Bookstores "making an effort" of their own free will to provide audio and braille for some of their stock is different than suing a media outlet for not providing all of their media as such. My point stands. Sue bookstores if you are that outraged about it.
Then let's start suing bookstores for not providing all their books on CD. Those bastards aren't making proper accommodations for the "differently-abled," let's hang em!
I still toy with the idea of going back to KDE 3 every once in a while. I probably would if I thought I could pull it off without breaking everything. 4 still seems slow, buggy, and lacking anything worthwhile other than gloss (that doesn't work right, and seems to cause just as many problems when disabled). That's not even to say it took several minor versions over several months to re-enable major functionality not shipped with 4.
Blah blah video drivers, KDE3 never had issues with them, and yet 4 does, regardless of if composting is enabled or not. Why does Linux have to play follow the leader while breaking core functionality? People aren't going to start using Linux because it can do the Apple desktop cube spin, it's as simple as that.
I agree with that. There is of course a gray area in things where the identification of the positive claim is ambiguous, plus situations where some theory is required even in absence of supporting evidence. There is also the case where a claim is in the process of being proven and thus it is hard to sort out how legitimate the belief in it is at a given moment, especially among those proving it. And of course what you allude to, cases where it is simply irrelevant what people think about a matter given lack of support either way. There are even the deeper epistemological issues you mention as well, which are true mindfucks that far from saying much about god, potentially mean reality as a whole does not exist.
However, all those subtleties were not really relevant to the specific claim that atheism is a positive belief, which is actually a fairly clean and straightforward logical situation despite how many people are hung up on it, so I left them out. I'm not about to bring up Cogito Ergo Sum to people who seem to not want to figure out what the burden of proof is; it's just not adventitious to being understood.
Jews and Christians both have the same books in their scripture documenting some pretty direct intervention. Of course the Christians lampshaded it as people started to wise up by claiming Jesus was the last prophet (I never completely understood why there was a need for a last one, it seems like more would be better, but I am hardly a theologian), but they still think it happened at some point in the past. Muslims may or may not depending on exactly what they believe. Shintos are sort of a special case, but they're barely a religion, anyway; more classifiable as a sort of organized superstition. Buddhists vary wildly. Don't get me started on Hindus.
Even if the god(s) do not intervene in daily affairs, any creator god (and most are) bear the burden of everything they created. Now there is the Matrix philosophy that we have to have good and bad, but personally, I don't buy it. Things are rather good for most people now, with some exceptions, but for most of history, nearly all of humanity lived (or not) in abject squalor. Hardly proof god is a nice guy to have made that happen, even if he is "hands off" to progressing human affairs.
"There was a time when people did not believe rocks could fall from the sky. It was silly to believe that rocks could fall from the sky, common sense told you that that was silly. Then we came to understand where meteors could come from and proved it. Does this mean that there were no meteors until it was proved?"
No, it means we did not know what meteors were, and anyone claiming they fell from the sky held the burden of proof, just like the people of the time claiming they were thrown at sinful mortals by angry gods. Now we know what was going on. It is working as intended. Your point?
Which is irrelevant, since every major religion has made it apparent that their gods are very concerned with human affairs. Sure, maybe if the Jains are right... but if the Jains are right, you're screwed to begin with.
"That doesn't make you agnostics in the strict sense. Atheists believe that God does not exist. Agnostics have an absence of belief in the existence or non-existence of God. The existence of circumstances which would cause both (some) atheists and (some) agnostics to switch from their existing beliefs (or lack thereof) to a belief that God does exist doesn't suddenly make the existing beliefs equivalent."
You cannot believe in the lack of something other than to not believe it exists, so your assertion that "Atheists believe that God does not exist" is absurd to begin with. Lacking an opinion is not the same, nor does that make you an agnostic: it makes you totally uninterested in the matter and thus not likely to go on slashdot to moan about atheists being ignorant. Neither atheists nor agnostics believe in god. They are the same. Sorry if that doesn't jive with your worldview. You are an atheist; or you are a theist. Agnostic doesn't exist.
"Right, because atheists have a positive belief in the non-existence of God"
Do you realize that claiming anyone holds a "positive belief in nonexistence" of anything is stupider than it sounds to you? That is literally impossible. A "positive belief in nonexistence" only exists in the acceptance of lack of proof for. Even insisting something as absurd as, say, England does not exist, is not a belief in a negative: it can only be based in the rejection of all positive proof. Since there is no positive proof of god, god does not exist. This is not a belief. This is a factual statement. As I said: the only proof of a negative is lack of proof of the positive. Belief in a negative is absurd. There is no such thing, so your accusations are outright slander as far as I am concerned.
"which is different than the agnostics' absence of belief in the existence or non-existence of God"
This is only possible if you have no opinion on the matter at all. Considering you both are mouthing off on slashdot, that cannot be the case, so you must be confused.
"The atheist perspective may come from a particular construction of the burden of proof which holds that the negation of an existential claim is held to be true unless the existential claim is proven, but this is different than the construction you offer above, as the negation of a positive claim is itself a positive claim."
There is no positive claim. There is no proof at all - zilch - nada - that god exists, that cannot be explained by other means. "The negation of a positive claim is itself a positive claim" is totally false, to the point of a paradox. If you assert A, and I do not believe in A, that does not imply I believe in the lack of A; because then there is itself a belief in the lack of belief of A, and so on.
I consider your entire post a collection of logical fallacies and I am not even sure why I replied, other than the expectation that other "agnostics" will mod it up out of the mistaken belief that they are the only people in the universe who are right.
Yet god allowed those people to act in its name. Either it is incompetent or it condones those activities. To say nothing of all the other evil god, for inexplicable reasons, allows to exist.
"How exactly is the walled garden a threat to/. users? If Apple were in Microsoft's position/. users would be people who had the developer's SDK (which is only $99 not some staggering sum) and they could do whatever they wanted on their machines."
That you are alright with having to pay to develop applications for the primary computer OS is exactly why you cannot be taken seriously on the matter. If Apple were in Microsoft's position, you are right that we would all have developer licenses: because I have no illusion that Apple would allow competing OSes like Linux to exist, thus making them the only option. Further, all computer-related commerce would be subject to an Apple tax, like it is now with most Apple products (the compulsory "app store"). This is not acceptable. This is not an improvement. This is far worse than Microsoft is capable of.
You are perfect proof why I do not trust Apple and why I consider Apple fans to be themselves ignorant and dangerous to computing.
I shake my fist so often my arm perpetually hurts. Sometimes I have to switch hands.
"Yeah, that whole pot kettle comment thing doesn't really work when you are talking about big, diverse groups of people."
But I'm not, am I. I'm talking about a specific group of people who hold a specific line of thought and do specific things. There might not be much signal to noise, but there is a signal.
Actually, it is. Lack of proof for a positive = proof of a negative. It is the only proof of a negative which can exist. It does not mean the negative is necessarily true, but that the negative is the only rational answer currently possible without guessing. That is why agnostics do not understand logic: they are, in fact, not a separate entity, but either atheists or deists who are misrepresenting themselves for social reasons.
"The problem is Theism and Atheism are both based on ignorance (a belief or lack of belief, not Truth nor facts.) Agnosticism is a step in the right direction -- wisdom _begins_ when you realize you know nothing. Only the mystic has Truth (due to experience.)"
"Agnostics" saying this more does not make it more true.
Courtesy of the scientific method and burden of proof, a positive claim is false until proven. That doesn't imply ignorance. God does not exist until god is proven to exist. Further, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so god is extremely unlikely until some sort of proof starts showing up.
Here's a test. When it comes to elves, do you say you are "agnostic?" Elves have just as much proof as god. In fact, both Icelandic and LOTR elves have the exact same proof; so you should be agnostic to them both coexisting. Yet no sane person would say "I am not sure" - they would say, "no, elves do not exist."
That's the problem with agnostics. The word means nothing. Atheists ARE agnostics in the strict sense: if god were proven, we would have to accept that god exists (even if that god is evil/incompetent). Until then, we do not say "well, god MIGHT exist, so we should use a special word to make it look like we're not against religion, just in cane," just like you do not say "hmm, well..." when asked if you believe Middle Earth is literally located in New Zealand. The difference that I see existing between atheists and self-proclaimed "agnostics" (most of whom are actually deists trying to sound more intelligent) is that one understands logical processes and probability, and one does not.
Please stop insulting people using your misunderstanding of common words.
No, it isn't possible. A million years is not a long time at all in evolutionary terms. Expand that timeline quite a lot and it becomes very possible, just not all that probable.
If god is real, I am pretty sure I don't want to meet him, given all the crap that happened over the course of history in his name. He must be either evil or incompetent.
Yeah, go ahead and raise them by telling them lies. Then they can either be effectively mentally handicapped the rest of their lives living in fear of a being that does not exist, or figure out you lied to them in face of the facts and learn to hate you for it.
Maybe we need to institute basic science tests before people are allowed to vote. Not totally behind the idea, but people like you make it sounds like a good tradeoff.
We kind of are dumb, though. Especially some of us. I don't see how this is in any way impossible... we have a contingent of creationists who believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted. If anything, this is the logical conclusion of that line of thinking.
Don't let hominems blind you to the fact there really is a lot of stupidity running wild in this country.
Teach one lie with another? What's next, classes on how to hunt haggis?
In any case, the children who attended these schools can say goodbye to ever being accepted into a university without some serious remedial studies, like a full on associates degree. Even then, I doubt any of them will be getting into MIT or CMU any time soon.
"Geek cred must be constantly watered by the dripping spittle of hate against a gadget company, and refusing to let others (The Sheep!) like what we don't like!"
Which is why half the comments here, and on the last story which will not be named, nearly all of them, were blindly defending Apple, no matter what?
Some of us are seriously worried about what would happen were Apple in Microsoft's position. Say what you will about Microsoft, they have never yet attempted the walled garden to the level Apple has made a business model and sold to billions of people with questionable claims. Speaking of which - pot, kettle, black, since most people complaining about Apple being attacked love to go and do the exact same thing they accuse others of when a story about Microsoft (and even Linux at times) comes up.
I'd personally prefer if neither company existed, but Microsoft is the incompetent demon I know, Apple is the devil I don't. They have already proven they are able to manipulate the market to absurd levels (iTunes, locked down mobile OSes and service lockin, increasingly walled off desktop OSes, etc) in ways that harm ALL computer users, not just Apple users. You can bet when Apple does something sneaky like quietly remove implications that they are immune to viruses I am going to pay attention. If that looks like irrational hatred like you claim it is, well, I think it says a lot about how objective you are to your "gadget company."
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Nether have I, because I am the Pope, and therefore am always right!
Bookstores "making an effort" of their own free will to provide audio and braille for some of their stock is different than suing a media outlet for not providing all of their media as such. My point stands. Sue bookstores if you are that outraged about it.
Constitutional republic. The first bit is important.
Even the militant politically correct will not demand subtitles for porn. Personally, I say we start a movement for totally silent porn.
Then let's start suing bookstores for not providing all their books on CD. Those bastards aren't making proper accommodations for the "differently-abled," let's hang em!
I still toy with the idea of going back to KDE 3 every once in a while. I probably would if I thought I could pull it off without breaking everything. 4 still seems slow, buggy, and lacking anything worthwhile other than gloss (that doesn't work right, and seems to cause just as many problems when disabled). That's not even to say it took several minor versions over several months to re-enable major functionality not shipped with 4.
Blah blah video drivers, KDE3 never had issues with them, and yet 4 does, regardless of if composting is enabled or not. Why does Linux have to play follow the leader while breaking core functionality? People aren't going to start using Linux because it can do the Apple desktop cube spin, it's as simple as that.
It has been the Year of the Linux Desktop since I started using Linux primarily. Everyone else I attribute to measurement errors.
Don't tell me I don't understand statistics!
Yeah, Japan has some nice laws. We shouldn't get only the crappy ones if we're going to emulate them!
I agree with that. There is of course a gray area in things where the identification of the positive claim is ambiguous, plus situations where some theory is required even in absence of supporting evidence. There is also the case where a claim is in the process of being proven and thus it is hard to sort out how legitimate the belief in it is at a given moment, especially among those proving it. And of course what you allude to, cases where it is simply irrelevant what people think about a matter given lack of support either way. There are even the deeper epistemological issues you mention as well, which are true mindfucks that far from saying much about god, potentially mean reality as a whole does not exist.
However, all those subtleties were not really relevant to the specific claim that atheism is a positive belief, which is actually a fairly clean and straightforward logical situation despite how many people are hung up on it, so I left them out. I'm not about to bring up Cogito Ergo Sum to people who seem to not want to figure out what the burden of proof is; it's just not adventitious to being understood.
Jews and Christians both have the same books in their scripture documenting some pretty direct intervention. Of course the Christians lampshaded it as people started to wise up by claiming Jesus was the last prophet (I never completely understood why there was a need for a last one, it seems like more would be better, but I am hardly a theologian), but they still think it happened at some point in the past. Muslims may or may not depending on exactly what they believe. Shintos are sort of a special case, but they're barely a religion, anyway; more classifiable as a sort of organized superstition. Buddhists vary wildly. Don't get me started on Hindus.
Even if the god(s) do not intervene in daily affairs, any creator god (and most are) bear the burden of everything they created. Now there is the Matrix philosophy that we have to have good and bad, but personally, I don't buy it. Things are rather good for most people now, with some exceptions, but for most of history, nearly all of humanity lived (or not) in abject squalor. Hardly proof god is a nice guy to have made that happen, even if he is "hands off" to progressing human affairs.
"There was a time when people did not believe rocks could fall from the sky. It was silly to believe that rocks could fall from the sky, common sense told you that that was silly. Then we came to understand where meteors could come from and proved it. Does this mean that there were no meteors until it was proved?"
No, it means we did not know what meteors were, and anyone claiming they fell from the sky held the burden of proof, just like the people of the time claiming they were thrown at sinful mortals by angry gods. Now we know what was going on. It is working as intended. Your point?
Which is irrelevant, since every major religion has made it apparent that their gods are very concerned with human affairs. Sure, maybe if the Jains are right... but if the Jains are right, you're screwed to begin with.
"That doesn't make you agnostics in the strict sense. Atheists believe that God does not exist. Agnostics have an absence of belief in the existence or non-existence of God. The existence of circumstances which would cause both (some) atheists and (some) agnostics to switch from their existing beliefs (or lack thereof) to a belief that God does exist doesn't suddenly make the existing beliefs equivalent."
You cannot believe in the lack of something other than to not believe it exists, so your assertion that "Atheists believe that God does not exist" is absurd to begin with. Lacking an opinion is not the same, nor does that make you an agnostic: it makes you totally uninterested in the matter and thus not likely to go on slashdot to moan about atheists being ignorant. Neither atheists nor agnostics believe in god. They are the same. Sorry if that doesn't jive with your worldview. You are an atheist; or you are a theist. Agnostic doesn't exist.
"Right, because atheists have a positive belief in the non-existence of God"
Do you realize that claiming anyone holds a "positive belief in nonexistence" of anything is stupider than it sounds to you? That is literally impossible. A "positive belief in nonexistence" only exists in the acceptance of lack of proof for. Even insisting something as absurd as, say, England does not exist, is not a belief in a negative: it can only be based in the rejection of all positive proof. Since there is no positive proof of god, god does not exist. This is not a belief. This is a factual statement. As I said: the only proof of a negative is lack of proof of the positive. Belief in a negative is absurd. There is no such thing, so your accusations are outright slander as far as I am concerned.
"which is different than the agnostics' absence of belief in the existence or non-existence of God"
This is only possible if you have no opinion on the matter at all. Considering you both are mouthing off on slashdot, that cannot be the case, so you must be confused.
"The atheist perspective may come from a particular construction of the burden of proof which holds that the negation of an existential claim is held to be true unless the existential claim is proven, but this is different than the construction you offer above, as the negation of a positive claim is itself a positive claim."
There is no positive claim. There is no proof at all - zilch - nada - that god exists, that cannot be explained by other means. "The negation of a positive claim is itself a positive claim" is totally false, to the point of a paradox. If you assert A, and I do not believe in A, that does not imply I believe in the lack of A; because then there is itself a belief in the lack of belief of A, and so on.
I consider your entire post a collection of logical fallacies and I am not even sure why I replied, other than the expectation that other "agnostics" will mod it up out of the mistaken belief that they are the only people in the universe who are right.
Yet god allowed those people to act in its name. Either it is incompetent or it condones those activities. To say nothing of all the other evil god, for inexplicable reasons, allows to exist.
"How exactly is the walled garden a threat to /. users? If Apple were in Microsoft's position /. users would be people who had the developer's SDK (which is only $99 not some staggering sum) and they could do whatever they wanted on their machines."
That you are alright with having to pay to develop applications for the primary computer OS is exactly why you cannot be taken seriously on the matter. If Apple were in Microsoft's position, you are right that we would all have developer licenses: because I have no illusion that Apple would allow competing OSes like Linux to exist, thus making them the only option. Further, all computer-related commerce would be subject to an Apple tax, like it is now with most Apple products (the compulsory "app store"). This is not acceptable. This is not an improvement. This is far worse than Microsoft is capable of.
You are perfect proof why I do not trust Apple and why I consider Apple fans to be themselves ignorant and dangerous to computing.
I shake my fist so often my arm perpetually hurts. Sometimes I have to switch hands.
"Yeah, that whole pot kettle comment thing doesn't really work when you are talking about big, diverse groups of people."
But I'm not, am I. I'm talking about a specific group of people who hold a specific line of thought and do specific things. There might not be much signal to noise, but there is a signal.
Actually, it is. Lack of proof for a positive = proof of a negative. It is the only proof of a negative which can exist. It does not mean the negative is necessarily true, but that the negative is the only rational answer currently possible without guessing. That is why agnostics do not understand logic: they are, in fact, not a separate entity, but either atheists or deists who are misrepresenting themselves for social reasons.
"The problem is Theism and Atheism are both based on ignorance (a belief or lack of belief, not Truth nor facts.) Agnosticism is a step in the right direction -- wisdom _begins_ when you realize you know nothing. Only the mystic has Truth (due to experience.)"
"Agnostics" saying this more does not make it more true.
Courtesy of the scientific method and burden of proof, a positive claim is false until proven. That doesn't imply ignorance. God does not exist until god is proven to exist. Further, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so god is extremely unlikely until some sort of proof starts showing up.
Here's a test. When it comes to elves, do you say you are "agnostic?" Elves have just as much proof as god. In fact, both Icelandic and LOTR elves have the exact same proof; so you should be agnostic to them both coexisting. Yet no sane person would say "I am not sure" - they would say, "no, elves do not exist."
That's the problem with agnostics. The word means nothing. Atheists ARE agnostics in the strict sense: if god were proven, we would have to accept that god exists (even if that god is evil/incompetent). Until then, we do not say "well, god MIGHT exist, so we should use a special word to make it look like we're not against religion, just in cane," just like you do not say "hmm, well..." when asked if you believe Middle Earth is literally located in New Zealand. The difference that I see existing between atheists and self-proclaimed "agnostics" (most of whom are actually deists trying to sound more intelligent) is that one understands logical processes and probability, and one does not.
Please stop insulting people using your misunderstanding of common words.
No, it isn't possible. A million years is not a long time at all in evolutionary terms. Expand that timeline quite a lot and it becomes very possible, just not all that probable.
If god is real, I am pretty sure I don't want to meet him, given all the crap that happened over the course of history in his name. He must be either evil or incompetent.
The only debate is between people quoting an ancient fairy tale and people who want the truth respected.
Yeah, go ahead and raise them by telling them lies. Then they can either be effectively mentally handicapped the rest of their lives living in fear of a being that does not exist, or figure out you lied to them in face of the facts and learn to hate you for it.
Maybe we need to institute basic science tests before people are allowed to vote. Not totally behind the idea, but people like you make it sounds like a good tradeoff.
We kind of are dumb, though. Especially some of us. I don't see how this is in any way impossible... we have a contingent of creationists who believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted. If anything, this is the logical conclusion of that line of thinking.
Don't let hominems blind you to the fact there really is a lot of stupidity running wild in this country.
Teach one lie with another? What's next, classes on how to hunt haggis?
In any case, the children who attended these schools can say goodbye to ever being accepted into a university without some serious remedial studies, like a full on associates degree. Even then, I doubt any of them will be getting into MIT or CMU any time soon.
"Geek cred must be constantly watered by the dripping spittle of hate against a gadget company, and refusing to let others (The Sheep!) like what we don't like!"
Which is why half the comments here, and on the last story which will not be named, nearly all of them, were blindly defending Apple, no matter what?
Some of us are seriously worried about what would happen were Apple in Microsoft's position. Say what you will about Microsoft, they have never yet attempted the walled garden to the level Apple has made a business model and sold to billions of people with questionable claims. Speaking of which - pot, kettle, black, since most people complaining about Apple being attacked love to go and do the exact same thing they accuse others of when a story about Microsoft (and even Linux at times) comes up.
I'd personally prefer if neither company existed, but Microsoft is the incompetent demon I know, Apple is the devil I don't. They have already proven they are able to manipulate the market to absurd levels (iTunes, locked down mobile OSes and service lockin, increasingly walled off desktop OSes, etc) in ways that harm ALL computer users, not just Apple users. You can bet when Apple does something sneaky like quietly remove implications that they are immune to viruses I am going to pay attention. If that looks like irrational hatred like you claim it is, well, I think it says a lot about how objective you are to your "gadget company."