Agreed - but there are plenty of circumstances in which a person can be considered to be responsible for an action without it being stipulated as a legal responsibility.
that isn't true as a blanket statement -incitement to riot is against the law, so there are instances where provoking other people to violence is against the law.
Of course I realise that wanting someone to rape you is an oxymoron. This is why I try to stay away from rape analogies, having no experience of the subject i'm just asking to overlook some sensitive details which derail the whole thing and inadvertantly trivialise something horrific. sorry, I should have just stuck to the first analogy.
in fact a more relevant analogy to your objection would be the difference between a woman who dresses sexily and flirts with men in a bar, who obviously is not responsible if one of those men rapes her, and a woman who knows a rapist that she wants to rape her or perhaps someone else and concocts what she considers to be the best circumstances to encourage and facilitate that rape, with the explicit intention of the rape occuring.
The acceptance of responsibility is part and parcel of freedom. I am not advocating the reduction of freedom, just the recognition of the responsibility it imbues.
Words don't force anyone to do anything, but if I know saying those words will cause that person to choose to react violently, and I say them in a deliberate attempt to have them wreak violence, then I have orchestrated that violence. If I pay a hitman to kill someone, don't you think I bear some responsibility for that person's death?
I made no claim as to whether or not this was the intent of the film makers. Note my original post begins "if". It is intended as a hypothetical statement, I don't even specifically mention the filmmakers.
Yes but had you said that to him in order to deliberately make him flip out, you should indeed accept some of the responsibility. And in the case of deliberately provoking a five year old it would be closer to practically all of the responsibility, since the skill of an adult at emotional manipulation would leave a 5 year old pretty much totally in their control.
This is not an appropriate analogy. This is more like being in a hostage situation where the the gunman says "if you take a step closer i'll shoot them" then in order to deliberately bring about the death of the hostages, you step closer. Note the import distinction that you want him to kill the hostages.
There's a difference between performing a perfectly reasonable act to which other people will choose to react violently, and perfoming an act with no intention other than to provoke a violent reaction, because you want to have the violence occur and are choosing to create a situation where you know people will choose to react violently.
If you perform an act that has no other intention than to deliberately provoke someone you know to be an unstable violent maniac and you know will choose to go on a murderous rampage, you carry a some measure of responsiblity for that rampage.
While I don't have any citations handy, I'm pretty sure it has been done. When talking about the span of human history, the word "never" is a VERY strong word.
While I can't prove a universal negative, the fact that you have no citations and are only pretty sure doesn't really give me much pause for thought. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it has happened.
For starters, not all those who do things in the name of rationality are actually rational. In fact, it is hard to come up with a definition of "rational" that does not include behaviors that most people would consider "irrational." Rational simply means in accordance with reason or logic. However, when your opening premise is that all men should worship the great spaghetti monster, then that which rationally follows can be rather absurd.
Logic is a vacuum - it can only restate the truths it starts with. Your set of axioms goes a great way towards explaining your behavior, especially if you are rational.
I don't see what any of that has to do with the point I was making, which is that the explicitly stated purpose of all of these "atheist regimes" was never to improve their victim's critical thinking skills.
Also, what you're saying smacks of post-modern solipsism. Just because you have to start with some axioms doesn't mean all axioms are as valid as any others. Axioms themselves don't just spring out of thin air - they can be the product of previous rationally concluded reasoning, as well as wishful thinking. From what I've seen there's a robust chain of logic leading from "i think therefore i am" to "there's no reason to believe a god exists, and no reason to believe the laws of physics have ever been violated by supernatural forces, and there is overwhelming evidence that none of the gods purported to date exist". Obviously this is a very long chain that I don't have time to justify here, but what I'm saying is, I don't concede your point, and if I had hours and hours to debate I would.
It's just that such arguments sound awfully similar to arguments made by religious apologists for the evils of their institutions.
Stalinism isn't "our" institution. It wasn't motivated by the desire to spread atheism, and it isn't recognised as some kind of authority figure to atheism. In all these cases of totalitarian regimes forcing deconversion on their victims, atheism is a requirement, not the goal.
Given that it's a lack of belief in religion, rather than a subscription to stalinism, it's not proper to suggest that atheists must be apologists for the atrocities of Stalin. It's like saying all people that aren't Jewish are apologists for the holocaust, since not being Jewish was a requirement of the Nazi regime.
No, but the people who find that unity does what they want don't have to spend $120 on windows in order to have a GUI on their PC.
Also, unless you have a slow internet connection or PC I'm pretty sure you can install gnome in less than an hour - and most people don't get paid $120 an hour. To the vast majority of people $120 is at least a day's work, and more than their entire week's food budget.
Those genocides weren't in the name of atheism, they were in the name of the totalitarian states that committed them. They weren't trying to convert the people to rational humanists - they wanted them to worship the state rather than god.
No one has ever tried to prosecute a genocide against irrationality and magical thinking, in the name of making the world a more rational place.
Publicly objecting to something (or "whining" as you dismissively term it) contributes towards building mindshare against the problem in question, and is a necessary step in bringing about a solution.
Why on earth would a digital playback device invoke an archaic analogue overlay mechanism? Surely the player could just alter the frame digitally, rather than fudging around with the output signal?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not certain what you're driving at, but rights and responsibility go hand in hand.
Agreed - but there are plenty of circumstances in which a person can be considered to be responsible for an action without it being stipulated as a legal responsibility.
that isn't true as a blanket statement -incitement to riot is against the law, so there are instances where provoking other people to violence is against the law.
Of course I realise that wanting someone to rape you is an oxymoron. This is why I try to stay away from rape analogies, having no experience of the subject i'm just asking to overlook some sensitive details which derail the whole thing and inadvertantly trivialise something horrific. sorry, I should have just stuck to the first analogy.
in fact a more relevant analogy to your objection would be the difference between a woman who dresses sexily and flirts with men in a bar, who obviously is not responsible if one of those men rapes her, and a woman who knows a rapist that she wants to rape her or perhaps someone else and concocts what she considers to be the best circumstances to encourage and facilitate that rape, with the explicit intention of the rape occuring.
The acceptance of responsibility is part and parcel of freedom. I am not advocating the reduction of freedom, just the recognition of the responsibility it imbues.
Words don't force anyone to do anything, but if I know saying those words will cause that person to choose to react violently, and I say them in a deliberate attempt to have them wreak violence, then I have orchestrated that violence. If I pay a hitman to kill someone, don't you think I bear some responsibility for that person's death?
I made no claim as to whether or not this was the intent of the film makers. Note my original post begins "if". It is intended as a hypothetical statement, I don't even specifically mention the filmmakers.
Only if they burnt the flags specifically so that the militant nationalist would shoot them.
No, because you aren't specifically orchestrating a reaction in order to deliberately bring about your own death.
Yes but had you said that to him in order to deliberately make him flip out, you should indeed accept some of the responsibility. And in the case of deliberately provoking a five year old it would be closer to practically all of the responsibility, since the skill of an adult at emotional manipulation would leave a 5 year old pretty much totally in their control.
This is not an appropriate analogy. This is more like being in a hostage situation where the the gunman says "if you take a step closer i'll shoot them" then in order to deliberately bring about the death of the hostages, you step closer. Note the import distinction that you want him to kill the hostages.
The people that wouldn't be murdered if you hadn't chosen to go out of your way to make sure people get murdered.
There's a difference between performing a perfectly reasonable act to which other people will choose to react violently, and perfoming an act with no intention other than to provoke a violent reaction, because you want to have the violence occur and are choosing to create a situation where you know people will choose to react violently.
If you perform an act that has no other intention than to deliberately provoke someone you know to be an unstable violent maniac and you know will choose to go on a murderous rampage, you carry a some measure of responsiblity for that rampage.
platform independence
You've completely misunderstood not only what I'm saying, but the entire discussion thread.
While I don't have any citations handy, I'm pretty sure it has been done. When talking about the span of human history, the word "never" is a VERY strong word.
While I can't prove a universal negative, the fact that you have no citations and are only pretty sure doesn't really give me much pause for thought. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it has happened.
For starters, not all those who do things in the name of rationality are actually rational. In fact, it is hard to come up with a definition of "rational" that does not include behaviors that most people would consider "irrational." Rational simply means in accordance with reason or logic. However, when your opening premise is that all men should worship the great spaghetti monster, then that which rationally follows can be rather absurd. Logic is a vacuum - it can only restate the truths it starts with. Your set of axioms goes a great way towards explaining your behavior, especially if you are rational.
I don't see what any of that has to do with the point I was making, which is that the explicitly stated purpose of all of these "atheist regimes" was never to improve their victim's critical thinking skills.
Also, what you're saying smacks of post-modern solipsism. Just because you have to start with some axioms doesn't mean all axioms are as valid as any others. Axioms themselves don't just spring out of thin air - they can be the product of previous rationally concluded reasoning, as well as wishful thinking. From what I've seen there's a robust chain of logic leading from "i think therefore i am" to "there's no reason to believe a god exists, and no reason to believe the laws of physics have ever been violated by supernatural forces, and there is overwhelming evidence that none of the gods purported to date exist". Obviously this is a very long chain that I don't have time to justify here, but what I'm saying is, I don't concede your point, and if I had hours and hours to debate I would.
It's just that such arguments sound awfully similar to arguments made by religious apologists for the evils of their institutions.
Stalinism isn't "our" institution. It wasn't motivated by the desire to spread atheism, and it isn't recognised as some kind of authority figure to atheism. In all these cases of totalitarian regimes forcing deconversion on their victims, atheism is a requirement, not the goal.
Given that it's a lack of belief in religion, rather than a subscription to stalinism, it's not proper to suggest that atheists must be apologists for the atrocities of Stalin. It's like saying all people that aren't Jewish are apologists for the holocaust, since not being Jewish was a requirement of the Nazi regime.
No, but the people who find that unity does what they want don't have to spend $120 on windows in order to have a GUI on their PC.
Also, unless you have a slow internet connection or PC I'm pretty sure you can install gnome in less than an hour - and most people don't get paid $120 an hour. To the vast majority of people $120 is at least a day's work, and more than their entire week's food budget.
No, he's saying that not paying $120 is an advantage.
Those genocides weren't in the name of atheism, they were in the name of the totalitarian states that committed them. They weren't trying to convert the people to rational humanists - they wanted them to worship the state rather than god.
No one has ever tried to prosecute a genocide against irrationality and magical thinking, in the name of making the world a more rational place.
ARM assembler is much more straightforward to learn and conceptually satisfying than x86 assembler.
Publicly objecting to something (or "whining" as you dismissively term it) contributes towards building mindshare against the problem in question, and is a necessary step in bringing about a solution.
Why on earth would a digital playback device invoke an archaic analogue overlay mechanism? Surely the player could just alter the frame digitally, rather than fudging around with the output signal?