I think that's the real question one needs to ask about atheism: while it's possible to be an atheist based upon the policy of the selective-system of the scientific method, it's also possible to blindly propagate atheism as a mental virus. And that, to me, is the real defining characteristic of "religion".
Slashdot Mirror
I hear the music of adventure calling me. The fast and bulbous land of po-ta-to is my destiny. :-)
probably about the same time you get your capslock fixed.
That was a notoriously buggy redhat release. You should take this experience to be a bad impression of RH5.1, not gnome 1.0.
I've tasted debian before, but subsequently tried redhat just to see what all the fuss was about. I appreciate the role redhat has been playing, with getting the bugs in front of so many eyeballs, as it were. ;-) I think, though, that when Slink is finally released I'm going to find a permanent home with debian.
If that is actually Merced's achilles-heel, wouldn't that make a native 64-bit operating-system the right basket?
Compiler teams are all fouled up right now b/c they have no idea what the Merced actually looks like. Oh sure, we've seen the "projected" specs and sheets... but where are the details?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the compiler team will benefit from the NDA in this respect.
Well, a bunch of lamers could come out of the woodwork to whine about what other people do with GPL'd software. Face it, the licensing terms for linux allow this kind of commercialism, regardless of how rediculous it seems to you.
This is not a flame. I'm just letting you know that so long as the GPL is not violated, I don't give a rat's ass what you think. I'm sure you feel similarly about my opinion; that's cool with me.
If you're going to set arbitrary thresholds, you should justify them. Why >50%, and not >49%. What's not "prevalent" about a meme that lives in a mere 49% of the brains in a localized geographic region?
What you fail to understand is that a meme without positive/negative feedback to the survival of the monkey can still have shitloads of positive/negative feedback towards the survival of the meme itself. You really should read some of Dawkins original stuff. Start with "The Selfish Gene".
What's so pointless about trying to understand one another? Duh.
It doesn't have to effect the survival of the population in order to propagate. Take, for example, the meme of wearing your baseball cap backwards. It doesn't help the survival rate of the infected. It's just a matter of "monkey see, monkey do", and the meme propagates ruthlessly without aiding in the monkey's survival.
Can you give a specific number for the minimum requirements for being "prevalent"? Apparently common-use isn't enough. So what, then, is the requirement? Must it be as pervasive as the meme "my set of semantic bindings are right and yours are wrong"?
On a different note, I looked up dogma in an unabridged dictionary, and there is, indeed, an alternate semantic binding: a statement taken to be true a priori. I've met such atheists, but I guess they're not really atheists because they merely believe there is no god, rather than failing to believe there is one. It's now much more clear to me. Hurray!
I did not engage in this debate with the expectation of win or loss, nor do I have any emotional attatchment to any particular set of semantic bindings. I think that improving sets of semantic bindings is a noble quest. I won't debate your proposed binding for the word "you", as that pronoun is relative to the user, meaning that I'm not the only one who must suffer the pejorative intent. :-)
I'm glad. I don't have any hard feelings. I found this discussion to be fascinating. As for the validity of what you said: When you said that I am my own "god", were you using the dictionary definition? 8^)
I hope you got your catharsis.
All definitions are made up by someone at some time. It is no crime to introduce new useage, although it obviously can be a source of irritation for some.
I disagree with rightness/wrongness of definitions. I am using a definition with which you disagree, but am capable of entertaining any that you wish to propose. (In the interest of not falling prey to the One True(tm) mentality.) Let me entertain yours.
By your definition, a person who holds the statement "there is no god" to be true is not an atheist. Conversely, a person who refuses to believe the statement "god exists" is an atheist. I'm one of this latter category, so obviously I would agree that it is possible to adopt atheism areligiously.
My claim is that both of the following statements are untrue: 1) Atheism is a religion. 2) Atheism is not a religion.
To elaborate, my claim is that the mechanism by which one comes to hold statements to be true is what defines the nature of religion. Religion is a property of how memes are adopted, not a property of the memes themselves.
It is I who have been bringing us back to this point: the defining characteristic of "religion" is the uncritical transmission of articles of faith. I would say that, yes, P is accepting the statement religiously.
One is right under your nose: the metameme, or the meme about memes. That one is growing in popularity, and is rarely transmitted parentally.
You seem to have missed my acknowledgement that the atheism meme, by itself, is not particularly effective in terms of raw survival-value. But the loosely-aggregated complex of memes that form the meme-colony in the mind of actual atheists, does have a collective structure that aids in the propagation of said meme. This is nothing new: the belief that jesus is the son of god, by itself, has no particular survival-value either. But bundled with the threat of hellfire, and the promise of eternal life it sure spreads like wildfire!
Atheism, as defined above, is a meme that is transmittable by mere, mindless parental-programming. Never mind that it's unlikely. Never mind if one ought/ought-not do it. It simply can happen. I call such mindless-transmission "dogma". You don't, but the use of that particular word is irrelevant.
Peace.
Yes, I still think it's dubious, and this brings us full-circle back to the context of the book review: that the pervasiveness of the internet will have a significant impact on meme-transmission. I think we'll see the internet mitigate the effects of parental-transmission of memes. Time will tell.
I realize that is the traditional definition of dogma, and I have been using the word in a sense that differs slightly. While I do view dogma as a set of rules of a faith, I think that the set can (and usually does) include rules that are tacit: not explicitly codified. As a biologist, one gets nowhere by prescribing a definition of a species. The science works much better on a descriptive level, through observation of instances. It would be foolish to claim first that all frogs are spotless, because one must then try to eschew the new discovery of a spotted frog by saying "ah, it's not a frog. It has spots."
Meme-complexes should be studied in the same way.
I also think that your focus of a meme's effect on birthrate is dubious. A meme can be virulent without having any such effect.
I offer this very discussion as evidence to the contrary!
Let's fix an abstract individual, J. Random Atheist, who believes that there is no god as a mere article of faith. Let's assume that J holds this belief because his parents told him that this was the case, and that J has no other thoughts on the matter. (In J's defense, let's assume that the subject merely never comes up.) It appears, to me, that people are saying that J is not a true atheist, because he holds the view dogmatically. That's a pointlessly divisive way to cleave the category, IMO.
Whether or not Atheism is a religion in a question that probably cannot be answered in the abstract. Rather, it depends upon the characteristics of the atheism meme-complex in the mind of the person who holds those views.
When you say that "there is no dogma of atheism", you are incorrect. It is possible for atheism to be held and propagated based upon shallow dogma. I know this to be true because I've met dogmatic atheists before.
On the other hand, there are atheists who, rather than being dogmatic, have a policy of not entertaining nondisprovable hypotheses, which means that the god-question doesn't pass muster for consideration. The link in the above paragraph asks, at the end, whether or not science is a virus of the mind. I think that's the real question one needs to ask about atheism: while it's possible to be an atheist based upon the policy of the selective-system of the scientific method, it's also possible to blindly propagate atheism as a mental virus. And that, to me, is the real defining characteristic of "religion".