On 9/12/2011 10:55 AM, phanisvara das wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:02:25 +0530, Roger Luedecke <roger.luedecke@gmail.com> wrote:
Those who "believe" can't really do anything else but project their faith based lack-of-reasoning reasoning on others, thus they don't see the fundamental distinction between believing in X vs believing in Y vs not believing in anything.
They can't understand that it is not required to believe in anything in order to have structure, process, civilization, ethics/morals, even hope, even ceremony. They can't even conceive of any other motivation or explanation for ones actions. They can't explain anyones actions any other way than to assume that any set of rules anyone follows is just their religion, no different than any other religion.
Of course billions of people are insane. The number hardly matters, only the facts. Billions of people are all human and so of course many have the same innate weaknesses. At one time everyone "knew" the world was flat. And they were, every single one, wrong.
This is not productive. You are welcome to your views, as is anyone. We do not require anything but technical skill to enable our project goals.We are not a platform for religion, or for anti religious sentimentor propaganda.
roger, you're correct, of course. this part of the discussion has nothing to do with openSUSE and shouldn't be taking place. nevertheless, like almost everybody else, i've got to throw my opinion in here:
brian doesn't realize that, with his categorical statements about "believers," he's just as wrong as many dogmatic believers are: making his faith into another dogma that people have to subscribe to lest they be labeled insane. what's the difference to some fanatic [fill in your least favorite religion]? none.
we all have to believe, because in reality we know nothing. you may believe in the output of some computer network that monitors a particle accelerator and declare that prticle [x] has been discovered, only to be refuted later when somebody else discovers particle [y]. i believe in god, and i've chosen a particular way to try to learn more and get closer to the purpose of life, which i believe exists -- but i KNOW that both of us may be wrong, and that others, who choose a different way to that 'god,' are probably as right as i am. all of us are limited due to our very fallible human nature, and that includes brian k. white.
And there you display the problem without seeing it yourself, thus proving my point. I do not believe in anything. I act according to what is reasonable based on observations and reasoning, up to the limit of my capacity for observation and reasoning. But I know all along that those capacities are limited and subject to change, and that the deductions from those capacities are likewise subject to change. If I "believe" some scientist or engineer who says something I yself can't directly observe or understand, I'm really not believing him/her at all but believing my own direct observation that most scientists are both honest, and thorough enough not likely to be mistaken about whatever they are claiming they found. And those that are either dishonest or sloppy, will sooner or later be discovered by the other scientists who can demonstrate the discrepancy. This much I have seen myself first hand and requires no belief, as well as being applicable to my self which also requires no belief. "believing" in further removed experts in other subjects is not believing at all but just extrapolating that what applies to everyone I have ever observed first hand probably applies to most others. Of course I could be wrong. I could be living in a specially constructed world that falsifies every aspect of my experiences like that Jim Carey movie based on the Phillip K. Dick novel, but that would be a STUPID basis for constructing ones world view and actions. Further, no scientist ever says "this is the way it is" but the religions DO say "this is the way it is". Science does not claim to prove but instead always seeks to dis-prove. Whatever manages to resist dis-proval the longest, is treated _tentatively_ as the basis for future reasoning. By now the only thing science claims to "know" is that that probably nothing we use as mental place-holders right now will turn out to be the whole real story later. The fact that you don't understand why that makes such a big difference, and why that method of operation can be "right" while basing real-world actions on Faith can be "wrong" instead of "two equally valid opinions" is not my fault. The fact that this is demonstrable and thus inarguable is seen by you as an insult or affront to your sensibilities is not my fault. The fact that your sensibilities do not exhibit parity with observation, is not my fault. Don't want to be called a wacko believer in fairy tales? Don't believe in fairy tales! Simple! People may not like the way it sounds unfair or disrespectful or pointlessly "mean" to call believers at worst idiots or at best willfully deluded, but too bad. Just because an idiot doesn't know why others call him an idiot doesn't change the fact that he is. I agree it's not necessary to call them an idiot and hurt their feelings for no reason as long as they are not hurting anyone. But you believers, by trying to say that your fantasy is anything but fantasy, must be corrected. Your feelings are not sufficient reason to sit by and allow the spread of mis-guidance to the potentially susceptible. This is not "opinion, no more valid than your or my opinion". I do have opinions for instance on why people become and/or remain believers. What makes them mere opinions is that they are my conjecture, based on intuition and little else. Not based on any real facts or measurable and reproducible experiments. But basing your thoughts and your actions on a self-satisfying, circular logic, man made construct, that only might be true simply because literally anything _might_ be true in an infinite and unknowable universe, is stupid. You could just as easily conduct your life according to the tennets of the flying spaghetti monster (which is exactly the point of that institution), and it would be _exactly_ as valid and _exactly_ as absurd, as any other religion. Ultimately, just because some ridiculous made-up story can't be dis-proven because it includes a lawyer clause that says essentially "Anything about this which doesn't seem to make sense like why innocent children and truly wonderful giving people die in agony every minute of every day, that can all be explained by the fact that He is so vastly above us that of course we can't expect to understand His actions, but you know, better do what we say He says anyways, just in case..." is stupid. You only have your one little tiny brief life. Waste it on hoping for or fearing some afterlife? Idiocy. Utter, admittedly understandable, idiocy. It's not my fault you are a sucker. It's not my obligation to pretend your baseless hopes have any validity just to preserve your deluded world-view. It's not anyone else's responsibility to protect your delicate fantasy from colliding with reality. The fact that you do not like hearing this does not make the fundamental problem go away and does not make me "wrong" for insisting that a fantasy is a fantasy. It is what it is and it's really not subject to personality. A disbelief in fantastical ideas is not itself just an equally fantastical belief. The scientific method isn't "dogma". You do not get to cry "Intolerance!" over the insistence on only granting any credit to ideas which can be demonstrated. Feel free to demonstrate His existence and all this goes away. But "demonstrate" is a technical term which requires employing the scientific method, which you (I have to assume) don't "believe" in and can't actually perform or understand why one experiment proves (tentatively, always tentatively) a thing and another does not (not even tentatively), and so the discussion is irresolvable. The real evil of religion is two-fold. 1, That it corrupts people while they are still too young to know better. Unfortunately most humans are susceptible to a form of imprinting where things that happen in early development actually physically alter the brain and so for the rest of their lives, even when they later attain more experience and more ability to evaluate things and make judgements, it's too late for most to be able to shake the deep-rooted belief no matter what their eyes, ears, and reasoning ability tells them. People have a great capacity for blind-spots to help them avoid unpleasant internal crises. 2, That religion hooks into and exploits several of humans' greatest weaknesses which are emotion (vs reason) for dictating actions and reactions, fear of death, fear of being alone and powerless and uncared for. These things are deep in people and many many people are simply too weak to face them honestly. The saccharine is just too sweet to resist. This doesn't make the suckers evil, but neither does their being merely well-meaning suckers absolve them of having to exist in the real world in which praying doesn't actually work to solve problems and achieve goals. A lot of that last IS just my "opinion" but you know what? Opinions are not at all all equal and frankly I think mine are worth more than most. It doesn't bother me the tiniest bit that other people with differing or opposite opinions think the same about themselves. I only care about, only waste my time on, what appears to fit the facts until the facts or observations change. I don't care how many people think praying will keep an asteroid from hitting the earth and wiping us all out. I don't care how many people think if that happens then it was His will and we should just let it happen. F&^%&^ them I'm going to employ the scientific method as long as it _works_, and do, or help in doing, what will actually get the job done, even though it means you can satisifiedly say "see, we prayed and missiles got built and the asteroid got deflected". Do you really want to continue this? Do you think you have a shred of a chance to demonstrate that there is any actual validity to religious beliefs? You really expect to be the first person ever in the history of the earth to finally manage that, today here on a linux distribution mail list? Talk about capacity for belief... Making a comment that apparently sounds logical and cutting and ironic to you, while actually being none of those, is just more proof of the very point atheists have been making since day one about the insidious nature of allowing illogic to have any valid voice. Actually, just using the word "atheist" is itself already a misleading framing of the concept. By assigning a word like that "atheist" it falsely makes the concept sound like it's just another belief system, different from christianity or islam only in the trappings. Really there should be no word for "atheism" just as there is no word for "doesn't believe mirrors steal souls" or "doesn't believe the toys come alive at night when no one is looking". They are simply called "sane". -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org