As far as the main thrust of the topic, of course bundling helps--a lot--but maybe the exec just meant that bundling can't suppress good things forever...
Anyhow, the question of what to do if Firefox does gain a 2/3 market share is still valid (and even before that).
My hope is that more aspects of the Firefox browser can become or contribute to their own standards--and that Mozilla will itself adhere to them. XUL, the interface language used in the browser itself and extension building, might be such a candidate for standardization (or at least a subset of it), assuming other browser makers would be interested.
Perhaps there's a lesson somewhere with XBL, assuming it ever goes anywhere (the extensibility of XBL is great, but again, there should, I feel, be some standard for the more frequently recurring bread-and-butter requirement of describing browser elements, as XUL provides).
Likewise, it'd be great for XPCOM functionality to somehow become accepted as XBCOM (cross-browser). Perhaps FUEL API's could be joined with other browser makers' libraries into a standard, again assuming interest. At the very least, I hope other browser-makers-which-allow-extension-of-the-browser may agree to standardize on Mozilla's useful JavaScript module importation so that such code can also be reused cross-browser without modification.
One concern I have is with an existing attitude in Mozilla where repeated mention has been made by prominent Mozilla developers of a distinction between the web and non-web, and arguing against following standards which were conceived without the web in mind. While that may well be true, this can also set up a false dichotomy and introduce exceptionalism. If there is a non-web use for a technology (e.g., support for external DTDs in (especially document-centric) XML for simple localization), then there well is also a web-use. Likewise was such an argument against certain standards made toward not implementing DOM Level 3, even though parsing and serialization from or to strings or the DOM is a pretty basic requirement across browsers (and the API, as with the rest of the DOM, is not that terrible so as to make it impossible to work around, as we all do with levels 1 and 2 of the DOM). I hope such existing cross-browser issues can be addressed, even as new standards if need really be (again, without falsely assuming that non-web uses such as serializing to streams, etc., can't find web (or browser) uses and dumbing down the standards).
I'm also concerned with another topic impinging on the Mozilla-as-gatekeeper concern: modularity within Firefox itself. Firefox should, I feel, quickly make good on its plans to enhance its extension dependency system, so third parties can supply independent modules and have extensions automatically trigger such downloads upon installation. Otherwise Mozilla stays as the albeit friendly gate-keeper within the community (not to mention for other browsers) and either gets bloated or left insufficiently extensible. For example, for dealing with the sparseness of built-in JavaScript functions to handle many common tasks, while using an already familiar API, PHP.JS could eventually be made as such a module. Mozilla expressed openness to allow modules to be added, but it would, I feel, be more extensible and sustainable into the future (and not contribute to browser bloat), if the community "market" could more
Thirds on Innumeracy (or is it "third"?)...
I had a business major roommate who took a look at this book I was reading for an engineering course, and we both finished the book, as I recall, even before the course began...
I've always wanted to see roller coasters take you to work... Like "Loop the Loop" for Chicagoans... Could raise funds that could be injected into developing the rest of the transportation system, and would sure beat every commute I've ever been in...
No respectable linguist will tell you that there is any such thing as "proper" English (or "proper" for any language for that matter), unless you're simply talking about norms, in which case it is only fair to let the standard be regionally-based (and thus irrelevant to point out a particular country), or prestige (which is arbitrary as far as its relation to more objective criteria we might consider for a value judgment on languages, like linguistic expressiveness).
Plenty of changes to "standard" English were introduced based on misunderstandings of etmology, English itself grew out of Proto-Germanic which should itself indicate that we didn't always adhere to the "proper" way, and counter-intuitively, much of American English more accurately preserves the features of earlier British dialects than modern British English.
For socioeconomic/intercommunication reasons, an employer or student/job-seeker might discriminate toward one dialect standard, but that does not mean one dialect is inherently more proper.
"Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
The declaration was adopted in 1948 without a single dissenting vote in the U.N. General Assembly, so it has quite a bit of moral authority around the world (even though it is not enforceable yet, as it darn well should be).
So, it appears there is actually a right to be able to have SOME degree of IP... There's of course a big difference between copyright and patents (with the latter referring more to ideas), consideration of "obviousness" for patents, etc.
I've been using Assembla and really quite impressed not only with the range of resources they offer but also with its real integration of job seeking and posting. Assembla might be on to making open source into more sustainable work, while you're already using it for something else...
"5.1, though it sounds like an incremental release, has got some pretty major features," said Zack Urlocker, vice president for MySQL products at Sun, in a video postedto InfoWorld's Web site this week. "Probably, we should have called it 6.0, because there's so much stuff in there and we've been working on it for a couple of years."
Hmm...Or maybe the marketers at Sun should give the name the grandeur it deserves and change it to MySQL 2 Standard Edition version 6...
An interventionist God is not like a programmer who makes exceptions to your actions. It is like demanding that the programmer personally devote all of his attention to monitoring your progress in the game, and manually intervene when it looks like you are losing. Want to talk about humility? What you are demanding is the unsurpassed pinnacle of arrogance--you expect God to be your own personal full time wetnurse. And don't take my word as an atheist. Take my word as a former believer. There was never a time when I was not astonished by the expectations of many believers that God's primary purpose was to be their personal caretaker.
Would it be so hard for the God of the universe to devote all of his attention to monitoring each player's progress? We can create a computer program that does just that, but God could not? If God makes Herself available as a "wetnurse" in sustaining us, why not avail oneself of it; would a real God actually be taxed by such an effort? Maybe you are referring to the excesses of some religionists who fail to take action because they believe they can rely on God to do everything for them. That is a different matter and has nothing to do with whether there is a God Who is capable of intervening in our affairs or not. This is a question of logic; assuming all who believe in an intervenionist God have such motives as you describe is not very fair, any more than it would be to assume that all atheists feel that they are arrogant to believe themselves God; nor frankly do I see it as very truth seeking. Its easy to paint broad strokes and denigrate the other side, but it will not help one find the truth of much of anything.
My Faith claims that we cannot solve the question of theodicy. Suffering is a mystery that the mind of man cannot fathom. While we believe innocents can be assured of compensation in the next world, it indeed seems hard to follow how can suffering can be tolerated at all. However, our Faith also maintains, in effect, that as that manifestly is our lot, how can we argue with the programmer? (I still believe the programmer example is quite reasonable and fair).
You can find several articulate proofs (unless you are referring to proofs which attempt to place God somehow "before" the universe in a chronological sense) if you stop making a priori assumptions and categorical assertions that the case is all wrapped up, and you are so knowledgeable about the issue (and science, etc.) and we are all just fools. It is really sad and reflects poorly on atheists if you expect others to believe you are actually rationale in what you are saying now. Oneupsmanship and denigration is not a "rational" basis for discussion.
Shows what I know about the Baha'i faith, I guess.
Well, I think it's in general a fair argument (as you were essentially making I think) to say that people are people, and nobody, including Bahai's, are inherently immune to baser actions. I agree with that. But I really recommend your taking a look at the link I sent as there are some incredible stories in some of those articles such as how Baha'is in Iran, while forbidden from higher education and other basic rights, were nevertheless trying to serve their country rather than get tangled up in opposing it (outside of seeking to defend their rights in courts, at the U.N., etc.)...One recent example there is how several young Baha'is, who were serving underprivileged youth were actually imprisoned for doing so. Baha'u'llah wrote that in this age "the law of holy war hath been blotted out from the Book", so I think there is some correlation with the nonviolent response of that commuunity (even though the Qur'anic verses on holy war are indeed often taken out of context, in recent years especially, there has been some tragically exploited room for ambiguity)...
What the heck do you call the followers of Baha'i, anyway?
Followers of the Baha'i Faith are just called Baha'is. The Prophet-Founder of the Baha'i Faith was Baha'u'llah (pronounced Baha-o-Lah).
I never understood why a Deistic, hands-off God is somehow more rational than an intervening God. Yes, it is great to appreciate that the Sustainer of creation (I say Sustainer because "Creator" tends to evoke the thought that religionists must assume that stories of creation refer to physical creation, as though the perfect "Creator" somehow at one time had no creation) is far beyond anyone's conception, but wouldn't that also be a pretty weak God which COULDN'T intervene in creation and would somehow forget about His creatures because they were too small for Him? Just because some people interpret power as being aloof doesn't mean that's how God sees it (Scriptures certainly don't see it that way).
Similarly, I don't think that an intervening God falls within the realm of science, at least not within the sense you are describing it, as a means of summarily dismissing such a possibility. If on occasion, God may intervene in the creation He created, how can that be disproven? You can say it is not logical, but that doesn't make it untrue. It would be like a character in a video game arguing that the programmer of the game never made exceptions to his actions; how would he know??... Do I think that science should put itself on hold because such things are possible? Absolutely not--on the contrary. But I think it would help for us to have a little humility to say things in this universe have time and again proven themselves to be so interesting and unfathomable (ala Einstein grappling with quantum theory) even on the measurable dimensions, that it may well be possible that there are also transcendent realities beyond my own immediate understanding... Besides being more interesting and less nihilistic, it could even make the world a bit more harmonious if atheists didn't assume out of hand that their fellow human beings who believed in God, even a personal intervening God, were helpless irrational idiots...
But if you follow and believe in (almost) any religion, it means you believe things that are by definition unprovable, irrational, and supernatural. A person who is ready to believe such things might be more ready to believe other irrational things than someone who bases his thoughts on rational explanations.
Or, with a firm belief in a God who wishes us to master a scientific understanding of His creation (I'm a Baha'i) in order to be of service in this world, and which insists that we be humble with our own ideas, we might be more inclined than we otherwise would be to insist on discovering the real truth of a situation. Other prominent individuals exist who find perfect harmony in science and religion (the head of the Human Genome project I found particularly articulate).
When people make broad strokes against religion, I feel that it only engenders a deeper distrust of science and even animosity among some, just as when religious zealotry engenders deeper distrust of religion--both definitely lose out in the process. It also flies against recorded history as well, which can make abundantly clear that so many great scientific developments in the West are due to the actions of Arabs preserving and extending the science of the Greeks. Their motivation and inspiration was largely religious and encouraged by their leaders at the top as well, and it is wholly unfair to dismiss that because segments of their civilization have in recent years been in retrogression. Maybe if it weren't so fashionable to bash religion, one might discover that there are a lot more rational-minded religious people out there, doing great things for science as well (even spurred on by their religion), than some would has us believe.
The other problem is that in logic, if you allow a contradiction or paradox, you can prove about anything you want. Positing the existence of an omnipotent, sentient, all-powerful being as an axiom of any system of logic and thought will necessarily result in a system that can be used to prove anything whatsoever. So even though most believers might be considered "moderate", religion can always be used as an excuse for about any crazy thought you have.
So can atheism. If there are no absolute standards, I can even claim that logic can be ignored (e.g., as some will dismiss scientific studies documenting higher marriage success rates for those who do not cohabit before marriage--that must just be religious propaganda)... A good literary example is Lord of the Flies... The ending results in the question, if the adults are also left to their own devices, what will be the result? Yes, it relies on a belief in the "super" natural; if it didn't, claims to universality (which have, as in history, led to successively larger units of communal organization) would ring pretty hollow. Religion can, has, and will cause people to think of things greater and act in greater ways. The question is 'what is a good religion which is consonant with material reality as well as necessarily transcending it?'. Shall we blame a lamp because it can be used to start a fire? I would think scientifically-minded people could appreciate the argument that a tool can be used for good or bad.
Skeptics and atheists, on the other hand, will usually require more rational logic, facts and proof before believing you.
Unless it is about atheism, in which case most won't even listen to proofs for the existence of God and the like (and least in a manner which is genuinely truth-seeking without being full of a priori assumptions) because religionists are seen to "believe things that are by definition unprovable, irrational". Dogmatic materialism is still dogma...
No, but, to be fair, I don't know of any areas of the world where... followers of the Baha'i faith have to live under, for example, the rule of the Saudi Regime.
The Baha'i Faith, per the Encyclopedia Britannica, is the 2nd most diverse religion in the world after Christianity in terms of the number of countries possessing a significant following of believers, and the Baha'i Faith is still severely persecuted in several countries, particularly Iran which was revealed in a secret memorandum obtained and publicized by the U.N. to have a secret blueprint to destroy the community externally as well as internally, but also Egypt which has recently been denying them a right to their vital ID cards, yet due to very emphatic admonitions from its Prophet-Founder, Baha'u'llah, against violence in the name of religion (e.g., "It is better to be killed than to kill" as applied to the context of organized religious warfare), Baha'is endure a great deal (while appealing to the national courts, the United Nations, etc.).
We've already built structures to solve international conflicts, and it works extremely well when the two sides are willing to work through those structures.
That's exactly why the current international structures do not work well as they could. Real international structures--as with national or local policing structures--increasingly need to actually have some real teeth AND the ability to override lesser interests (in this case nation-states) with a corresponding accountability to the electorate that can make the former possible in order to work in cases where one party doesn't want to cooperate.
But I think your choice of examples might have highlighted another deeper problem which doesn't seem to often find illumination in online discussions. Just maybe ask whether it is due to a complete transformation of the goodness of peoples' character that a few mere decades ago (and going back further and on and on) whether the US or Europe wouldn't like battlebots to fight against the other; maybe there is still a little capacity for a sense of superiority left over, even if the lessons of out-and-out imperialism have been well-learned the hard way. The killer in me is the killer in you...
"That is dangerous with the current thinking of the UN. For one, they see..."
You mean the current thinking of the UN bureaucracy or the rest of the whole world? The former has no power of its own, so its hard to speak of the U.N. as though its "us" and "them". It may seem to make sense to refer to "them" in the case of the bureaucracy of the U.N., but, (a) they have no power outside of that given to them by the nations that send them there, and (b) U.S. citizens are also heavily represented within U.N. bodies. Blaming the U.N. is really blaming ourselves.
As an American and world citizen, I believe humanity is already capable of democracy even though I may disagree with some decisions, even though some governments might not be capable or interested in it (see my qualification you also refer to), and even if that means giving away some power (which the Founding Fathers realized the states needed to--and the U.S. did in more recent history by being part of the historic WTO). We can't have the cake and eat it too. We can believe in democracy, and believe it applies to humanity, or we can believe in selfishness and our own egos. It may take a lot, but we ought to be humble enough to admit that, despite what our pundits in the media would have us believe, we are not always right either. That doesn't mean giving away the house--on the contrary, we should be very intelligent in any sharing of power, so that it won't violate our own basic values; but the sharing of power is necessary not only for idealistic reasons in our belief in democracy--but also in practical reasons (no one can trust the U.N. if it is subject to the whims of just a handful of countries).
"For one, they see the solution for pretty much anything to be to drain money from the successful nations and give it to the poorer ones -- and they're not good at recognizing which is which (except that they know the US is their money pot)."
The U.S. pays only a tiny fraction of its economy to the U.N.--an institution which has had tremendous successes in a number of areas and which is absolutely vital, as all politicians will recognize even after rhetoric against the U.N. which may get them elected. Don't get drawn into a line politicians like to use to get elected. There are cases of corruption, sure, but that can only be blamed on the oversight of it my member states--and we're a very influential one of those members.
"They also would be able to enforce political correctness. Nothing could be muttered that would offend anyone in the world,"
I'd be in favor of people not offending others... I think our religious traditions (if you are religious) are all supposed to believe the same... This doesn't mean giving away rights though, nor does it mean avoiding a chance to speak up against rights violated by others elsewhere; allowing the world a qualified chance to vote in affairs determined by a body whose decisions affect it (in a real way--not the mere popularity contest which U.N. votes are now), is not, in my view, doing so...
"except the Muslims would still be allowed to chant "Death to Israel" as they are an oppressed, protected class."
Self-determination and respect for diversity over conformity are both part of the existing founding and operating documents of the current U.N. and would need to be so for a strengthened U.N. Certainly any reformed U.N. would and should not be consti
Call for a global summit to revamp the United Nations in order that it can be reformed and capable of gaining the trust of the world as it distributes necessary global policing work:
1) Enable General Assembly decisions to be binding on nation-states (with certain limits to avoid over-centralization). 2) Add a Peoples' Congress to the General Assembly to make the voting a bit more proportional to population (if you think people in countries like India are satisfied to trust the votes of the G.A. when they have 100,000 times less per capita voting power than the island-state of Tuvalu than I'll sell you bottled water...) 3) Ensure that there are minimum standards for human rights in order for a country to even belong to the U.N. Its ridiculous to allow an unelected dictator (and no doubt an oppressive one at that) to get the vote of a whole nation. 4) Abolish Security Council permanent membership (despite our having a veto, it doesn't do the U.N. which we need any good for credibility). The Articles of Confederation didn't work for us, so it's no wonder they haven't worked well for the world. 5) Allow the International Court to arbitrate regardless of whether both nations agreed to submit their case to it. It'd be pretty silly for our own Supreme Court not to be able to vote unless both parties wanted to bring their case to it. Duh!
and...
agree on a global compact that ensures that:
1) Disarmament is universal and internationally monitored (asking others to disarm is not only ridiculous when you haven't done so, but it doesn't encourage others to support your efforts to disarm others) 2) Borders are fixed by international consensus and violators of a border (or who violate the disarmament agreement) will find their government completely destroyed by the whole international community. Preemptive strikes are quite legitimate and potentially effective when undertaken by an elected higher authority (like a police force raiding a place stockpiling dangerous weapons)--as opposed to depending on nation-state vigilantism.
and
Agree on a universal auxiliary language--make English a universal second (or third) language around the world (if countries like English as much as we think they do, that should be no problem, if they're allowed to vote on it), and if not, have a vote to consider a constructed or some other language (it's better than the current situation of citizenry and immigrants being expected to have the impossible task of learning a multiplicity of languages they weren't taught as children).
and, while this one is probably the biggest long shot,
Introduce a national referendum to consider abolishing political parties, campaigning, etc. (while keeping universal suffrage, secret ballot, etc.) Just as local governments don't need parties and the circus of campaigns or electioneering to function, neither does a national one. There'd be a whole lot more scientists elected if the system didn't depend on requiring a person to engage in that whole circus.
People will maintain on the one hand that violent video games can have no effect on society, and yet bet their money on companies which rely on the periodic display of images (i.e., advertising) to influence the behavior of others. We all imagine we are immune, but as science is showing here and has shown (real science and real religion don't need to contradict, btw, if we could ever get over the false dichotomy), whether we like it or not--garbage in, garbage out... We can't keep insisting that there are 'good' and 'bad' people (or those who would have snapped anyways, as we tell ourselves)...
While it can be admittedly sometimes entertaining watching the zingers fly back and forth, especially when one is cheering for those expressing a truth one believes in, I strongly believe that the oneupsmanship that is more common among men, especially Western men, I believe this approach is both anathema to many women, and not the best way to disseminate well-thought out opinions or inform others (or even to be funny). And as soon as any emotion is showed, or an appeal to balance, the very typical mockery ensues. Such a quick-to-argue culture is not a sign of healthy debate--it is a sign of partisan-infected, non-learning-mode immaturity and inefficiency that is sadly a part of the wider culture as well (we also are really, really deluding ourselves by thinking that our partisan system is necessary to democracy and the best way to find a qualified candidate--why do you think so few scientists get elected?).
This is childish and typical of a masculine extreme. When I say masculine, this is an excess definitely correlated with many males (really, how many women engage in this kind of battling?) but this is not mutually exclusive of coexisting in society with feminine extremes either, so don't take this as being about women-good, men-bad and respond in kind).
In my (fringe minority?) opinion, the biggest threat is not having a great regular expressions tool... Though it is able to do single-line replaces, I'd really hope for more power from a community-supported product. (I know, I know, Where's the patch?) And that's about the only reason I ever use Word (even though you gotta watch out for those darn curly quotes)...
There's already a dedicated wiki like this through the for-profit Wikia, Wikianswers, whereas the Wikipedia reference desk is another well-trafficked (and ad-free) option.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the main thrust of the topic, of course bundling helps--a lot--but maybe the exec just meant that bundling can't suppress good things forever...
Anyhow, the question of what to do if Firefox does gain a 2/3 market share is still valid (and even before that).
My hope is that more aspects of the Firefox browser can become or contribute to their own standards--and that Mozilla will itself adhere to them. XUL, the interface language used in the browser itself and extension building, might be such a candidate for standardization (or at least a subset of it), assuming other browser makers would be interested.
Perhaps there's a lesson somewhere with XBL, assuming it ever goes anywhere (the extensibility of XBL is great, but again, there should, I feel, be some standard for the more frequently recurring bread-and-butter requirement of describing browser elements, as XUL provides).
Likewise, it'd be great for XPCOM functionality to somehow become accepted as XBCOM (cross-browser). Perhaps FUEL API's could be joined with other browser makers' libraries into a standard, again assuming interest. At the very least, I hope other browser-makers-which-allow-extension-of-the-browser may agree to standardize on Mozilla's useful JavaScript module importation so that such code can also be reused cross-browser without modification.
One concern I have is with an existing attitude in Mozilla where repeated mention has been made by prominent Mozilla developers of a distinction between the web and non-web, and arguing against following standards which were conceived without the web in mind. While that may well be true, this can also set up a false dichotomy and introduce exceptionalism. If there is a non-web use for a technology (e.g., support for external DTDs in (especially document-centric) XML for simple localization), then there well is also a web-use. Likewise was such an argument against certain standards made toward not implementing DOM Level 3, even though parsing and serialization from or to strings or the DOM is a pretty basic requirement across browsers (and the API, as with the rest of the DOM, is not that terrible so as to make it impossible to work around, as we all do with levels 1 and 2 of the DOM). I hope such existing cross-browser issues can be addressed, even as new standards if need really be (again, without falsely assuming that non-web uses such as serializing to streams, etc., can't find web (or browser) uses and dumbing down the standards).
I'm also concerned with another topic impinging on the Mozilla-as-gatekeeper concern: modularity within Firefox itself. Firefox should, I feel, quickly make good on its plans to enhance its extension dependency system, so third parties can supply independent modules and have extensions automatically trigger such downloads upon installation. Otherwise Mozilla stays as the albeit friendly gate-keeper within the community (not to mention for other browsers) and either gets bloated or left insufficiently extensible. For example, for dealing with the sparseness of built-in JavaScript functions to handle many common tasks, while using an already familiar API, PHP.JS could eventually be made as such a module. Mozilla expressed openness to allow modules to be added, but it would, I feel, be more extensible and sustainable into the future (and not contribute to browser bloat), if the community "market" could more
Thirds on Innumeracy (or is it "third"?)... I had a business major roommate who took a look at this book I was reading for an engineering course, and we both finished the book, as I recall, even before the course began...
I've always wanted to see roller coasters take you to work... Like "Loop the Loop" for Chicagoans... Could raise funds that could be injected into developing the rest of the transportation system, and would sure beat every commute I've ever been in...
As an expat in China, my favorite translation for a mouth-watering chicken dish was "slobber chicken".
Whoops--should have finished the article
Sounds like this guy should be renamed Geoffrey Lando-Calrissian...
No respectable linguist will tell you that there is any such thing as "proper" English (or "proper" for any language for that matter), unless you're simply talking about norms, in which case it is only fair to let the standard be regionally-based (and thus irrelevant to point out a particular country), or prestige (which is arbitrary as far as its relation to more objective criteria we might consider for a value judgment on languages, like linguistic expressiveness).
Plenty of changes to "standard" English were introduced based on misunderstandings of etmology, English itself grew out of Proto-Germanic which should itself indicate that we didn't always adhere to the "proper" way, and counter-intuitively, much of American English more accurately preserves the features of earlier British dialects than modern British English.
For socioeconomic/intercommunication reasons, an employer or student/job-seeker might discriminate toward one dialect standard, but that does not mean one dialect is inherently more proper.
See African American Vernacular English for a good example of this. (Indian_English doesn't cover it and Linguistic_prescription needs a lot of work.)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 27, item 2, actually states:
The declaration was adopted in 1948 without a single dissenting vote in the U.N. General Assembly, so it has quite a bit of moral authority around the world (even though it is not enforceable yet, as it darn well should be).
So, it appears there is actually a right to be able to have SOME degree of IP... There's of course a big difference between copyright and patents (with the latter referring more to ideas), consideration of "obviousness" for patents, etc.
We in the U.S. still haven't ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, but it speaks to this too, though not insisting that IP must be absolute.
I've been using Assembla and really quite impressed not only with the range of resources they offer but also with its real integration of job seeking and posting. Assembla might be on to making open source into more sustainable work, while you're already using it for something else...
Would it be so hard for the God of the universe to devote all of his attention to monitoring each player's progress? We can create a computer program that does just that, but God could not? If God makes Herself available as a "wetnurse" in sustaining us, why not avail oneself of it; would a real God actually be taxed by such an effort? Maybe you are referring to the excesses of some religionists who fail to take action because they believe they can rely on God to do everything for them. That is a different matter and has nothing to do with whether there is a God Who is capable of intervening in our affairs or not. This is a question of logic; assuming all who believe in an intervenionist God have such motives as you describe is not very fair, any more than it would be to assume that all atheists feel that they are arrogant to believe themselves God; nor frankly do I see it as very truth seeking. Its easy to paint broad strokes and denigrate the other side, but it will not help one find the truth of much of anything.
My Faith claims that we cannot solve the question of theodicy. Suffering is a mystery that the mind of man cannot fathom. While we believe innocents can be assured of compensation in the next world, it indeed seems hard to follow how can suffering can be tolerated at all. However, our Faith also maintains, in effect, that as that manifestly is our lot, how can we argue with the programmer? (I still believe the programmer example is quite reasonable and fair).
You can find several articulate proofs (unless you are referring to proofs which attempt to place God somehow "before" the universe in a chronological sense) if you stop making a priori assumptions and categorical assertions that the case is all wrapped up, and you are so knowledgeable about the issue (and science, etc.) and we are all just fools. It is really sad and reflects poorly on atheists if you expect others to believe you are actually rationale in what you are saying now. Oneupsmanship and denigration is not a "rational" basis for discussion.
Well, I think it's in general a fair argument (as you were essentially making I think) to say that people are people, and nobody, including Bahai's, are inherently immune to baser actions. I agree with that. But I really recommend your taking a look at the link I sent as there are some incredible stories in some of those articles such as how Baha'is in Iran, while forbidden from higher education and other basic rights, were nevertheless trying to serve their country rather than get tangled up in opposing it (outside of seeking to defend their rights in courts, at the U.N., etc.)...One recent example there is how several young Baha'is, who were serving underprivileged youth were actually imprisoned for doing so. Baha'u'llah wrote that in this age "the law of holy war hath been blotted out from the Book", so I think there is some correlation with the nonviolent response of that commuunity (even though the Qur'anic verses on holy war are indeed often taken out of context, in recent years especially, there has been some tragically exploited room for ambiguity)...
What the heck do you call the followers of Baha'i, anyway?Followers of the Baha'i Faith are just called Baha'is. The Prophet-Founder of the Baha'i Faith was Baha'u'llah (pronounced Baha-o-Lah).
I never understood why a Deistic, hands-off God is somehow more rational than an intervening God. Yes, it is great to appreciate that the Sustainer of creation (I say Sustainer because "Creator" tends to evoke the thought that religionists must assume that stories of creation refer to physical creation, as though the perfect "Creator" somehow at one time had no creation) is far beyond anyone's conception, but wouldn't that also be a pretty weak God which COULDN'T intervene in creation and would somehow forget about His creatures because they were too small for Him? Just because some people interpret power as being aloof doesn't mean that's how God sees it (Scriptures certainly don't see it that way).
Similarly, I don't think that an intervening God falls within the realm of science, at least not within the sense you are describing it, as a means of summarily dismissing such a possibility. If on occasion, God may intervene in the creation He created, how can that be disproven? You can say it is not logical, but that doesn't make it untrue. It would be like a character in a video game arguing that the programmer of the game never made exceptions to his actions; how would he know??... Do I think that science should put itself on hold because such things are possible? Absolutely not--on the contrary. But I think it would help for us to have a little humility to say things in this universe have time and again proven themselves to be so interesting and unfathomable (ala Einstein grappling with quantum theory) even on the measurable dimensions, that it may well be possible that there are also transcendent realities beyond my own immediate understanding... Besides being more interesting and less nihilistic, it could even make the world a bit more harmonious if atheists didn't assume out of hand that their fellow human beings who believed in God, even a personal intervening God, were helpless irrational idiots...
Or, with a firm belief in a God who wishes us to master a scientific understanding of His creation (I'm a Baha'i) in order to be of service in this world, and which insists that we be humble with our own ideas, we might be more inclined than we otherwise would be to insist on discovering the real truth of a situation. Other prominent individuals exist who find perfect harmony in science and religion (the head of the Human Genome project I found particularly articulate).
When people make broad strokes against religion, I feel that it only engenders a deeper distrust of science and even animosity among some, just as when religious zealotry engenders deeper distrust of religion--both definitely lose out in the process. It also flies against recorded history as well, which can make abundantly clear that so many great scientific developments in the West are due to the actions of Arabs preserving and extending the science of the Greeks. Their motivation and inspiration was largely religious and encouraged by their leaders at the top as well, and it is wholly unfair to dismiss that because segments of their civilization have in recent years been in retrogression. Maybe if it weren't so fashionable to bash religion, one might discover that there are a lot more rational-minded religious people out there, doing great things for science as well (even spurred on by their religion), than some would has us believe.
The other problem is that in logic, if you allow a contradiction or paradox, you can prove about anything you want. Positing the existence of an omnipotent, sentient, all-powerful being as an axiom of any system of logic and thought will necessarily result in a system that can be used to prove anything whatsoever. So even though most believers might be considered "moderate", religion can always be used as an excuse for about any crazy thought you have.So can atheism. If there are no absolute standards, I can even claim that logic can be ignored (e.g., as some will dismiss scientific studies documenting higher marriage success rates for those who do not cohabit before marriage--that must just be religious propaganda)... A good literary example is Lord of the Flies... The ending results in the question, if the adults are also left to their own devices, what will be the result? Yes, it relies on a belief in the "super" natural; if it didn't, claims to universality (which have, as in history, led to successively larger units of communal organization) would ring pretty hollow. Religion can, has, and will cause people to think of things greater and act in greater ways. The question is 'what is a good religion which is consonant with material reality as well as necessarily transcending it?'. Shall we blame a lamp because it can be used to start a fire? I would think scientifically-minded people could appreciate the argument that a tool can be used for good or bad.
Skeptics and atheists, on the other hand, will usually require more rational logic, facts and proof before believing you.Unless it is about atheism, in which case most won't even listen to proofs for the existence of God and the like (and least in a manner which is genuinely truth-seeking without being full of a priori assumptions) because religionists are seen to "believe things that are by definition unprovable, irrational". Dogmatic materialism is still dogma...
The Baha'i Faith, per the Encyclopedia Britannica, is the 2nd most diverse religion in the world after Christianity in terms of the number of countries possessing a significant following of believers, and the Baha'i Faith is still severely persecuted in several countries, particularly Iran which was revealed in a secret memorandum obtained and publicized by the U.N. to have a secret blueprint to destroy the community externally as well as internally, but also Egypt which has recently been denying them a right to their vital ID cards, yet due to very emphatic admonitions from its Prophet-Founder, Baha'u'llah, against violence in the name of religion (e.g., "It is better to be killed than to kill" as applied to the context of organized religious warfare), Baha'is endure a great deal (while appealing to the national courts, the United Nations, etc.).
That's exactly why the current international structures do not work well as they could. Real international structures--as with national or local policing structures--increasingly need to actually have some real teeth AND the ability to override lesser interests (in this case nation-states) with a corresponding accountability to the electorate that can make the former possible in order to work in cases where one party doesn't want to cooperate.
But I think your choice of examples might have highlighted another deeper problem which doesn't seem to often find illumination in online discussions. Just maybe ask whether it is due to a complete transformation of the goodness of peoples' character that a few mere decades ago (and going back further and on and on) whether the US or Europe wouldn't like battlebots to fight against the other; maybe there is still a little capacity for a sense of superiority left over, even if the lessons of out-and-out imperialism have been well-learned the hard way. The killer in me is the killer in you...
Thank you...glad to receive a thoughtful reply...
"That is dangerous with the current thinking of the UN. For one, they see..."
You mean the current thinking of the UN bureaucracy or the rest of the whole world? The former has no power of its own, so its hard to speak of the U.N. as though its "us" and "them". It may seem to make sense to refer to "them" in the case of the bureaucracy of the U.N., but, (a) they have no power outside of that given to them by the nations that send them there, and (b) U.S. citizens are also heavily represented within U.N. bodies. Blaming the U.N. is really blaming ourselves.
As an American and world citizen, I believe humanity is already capable of democracy even though I may disagree with some decisions, even though some governments might not be capable or interested in it (see my qualification you also refer to), and even if that means giving away some power (which the Founding Fathers realized the states needed to--and the U.S. did in more recent history by being part of the historic WTO). We can't have the cake and eat it too. We can believe in democracy, and believe it applies to humanity, or we can believe in selfishness and our own egos. It may take a lot, but we ought to be humble enough to admit that, despite what our pundits in the media would have us believe, we are not always right either. That doesn't mean giving away the house--on the contrary, we should be very intelligent in any sharing of power, so that it won't violate our own basic values; but the sharing of power is necessary not only for idealistic reasons in our belief in democracy--but also in practical reasons (no one can trust the U.N. if it is subject to the whims of just a handful of countries).
"For one, they see the solution for pretty much anything to be to drain money from the successful nations and give it to the poorer ones -- and they're not good at recognizing which is which (except that they know the US is their money pot)."
The U.S. pays only a tiny fraction of its economy to the U.N.--an institution which has had tremendous successes in a number of areas and which is absolutely vital, as all politicians will recognize even after rhetoric against the U.N. which may get them elected. Don't get drawn into a line politicians like to use to get elected. There are cases of corruption, sure, but that can only be blamed on the oversight of it my member states--and we're a very influential one of those members.
Some good reading:
"They also would be able to enforce political correctness. Nothing could be muttered that would offend anyone in the world,"
I'd be in favor of people not offending others... I think our religious traditions (if you are religious) are all supposed to believe the same... This doesn't mean giving away rights though, nor does it mean avoiding a chance to speak up against rights violated by others elsewhere; allowing the world a qualified chance to vote in affairs determined by a body whose decisions affect it (in a real way--not the mere popularity contest which U.N. votes are now), is not, in my view, doing so...
"except the Muslims would still be allowed to chant "Death to Israel" as they are an oppressed, protected class."
Self-determination and respect for diversity over conformity are both part of the existing founding and operating documents of the current U.N. and would need to be so for a strengthened U.N. Certainly any reformed U.N. would and should not be consti
Call for a global summit to revamp the United Nations in order that it can be reformed and capable of gaining the trust of the world as it distributes necessary global policing work:
1) Enable General Assembly decisions to be binding on nation-states (with certain limits to avoid over-centralization).
2) Add a Peoples' Congress to the General Assembly to make the voting a bit more proportional to population (if you think people in countries like India are satisfied to trust the votes of the G.A. when they have 100,000 times less per capita voting power than the island-state of Tuvalu than I'll sell you bottled water...)
3) Ensure that there are minimum standards for human rights in order for a country to even belong to the U.N. Its ridiculous to allow an unelected dictator (and no doubt an oppressive one at that) to get the vote of a whole nation.
4) Abolish Security Council permanent membership (despite our having a veto, it doesn't do the U.N. which we need any good for credibility). The Articles of Confederation didn't work for us, so it's no wonder they haven't worked well for the world.
5) Allow the International Court to arbitrate regardless of whether both nations agreed to submit their case to it. It'd be pretty silly for our own Supreme Court not to be able to vote unless both parties wanted to bring their case to it. Duh!
and...
agree on a global compact that ensures that:
1) Disarmament is universal and internationally monitored (asking others to disarm is not only ridiculous when you haven't done so, but it doesn't encourage others to support your efforts to disarm others)
2) Borders are fixed by international consensus and violators of a border (or who violate the disarmament agreement) will find their government completely destroyed by the whole international community. Preemptive strikes are quite legitimate and potentially effective when undertaken by an elected higher authority (like a police force raiding a place stockpiling dangerous weapons)--as opposed to depending on nation-state vigilantism.
and
Agree on a universal auxiliary language--make English a universal second (or third) language around the world (if countries like English as much as we think they do, that should be no problem, if they're allowed to vote on it), and if not, have a vote to consider a constructed or some other language (it's better than the current situation of citizenry and immigrants being expected to have the impossible task of learning a multiplicity of languages they weren't taught as children).
and, while this one is probably the biggest long shot,
Introduce a national referendum to consider abolishing political parties, campaigning, etc. (while keeping universal suffrage, secret ballot, etc.) Just as local governments don't need parties and the circus of campaigns or electioneering to function, neither does a national one. There'd be a whole lot more scientists elected if the system didn't depend on requiring a person to engage in that whole circus.
People will maintain on the one hand that violent video games can have no effect on society, and yet bet their money on companies which rely on the periodic display of images (i.e., advertising) to influence the behavior of others. We all imagine we are immune, but as science is showing here and has shown (real science and real religion don't need to contradict, btw, if we could ever get over the false dichotomy), whether we like it or not--garbage in, garbage out... We can't keep insisting that there are 'good' and 'bad' people (or those who would have snapped anyways, as we tell ourselves)...
Thanks... I was attempting a pun with the "viral" reference, but thank you for your insights...
How about something more like the GPL? Wouldn't a "viral" license be more appropriate?
While it can be admittedly sometimes entertaining watching the zingers fly back and forth, especially when one is cheering for those expressing a truth one believes in, I strongly believe that the oneupsmanship that is more common among men, especially Western men, I believe this approach is both anathema to many women, and not the best way to disseminate well-thought out opinions or inform others (or even to be funny). And as soon as any emotion is showed, or an appeal to balance, the very typical mockery ensues. Such a quick-to-argue culture is not a sign of healthy debate--it is a sign of partisan-infected, non-learning-mode immaturity and inefficiency that is sadly a part of the wider culture as well (we also are really, really deluding ourselves by thinking that our partisan system is necessary to democracy and the best way to find a qualified candidate--why do you think so few scientists get elected?). This is childish and typical of a masculine extreme. When I say masculine, this is an excess definitely correlated with many males (really, how many women engage in this kind of battling?) but this is not mutually exclusive of coexisting in society with feminine extremes either, so don't take this as being about women-good, men-bad and respond in kind).
In my (fringe minority?) opinion, the biggest threat is not having a great regular expressions tool... Though it is able to do single-line replaces, I'd really hope for more power from a community-supported product. (I know, I know, Where's the patch?) And that's about the only reason I ever use Word (even though you gotta watch out for those darn curly quotes)...
There's already a dedicated wiki like this through the for-profit Wikia, Wikianswers, whereas the Wikipedia reference desk is another well-trafficked (and ad-free) option.