Not entirely, as the empirical requirement discounts personal experience. For example, the only way I know that I am a conscious entity is because I experience it. There's no empirical test for consciousness, and as a result the only way I "know" that people around me experience it like I do is implication. They seem to behave and respond in the same way I do, therefore I assume they are experiencing the same thing.
Say I observe something unexpected, like I meet an alien. The alien tells me he's the only one here, and they won't be back because earth sucks and they hate it. The he leaves. Now I *know* this happened because I experienced it, but if I told you about it you'd think I was crazy. (Just as an aside - I've never really met any aliens) So while my personal experiences can't be used to prove something to you, they are how I acertain the truthfulness of most things I know. The same is true of everyone. Things that don't correlate with our personal experience, we tend to disregard. Science is a useful way of applying some rules that allow us to show that something we think is true works most/all of the time, but it doesn't apply to the full spectrum of human experience (eg: consciousness example above) and it ultimately can't identify something to be the truth - just the best model based on our current ability to observe. The Ptolemaic System is a classic example of that.
So what am I saying? I'm saying that religion (or more appropriately, faith) is a personal thing, is not untrue simply because it doesn't fit within natural science, and while you're free to select your own belief system you shouldn't belittle others for having their own. There's an infinate number of absurdities out there, which includes the one you believe, and at least one of them will be true.
Except you've missed the fact that the athiests are the ones who's belief system calls for "empirical evidence" in order to acertain truth, as opposed to science which requires empirical evidence in order to demonstrate that a particular model works. Let me ramble off a few examples: You could be a brain in a vat. The world may have come into existance last Tuesday with the appearence of age. This universe could be a computer simulation. Etc, etc, etc. All of these are impossible to produce any empirical evidence for, as they hypothosise about things outside our ability to observe, but each could still be the truth.
Actually, the simulation one is the most probable truth of our existance, based on mathematical probability and an optomistic appliction of Moore's Law - I saw this great doco on quantum mechanics where this quantum physisist explained it. Very compelling, but a story for another time.
Anyway, the point is that suggesting you need empirical evidence for God is stupid, as by definition things that are supernatural don't fit within a purely natural dicipline like science. A lack of empirical evidence for something doesn't make it false - It just says nothing one way or the other. And as is the case with the idea of things supernatural, there's been enough non-empirical (subjective, implied, non-repeatable, etc) evidence around the place that I'm convinced there's more to our reality then you think there is. Make up your own mind, sure. But don't belittle me for having a different POV.
Crazy atheist evengelists and their "empirical supremecy", I don't know...:P
In a simular discussion previously on Slashdot, someone raised these writings, which I hadn't heard of previously. They expressed a simular sentiment to yours - that these cannot be used as supporting evidence for a historical Jesus, as they are considered suspect. So I got onto Wikipedia, and Google and did some research. You know what I found? Although there is a direct reference to Jesus in Josephus's work that is disputed, the rest of his work is considered authentic by most scholars - including the following text:
"...Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others..."
Note that Wikipedia asserts: "The above quotation from the Antiquities is considered authentic by the majority of scholars.". (ref).
Seems less ridiculous to bring it up in the light of, you know, the facts and stuff.
That's a incorrect challenge in response to the parent post's assertion. The question is not who can or cannot explore these issues, but who has a motive to do so, and who has historically done so.
While I think consideration of the statistical risk vs. benefit of immunisation is useful, there are some things that make that difficult. The thing that concerns me the most is that the risk statistics for immunisations are flawed because doctors don't report complications. I have first-hand experience of this - my father recently was planning a trip to China and had to get I think Hep A or Hep B vaccines - not sure which of the two. Anyway, immediately following the first injection, he got really sick. He went and told the doctor who'd given him the shot, and his response was "Oh you must have caught the flu". Except, none of his symptoms were in any way flu-like, and it came on suddenly after the injection, and then slowly subsided. So, one person who would have contributed to the statistics of mild complications gets ignored. He later mentinoed this to an endocrinologist he'd been seeing, who said he'd seen two people die due to simular circumstances, and that my dad should not get the remaining shots. The GP of the two victims had advised them the reactions were not anything to do with the vaccine, or were not servere enough to be concerned over, so they went back and got the rest. Each successive dose caused a worse reaction - one died on the second shot, and one on the third. Whether or not these ended up being included in the vaccine risk statistics - I don't know. But the first reaction certainly was ignored, as it was with my dad.
I think history shows pretty clearly that if power and/or money are involved, expect conspiricy rather then transparency. Having a vaccine on the vaccination schedule would be worth an absolute fortune to drug companies, and having their vacccine seen as 100% (or close to 100%) safe is essential to maintaining public confidence. It means that people on Slashdot will happily make negative "you must also be a creationist" comments to those who dispute the validity of immunising your newborn against an STD. Me personally, I don't see how prompting your 2 month old child's immune system to develop antibodies for 9 complex diseases at once can logically be considered "safe", and considering the money involved, can we really trust the information presented to be objective? I'm in Australia, and for some reason they just increased the number of vaccines given at what was originally 3 months, and also rolled it back to 2 months. Why? No one answers that question. They just tell us to trust they're doing it in our best interests. I call BS - they're doing it in the drug companies' best interests.
With my kids, I've delayed their vaccinations for diseases that have significant risks according to those risks, and not bothered with ones like Chicken Pox. I can't see why you'd bother being vaccinated against Chicken Pox. Because we can? Doesn't seem particularly sensible to me. Especially considering that actually having Chicken Pox is more effective in becoming immune to future infection, and the vaccine causes you to have more servere bouts of shingles if contracted. Oh but I hear they've got a vaccine coming for shingles, so you can buy that one too. (note: sarcasm)
Ultimately for me, do I trust a government or a scientist (or groups thereof) to make decisions in the best interests of my children? The answer is no. They may possibly make decisions in the best interests of society at times, but from a purely logical, rational perspective, it is possible for someone to justify letting my child die if it was for the "greater good" of society. Call me selfish, but I'm not really into that. I'll take all the information they can give me (and trust me, I read a lot of it), but in the end my wife and I will decide what's best for our kids.
To what do you refer when you say the One True Belief? Not believing in religion is not a creed. I don't believe in God in the same way that I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy.
And thus you have beliefs about both god, and the Tooth Fairy. I also share your belief that the Tooth Fairy is not real, as most people over the age of 7 do, but it doesn't make it any less a belief. You might say it's the most obvious belief, but we form belief systems about everything we encounter, and then those beliefs form our worldview. Therefore, atheism is very much a worldview. Its a set of common beliefs that you and other people share. Your belief about god comes from being presented with the idea of god and then using the knowledge you had or later gained, you've formed a belief about the existance of such an entity. The only way atheism could be a nothing is if you'd never been presented with the idea of there being a god, and therefore had not yet formed your own belief about it.
I believe that this chair I'm sitting on will hold me up. I believe that this message I'm typing will appear on Slashdot. I believe that you are a human, not a computer responding to these messages. All of these are fairly obvious beliefs - but the fact that they are obvious makes them no less beliefs.
Beyond that, today's particular "New Atheism" as espouced by your friend Sam Harris and also his colleagues such as Richard Dawkins has further comminality in its beliefs that I find scary. They believe that to believe in a god is mental illness. They believe that parents should not teach their children about the religion they follow. These are beliefs - and dangerous ones. Because they seek to present people who don't hold the same beliefs as being lesser people, and not worthy of the same freedoms and rights as the so-called "brights".
I have particular beliefs that include there being a god, and they are shared by a group of people I like to spend time with. You have a set of beliefs, and you like to read stuff written by people who share those beliefs, obviously, and probably like to discuss with them also. The argument that atheism is a nothing is just designed to try and create this imaginary separation between atheists and those they are trying to get rid of. It's not socially acceptable to discriminate against one belief because you hold another. But if you can argue that your beliefs are not beliefs at all; that you are superiour because you have no belief - then you can say that belief is the enemy, and that means of discriminating against those you don't like hasn't been tried yet.
Atheism is not a set of beliefs? Sorry - but I'm not buying it, and neither are a lot of people on both sides of the god-existance fence. You hold a belief about the existance of god. Your beliefs are no more special then mine, no matter what your New Atheist Priesthood(tm) might like to tell you.
Just a small question...
If the rockets couldn't push the dust away because there's no atmosphere to carry their force, how exactly did they push the lunar lander off the surface of the moon?
I always wonder about how we communicate with stuff we send into space if there's no atmosphere. My understanding (thanks to possibly incomplete memories of high school physics) is that radio waves require a medium through which to travel. What is that medium in the middle of nowhere in space? How do probes we send to the edge of our solar system send stuff back? Just curious - keen to know how it works.
I need to stop this conversation, because it's consuming a lot of my time. The last post in particular, contained articles from medical journals espousing the virtues of religion that I spent a great deal of time reading through (and references). However, you've completely ignored them and stuck with your "religion is mental illness" line. So I give up.
However, the truely marvellous thing about this conversation is that it's alerted me to just how much of the medical and scientific community think the opinions that you (and strangely, also Richard Dawkins) have expressed are arrogent nonsence. Religion is in general, not harmful, it's been shown in studies. Religion is useful, helpful, and positive both for the individual and society. You can hold that it's mental illness - that's your perogative. But it's in the face of the empirical evidence to the contrary.
So thanks for the discussion - I do appreciate it. I seem to concur with your previously published opinions on Halo 3 elsewhere on here, so hey - maybe we'll have a more same-sided discussion somewhere here in the future.
Cheers.
Can you see the arrogance in the claim that there is only one god and you know all about him?
That would be true if I claimed that. I claim that there's a book that explains all about how there's only one god and that it provides the stuff I and everyone else needs to know about him. I didn't write it, and to be honest, I really would like to spend a whole lot more time reading it. It never claims to be a science textbook, even though there's people who think it should be taken that way. It doesn't claim it will always be literal, although again - there's people who will say that it does. I can't tell you based on that book how exactly the world was created, how old it is, or what they should teach in science at school. But it talks a lot about God, documents things he did and people who believed in Him, and ultimately his plan to give me a hope. You can believe that's not real if you like. Just don't tell me I'm sick - there's nothing sicker then to go around trying to rob people of their hope, just so you can feel smart. Fuck you for that. Religion can be right or wrong, but what you and your ilk are doing is far worse. You're seeking to destroy something that although sometimes misused, ultimately exists to give people purpose and hope. Whether that hope is true or false, it's more then what you have. Dawkins' claim of "shouldn't this be enough" is obviously answered by a resounding "No!" as our society becomes more and more the way you and he would like it, and yet more people are offing themselves every year in dispair. Natural selection at it's finest, I'm sure. Ultimately, the issue of hope bears no relevance on whether or not God exists because hopes can be based on falsehoods. However, when speaking of life and death, to dismiss a hope of something beyond this as unnecessary is the greatest illness I can imagine - one that allows the bearer to grow numb while he kills everyone around him. Good luck with that.
You can't have it both ways, sorry. Either both good and evil of your faith is because of your faith, or neither is. Anything else is a claim that requires solid proof.
Except if it's my faith, and I know what it involves. As opposed to you, who look on and call anything that serves your purposes part of my faith. For example, Mormons call themselves Christians. But most other Christian groups say Mormans are not. They disagree with what are held by a large Christian population to be basic tennants of the Christian faith. You could exemplify the actions of Mormans and say "those people are part of your beliefs!", but you're WRONG. Because the set of beliefs I hold does not agree with the beliefs that Mormons adhere to. They're free to practice their religion, and even to call themselves Christians - it's their belief system. But it is at odds with mine. Consider this the same as atheists that think religion is OK, and atheists who think (like you) that religion is harmful and a mental illness. I could group all of you together and just put you under the banner of Atheism, but you might not like being attached to the same group of people who are voting to maintain people's freedom of religion - because although they don't believe there's a God, they can see the value in religion and religious communities, and therefore think that you and your cobelievers are WRONG. Read that? Try it again: WRONG. People, who believe there's no God, also think you are wrong! How could they think that?
Oh, HERE's one reason how. The following is an excerpt from the Medical Journal of Australia:
Why should religion and health be connected? The argument is a rational one. If religious people have a world view that gives hope and meaning in the face of stress and loss, if they have social support from other members of the religious community, and if they live healthier lifestyles by smoking less, drinking less, and making more conservative, less risky decisions in marriage, the workplace, and recreational
Sorry for the double post, but I had to just comment on this:
But I've done a few Internet researches. "religion child abuse" for example, yields about 2.5 million Google hits, many on the first few pages are links to scientific papers researching the link between those two.
"religion mental illness" yields about 2 mio. pages, again several from the first few pages pointing to scientific journals or papers. If the link is no obvious to you: You certainly would agree that "training" a child in, say, shizophrenia, would be abusive, wouldn't you?
Your "Google Proof" method of affirming your claims is invalid. The majority of pages on the "religion child abuse" search are quoting Dawkins and discussing his claims. Let's look at the first 10 results, shall we?
1. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252 - WorldNetDaily
Discusses Dawkins' series "The Root of All Evil?". Presents comments from a Catholic Church spokesperson in responce. Takes no position on the issue, as good news journalism shold.
2. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,100175,00.html - Time Magazine
A news article about a paricular sect who refuse medical treatment for their children in favour of prayer. This is not common religious teaching, and the article doens't present it as such, but discusses the rights of the parent and changes to the view of "freedom of religion." More about politics then religion.
3. http://www.nospank.net/bottoms.pdf - NoSpank PDF
Bias aleart. NoSpank has a pre-published agenda and have cherrypicked articles to support. That aside, the article doesn't conclude that religion is child abuse, but that when religion is used to abuse it can have worse after affects. I would dispute this article based on the fact that it is published by a non-objective source, but regardless, it doesn't support your initial idea.
Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion...
This is something I've been searching to find for a while. Reading Dawkins' work, and listening to him talk, I've always thought to myself "someone in the church has hurt him, and he's blaming God for it". And I was right. He speaks like someone who is motivated by bitterness rather then a series of objective findings that lead him to atheism. So he was abused, and blames religion/church/god for it. Maybe laying blame on the abuser who was using their position of responsobility for wrongdoing would be more sensible then a crusade against religion.
5. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/11/religion-as-child-abuse-and-about-hell.html - Blog post
Not anything approaching authorititive, the author links his own critiques of James Dobson that take read meaning into statements where there are none, and then write a diatribe on that one point. Example? He links an article which looks at the following paragraph:
Some kids can be crushed with nothing more than a stern look; others seem to require strong and even painful disciplinary measures to make a vivid impression. This difference usually results from the degree to which a child needs adult approval and acceptance. The primary parental task is to see things as the child perceives them, thereby
But heck, I'm not afraid, if your god has any brains at all, he'll welcome free thinking over sheep mentality, and if he doesn't then I don't want anything to do with him anyways.
Can you not see the arrogence when you write this? The very concept of their being a god puts that being significantly above you in terms of morality and intelligence. If your "self-promotion" of yourself as a free thinker makes you think you're of some value to the being who holds your very existance in the palm of his/her/otherwise hand, then you have a severely overinflated view of yourself. And reading the rest of your post, I have to conclude that's correct. If God cares at all about us, it certainly has nothing to do with how smart you think you are.
Can you imagine "Jesus Camp" without Jesus?
Note I haven't seen that film, but on the basis of what I understand it to be about - Yes. Substitute any other religious figure. Substitute any other popular figure. Does "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!" ring any bells?? That guy is sure fired up about his beliefs to the point of crazy. What about your average Oprah giveaway show, where Americans are in tears about the material posetions they've just been given? What about Tony Robbins seminars? Furvor to the point of crazy about someone or something is not specific to religion. It certainly makes a large showing in materialism (people dying in crushes at post-christmas sales). People are smart, but crowds of people can be stupid. This is not specific to religion. Jesus Camp is a fringe example of where misguided people use the Christian faith in an inappropriate way. Look (if you're able) at the character of Jesus who that camp is supposedly about. I think you'll find that the way he lived and taught is somewhat different to how they propose those children behave.
Look, the problem here is that your belief system tells you I'm a blind idiot before I even begin typing, so we're certainly not going to get anywhere here. I know that the Christians around me have had a positive impact on the world. They're generous with their time and their money to others and charity, they're selfless and serving of those around them, and they love people because they believe that's their purpose in life. Those things are all societal positives, and decsriptive of what Christianity is. From my perspective, this is the hallmark of all the Christians I know, and is lacking in most of the athiests I know - they're more interested in telling me how right they are. Jesus Camp? Well, that's YOUR country. People seem generally crazier over there.
Of course it isn't child abuse by god, a fiction can't abuse children. And thus you give away your own self-reinforcing belief system. Because you believe God to be ficticious, religion has no worth. Thus teachings of religion that you don't like have no worth other to inspire fear. Because you don't like them, and they can inspire fear, they must be wrong. If they're wrong, God must be fiction. GOTO beginning again. You, like Dick, think that because your own personal moral code doesn't line up with what you read in the Bible (if you've even read it - you sound like you're just quoting "The God Delusion" as fact to me), the only conclusion is that the Bible must be wrong. Way to be self-righteously arrogent, really.
Your points use your bias as evidence to back up your claims. You can't do that. Yes, people can abuse children with fiction. They can also abuse them with non-fiction, such as suggesting that they could do nasty things to their parents. Your point seems to be that because religious teachings contain elements that might be scary, that it must be wrong. Can you not see the problem there? I certainly don't endorse inspiring fear in children, and yes - that "Jesus Camp" movie sounds like it's pretty wrong, but this is NOT an accurate representation of Christianity or it's beliefs. And sampling a bunch of whacky people who do things in the name of their religion says nothing about the religion itself. Yep, Christianity teaches there's a hell. Atheism teaches there's oblivion. The thought of ceasing to exist scares me far more then the possibility of hell, especially when the same teachings that talk about hell say that its one of two alternative end-points. You're saying religion is wrong, primarily, just like Richard Dawkins, because you don't like the idea it could be right. It doesn't fit with the way you want to view the universe and humanity. Well, tough bickies, really.
Show me the citations you speak of that confirm from real, qualified psychologists that giving children a religious belief system to live by is mentally damaging. Not that occasionally people will abuse it - which they will, but rather that it is predominantly a harmful thing. And let's just exclude papers you get from members of skeptics societies or other "lets get rid of religion" organisations. Go somewhere objective, and find some research. I'm interested to see what you can find. Because while I'm sure you can find papers on individual cases where religion is used to abuse, all the people in psychology I've ever spoken to (not Christians themselves, btw) have espoused the increadible good that comes out of someone belonging to a religious community and having a belief system like the one taught in the Bible. So, in the absense of you citing one actual real piece of evidence as yet, I'm going to propose that your beliefs come from a faith in the words of Richard Dawkins, which I suggest is an unsound place to put your faith.
Richard Dawkins is far from being anything like an intellegent source on issues of religion or child psychology. Would you listen to medical advice from say a systems admin over that of a doctor? No? Then why would you listen to the increadibly biased opinions of an evolutionary biologist on issues of spirituality and psychology, when said biologist has shown himself to have a hatred of all things religious? Objective you think? The man has been criticised by sources outside religion for his arrogant and erroneous take on the issue - he is NOT an authority on these issues, and yet speaks as though he is one.
The example you cite is child abuse - by a person. Not by God, or by the beliefs of any religion, or by the majority of people who believe them and teach them to their kids. The use of fear to control and abuse someone is not specific to religion, and just because the fear came from a threat of her friend burning in hell doesn't make it any different to a non-religious person threatening to do nasty things to her mummy if she didn't keep her mouth shut. Child abusers always concoct ways to control the children they abuse using fear so they won't get caught, and yes - this is often more horrible then the abuse itself. A very common one is for them to tell the child that their parents will stop loving them if they tell, the fear of which is far more terrible for the child then the abuse itself. All of this is common teaching in child protection training. It's not something specific to religion, no matter what Richard Dawkins would like to suggest.
I appreciate your response, primarily becasue it displays a viewpoint that has been weighed up and considered, and while I disagree with you on some points, I still appreciate the opinion you've put foward. By way of some reply...
"It's about making as much money as is humanly possible with as little investment as possible - and that's all."
Gee, that's what I try to do every day of my life, and that's what I expect of the companies that I invest in (which aren't the major media companies, BTW). True, but we're not really talking about companies at the root of it. Supposedly, we're talking about art and artists. That should be a fundamentally different kettle of fish. Art is supposed to be in opposition to things like maximising profits while minimising input/effort. It's supposed to come foremost out of someone's desire to create, rather then desire to make a buck. If these are put the other way around, the result generally sucks. To take this a step further, art is supposed to become culture, and culture should ultimately become the property of everyone. And within their lifetime might be nice too.
Yep - I understand the need for a limited monopoly if creators are going to do this full-time. But life+70 is beyond ridiculous. How about 10 years? In our age of digital distrobution, instantly being able to sell the same product to pretty much anyone worldwide for almost zero cost, why do you need more then that? This is why I look at the "contract" that your government has forced onto mine (and thus also me), and much of the rest of the world, and decide the only way that I as an individual can make a difference is to cut off the means by which the big media companies wield all this power: money. If they have none, they can do nothing. Presently, they have too much and can do things no company should ever be able to do - like control governments, for example. Now, yes, I could just not listen to music, or listen to only free music... but what gets more attention? Lost customers who have moved on to free/independant product is far less newsworthy then pirates (I mean, come on - who doesn't love pirates? Arrrg!) rampantly disregarding the property of multibillion dollar companies. Children, grandparents and the disabled being sued for questionable, if not downright ridiculous, crimes. It has that whole Robin Hood feel to it, and that gets attention. If we just all be "good citizens" everyone will conclude that the laws are fair and just, but a particular demographic have suddenly gotten a taste for independant artists who release their music for free. They'll then get offered large sums of money to be signed by big labels, and I won't be able to listen anymore. It's no solution. The *only* solution I believe, is to change the market by force, and unfortunately that doesn't involve swashbuckling, sword-play and songs about major generals, but does involve some degree of disregard for current copyright arrangements, to put it politely. The responsobility attached to that is to educate people as to why I disagree so strongly with the present situation, and that's what I try to do. I also like to give money to artists who are trying themselves to mend the situation. I'm more then happy to pay for music in that cirucmstance - I'm just not going to help support the perpetuation of this current copyright craziness.
Anyway, summary time: Art should always be about artist wanting to create rather then money. Otherwise, the general case is that the product is crap (think boy bands and Britney). Copyright is good, but in it's present form is flat-out public theivery and needs changing. Only way I see change happening is by starving out those causing the problems - namely, giant media companies - and supporting those who are trying to better the situation. I might be wrong, but it's the only plan I have. Do you have a better one?
There are a couple of things I wanted to comment on from your post:
"And their right, the consumer did break the contract first, the consumers are infringing on their copyrights, and not paying the producers what they feel their products are worth. The argument that they charge too much and hence they broke the contract first doesn't work, because it's their product and they can charge whatever they want for it."
See, you would be right if copyright was an equally negotiated contract between me and an individual content creator, and then I went and copied their work against that contract. However, it's not. It's a contract between big businesses and governments who are in their pockets that are made on my behalf, without my best interests in mind. If someone who had the right to do so, contracted you to work at a job you hated for the rest of your working life, you might think about breaking that contract, yes? If someone who could make decisions on your behalf, took out a huge loan in your name and contracted you to pay it back, which meant that you'd have to spend every waking minute working just to keep up with your payments, you might think about breaking that contract, mightn't you? Because the terms are unreasonable, and while they legally apply to you because your proxy made that decision for you, you were not consulted and you don't agree with them. While these examples have far more extreme consequences, the basic premise remains the same - someone entered me into a contract which in no way benefits me. The argument that copyright is an incentive for artists to produce more work vanished when labels realised that the young and impressionable audience will buy whatever crap they're selling as long as they market it right. If I'm a content creator, what insentive do I have to create when some no-brainer song can sell millions, simply because of the way it's marketed?
Look, this copyright business is a 2 way street. You said if I don't like it, I should just not use their product anymore. How about the other side? If *YOU* as a content creator don't like the current situation, STOP CREATING CONTENT! Then I can't pirate it, can I? Simple! But see, the big companies won't do that. They don't want to stop - they want to force me to buy. It was never about what's "right" and what's "wrong". It's not about what's best for the artist, and it's especially not about what's best for the consumer. It's about making as much money as is humanly possible with as little investment as possible - and that's all.
I'm all for fair and reasonable copyright. But we don't have that, so I'm not going to hold up my end of the bargain. If you don't like it, don't create. That's your free choice to do so. On the other hand, maybe you could just create because you want your work to be enjoyed, and I'll pay you money if I enjoy it to encourage you to make more. That's really how it was supposed to work in the first place after all.
I'm inclined to agree with the parent post here - given that the hard disk in the PS3 is easily upgradeable, it would just be sensible for them to always put the most common sized hard disk in it, and I'd assume that we're getting to the point where it's cheaper for them to buy 80Gb drives instead of the probably-now-less-commonly-produced 60Gb drives. I mean, that would just be sensible. And given that the FCC filing that spawned all this speculation didn't mention any other enhancements to the 80Gb model, one would assume it's the 60Gb one with an extra 20Gb. Not really worth adding a new tier to the product line just for that.
That's my 2c, and I'm sticking to it.:P
Son, Pirate Bay is a distributor. If I knew of a guy who was handing out pirated DVDs, and I told my friends about him, does that make me a distributor? Because in effect, that's what TPB is doing. They distribute.torrent files. Those files contain absolutely no copyrighted material, they just tell your Bittorrent client where to find other people who have the material. So while you might like to think TPB is a distributor, the data that actually comes off their servers contains no copyrighted material whatsoever.
The only difference between Pirate Bay and Netflix is that so far Pirate Bay has gotten away without giving the content owners a cut of the revenue. Yep, you do work in the media industry, because they're unable to identify the obvious difference either. Netflix sends you a DVD with material that is copyrighted. TPB can't do that, because the copyrighted material isn't on their servers. When I download a torrent, I get the material in tiny chunks from hundreds of people all over the interwebs. TPB itself doesn't send me any of those chunks - they all come from other evil pirates like me.
Meanwhile, media conglomerates steal from me constantly. Every year, works that were supposed to pass to public ownership are retained under copyright due to American politicians being bought by large media companies. I'm in Australia, and yet those same crazy laws apply thanks to Team America. Life+75 is just ridiculous. In a world where content makers have instant, cost-free duplication and distrobution, 10 years of copyright is more then adequate for a creator to make some money off a work. And yet, I'm sure we'll see Life+125 come in as soon as Mickey Mouse comes up for expiry again. You are supporting the theft of my culture on a daily basis. Don't expect me to respect your "potential loss of profits".
I'm all for copyright, as long as it's fair. Right now, it's not. So I'm not prepared to abide by it. I'll find alternitive ways to encourage the artists I enjoy to keep creating art.
I was just reminded of how you cant select a line of text in a cmd.exe prompt, and instead have to "select all", the whole session. Go to the top-left hand corner of the cmd window and click on the icon (or press Alt+spacebar). Choose Edit -> Mark. Drag the selection across the line of text and then press Enter. The line of text is now on the clipboard.:) Just thought I'd share - I find it to be insanely useful at times.
Apologies on the incorrect choice of word... my bad!:)
Allowing people to murder each other has a negative impact on society that vastly outweighs any potential positive impact. For that reason, it is outlawed.
Negative and positive impact are subjective concepts. For example, by killing my noisy neighbour I rid society of someone who annoys me. Therefore, from my perspective, the overall impact of the action can be seen as positive. If my neighbour was a hermit, without family, friendless and unemployed, it could also be argued that he provides no value to society and so his death is of no negative consequence. Why then should it be illegal? And while we're at it, who gets the right to decide?
I think to remove the idea of corporate morality from law creation is a dangerous idea. Once the morals of the majority are discarded in the process, you can justify many things that previously would be considered reprehensible. Consider the very elderly or mentally injured. If laws are built purely on benefit to society, there is a good argument for leaving them to fend for themselves rather then passing legislation to provide care for them. You could say there is no future potential for them to input to society - they are merely using resource until their deaths; resource that could be used elsewhere for great benefit to society. From your standpoint of positive/negative impact, an argument could be made for this scenario.
However, governments in democratic countries are *supposed to* act based on the majority opinion of their constituents - where they don't, one would hope they'd get promptly voted out. As humans, it's my understanding that we all develop our own ideas about what we think is right, and what we think is wrong. I mean, most people would think its wrong for someone to sexually abuse a child. That's a moral belief right there, and one that's fairly common. Those individual morals/beliefs/opinions are then aggregated by publicly elected officials who represent subsets of a whole country's opinions and beliefs. The principal is that what you get is a representative view of the entire country's opinions and beliefs, and those become the laws. This includes their moral beliefs. Am I suggesting that an individual politician should act soley on their own moral beliefs? Not at all - if this is not representitive of the people who voted for them, then they are doing them an enourmous disservice. But by the same token, to suggest that laws be implemented on the basis of "positive/negative impact to society" means that you have to place the evaluation of "positive/negative impact" into the hands of someone. Who would that be? Against what standard would they evaluate that impact? What is considered positive? What is considered negative? I would suggest these questions are impossible to answer without someone's morals and beliefs being applied to the issue somewhere. Personally, I'd prefer it to be the general public then a handful of politicians.
government shouldn't be in the business of legislating morality Sorry, as I know this is slightly off-topic, but isn't that one of the government's main purposes? For example, most people consider it amoral to murder someone, so the government passes and enforces laws that specify penalties for murder. Ultimately if government is working as it should, they are legislating the morals of *most* of the people across *all* of the people. I know it's not a perfect world and so it doesn't always happen that way, but if you can come up with a better system, I'd love to hear it.
"But they will also introduce Wii Premium to stay at the higher price of 249.99 this will include better graphics, media center functions, more memory, ect..." So when this new Wii with improved graphics and memory comes out, and then they release games that utilize those things, what happens to the millions of people who bought themselves Wiis within the previous 24 months and now can't play the new games? What happens to all those people who wouldn't normally play games but bought a Wii because it was marketed to them as being simple and fun, but now they have to check the system requirements before they buy a game? I honestly can't see Nintendo doing that. Microsoft, yes. They've come from a background of easily upgradeable PCs, and software with system requirements, so for them it seems a step they'd be happy to take. Besides, their userbase is primarily people who have some level of tech savvy. But yeah, can't see Nintendo going in that direction.
Just for my tiny rant, while I acknowledge the strength of their consoles, I think Microsoft's entry into the console game market has bought a lot of negatives. Maybe they were inevitable ultimately, but things like patching games/hardware and micropayments for game content in my opinion don't belong in console gaming. The possibility of major hardware revisions to an existing line of consoles (ie: the "Zephyr") to me foretells the end of console gaming as I've known it. I was a relatively early adopter of PS2 having arrived late to PS1 gaming, and I've happily played my PS2 for YEARS. I think it's more than 6 now. In that 6 years, I can't remember how many times I've upgraded my PC to play the latest and greatest games. More RAM, new video card, faster CPU. And then there's software things like stuffing around with drivers and patch levels and whatnot. I've been at LAN parties with a handful of friends where we've spent literally HOURS waiting for people to get their config sorted. That's why I like consoles. You don't have to worry so much about that stuff - you can just play games. I bought an original Xbox JUST to play at Halo/Halo2 LANs for that very reason. But now patches and micropayments are the norm. You can ship a product with things that don't work quite right, and then fix them with updates. Like 360's backward compatibility - they said it had it, but when it shipped it just wasn't there. But that's OK - they'll fix it in the patches when they get around to it. Or games - it used to be that you had to accomplish things within the game to unlock extra content. Now they just want to sell it to you at extra cost. And of course Sony and Nintendo will do the same thing - its a new, unexploited revenue stream. And companies are ultimately about making a profit. Like I say, I guess these things were probably inevitable, but it's sad that Microsoft was the one to bring them to the market.
As a Windows user who now works in a predominantly OS X workplace, I have to say I disagree entirely with the single menu bar up the top thing. I find it confusing and frustrating. If I have multiple instances of the same application open, the only thing I have to indicate which window's menu bar I'm reaching for is the hue of the window's title bar, and often times that's not where I'm looking. If I was using Windows, the issue wouldn't be there, as each window would have its own menu bar. To me, that makes far more sense.
I think it's preference, primarily. As much of this stuff is.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely, as the empirical requirement discounts personal experience. For example, the only way I know that I am a conscious entity is because I experience it. There's no empirical test for consciousness, and as a result the only way I "know" that people around me experience it like I do is implication. They seem to behave and respond in the same way I do, therefore I assume they are experiencing the same thing.
Say I observe something unexpected, like I meet an alien. The alien tells me he's the only one here, and they won't be back because earth sucks and they hate it. The he leaves. Now I *know* this happened because I experienced it, but if I told you about it you'd think I was crazy. (Just as an aside - I've never really met any aliens) So while my personal experiences can't be used to prove something to you, they are how I acertain the truthfulness of most things I know. The same is true of everyone. Things that don't correlate with our personal experience, we tend to disregard. Science is a useful way of applying some rules that allow us to show that something we think is true works most/all of the time, but it doesn't apply to the full spectrum of human experience (eg: consciousness example above) and it ultimately can't identify something to be the truth - just the best model based on our current ability to observe. The Ptolemaic System is a classic example of that.
So what am I saying? I'm saying that religion (or more appropriately, faith) is a personal thing, is not untrue simply because it doesn't fit within natural science, and while you're free to select your own belief system you shouldn't belittle others for having their own. There's an infinate number of absurdities out there, which includes the one you believe, and at least one of them will be true.
Except you've missed the fact that the athiests are the ones who's belief system calls for "empirical evidence" in order to acertain truth, as opposed to science which requires empirical evidence in order to demonstrate that a particular model works. Let me ramble off a few examples: You could be a brain in a vat. The world may have come into existance last Tuesday with the appearence of age. This universe could be a computer simulation. Etc, etc, etc. All of these are impossible to produce any empirical evidence for, as they hypothosise about things outside our ability to observe, but each could still be the truth.
Actually, the simulation one is the most probable truth of our existance, based on mathematical probability and an optomistic appliction of Moore's Law - I saw this great doco on quantum mechanics where this quantum physisist explained it. Very compelling, but a story for another time.
Anyway, the point is that suggesting you need empirical evidence for God is stupid, as by definition things that are supernatural don't fit within a purely natural dicipline like science. A lack of empirical evidence for something doesn't make it false - It just says nothing one way or the other. And as is the case with the idea of things supernatural, there's been enough non-empirical (subjective, implied, non-repeatable, etc) evidence around the place that I'm convinced there's more to our reality then you think there is. Make up your own mind, sure. But don't belittle me for having a different POV.
Crazy atheist evengelists and their "empirical supremecy", I don't know... :P
In a simular discussion previously on Slashdot, someone raised these writings, which I hadn't heard of previously. They expressed a simular sentiment to yours - that these cannot be used as supporting evidence for a historical Jesus, as they are considered suspect. So I got onto Wikipedia, and Google and did some research. You know what I found? Although there is a direct reference to Jesus in Josephus's work that is disputed, the rest of his work is considered authentic by most scholars - including the following text:
"...Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others..."Note that Wikipedia asserts: "The above quotation from the Antiquities is considered authentic by the majority of scholars.". (ref).
Seems less ridiculous to bring it up in the light of, you know, the facts and stuff.
That's a incorrect challenge in response to the parent post's assertion. The question is not who can or cannot explore these issues, but who has a motive to do so, and who has historically done so.
While I think consideration of the statistical risk vs. benefit of immunisation is useful, there are some things that make that difficult. The thing that concerns me the most is that the risk statistics for immunisations are flawed because doctors don't report complications. I have first-hand experience of this - my father recently was planning a trip to China and had to get I think Hep A or Hep B vaccines - not sure which of the two. Anyway, immediately following the first injection, he got really sick. He went and told the doctor who'd given him the shot, and his response was "Oh you must have caught the flu". Except, none of his symptoms were in any way flu-like, and it came on suddenly after the injection, and then slowly subsided. So, one person who would have contributed to the statistics of mild complications gets ignored. He later mentinoed this to an endocrinologist he'd been seeing, who said he'd seen two people die due to simular circumstances, and that my dad should not get the remaining shots. The GP of the two victims had advised them the reactions were not anything to do with the vaccine, or were not servere enough to be concerned over, so they went back and got the rest. Each successive dose caused a worse reaction - one died on the second shot, and one on the third. Whether or not these ended up being included in the vaccine risk statistics - I don't know. But the first reaction certainly was ignored, as it was with my dad.
I think history shows pretty clearly that if power and/or money are involved, expect conspiricy rather then transparency. Having a vaccine on the vaccination schedule would be worth an absolute fortune to drug companies, and having their vacccine seen as 100% (or close to 100%) safe is essential to maintaining public confidence. It means that people on Slashdot will happily make negative "you must also be a creationist" comments to those who dispute the validity of immunising your newborn against an STD. Me personally, I don't see how prompting your 2 month old child's immune system to develop antibodies for 9 complex diseases at once can logically be considered "safe", and considering the money involved, can we really trust the information presented to be objective? I'm in Australia, and for some reason they just increased the number of vaccines given at what was originally 3 months, and also rolled it back to 2 months. Why? No one answers that question. They just tell us to trust they're doing it in our best interests. I call BS - they're doing it in the drug companies' best interests.
With my kids, I've delayed their vaccinations for diseases that have significant risks according to those risks, and not bothered with ones like Chicken Pox. I can't see why you'd bother being vaccinated against Chicken Pox. Because we can? Doesn't seem particularly sensible to me. Especially considering that actually having Chicken Pox is more effective in becoming immune to future infection, and the vaccine causes you to have more servere bouts of shingles if contracted. Oh but I hear they've got a vaccine coming for shingles, so you can buy that one too. (note: sarcasm)
Ultimately for me, do I trust a government or a scientist (or groups thereof) to make decisions in the best interests of my children? The answer is no. They may possibly make decisions in the best interests of society at times, but from a purely logical, rational perspective, it is possible for someone to justify letting my child die if it was for the "greater good" of society. Call me selfish, but I'm not really into that. I'll take all the information they can give me (and trust me, I read a lot of it), but in the end my wife and I will decide what's best for our kids.
And thus you have beliefs about both god, and the Tooth Fairy. I also share your belief that the Tooth Fairy is not real, as most people over the age of 7 do, but it doesn't make it any less a belief. You might say it's the most obvious belief, but we form belief systems about everything we encounter, and then those beliefs form our worldview. Therefore, atheism is very much a worldview. Its a set of common beliefs that you and other people share. Your belief about god comes from being presented with the idea of god and then using the knowledge you had or later gained, you've formed a belief about the existance of such an entity. The only way atheism could be a nothing is if you'd never been presented with the idea of there being a god, and therefore had not yet formed your own belief about it.
I believe that this chair I'm sitting on will hold me up. I believe that this message I'm typing will appear on Slashdot. I believe that you are a human, not a computer responding to these messages. All of these are fairly obvious beliefs - but the fact that they are obvious makes them no less beliefs.
Beyond that, today's particular "New Atheism" as espouced by your friend Sam Harris and also his colleagues such as Richard Dawkins has further comminality in its beliefs that I find scary. They believe that to believe in a god is mental illness. They believe that parents should not teach their children about the religion they follow. These are beliefs - and dangerous ones. Because they seek to present people who don't hold the same beliefs as being lesser people, and not worthy of the same freedoms and rights as the so-called "brights".
I have particular beliefs that include there being a god, and they are shared by a group of people I like to spend time with. You have a set of beliefs, and you like to read stuff written by people who share those beliefs, obviously, and probably like to discuss with them also. The argument that atheism is a nothing is just designed to try and create this imaginary separation between atheists and those they are trying to get rid of. It's not socially acceptable to discriminate against one belief because you hold another. But if you can argue that your beliefs are not beliefs at all; that you are superiour because you have no belief - then you can say that belief is the enemy, and that means of discriminating against those you don't like hasn't been tried yet.
Atheism is not a set of beliefs? Sorry - but I'm not buying it, and neither are a lot of people on both sides of the god-existance fence. You hold a belief about the existance of god. Your beliefs are no more special then mine, no matter what your New Atheist Priesthood(tm) might like to tell you.
Just a small question...
If the rockets couldn't push the dust away because there's no atmosphere to carry their force, how exactly did they push the lunar lander off the surface of the moon?
I always wonder about how we communicate with stuff we send into space if there's no atmosphere. My understanding (thanks to possibly incomplete memories of high school physics) is that radio waves require a medium through which to travel. What is that medium in the middle of nowhere in space? How do probes we send to the edge of our solar system send stuff back? Just curious - keen to know how it works.
I need to stop this conversation, because it's consuming a lot of my time. The last post in particular, contained articles from medical journals espousing the virtues of religion that I spent a great deal of time reading through (and references). However, you've completely ignored them and stuck with your "religion is mental illness" line. So I give up.
However, the truely marvellous thing about this conversation is that it's alerted me to just how much of the medical and scientific community think the opinions that you (and strangely, also Richard Dawkins) have expressed are arrogent nonsence. Religion is in general, not harmful, it's been shown in studies. Religion is useful, helpful, and positive both for the individual and society. You can hold that it's mental illness - that's your perogative. But it's in the face of the empirical evidence to the contrary.
So thanks for the discussion - I do appreciate it. I seem to concur with your previously published opinions on Halo 3 elsewhere on here, so hey - maybe we'll have a more same-sided discussion somewhere here in the future.
Cheers.
Houston, we have a problem: I'm getting fundamentally different results. I wonder if it has to do with SafeSearch settings?
:) Thanks for the fun though.
Regardless, by simplifying the query to "god", I get all of your hits plus more. The winner, it is me! lol
Can you see the arrogance in the claim that there is only one god and you know all about him?
That would be true if I claimed that. I claim that there's a book that explains all about how there's only one god and that it provides the stuff I and everyone else needs to know about him. I didn't write it, and to be honest, I really would like to spend a whole lot more time reading it. It never claims to be a science textbook, even though there's people who think it should be taken that way. It doesn't claim it will always be literal, although again - there's people who will say that it does. I can't tell you based on that book how exactly the world was created, how old it is, or what they should teach in science at school. But it talks a lot about God, documents things he did and people who believed in Him, and ultimately his plan to give me a hope. You can believe that's not real if you like. Just don't tell me I'm sick - there's nothing sicker then to go around trying to rob people of their hope, just so you can feel smart. Fuck you for that. Religion can be right or wrong, but what you and your ilk are doing is far worse. You're seeking to destroy something that although sometimes misused, ultimately exists to give people purpose and hope. Whether that hope is true or false, it's more then what you have. Dawkins' claim of "shouldn't this be enough" is obviously answered by a resounding "No!" as our society becomes more and more the way you and he would like it, and yet more people are offing themselves every year in dispair. Natural selection at it's finest, I'm sure.
Ultimately, the issue of hope bears no relevance on whether or not God exists because hopes can be based on falsehoods. However, when speaking of life and death, to dismiss a hope of something beyond this as unnecessary is the greatest illness I can imagine - one that allows the bearer to grow numb while he kills everyone around him. Good luck with that.
You can't have it both ways, sorry. Either both good and evil of your faith is because of your faith, or neither is. Anything else is a claim that requires solid proof.
Except if it's my faith, and I know what it involves. As opposed to you, who look on and call anything that serves your purposes part of my faith. For example, Mormons call themselves Christians. But most other Christian groups say Mormans are not. They disagree with what are held by a large Christian population to be basic tennants of the Christian faith. You could exemplify the actions of Mormans and say "those people are part of your beliefs!", but you're WRONG. Because the set of beliefs I hold does not agree with the beliefs that Mormons adhere to. They're free to practice their religion, and even to call themselves Christians - it's their belief system. But it is at odds with mine. Consider this the same as atheists that think religion is OK, and atheists who think (like you) that religion is harmful and a mental illness. I could group all of you together and just put you under the banner of Atheism, but you might not like being attached to the same group of people who are voting to maintain people's freedom of religion - because although they don't believe there's a God, they can see the value in religion and religious communities, and therefore think that you and your cobelievers are WRONG. Read that? Try it again: WRONG. People, who believe there's no God, also think you are wrong! How could they think that?
Oh, HERE's one reason how. The following is an excerpt from the Medical Journal of Australia:
Why should religion and health be connected? The argument is a rational one. If religious people have a world view that gives hope and meaning in the face of stress and loss, if they have social support from other members of the religious community, and if they live healthier lifestyles by smoking less, drinking less, and making more conservative, less risky decisions in marriage, the workplace, and recreational
Simplification, ey? "god real" = 17.5 million. QED yourself. :)
But I've done a few Internet researches. "religion child abuse" for example, yields about 2.5 million Google hits, many on the first few pages are links to scientific papers researching the link between those two. "religion mental illness" yields about 2 mio. pages, again several from the first few pages pointing to scientific journals or papers. If the link is no obvious to you: You certainly would agree that "training" a child in, say, shizophrenia, would be abusive, wouldn't you?
Your "Google Proof" method of affirming your claims is invalid. The majority of pages on the "religion child abuse" search are quoting Dawkins and discussing his claims. Let's look at the first 10 results, shall we?
1. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252 - WorldNetDaily
Discusses Dawkins' series "The Root of All Evil?". Presents comments from a Catholic Church spokesperson in responce. Takes no position on the issue, as good news journalism shold.
2. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,100175,00.html - Time Magazine
A news article about a paricular sect who refuse medical treatment for their children in favour of prayer. This is not common religious teaching, and the article doens't present it as such, but discusses the rights of the parent and changes to the view of "freedom of religion." More about politics then religion.
3. http://www.nospank.net/bottoms.pdf - NoSpank PDF
Bias aleart. NoSpank has a pre-published agenda and have cherrypicked articles to support. That aside, the article doesn't conclude that religion is child abuse, but that when religion is used to abuse it can have worse after affects. I would dispute this article based on the fact that it is published by a non-objective source, but regardless, it doesn't support your initial idea.
4. http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins
I won't even bother. Yep - surprise. Richard Dawkins thinks religion is child abuse. But wait a second - it reveals where some of Richard's spite towards the church comes from:
Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion...
This is something I've been searching to find for a while. Reading Dawkins' work, and listening to him talk, I've always thought to myself "someone in the church has hurt him, and he's blaming God for it". And I was right. He speaks like someone who is motivated by bitterness rather then a series of objective findings that lead him to atheism. So he was abused, and blames religion/church/god for it. Maybe laying blame on the abuser who was using their position of responsobility for wrongdoing would be more sensible then a crusade against religion.
5. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/11/religion-as-child-abuse-and-about-hell.html - Blog post
Not anything approaching authorititive, the author links his own critiques of James Dobson that take read meaning into statements where there are none, and then write a diatribe on that one point. Example? He links an article which looks at the following paragraph:
Some kids can be crushed with nothing more than a stern look; others seem to require strong and even painful disciplinary measures to make a vivid impression. This difference usually results from the degree to which a child needs adult approval and acceptance. The primary parental task is to see things as the child perceives them, thereby
Can you not see the arrogence when you write this? The very concept of their being a god puts that being significantly above you in terms of morality and intelligence. If your "self-promotion" of yourself as a free thinker makes you think you're of some value to the being who holds your very existance in the palm of his/her/otherwise hand, then you have a severely overinflated view of yourself. And reading the rest of your post, I have to conclude that's correct. If God cares at all about us, it certainly has nothing to do with how smart you think you are.
Can you imagine "Jesus Camp" without Jesus?
Note I haven't seen that film, but on the basis of what I understand it to be about - Yes. Substitute any other religious figure. Substitute any other popular figure. Does "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!" ring any bells?? That guy is sure fired up about his beliefs to the point of crazy. What about your average Oprah giveaway show, where Americans are in tears about the material posetions they've just been given? What about Tony Robbins seminars? Furvor to the point of crazy about someone or something is not specific to religion. It certainly makes a large showing in materialism (people dying in crushes at post-christmas sales). People are smart, but crowds of people can be stupid. This is not specific to religion. Jesus Camp is a fringe example of where misguided people use the Christian faith in an inappropriate way. Look (if you're able) at the character of Jesus who that camp is supposedly about. I think you'll find that the way he lived and taught is somewhat different to how they propose those children behave.
Look, the problem here is that your belief system tells you I'm a blind idiot before I even begin typing, so we're certainly not going to get anywhere here. I know that the Christians around me have had a positive impact on the world. They're generous with their time and their money to others and charity, they're selfless and serving of those around them, and they love people because they believe that's their purpose in life. Those things are all societal positives, and decsriptive of what Christianity is. From my perspective, this is the hallmark of all the Christians I know, and is lacking in most of the athiests I know - they're more interested in telling me how right they are. Jesus Camp? Well, that's YOUR country. People seem generally crazier over there.
Richard Dawkins is far from being anything like an intellegent source on issues of religion or child psychology. Would you listen to medical advice from say a systems admin over that of a doctor? No? Then why would you listen to the increadibly biased opinions of an evolutionary biologist on issues of spirituality and psychology, when said biologist has shown himself to have a hatred of all things religious? Objective you think? The man has been criticised by sources outside religion for his arrogant and erroneous take on the issue - he is NOT an authority on these issues, and yet speaks as though he is one. The example you cite is child abuse - by a person. Not by God, or by the beliefs of any religion, or by the majority of people who believe them and teach them to their kids. The use of fear to control and abuse someone is not specific to religion, and just because the fear came from a threat of her friend burning in hell doesn't make it any different to a non-religious person threatening to do nasty things to her mummy if she didn't keep her mouth shut. Child abusers always concoct ways to control the children they abuse using fear so they won't get caught, and yes - this is often more horrible then the abuse itself. A very common one is for them to tell the child that their parents will stop loving them if they tell, the fear of which is far more terrible for the child then the abuse itself. All of this is common teaching in child protection training. It's not something specific to religion, no matter what Richard Dawkins would like to suggest.
Gee, that's what I try to do every day of my life, and that's what I expect of the companies that I invest in (which aren't the major media companies, BTW). True, but we're not really talking about companies at the root of it. Supposedly, we're talking about art and artists. That should be a fundamentally different kettle of fish. Art is supposed to be in opposition to things like maximising profits while minimising input/effort. It's supposed to come foremost out of someone's desire to create, rather then desire to make a buck. If these are put the other way around, the result generally sucks.
To take this a step further, art is supposed to become culture, and culture should ultimately become the property of everyone. And within their lifetime might be nice too. Yep - I understand the need for a limited monopoly if creators are going to do this full-time. But life+70 is beyond ridiculous. How about 10 years? In our age of digital distrobution, instantly being able to sell the same product to pretty much anyone worldwide for almost zero cost, why do you need more then that? This is why I look at the "contract" that your government has forced onto mine (and thus also me), and much of the rest of the world, and decide the only way that I as an individual can make a difference is to cut off the means by which the big media companies wield all this power: money. If they have none, they can do nothing. Presently, they have too much and can do things no company should ever be able to do - like control governments, for example. Now, yes, I could just not listen to music, or listen to only free music... but what gets more attention? Lost customers who have moved on to free/independant product is far less newsworthy then pirates (I mean, come on - who doesn't love pirates? Arrrg!) rampantly disregarding the property of multibillion dollar companies. Children, grandparents and the disabled being sued for questionable, if not downright ridiculous, crimes. It has that whole Robin Hood feel to it, and that gets attention. If we just all be "good citizens" everyone will conclude that the laws are fair and just, but a particular demographic have suddenly gotten a taste for independant artists who release their music for free. They'll then get offered large sums of money to be signed by big labels, and I won't be able to listen anymore. It's no solution. The *only* solution I believe, is to change the market by force, and unfortunately that doesn't involve swashbuckling, sword-play and songs about major generals, but does involve some degree of disregard for current copyright arrangements, to put it politely. The responsobility attached to that is to educate people as to why I disagree so strongly with the present situation, and that's what I try to do. I also like to give money to artists who are trying themselves to mend the situation. I'm more then happy to pay for music in that cirucmstance - I'm just not going to help support the perpetuation of this current copyright craziness.
Anyway, summary time: Art should always be about artist wanting to create rather then money. Otherwise, the general case is that the product is crap (think boy bands and Britney). Copyright is good, but in it's present form is flat-out public theivery and needs changing. Only way I see change happening is by starving out those causing the problems - namely, giant media companies - and supporting those who are trying to better the situation. I might be wrong, but it's the only plan I have. Do you have a better one?
There are a couple of things I wanted to comment on from your post:
"And their right, the consumer did break the contract first, the consumers are infringing on their copyrights, and not paying the producers what they feel their products are worth. The argument that they charge too much and hence they broke the contract first doesn't work, because it's their product and they can charge whatever they want for it."
See, you would be right if copyright was an equally negotiated contract between me and an individual content creator, and then I went and copied their work against that contract. However, it's not. It's a contract between big businesses and governments who are in their pockets that are made on my behalf, without my best interests in mind. If someone who had the right to do so, contracted you to work at a job you hated for the rest of your working life, you might think about breaking that contract, yes? If someone who could make decisions on your behalf, took out a huge loan in your name and contracted you to pay it back, which meant that you'd have to spend every waking minute working just to keep up with your payments, you might think about breaking that contract, mightn't you? Because the terms are unreasonable, and while they legally apply to you because your proxy made that decision for you, you were not consulted and you don't agree with them. While these examples have far more extreme consequences, the basic premise remains the same - someone entered me into a contract which in no way benefits me. The argument that copyright is an incentive for artists to produce more work vanished when labels realised that the young and impressionable audience will buy whatever crap they're selling as long as they market it right. If I'm a content creator, what insentive do I have to create when some no-brainer song can sell millions, simply because of the way it's marketed?
Look, this copyright business is a 2 way street. You said if I don't like it, I should just not use their product anymore. How about the other side? If *YOU* as a content creator don't like the current situation, STOP CREATING CONTENT! Then I can't pirate it, can I? Simple! But see, the big companies won't do that. They don't want to stop - they want to force me to buy. It was never about what's "right" and what's "wrong". It's not about what's best for the artist, and it's especially not about what's best for the consumer. It's about making as much money as is humanly possible with as little investment as possible - and that's all.
I'm all for fair and reasonable copyright. But we don't have that, so I'm not going to hold up my end of the bargain. If you don't like it, don't create. That's your free choice to do so. On the other hand, maybe you could just create because you want your work to be enjoyed, and I'll pay you money if I enjoy it to encourage you to make more. That's really how it was supposed to work in the first place after all.
I'm inclined to agree with the parent post here - given that the hard disk in the PS3 is easily upgradeable, it would just be sensible for them to always put the most common sized hard disk in it, and I'd assume that we're getting to the point where it's cheaper for them to buy 80Gb drives instead of the probably-now-less-commonly-produced 60Gb drives. I mean, that would just be sensible. And given that the FCC filing that spawned all this speculation didn't mention any other enhancements to the 80Gb model, one would assume it's the 60Gb one with an extra 20Gb. Not really worth adding a new tier to the product line just for that. That's my 2c, and I'm sticking to it. :P
Negative and positive impact are subjective concepts. For example, by killing my noisy neighbour I rid society of someone who annoys me. Therefore, from my perspective, the overall impact of the action can be seen as positive. If my neighbour was a hermit, without family, friendless and unemployed, it could also be argued that he provides no value to society and so his death is of no negative consequence. Why then should it be illegal? And while we're at it, who gets the right to decide?
I think to remove the idea of corporate morality from law creation is a dangerous idea. Once the morals of the majority are discarded in the process, you can justify many things that previously would be considered reprehensible. Consider the very elderly or mentally injured. If laws are built purely on benefit to society, there is a good argument for leaving them to fend for themselves rather then passing legislation to provide care for them. You could say there is no future potential for them to input to society - they are merely using resource until their deaths; resource that could be used elsewhere for great benefit to society. From your standpoint of positive/negative impact, an argument could be made for this scenario.
However, governments in democratic countries are *supposed to* act based on the majority opinion of their constituents - where they don't, one would hope they'd get promptly voted out. As humans, it's my understanding that we all develop our own ideas about what we think is right, and what we think is wrong. I mean, most people would think its wrong for someone to sexually abuse a child. That's a moral belief right there, and one that's fairly common. Those individual morals/beliefs/opinions are then aggregated by publicly elected officials who represent subsets of a whole country's opinions and beliefs. The principal is that what you get is a representative view of the entire country's opinions and beliefs, and those become the laws. This includes their moral beliefs. Am I suggesting that an individual politician should act soley on their own moral beliefs? Not at all - if this is not representitive of the people who voted for them, then they are doing them an enourmous disservice. But by the same token, to suggest that laws be implemented on the basis of "positive/negative impact to society" means that you have to place the evaluation of "positive/negative impact" into the hands of someone. Who would that be? Against what standard would they evaluate that impact? What is considered positive? What is considered negative? I would suggest these questions are impossible to answer without someone's morals and beliefs being applied to the issue somewhere. Personally, I'd prefer it to be the general public then a handful of politicians.
I'd be keen to know your thoughts on this.Just for my tiny rant, while I acknowledge the strength of their consoles, I think Microsoft's entry into the console game market has bought a lot of negatives. Maybe they were inevitable ultimately, but things like patching games/hardware and micropayments for game content in my opinion don't belong in console gaming. The possibility of major hardware revisions to an existing line of consoles (ie: the "Zephyr") to me foretells the end of console gaming as I've known it. I was a relatively early adopter of PS2 having arrived late to PS1 gaming, and I've happily played my PS2 for YEARS. I think it's more than 6 now. In that 6 years, I can't remember how many times I've upgraded my PC to play the latest and greatest games. More RAM, new video card, faster CPU. And then there's software things like stuffing around with drivers and patch levels and whatnot. I've been at LAN parties with a handful of friends where we've spent literally HOURS waiting for people to get their config sorted. That's why I like consoles. You don't have to worry so much about that stuff - you can just play games. I bought an original Xbox JUST to play at Halo/Halo2 LANs for that very reason. But now patches and micropayments are the norm. You can ship a product with things that don't work quite right, and then fix them with updates. Like 360's backward compatibility - they said it had it, but when it shipped it just wasn't there. But that's OK - they'll fix it in the patches when they get around to it. Or games - it used to be that you had to accomplish things within the game to unlock extra content. Now they just want to sell it to you at extra cost. And of course Sony and Nintendo will do the same thing - its a new, unexploited revenue stream. And companies are ultimately about making a profit. Like I say, I guess these things were probably inevitable, but it's sad that Microsoft was the one to bring them to the market.
As a Windows user who now works in a predominantly OS X workplace, I have to say I disagree entirely with the single menu bar up the top thing. I find it confusing and frustrating. If I have multiple instances of the same application open, the only thing I have to indicate which window's menu bar I'm reaching for is the hue of the window's title bar, and often times that's not where I'm looking. If I was using Windows, the issue wouldn't be there, as each window would have its own menu bar. To me, that makes far more sense.
I think it's preference, primarily. As much of this stuff is.