MonDie

Even if they're just young people that don't know any better? I suppose a teenager isn't going to buy anything with their own money, but they might read the content. I suppose that makes my recent (now removed) status update look bad as well. I was merely saying I didn't mean to offend any creationists, but I suppose that could be construed as support for the viewpoint.

Given your avatar, I did not expect that.

(1) You can write a program without knowing exactly what it will do when executed. (2) The simulator may not be aware that we have immediate perceptions (qualia) of any kind at all, let alone pain. My question for the physicists and/or metaphysicists is this: Could something that exists beyond time and causality simulate time and causality? If that just blew your mind, follow the link. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

What makes you think the simulator even understands what suffering is? Interesting word, "tittle."

The extent to which they believe and the way they act on those beliefs could be influenced by personal psychological attributes. However, if it's consistently true that religious perpetrators are psychologically unique from nonreligious perpetrators, you have a good case for religion having a unique effect.

I know. I was kidding.

What a magical symbiosis! These guys should take notes.

This assumes the monkey occupies virtually no volume. We all know that's not true. Taller monkey = slightly shorter time.

Some religious people would say non-religious ideology is more dangerous. With the mention of correlation ≠ causation, I was suggesting that people with certain violent proclivities may be more attracted to or more attached to religions or ideologies.

Of course, this wasn't supposed to imply that an atheist can't be misogynistic. But even if there are some misogynistic atheists, I'm still an (ignostic) atheist. I wouldn't know anything about the issue since I'm just an hermitic 20 year old guy that's not part of any movement. Anyway, what about the Soviets? Does irreligion necessarily make things better? Correlations between ideologies/behaviors mustn't suggest a causal relationship. By the way, if you're an agnostic atheist, die, heretic!

I am not advocating moderation (see anchoring heuristic), I'm simply shifting the focus. If I heard a good argument for God's existence, I would believe in God. If I heard a good argument for God's nonexistence, I would believe in the lack of gods. The thing is, it's hard to arrive at a solid conclusion when God isn't consistently defined. For example, if God simply has to be some creative intelligence, maybe God is just a metaphysical supercomputer. However, I would make the case that "God" should be defined according to its etymology. If I discovered a metaphysical supercomputer, I wouldn't call it The Burial Mound Spirit. Yes, people certainly do enjoy being right. Maybe inductive reasoning tells them that a spirit mansion is nonetheless a mansion.

None of that rules out a malevolent god or a god that is limited in its power.

On Dual Process Theory: Both system 1 and system 2 are attempting to rationalize incoming perceptual information. The difference is that System 1 moves quickly and takes shortcuts (see heuristics); it doesn't waste too much time or expend too much energy. While heuristics may lead you to the correct answer often enough, system 2 is much better at arriving at the correct answer. The problem is that we take in so much information, we don't have time to give everything an in depth analysis. However, psychologists can trigger system 2 processing by various means. A person is more likely to use system 2 processing if they aren't being rushed to complete the task quickly, or if the importance of their answer has been emphasized. System 2 is like the person that, rather than passively viewing the nice people in the commercial, is paying close attention and crunching all the numbers. I was suggesting that religious belief is usually spread by bad arguments that appeal to system 1. For example, arguing that a particular atheist is mysogynistic to make the case that atheism leads to mysogyny. That's a bad argument that preys upon at least one fallacious way of thinking people are prone to, namely, focusing on individual cases rather than overall statistics. This is another example where the speaker seems to be focusing on a single instance rather than an overall trend. Regarding the studies on analytic thought and religious disbelief: Those studies hardly suggest that there is no God, and they weren't meant to. In the introduction, it states that the goal is to give sociological insight by showing that analytical thought is a contributing factor in people turning away from religion. In the experiments, the experimenters only measured religious belief after the participants were exposed to the independent variable (which, for the experimental group, was a manipulation designed to trigger analytical thought). Overall, the experimental group showed less belief that there is a god, and less intrinsic religiosity (an inclination to carry religion over into one's life). You could argue that, if certain individuals in the experimental group became more religious, it wouldn't have shown because belief wasn't measured both before and after, i.e. the experiment didn't track individuals, it only measured the net difference in the end. However, this gap is significantly filled by the earlier studies, which showed that analytical tendencies are correlated with disbelief. But an important point is that they mostly measured the belief that there is a god (except maybe the survey item: "When people pray they are only talking to themselves."). This raises an interesting question. What if you did a similar experiment on a group of strong atheists, and asked them "Is there no God?" We might see the strong atheists become hesitant to assert their position as well. Maybe analytical thinkers are just less likely to make premature assertions. Personally, I'm concerned about how people come to believe things, not what they happen to believe. I have this concern for myself as well, and rightly so. Furthermore, I don't want to ingrain into anyone the idea that, if they believe in God, they're somehow mentally deficient. That would only promote bad thought patterns, and, well, that would be mean...

Cool. Would you mind if we call this thing, the thing noone has ever dreamed of, by another name that is derived from meaningful word roots? Etymologically, "God" just means that which is called or invoked, or, alternatively, burial mound spirit (etymonline.com). I don't see how someone can invoke something they've never dreamed of, and I find it funny to think noone has ever dreamed of a burial mound spirit before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism

I guess we're stilll using the spoiler thing then.

My bike has pedals, but no motor. I don't think I've gone over 30mph. Maybe I have at times, but I don't have a speedometer.

Does a religion become intolerant because it's powerful, or does it become powerful because it's intolerant?

I will give an ignostic point of view. It depends on the individual's own idea of what "believing in God" means. If they think "God" is necessarily the intelligence that coauthored The Bible or The Quran, it's totally important. If belief in God is more of a sentiment, as in "I believe there is something that can be called God, but I don't know what it is," that might not be problematic at all. Aside from fundamentalism, another possible problem is that "believing in God" is a powerful cultural meme. Sometimes, people want to convince you to believe or not believe by pointing out the follies of various believers or nonbelievers. That's a bad reason to accept any claim, it's superficial, yet religious officials may try to use this to their advantage to attract children to their faith. I would argue that, in doing so, they encourage bad thought patterns involving System 1 processing (see upcoming link). The finding (by Norenzayan and Gervais) that analytical thought tends to decrease belief that there is* a god was based on dual process theory. *It should be noted that the experiment's questionnaire didn't ask "Do you believe there isn't a god?"

Regarding the use of the term "telepathy": Democritus could not have know that his word "atom" described any real thing. That didn't stop early chemists from using the term to communicate similar concepts after there was experimental evidence to support such an idea. However, it was eventually realized that so called "atoms" aren't really indivisible. "Telephone" and "telepathy" are etymologically similar. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=telephone http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-pathy&allowed_in_frame=0 A telephone transmits sound, a telepathy device should transmit emotions.

It isn't working. Whenever I try to open the .exe file with WINE, it tells me the program had to close either because of a program defect or a WINE deficiency. I downloaded WINE from the software center. It was simply titled "Wine Windows Program Loader," and it had the red wine glass as its icon.

I really appreciate your help! Apparently my brother does have his phone with him, and he told me that Windows has been uninstalled. My dad doesn't know where he put the Windows CD, so I'm trying to run the program with WINE. I've never done this before, but I hope it works, and I hope he doesn't tell me to do any more chores.

My pap's computer was running Windows, and now it runs Ubuntu. My brother probably changed it, but we can't contact my brother, and we don't know that the computer still has Windows installed. My pap needs Windows to run his tax software. I got into the BIOS with F2, and this is the list of boot devices: 1. Onboard or USB Floppy Drive (not present) 2. Onboard SATA Hard Drive (not present) 3. SATA0-Hitachi HDS721680PLA380 4. Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive 5. Onboard Network Controller 6. USB Device (not present)

Where can I learn about these models? I might not respond since I intend to abandon this forum account once and for all. I wasn't asking whether such structures would be predicted at all, but whether the predictions could be more finely tuned.

I know... I think I found the reason for my problem with making Network Manager accessible without root privelages. Network Manager still accesses my own wireless network automatically, but I can't change networks, and I can't reconnect to the usual network after getting off of it. I guess I'll just have to see what it does when I'm away from home.

More specifically, the faulty notion is that there is some objective criteria for determining what is good or "better." Benevolence is a subjective idea: If someone has faith that there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, they must also have faith that this world is the best it can be. Not that it will be the best that it can be, but that it is the best it can be right now. However, by this logic, a lack of faith is shown by any attempt to improve your current condition. A faithful peron cannot not love because god loves them; cannot eat because god feeds them; cannot pee because god empties their bladder for them; etc. If god does not do any of these things for them, they are content with the pains because they have faith that the pain is just a manifestation of god's love. Gives a whole new meaning to "God, I have to pee," doesn't it?