It was not meant to be a proof, but rather a justification for the idea that the existence of a deity is extremely improbable. By the way, where did I state that I know that there exists no deity?
Pffft Horseshoe crab been around for 300-450 million years, kicks old octo's ass!
Orthoceras, which are closely related to octopuses, lived in the Ordovician period, which makes them contemporary with the Horseshoe crab. Thus, octopus-like creatures have been around for a very long time, much longer than 95 million years.
By Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. Introducing a deity adds unnecessary complexity with no gain, and is thus unlikely the correct explanation.
It does not work because it does not protect against patent trolls and normal business players won't sue you as they patent for defensive purposes and maybe just want licensing fees.
Actually, some patent trolls suggest a licensing agreement before they sue, and will only sue if you decline. The terms are commonly ridiculous, such as a percentage of your gross revenue in licensing fees. E.g. Acacia demands 2% of your gross revenue for a license to their streaming video patent.
The difference between normal business players and patent trolls is not that the normal player wants licensing fees and the patent troll just wants to sue. Both would likely prefer a licensing agreement instead of a suit, so there is no difference there. The difference is that the patent troll is just collecting patents, and does not provide a product or service apart from its legal protection racket.
You may license your code under as many licenses as you wish, but once you license it to me under the GPL, you are bound by its terms.
Only with respect to yourself, i.e. he can't change the terms or attempt to revoke the license at will. But he may choose another license when he distributes to the next guy, or even when he distributes a new version of the same software to you.
It relies on life to be present. If that doesn't happen, evolution could never exist.
Of course, but still, the Theory of Evolution does not say anything about the Origin of Life, at least not anything else than stating the obvious fact that it obviously happened.
There is a symbiotic relationship whether you want to accept it or not.
That depends on your definition of the word symbiotic. If you take it to mean mutualistic, which is the layman definition, I'd like to ask how the Origin of Life benefits from the Theory of Evolution. If your definition includes commensalism or parasitism, the questions become even stranger.
If I want to play an mp3 that I purchased on my brand new mp3 player that doesn't handle the itunes DRM, shouldn't I be permitted to alter the format of that content so that I can still use it?
Of course not, since that precludes him selling you another copy of the same content in a different format./sarcasm
One reason for DRM to exist is to prevent format-shifting content, so that the content providers can sell the same content multiple times. But since this goal would appear excessively greedy, it is never mentioned by the proponents of DRM, who instead try to claim that it is required to prevent piracy.
The only person being restricted by the GPL is the copyright holder.
Wrong. The copyright holder can do whatever he wants with his copyrighted works, regardless of whether they are licensed to others under the GPL or not. That's e.g. how dual-licensing works.
The reason some projects cannot do this is because the projects accepted contributions from other people without requiring copyright transfers, causing the projects to contain copyrighted code with a plethora of copyright holders. This is also why projects that intend to dual-license the project code require copyright transfers or equivalent in order to accept contributions.
By entering into the contract (which permitted the content to be distributed to you in the first place) you have willingly given up some rights, such as the right to crack open the file and do whatever you want with it.
Except that some rights can't be signed away. Some clauses in a contract may be unenforceable, regardless of the wishes of the content provider. The content providers often include terms which are not enforceable just to scare the users into believing that they have less rights than they actually have.
The rights-holder is the only person who can give you the content, and they have you agree to a contact, in the form of Terms and Conditions, or a License Agreement, etc., before they will distribute that content to you.
Except that a lot of media, such as DVDs, contain no ToS or EULA. Thus, plain copyright law applies. In the US, that means that you are prohibited from breaking the DRM to view it in Linux, but where I live (Sweden), that is not true. You are not allowed to break copy protection, but you are allowed to break access protection or combined access/copy protection systems to enable your legal use of the content, which includes playing it on your platform of choice.
Except that "militant atheists" write books and hold speeches, while militant creationists start wars and blow up abortion clinics.
Since the word militant itself conjures up an image of someone who uses violence to further his goal, I'd say that Richard Dawkins is certainly not militant.
The first page of Chapter 2 I think is probably so offensive to many that they won't make it past that page.
And the only reason why they would find it offensive is because they know that it's the truth.
If they took the bible for what it really is, just another book of fairy tales that is, nobody would care. But for many, religion is a part of their fundamental being, and simply stating the obvious truth about how preposterous that religion really is, is taken as a physical attack on their person, with a similarly aggressive defense.
I recently read The God Delusion, and I really wonder if many adherents of the Abrahamitic religions have really read what the scriptures say. It is certifiably appalling. I had to look up the passages cited in Dawkins' book in the real bible to actually believe him, but there they were, word for word. And this is what Christians, Jews and Muslims use for moral guidance. That is really horrific.
How about respect for their silly religion, while laughing their asses off if someone would claim to believe in Santa Claus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or any other fairy tale that is not part of their personal favorite fairy tale?
I submet it is they who are intolerant as they don't have any credible evidence to even support their nonsense. I'm just calling it as I see it, and they are expecting special treatment for their own neurosis.
Reminds me of this quote:
When one human being is neurotic, he is diagnosed with a psychiatric disease and locked up in a mental hospital. When a million people are neurotic, it is called a religion, and must be respected.
but I find a lot of the time he can be callously disrespectful
Given that quite a few religious people threaten to kill people who don't respect their religions, I feel that disrespect is the only fitting response to religion. I'll never respect something because its adherents demand respect, quite the opposite.
By constrast, your average abortion involves mindless masses of parasitic, self-replicating cells, no more alive than a brain-dead car accident victim on life support.
A parasitic, self-replicating mass of cells, that sounds like a tumor. What's next from the religious crowd, ban all tumor-removal surgery?
Humans, like all other animals, are unabashedly species-ist.
I'm not so certain that this applies to all animals. There are species where cannibalism is more of the rule than the exception. I wouldn't call such a species species-ist.
To me the most disturbing thing is the repeated emphasis in both the original draft and the passed version on the lack of popular support for evolution. These people really don't understand how either science or government should work.
I agree. What scientific theories would remain to be teached if they had to have support from the great unwashed masses to be accepted? Not many, to say the least.
Evolution also relies on Abiogenesis and whatever happened before that (big bang)
Absolutely not, it does no such thing. Evolution concerns the development of life after it came to be, and explicitly does not cover the origin of life. Stating anything else only proves your own ignorance.
They have no problem reconciling their imagining of God with science.
In other words, scrambling to fit their square religion into the round hole provided by every step of scientific progress.
This is likely why religious people are getting more aggressive by the day. Religion demands ignorance, and science is taking bites out of their ignorance all the time. They are getting cornered, and fighting furiously to keep the ignorance because of it.
you want to write off a huge swath of real estate because of the actions of one state legislature.
Well, don't forget the Kansas State Board of Education, which decided that schools should teach Intelligent Design as an "alternative theory" to the Theory of Evolution. I'm sure there are other examples.
Slashdot Mirror
You can also substitute Rich with Raging.
It was not meant to be a proof, but rather a justification for the idea that the existence of a deity is extremely improbable. By the way, where did I state that I know that there exists no deity?
Ocean covers some 70% of the surface of the Earth.
Pffft Horseshoe crab been around for 300-450 million years, kicks old octo's ass!
Orthoceras, which are closely related to octopuses, lived in the Ordovician period, which makes them contemporary with the Horseshoe crab. Thus, octopus-like creatures have been around for a very long time, much longer than 95 million years.
By Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. Introducing a deity adds unnecessary complexity with no gain, and is thus unlikely the correct explanation.
It does not work because it does not protect against patent trolls and normal business players won't sue you as they patent for defensive purposes and maybe just want licensing fees.
Actually, some patent trolls suggest a licensing agreement before they sue, and will only sue if you decline. The terms are commonly ridiculous, such as a percentage of your gross revenue in licensing fees. E.g. Acacia demands 2% of your gross revenue for a license to their streaming video patent.
The difference between normal business players and patent trolls is not that the normal player wants licensing fees and the patent troll just wants to sue. Both would likely prefer a licensing agreement instead of a suit, so there is no difference there. The difference is that the patent troll is just collecting patents, and does not provide a product or service apart from its legal protection racket.
You may license your code under as many licenses as you wish, but once you license it to me under the GPL, you are bound by its terms.
Only with respect to yourself, i.e. he can't change the terms or attempt to revoke the license at will. But he may choose another license when he distributes to the next guy, or even when he distributes a new version of the same software to you.
It relies on life to be present. If that doesn't happen, evolution could never exist.
Of course, but still, the Theory of Evolution does not say anything about the Origin of Life, at least not anything else than stating the obvious fact that it obviously happened.
There is a symbiotic relationship whether you want to accept it or not.
That depends on your definition of the word symbiotic. If you take it to mean mutualistic, which is the layman definition, I'd like to ask how the Origin of Life benefits from the Theory of Evolution. If your definition includes commensalism or parasitism, the questions become even stranger.
If I want to play an mp3 that I purchased on my brand new mp3 player that doesn't handle the itunes DRM, shouldn't I be permitted to alter the format of that content so that I can still use it?
Of course not, since that precludes him selling you another copy of the same content in a different format. /sarcasm
One reason for DRM to exist is to prevent format-shifting content, so that the content providers can sell the same content multiple times. But since this goal would appear excessively greedy, it is never mentioned by the proponents of DRM, who instead try to claim that it is required to prevent piracy.
The only person being restricted by the GPL is the copyright holder.
Wrong. The copyright holder can do whatever he wants with his copyrighted works, regardless of whether they are licensed to others under the GPL or not. That's e.g. how dual-licensing works.
The reason some projects cannot do this is because the projects accepted contributions from other people without requiring copyright transfers, causing the projects to contain copyrighted code with a plethora of copyright holders. This is also why projects that intend to dual-license the project code require copyright transfers or equivalent in order to accept contributions.
By entering into the contract (which permitted the content to be distributed to you in the first place) you have willingly given up some rights, such as the right to crack open the file and do whatever you want with it.
Except that some rights can't be signed away. Some clauses in a contract may be unenforceable, regardless of the wishes of the content provider. The content providers often include terms which are not enforceable just to scare the users into believing that they have less rights than they actually have.
The rights-holder is the only person who can give you the content, and they have you agree to a contact, in the form of Terms and Conditions, or a License Agreement, etc., before they will distribute that content to you.
Except that a lot of media, such as DVDs, contain no ToS or EULA. Thus, plain copyright law applies. In the US, that means that you are prohibited from breaking the DRM to view it in Linux, but where I live (Sweden), that is not true. You are not allowed to break copy protection, but you are allowed to break access protection or combined access/copy protection systems to enable your legal use of the content, which includes playing it on your platform of choice.
IANAL though.
Except that "militant atheists" write books and hold speeches, while militant creationists start wars and blow up abortion clinics.
Since the word militant itself conjures up an image of someone who uses violence to further his goal, I'd say that Richard Dawkins is certainly not militant.
The first page of Chapter 2 I think is probably so offensive to many that they won't make it past that page.
And the only reason why they would find it offensive is because they know that it's the truth.
If they took the bible for what it really is, just another book of fairy tales that is, nobody would care. But for many, religion is a part of their fundamental being, and simply stating the obvious truth about how preposterous that religion really is, is taken as a physical attack on their person, with a similarly aggressive defense.
I recently read The God Delusion, and I really wonder if many adherents of the Abrahamitic religions have really read what the scriptures say. It is certifiably appalling. I had to look up the passages cited in Dawkins' book in the real bible to actually believe him, but there they were, word for word. And this is what Christians, Jews and Muslims use for moral guidance. That is really horrific.
Exactly what special treatment do theists expect?
How about respect for their silly religion, while laughing their asses off if someone would claim to believe in Santa Claus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or any other fairy tale that is not part of their personal favorite fairy tale?
I submet it is they who are intolerant as they don't have any credible evidence to even support their nonsense. I'm just calling it as I see it, and they are expecting special treatment for their own neurosis.
Reminds me of this quote:
When one human being is neurotic, he is diagnosed with a psychiatric disease and locked up in a mental hospital. When a million people are neurotic, it is called a religion, and must be respected.
but I find a lot of the time he can be callously disrespectful
Given that quite a few religious people threaten to kill people who don't respect their religions, I feel that disrespect is the only fitting response to religion. I'll never respect something because its adherents demand respect, quite the opposite.
By constrast, your average abortion involves mindless masses of parasitic, self-replicating cells, no more alive than a brain-dead car accident victim on life support.
A parasitic, self-replicating mass of cells, that sounds like a tumor. What's next from the religious crowd, ban all tumor-removal surgery?
Humans, like all other animals, are unabashedly species-ist.
I'm not so certain that this applies to all animals. There are species where cannibalism is more of the rule than the exception. I wouldn't call such a species species-ist.
To me the most disturbing thing is the repeated emphasis in both the original draft and the passed version on the lack of popular support for evolution. These people really don't understand how either science or government should work.
I agree. What scientific theories would remain to be teached if they had to have support from the great unwashed masses to be accepted? Not many, to say the least.
Dawkins' message and tone would positively mild compared to partisans like Rush Limbaugh
I completely agree, especially after reading quotations from the American Taliban.
It has been shown that one can either prove nor disprove the existence of god.
Which, by the way, proves that a babel fish cannot possibly exist.
Evolution also relies on Abiogenesis and whatever happened before that (big bang)
Absolutely not, it does no such thing. Evolution concerns the development of life after it came to be, and explicitly does not cover the origin of life. Stating anything else only proves your own ignorance.
They have no problem reconciling their imagining of God with science.
In other words, scrambling to fit their square religion into the round hole provided by every step of scientific progress.
This is likely why religious people are getting more aggressive by the day. Religion demands ignorance, and science is taking bites out of their ignorance all the time. They are getting cornered, and fighting furiously to keep the ignorance because of it.
you want to write off a huge swath of real estate because of the actions of one state legislature.
Well, don't forget the Kansas State Board of Education, which decided that schools should teach Intelligent Design as an "alternative theory" to the Theory of Evolution. I'm sure there are other examples.