This is brilliant!
Do you want to see your name as a tattoo? Then go to this site.
- Type your name in the first row
- Type your surname in the second
- You do not need to fill in the third and fourth
- Press “Visualizar”
- Enjoy đ
Via PanHas.
PMOG: An unforeseen boon to the atheosphere.
Fellow Atheist, did you recently notice a sudden flux of visitors from blog posts that are not seemingly linking to you? Is so, this is because I’ve been playing around with a new online game and I’ve chosen some of your articles, that I consider interesting, to insert into the playfield, so to speak.
But even if you were not one of those few bloggers who’s posts I’ve chosen for my initial experiment, please bear with me and read the rest of this post. It might be interesting to you.
What I’ve discovered is a very new and fresh on-line game which does something novel. Instead of making players actively participate in the game, like all othe browser games, and as a result require a level of attention that not everyone can afford; it turns the concept on its head and makes the whole internet the playing field. This name of it is PMOG and I think it might have the capacity, if used right, to help the blogosphere and especially the atheosphere, become both more contextual and fun.
I will not go into the details of what PMOG is or how it’s played but I want to explain why it has such a potential.
if you set aside than silly mine pranks and random fooling around with friends, the game’s true power appears in the form of missions. Basically what missions are (at least currently) is a collection of links to various pages in a serial format, along with a short description provided by the player who built the mission. This seemingly simple concept, allows something that is sorely missing.
You see, we currently have so much content produced every day that it is night impossible to find the truly interesting posts.The atheist blogroll is closing to a 1000 active blogs and it will only keep growing from there. I’m currently subscribed to almost all the blogs in the blogroll through an aggregator and I have to wade through a lot of uninteresting and repetitive posts every day just to find one or two that say something worth reading (for me).
Yes, I’ve prioritized a few blogs where almost everything written is interesting but I truly feel that there are underdogs out there who’s thoughts remain untapped while the big hitters like Pharyngula draw all the attention. Sure, places like Challenge Religion and the Carnival of the Godless help to cut through the mud, but their posts always seem disconnected from each other.
My idea then, is to use the mission capability of PMOG in order to create ad hoc “carnivals” that follow a theme and can also provide a customised commentary from the organiser in the form of pointers or clarifications.
This will have two effects that I can initially see:
- We have cohesive groups of posts that do not depend on a computer algorithm or people belonging to the same group. Thus I may have a mission about ethics and link to people who are members of the atheosphere (generally Atheist blogroll or Planet Atheism) along with ones who are not but have something relevant to say and most of us would miss.
- Given enough of us participating on this and allying with each other, we can push our missions to the top of the pile. This provides us with access to eyes we could not reach before.
Already, one mission on morality that I’ve created which hit 4/5 stars rating, generated 50 hits to my article which is almost as much as a CotG. If you consider that this game is still very very new and attracts people outside atheism as well, there is true potential to increase readership on the articles that are worth it.
Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg as well. Using items like portals for example, we can utilize our distributed power to create a network of relevant links. Imagine for example someone visiting the Expelled official website and the first thing that pops up is a 5-stars Expelled Exposed portal that the owners of Expelled cannot remove. As the popularity of the game increases, this can only grow more powerful for us, which is an even better reason to join in early.
Currently most missions are the random favorite sites each player has which just as fun (AKA not) as surfing on del.icio.us and makes the overall quality very low. I believe that if we can start improving this quality through the blogosphere, with better descriptions and interesting (underground or not) articles, we can easily take over.
Finally consider that the game can only become more interactive as time goes on. It will not be too long until we can create missions with riddles, votes and whatnot.
In any case, this was my little idea for the day. You can see the two initial missions that I’ve created as a proof of concept. For them, I used the items I marked as shared and starred in my google reader (It pays to do that sometimes).
- Morality without God: Includes articles from No Double Standards, Black Sun journal, Daylight Atheism, Atheist Ethicist and Philaletheia
- Challenge your Mind: With posts from Black Sun Journal, Easy to be Entreated, Geoff Arnold, Debunking Christianity, The Uncredible Hallq, Life Before Death and What’s the harm.
Hopefully, I’ve managed to convince at least a few of you to try this out just in case it’s worth it. In case you do, please add me as an ally so that I am aware of you and we can run & rate each other’s missions.
One last thing. Currently the game is under a lot of load from a recent sudden popularity hit so you might run into the occasional slowness or outright failure. Also, I failed to mention it until now but it requires Firefox and a special extension in order to play it.
In Defence of Greed
I’m having a lively discussion over at Ebonmuse’s recent post “Why I am not a communist” where I’ve mostly been discussing with a member of the audience, Mrnaglfar.
At a point in our discussion, Mrnaglfar asserted that greed is not inherently bad after I explained that it is not possible to have a perfect society based on a vice (greed). Specifically, his comment was:
More to the point, where do you get off even calling greed a ‘vice’, as if greed was inherently morally wrong? It’s like calling a hammer wrong; greed is merely a tool that can be used for many things. In the proper context, greed can be good – it can inspire innovation, make people strive for lofty goals, and without greed, very little would have ever been accomplished. However, greed can also throw people in poverty and lead to acts of violence, among other things. To merely paint greed a wrong with one broad brush stroke is similar to denying human nature entails greed and that in a perfect society it would vanish, and that through merely teaching children we can somehow undo over a billion years of evolution.
In all honesty, this perplexed me as I’ve never seen someone defend greed before. I’ve heard people claim that greed was a human flaw that capitalism has been built to exploit so that the end result is better for everyone. I’ve seen people believe that greed is part of human nature, a necessary evil and unchangable. But never that greed is not a vice.
As the conversation progressed and more thought was poured into the subject, it became obvious to me that Mrnaglfar’s idea of what greed is is quite different from what anyone normally associates with the word:
“A selfish or excessive desire for or pursuit of more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions” – from the Wiktrionary.
A telling example being how honour is explained as “greed for social status”. While Honour certainly entails a social status concept, there is nothing inherently greedy about it. People did not amass personal honour as an end in itself. Rather, if they did, then they had greed for honour or social standing, or to put more plainly, greed for glory and/or fame.
From the context, he seems to treat “greed” as a synonym for “desire” in order to base the idea that greed, by itself has a neutral moral value. However, greed entails aspects that go beyond the concept of simply desiring something. A Desire for money is not the same as Greed for money. A Desire for love, is not the same as greed for love. Indeed to treat greed like that in order to defend a concept is a form of equivocation.
As part of the converstation, there was a distinct defense of greed that I would like to tackle.
Greed as a tool
This was the initial argument that was raised in defence of greed. The concept being that since greed drives forward innovation, creativity and personal advancement under capitalism, it should be considered a tool and as such have a neutral moral value in the same sense that a knife can either be used for good (cutting food) or evil (killing people).
Initially I went with this definition although it did not sit well with me. Someting was amiss. I asserted that if greed is to be considered a tool then it is similar to a tool like a gun, whose main purpose is to do harm. However even this did not sound correct.
So I slept on it and with a fresh mind I think I can see what the problem is. Greed cannot be considered a tool at all.
A tool is something you manipulate in order to accomplish something. As an instrument it has no intrinsic value which is why you cannot label a weapon bad by default. However, even though the instrument has no moral value by itself, the action it is used to accompish does and that action takes its moral value not from the tool but by the desires.
And Greed is a desire.
You do not manipulate greed in order to accomplish something like you would a tool. Greed manipulares you (please save your “In Soviet Russia” jokes).
Say that I have greed for money. This is then my desire; to acquire money even though they are more than I need. My tool in this case is not greed as well but my brain and muscles. This is what I manipulate in order to acquire more money. The action that I decide upon on how to make more money can be labeled as good or bad depending on cumulative value of the desires and beliefs that manipulated me to do it.
Consider the following scenarios
A person robs a bank. The desires that led to this are:
- He had more than enough money to live on but had a greed for more. – bad
- The person has no avertion on intimidating and/or possibly killing innocent people. – very bad
- He has no avertion to taking items that do not belong to him – very bad
- He person was too lazy to find a legal way to acquire money. – bad
The cumulation of these three bad desires led to a bad action. You will also notice that the degree of how a desire or belief is bad varies. Thus a non-aversion to killing people is much worse than being lazy.
Now,if we are to take the same scenario with a twist on his desires:
- He did not have enough money to live. He had a desire to survive. – marginally good
- He did not have enough money to feed his family. He had a desire to help them. – good
- Even though he has an avertion on intimidating and/or possibly killing innocent people, it is not enough to overcome his desperation – very bad
- Even though he has he has an avertion to taking what does not belong to his, it is not enough to overcome his desperation – bad
- The person is very hard working but for various circumstances cannot find a job. This leads to desperation – good (hard working)
Even though the person has more good desires than bad, his weak avertion to intimidation and killing is cumulatively worse than all the good desires together. Nevertheless, any court of law would recognise the circumstances and would give him a more lenient sentence compared to the previous example.
Next, lets try something different but more related to greed. Say a televangelist is misapropriating funds from his wealthy church in order to have a wealthy lifestyle
- He has more than enough money to live. He is however greedy for wealth – bad
- He has no avertion to lying to cover this up – very bad
- He uses a very small part of his wealth to help the people who built up his wealth – marginally good
- He has not avertion to lying about his church’s powers in order to get more money. – bad
Now this person is not doing anything illegal under the law, but any moral person would condemn his actions.
Finally, let’s look at an example where the action of a greedy person is good. This person is a used car’s salesman.
- He is greedy for weath – bad
- He has a small avertion to lying but it can be overcome by greed – bad.
- He has a strong desire to avoid illegal activities – very good
Now this person, even though greedy and occasionally a liar, is still considered good (only marginally) as regards to his work. It is not because greed is neutral and does not count but rather because his good desires outweight his bad.
If we are to define greed as a neutral tool instead of a bad desire, then these calculation fail for we would have to define all desires as neutral tools. Lazyness is a tool (just not useful in capitalism as Mrnaglfar says), lying is a tool, intimidation is a tool etc. They can all possibly be used for good or bad purposes but if we are to make all desires and beliefs into neutral tools, how are we to judge an action as good or bad?
The answer is, we cannot. To do so would be to judge an action as good or bad on strictly subjective basis without any base. Even I do not promote such a way to judge.
So, Greed, like all desires, is not a tool. It has a moral value and that value is that greed is condemnable. One would thus be inclined to ask:
Why is greed wrong?
Circular reasoning
In regards to capitalism, greed does not apear to be all that bad, but I would like to show how this is a form of circular reasoning. It goes as thus.
- Greed is good because without it, capitalism would not work.
- Capitalism is good because every human is greedy and capitalism is the only system that can make it to serve good purposes.
This kind of circular reasoning does not allow a window where greed could be potentially phased out with a better desire, say, a like a desire to help people for emotional gain. As long as as capitalism remains the dominant culture, greed must be maintained and indeed increased if possible. As long as greed remains a powerful desire in most people, capitalism will work until it hits its other inenvitable hurdles.
Under this logic it is impossible to change things and indeed greed takes a perverted good moral value only because it derives this value from the perceived good value of capitalism.
The morality of Greed
Circular reasoning aside, how do we decide the moral value greed? I believe we can extract the value of greed from the definition and results it produces by itself, when not tempered by any other value.
Lets take the definition of greed once more.
“A selfish or excessive desire for or pursuit of more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions“
I’ve highlighted the parts which are relevant.
- A selfish desire: is the desire to hold yourself above others or have your own well being as your most powerful desire. This is not inherently bad but as far as desires go, it’s pretty low on the list (Objectivists begone!)
- An excessive desire: is bad by definition. Excess is never good.
- More than is needed: This denotes that this person, even though he has anything he might ever need from the subject of his greed, would still require more. This would in turn shift the supply and demand chain in a way that would create indirect suffering to other people.
As an example, to borrow one from the Atheist Ethicist, is the desire to wash your dog every day when there is a shortage of water. You do not need to wash your dog every day, indeed, washing it less would aleviate the urging problems of other people with the small drawback of a little stink. - More than is deserved: Once again, this is bad by definition. Someone who desires things he does not deserve is prone to performing actions that deny these items from people that do deserve them.
- Possesions: Indeed, it is true that greed mainly manifests itself for material goods. It does occasionaly appear as a greed for power or fame but it is the minority of cases and does not really work with capitalism that well (unless fame or power is gained through wealth).
The problem with this is that excessive materialistic desires are prone to create a problem in a world where the resources are already severely limited.
But lets not jugde just by literal semantics. Greed can be shown to be wrong philosophically.
As mentioned above, greed is usually for material possesions. This goes contrary to the knowledge that the resources of this world are limited. A greedy person, would not care if what he takes (legally) would indirectly cause someone who needs it more to miss it. As long as he has it then his desire is quenched. This is easily shown if you look at the recent problems with gas. Even though poor countries are not necessarily the ones that are producing the food, the rising food prices all over the world because the food is being used as gas by rich countries is indirectly affecting them.
Secondly, greed feeds upon itself. When someone has a excessive desire to get more than what is needed, it means that when the current target is reached, the desire remains and a new target is acquired. It is not true that the person will stop acquiring the subject of his greed after the current objective is reached for this would not be greed anymore.
Thirdy, greed causes needless suffering to the humans who posses it. Someone who is driven by material greed will always crave for more material possesions, no matter how many he already has. This will never allow him to be at peace with himself.
Even if his greed is stopped by other desires, like an avertion to crime or an avertion to other’s suffering, his greed will not go away. It will stay within him, causing emotional pain for the things he desires but cannot have.
Epilogue
And thus we come to the end of my little article. I hope I’ve sufficiently proved, by definition and philosophy that greed is a vice for it is a desire with an inherent negative value. Claiming that greed is good because it can occasionally lead to good deeds it akin to saying that the end justifies the means.
One last thing I’d like to tackle is the “perfect society” comment. I, like many others, strive to better the world. There are various things that are ambiguous and difficult to label as bad or good but we try. When I mention a better world, I do not know what I mean. I have no solid idea if the perfect world would be communism, anarchism or a socialist capitalism or whatnot. However I do have a clear idea of what does not belong in a better world, indeed, what is contrary to the spirit of it. Vices.
And greed is one of them.
What's the harm indeed
I’ve found this website in the latest SWIFT. How indeed have I missed this excellent repository?
Go and get some discussion ammo.
WordPress.com > Blogger
Can someone please explain to my why people are still creating blogs on blogger when they can use WordPress.com?
I mean, seriously, not only is the feature superiority of the later platform staggering but, after having to use blogger for the last few days now (mostly as a commenter), I can honestly attest, that it’s a pain it the buttocks!
Let me just list…
The things I’ve grown to hate in blogger
The list, looking back at it, is quite large. I’m surprised how someone who is funded by the bottomless pockets of the likes of Google can just be so bad at innovating and usage.
No trackback features
The only way you can see who is linking to you through blogger is to wait until google crawls through the site in question and discovers the link and then creates a “backlink”. If that site happens to be pretty obscure, then good luck.
Also blogger will not send a trackback or pingback to your own blog. I don’t know how many times I’ve been linked from blogger sites and I only discovered it when I checked my incoming links in my dashboard.
On the other side, wp.com not only handles trackbacks appropriately, placing them in the comment field at the time they were written with a small excerpt of the are around the link, but it also does not need you to manually specify trackback urls in your configuration. It will just send a pingback to any link you have automatically.
Comment handling
This is my biggest annoyance to tell you the truth.
- You are always redirected to another template in order to comment. Why they cannot just place the comment field below the entry, I do not know, but it’s horribly annoying. That damn template is so thin that I always have to scroll down 10 times to find what I want to reply to
- The captcha sux donkey balls. Not only are the letters ridiculously hard to read sometimes but apparently It will randomly deny the authentication.
- If your authentication is denied, then you have to decipher the next letters. Also, you cannot preview without correct captcha inserted.
- At random times, my OpenID will not be accepted (even though it’s always the same). When that happens, I have to re-enter the damn captcha always.
- No quoting mechanism or tags. I mean, seriously, how fucking difficult is it to allow the blockquote tag which has been defined in HTML for ages now? As a result, everyone just uses their own damn quoting style which is annoying as you have to figure out how each commented decided to quote today.
Granted, people use their own quoting style in WordPress comment fields as well but I can then blame it on their own ignorance/incapability to read and I’m hoping that an eventual upgrade will allow TinyMCE editing. - I’ll grant that blogger provides a preview feature which is useful but the rest of the comment annoyances just bury it.
- After you submit a comment, your permalink is some crappy blogger code which you cannot use to link to (if you want). In order to link to your comment (or use it in some other way), you need to go back to the original post and click on the date of your comment below your name.
Templates
80% of all blogger templates suck. They suck so hard it’s difficult to explain their suckiness.
- Fixed Width at 640 pixels or whatever which leads me to have 50% of my monitor empty with a tiny column of text in the middle.
- No avatar support. On the other hand, WordPress.com just added support for avatar collections and gravatars. This just make it more easy to tell the commenters apart.
They only thing saving the template issue of blogger is that they can be hacked, while you can’t do that in WordPress.com unless you pay. However, most people who like to hack are more likely to host their own WordPress sites. Also, the widgets of WordPress provide a much easier way to add banners and other random stuff to your sidebar instead of editing raw html.
Admin
WordPress.com provides you with a dashboard with many useful features like statistics, overview of your comments in all of wordpress.com, tag management etc. Blogger has, frankly, jack shit.
Community
The only community issue that blogger has is the top navbar which allows you to jump to another random blog. Not very useful
WordPress.com has the exellent possibly related posts feature, the classic navbar, tag surfer and tag subscription. If you want to find related stuff in the blogosphere, it is much easier. Also, by supporting trackbacks correctly, you actually see who is linking back at you immediately and it can actually act as a comment (as is the point of trackbacks).
They’ve already included a way to track your self-hosted wordpress blog through wordpress.com so I’m eagerly waiting for the plugins that will allow me to become a member of the wordpress.com community as well.
Btw, the profile setup of blogger leaves a lot to be desired for.
Features
Not only does wordpress.com seriously out-gun blogger in turns of features, it also has the extra benefit or being free software. That means that the quality of the service not only increases but that speed accelerating with the more people that join. What this means is that the rate that new cool features are being introduced increases exponentially.
On the other hand, blogger finally managed to allow scheduled posts just this month. A feature that has been standard for ages everywhere else.
Also, the fact that WordPress.com is open sourced means that, if for some reason, you wish to leave, you not only have the option of hosting it yourself (since the administration is identical) but you can bet that you can easily find alternatives as well that may fit your needs better.
Finally, I mentioned that wordpress.com is based on free software. This makes it superior ethically as well. While if you pay for features in blogger, you just hand more money to the ultra rich google, by supporting wordpress.com, you are paying the developers who in turn can use their time to provide a software that anyone can use.
So what are you waiting? Just give it a go and see if it works. It’s as painless as it gets.
You’re not certain how to do it? Let me give a hand:
How to migrate your blogger site to wordpress.com
Feel free to link to this section
- Create a new wordpress.com account and blog
- Go to Manage -> Import
- Import from blogger
- Admire how much better it looks.
If you have an already established user base, in order to avoid losing the users who read you through feed or bookmarked you you can do the following:
Feed
- Create a feedburner account and a feed for your blog (just follow the instructions)
- Redirect your blogger feed to the feedburner feed. This can be done though your Blogger Dashboard -> Settings -> Feed. In all honesty, If you have not done this already you’re missing out.
- Once all your users have moved to the new feed, perform the migration to wordpress.com and then edit your feedburner feed so as to draw the wordpress.com one instead of blogger.
- Done and none’s the wiser
Ninja Site redirection
This is just a way I thought off the top of my head. Unfortunately you might have to crack open your wallet for it to work. If anyone has a better idea, lemme know.
- Pay blogger to allow you to use your own domain name.
- Wait until everyone has updated their bookmarks.
- Migrate to wordpress.com
- Pay wordpress to allow you to use your own domain name.
- Redirect the domain name from blogger to wordpress.com
- Done and none’s the wiser
Alternatively, just make a final post and inform people to visit and bookmark the new site, you cheap bastard.
New bloggers
Why are you even using blogger anyway? If you’re reading this you should have deleted you blogger already and preparing a trackback from your new wordpress.com or baywords blog to tell me how right I was.
As new users, you have nothing to lose and, hopefully I’ve convinced you, a lot to gain.
Now, Git! Save me from having to use the crappy blogger comments again.
An easier way to track your comments in your lifestream
I’ve been trying to find a better way to allow my lifestream to track my comments that would require less manual activity from me as well as allow me to track my own comments in my own site.
When I started using google reader to archive and extend my lifestream, I briefly considered using it to track my comments as well but I decided against it as I wanted first to see if comment services like Cocomments or co.mments might work (they didn’t). I also could not see a way so as to get it to track only the thread titles where I’ve placed a comment (so as to insert it in the areas I am commenting) or how to get my lifestream to display only my own comments.
However, after managing to set up google reader as an archive, I discovered how much more information an atom feed is providing, part or which is the author or each comment post. Just what I needed đ
I quickly cooked up a bit of code to just keep the comments left from me in each thread’s feed. This is something I was not able to achieve with Cocomments and co.mments as they don’t provide you with an actual feed of the whole thread but rather they copy the text and provide you with a raw html formatted to simply look separated.
There was also a little problem that many feeds included various words in the title like “Comments on:” which just looked bad when I appended my extra “Commented on:” text. I needed to find a way to remove them so a little search and the php solution appeared. Perfect!
Last step was to trigger it even if I happened to comment with differing case in my alias. the “if” statement is quite anal about cases that way. All in lowercase then.
The end result is this:
if ($feedurl == $greader_comment_feed) {
if ($author = $item->get_author()) {
$name = strtolower($author->get_name());
if ($name == get_option('greader_comments_author')) {
$item_title_crops = array('Comments on:', 'Comments for', 'ÎŁÏÏλÎčα ÏÏÎż:');
$item_title = str_replace($item_title_crops,'',$item->get_source()->get_title());}
else {continue;}}}
Finally, all you need to do is setup a google reader public tag where you’re grouping in all the thread feeds of any place you comment in. You can see mine here for example. Get the feed of it, put the number of items you want to see (the default is 20) by appending ?n=# in the end, where # is the number of items you want. In this case you should put something sufficiently large as this will also include comments from others.
Unfortunately, once this was setup, I realized a limitation of simplelife. It still could not limit the number of items you received by date. This is apparently on the “To Do” list but seeing how long it is taking for new versions to come out, my only option was to code it myself. And code it I did đ
if (get_option('simple_datelimit') > 0) {$date_limit = get_option('simple_datelimit')*86400;}
if ($item->get_date(U) < date(U)-$date_limit) {continue;}
Not only that, but I decided to try my hand at adding it as an option on the plugins config page in the WordPress admin panel. This is why the “get_option” exists instead of hard-coded entries :).
What it does it take the number of days the user submits and multiplies it by the number of seconds in a 24h day (86400). After that, for each entry, I get the date in a UNIX epoch format and compare if the day the item was recorded is within the number of days I’ve set. If not, I just skip the current iteration.
Finally, since I already managed to edit a new option in the config, I thought why not to create the option for the Google Reader feed as well. And lo! There was code.
Since this wasn’t really hard, I’m planning now to prepare the plugin for general consumption and perhaps upload it to the Codex. I’ve was waiting for the 1.3 version to come out so that I could take that as it has some more improvements, but it just does not seem to be happening.
I also have some nice ideas to improve the config, like Ajax dynamic menus etc but that’s for the future.
Blogshares
Hah, I’d completely forgotten about this and now I discover that I’m worth 1M đ
Truth as a tool for immoral purposes
The Barefum Bum today used the movie Fitna to discuss the issue of wether accurate information can be used for racist purposes and I have no reason to disagree. However during the course of our short discussion, the issue of whether Geert Wilders is a racist keeps coming up.
Initially, I assumed that this was some kind of subtle Ad hominem, in effect using Wilder’s presumed racism as a way to discredit the movie but the issue at heart, I believe, is more complex.
You see, if Wilders is a racist, he deserves all the condemnation he can get; however, what I see people are trying to accomplish is to argue that because Wilders is/might be a racist, the movie itself should be labeled racist as well and thus condemned. Call me slow, but this does not follow.
Lets say that, given Wilders background, he is indeed a racist. Lets also say that he probably has his own, deeper purposes for making this movie. Lastly, lets assume for now that the movie is factually correct and also that there are no racist insinuations within but rather just strong anti-Islamism (but without any propaganda.)
Do the first two points make the truth (in this case the Movie as I defined it) racist as well? I would argue not.
The truth is the truth. The truth can be a tool.
The fact that the untwisted truth might be used for the wrong purposed does not make the truth wrong in the same sense that because nuclear energy can be used as a weapon, nuclear energy is not wrong.
Someone might argue then, that there are many types of tools and some might be inherently wrong, like, say, a pistol which has no other purpose than to injure and kill humans.Setting aside for a moment whether a tool can ever be inherently wrong, my questions are thus:
- Is it possible that the truth might be packaged in such a way so as to become a tool suitable only for immoral purposes?
- Is the use of truth for immoral purposes (not the purposes themselves) condemnable?
- At the end of the day, don’t all of us have some purposes for which we use the truth to argue for?
What if the god of Atheism was real?
This is directed to all my theist readers: What would you do if the god of atheism was real?
Imagine a God that provides no proof, or even hint, of his existence. He will only reward people who have lived their life believing that no gods existed, including him, and have reached this conclusion through critical and rational thinking.
If your life ends as an Atheist/Agnostic, you will be rewarded. If not…
How would you deal with this?
This is directed to all my theist readers: What would you do if the god of atheism was real?
Imagine a God that provides no proof, or even hint, of his existence. He will only reward people who have lived their life believing that no gods existed, including him, and have reached this conclusion through critical and rational thinking.
If your life ends as an Atheist/Agnostic, you will be rewarded. If not…
How would you deal with this?
This query was triggered by a recent question directed to Atheists by a Christian. It asked directly on how would we react if we ever discovered that the evangelical abrahamic deity existed, no matter how that happened.
What follows is some analysis and thoughts on the question posed. You can jump directly to my question details from here
Now, as others stated and is furthermore plainly obvious, this is a kind of a Pascal’s wager. The inquirer is simply attempting to make us think of the consequences of being wrong. This may sound like a scary concept for someone who is already a Christian or recently deconverted, and indeed it is one of the reasons why some people remain christians, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The fate of eternal punishment is just too great of a threat to even contemplate switching. A powerful meme in its own right.
Unfortunately, this does not work the same way on atheists and agnostics who know the facts and are not cowed by threats. This is readily apparent from many of the replies where the answer given is one of defiance, even in the face of eternal torment.
However, what is interesting is the own author’s own reply when the question is switched (as indeed is easy to do with any Pascal’s wager) and directed back at him, in the form of the existence of Allah. Read for yourselves:
NZskep, if tomorrow I found out that Allah was true, Iâd become a Muslim as fast as I could recite in Arabic âAllah hu akbar, bismillahi rahman hu rahim, la illa il allah, Mohammed rasul Allahâ.
Why? Because if that is the truth then itâs the truth. I donât really have a choice if Iâm a truth seeker. I have to accept it.
That also goes for Hinduism, Buddhism or even African Animism and of course if there is no god then Iâll become an Atheist..tomorrow.
No questions, no ifâs andâs or butâs.
This is unsurprising really. The author claims to be a truth seeker and would instantly convert to Allah, Hinduism, Dodecatheism or whatever, if only those deities made themselves undeniably real.
It is nothing more than the user displaying his Atheism/Agnosticism in regards to those other deities and then, like the rest of us, demanding proof that is not only undeniable, but also superior to the proof he has on his current god.
Surprisingly, he further claims that if there is no god, then he’ll become an atheist…tomorrow. Im not certain if this “…tomorrow” has some other meaning but what he is asking is again, undeniable proof for the non-existence of god. Barring the fact that you cannot prove a negative, this undeniable proof already exists in the many philosophical, scriptural and empirical problems all theistic religions face. The fact that he chooses not to consider them only shows that he is not really willing to look at it.
However, this apparent willingness to test his own beliefs leads me to the question I posted at the start of this post. I can even spicy it up a little to avoid some responses that might be directed to me.
- Do you feel defiant that this God allows the problem of evil to exist? Then be aware that this god has no power over this world/reality/life but all power over your life-after-death.
- You should not believe that life-after-death exists either.
- Do you believe that it’s better to believe to your current god because his punishment is horrible and/or eternal? Then be aware that the God of Atheists torture is not simply burning in a lake of fire stuff (that’s for wussies anyway). Expect eternal torment that you cannot even imagine. If you can imagine it…it’s worse.
- Do you feel that just because I assert this god exists that he is obviously not real? Well, think again. You cannot prove he does not exist any more that I can prove yours does not either. Personally, I don’t believe he exists…but he could.
- He does not care if you’ve been good or bad, only that you don’t believe in any gods.
- Btw, the cousin god of woo-woo will punish you appropriately if you should believe in any “alternative” stuff that have no proof either. No homeopathy, acupuncture, i-ching, ghosts etc or to the eternal suffering you go.
I think I’ve covered all the bases so lets hear it my theist readers (And I hope my atheist readers may help spread the question around): What would you do if the god of atheism was real?
Yet more hypocricy from Objectivists
Once below I found myself bothering with things that I should have known better not to.
Trying not to get into a detailed history of this:
- Evanescent wrote an article
- Alonzo Fyfe (AKA the Atheist Ethicist) tackled it which prompted Evanescent to come to the thread and whine. After failing to discuss (or read Alonzo’s follow up article) he wrote a new post as a reply asking Alonzo to discuss there. I was explicitly not invited.
- Evanescent and his band of Randians were eviscerated by the Barefoot Bum in Evanescent’s blog as well as commenters on Alonzo Fyfe’s post.
- At some point, Evanescent made the following statement (in regards to Barefoot Bum): “If he wants to win this argument, he only has to name another ultimate value other than life”. This prompted me to attempt to give single reply. If it was banned, fair enough, I expected as much.
However, it wasn’t blocked but allowed through and actually replied to. This, to my feeble and “irrational” mind seemed as an invitation to explain my position.
How much of a fool was I to expect even a shred of integrity from Randians. After my subsequent replies were left in moderation limbo for a day, they were eventually deleted (I cannot see them anymore as pending).
Since I expected this from the beggining, I decided to save my replies just in case so that perhaps I can continue the discussion with anyone interested, and also to display, once again, the hypocricy of Randianism.
Following are my replies as it would have been after this comment.
Of course after such a blatant display of silencing their opponents, I would be very wary of ever commenting on a place where they moderate. I know that Barefoot Bums trackback was deleted as well so I can only further guess that any opinion they could not refute has been conveniently moderated away. It is no wonder why other commenters are staying as far away from their comments as possible.
It also furtheronly reinforces my suspicions that if ever an Objectivist was placed on a position of political power, what followed would be a suspencion of freedom of such magniture that only Scientologists would be able to surpass it.
3 May, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I gave you an ultimate goal. This means that there is nothing following it and the purpose of this goal ends when it is realized. It is not, as you state, to make my life better. It just is.
I can explain why I consider this an ultimate goal, but this will not reveal life as an ultimate goal.
âŠThe avoidance of pain
You see that this is a circular argument? My goal is not to have no pain, not to live. Life is my means, a tool that I use in order to have no pain.
I have no choice on using life or not. My choices only affect my life in the future and for that, I have the goal of avoiding pain.
4 May, 2008 at 6:41 am âDesire Utilitarianism has a very good explanation of what rights are, does Objectivism have anything along similar lines?â
Actually, DU has a very poor description of rights and Objectivism certainly does not have anything along similar lines. DU is capable of only pointing at a *general* phenomena and ascribing to it the term ârightsââwhich is not only incorrect but also circular. The argument is circular because it merely uses different forms of the same argument to support the idea that rights exists.
For example, rights exists because generally people have many and strong reasons to encourage aversions to action X. Without all the unnecessary jargonistics, this is the same thing as saying rights exist because people want rights to exist. Well, but why do people want this to be the case? How did most people get those many and strong reasons? How did those reasons originate? What is their basis and is it univeral or cultural or subjective? And what about the few people who do not have those many and strong reasons? What about those who donât simply care about this either way?
DU is perhaps the silliest thing I have encountered that purports to be a philosophy; at its root, it is deeply confused about whether or not it is a philosophy based on determinism or free will. It insists on the objectivity of ethics but has no epistemological foundation or theory of concepts that demonstrates this objectivity; indeed, it appears that DU is epistemologically relativistic at best and subjectivistic at worst.
WRT Objectivism, it is simply not proper and not feasible to try to convince you of the Objectivist theory of rights on an internet forum. Rarely do people engage in online debates to be persuaded wholly about an opposing view; mostly, it is to bum-troll around looking to get into someoneâs hair like a stubborn piece of gum or win debating brownie points on cyberspace.
Primarily, personal and self-motivated study is the way to changing your views and exploring something new. So, if youâre truly interested in learning about the Objectivist theory of rights (and Objectivism in general)âand not simply engaging in fruitless online debatesâthen read the relevant books.
4 May, 2008 at 6:51 am âname another ultimate value other than lifeâ
âAbsence of pain. Physical and emotional.â
Absence of all pain would in fact destroy all meaning in valuation. It would be detrimental to our livesâwe would not know what has survival value in relation to us and what is a threat. Pain serves many different, important, and often life-sustaining functions. Pain can be an indicator of the nature of our actionsâwhether they are good or bad for us.
In an other sense, imagine your loved one is brutally mutilated by a thug right before your eyes. And then you donât feel pain; perhaps, you donât feel joy, but you neither feel painâjust indifference. Then, in what meaningful sense do we talk about valuation and emotional responses to values? How do know what is of value to us and what is not? Given our human nature, we experience our valuations through our emotions (emotional pain or emotional pleasure). With the absence of pain, one of the most important indicators of a healthy life will disappear.
So, no. Absence of pain cannot be an ultimate value. It is in fact important in the service of a truly ultimate value, which is life.
4 May, 2008 at 8:53 am Why would one avoid pain?
Why is pain undesirable?
Because it makes life unpleasant.
And it is better to have as pleasant a life as possible.
Why?
Because it make life enjoyable to live. Pleasure is the physical/emotional reward for achieving oneâs goals. But to what are these goals directed?
Iâll give you clue: L__E
There are two different types of responses to a âwhyâ question: one about the conscious intentions of an agent, and one about mechanisms.
Objectivism defines âvalueâ as something along these lines: some thing or condition that an agent acts to gain and/or keep. Now, letâs analyze this definition with respect to both types of answers to âwhyâ questions.
Under the intentional answer, eating for pleasure, eating to rid oneself of hunger, and eating to give oneself energy for doing known or suspected future tasks are values. Picking up sand on the bottom of my shoe when I walk on the beach is not a value (nor is the sand).
Under the mechanistic answer, anything I gain and/or keep, as well as anything I could gain and/or keep by doing whatever action Iâm doing at any point in time, are values. Under this answer, that sand I mentioned is a value. Yet this is absurd and trivializes the notion of value, making it next to useless.
From this analysis, it can be seen that the Objectivist definition of value must reasonably answer the intentional âwhyâ question, not the one I have labeled as âmechanisticâ. So, why is pain undesirable? The answer could be âbecause it just is undesirableâ or âbecause I donât want to feel badâ. But with the intentional reading of the âwhyâ question, the answer can not be, or at least almost never is, âbecause it is detrimental to my lifeâ. An intentional answer can not be reduced beyond the issue of consciously known desire, as far as I am aware.
Your answer was pretty good up until you answered the question âbut to what are these goals directed?â. It is there that the equivocation on âvalueâ pops up, where you switch to the non-intentional reading of the âwhyâ question.
So life can not be an ultimate value if it is not first a value, and no one, as far as I am aware, consciously holds just being alive, even if unable to do anything, as a value. Clearly, then, it is not the case that every personâs own status as being alive is of paramount value to them. A personâs own life is, at the very least, an instrumental valueâit is valuable because it allows one to pursue other values. So oneâs own life is a value by the Objectivist definition, but it is only, in general, a means to achieve other ends. Staying alive, then, is almost always, if not always, instrumental. But we can not say that it is an ultimate value. We can, however, say that it (the status of being alive) is a necessary prerequisite for valuing anything. This does not make it an ultimate value under the intentional notion of âvalueâ.
4 May, 2008 at 8:55 am I didnât separate the quotation from the rest of my post there. The quotation should be from the first line through the one ending in âL__Eâ.
4 May, 2008 at 11:29 am âStaying alive, then, is almost always, if not always, instrumental.â
This is not only false, it is impossible. Metaphysically, life is a given. Metaphysically, life is always self-directed, self-generating action (in plants and animals, including humans). To be an instrumental value, one must be able to act in such a way as to acquire, gain, and keep the value in order to achieve higher, more important values. But this is impossible because life is already givenâit is already acquired, it already exists. Your actions prove that you are alive. Hence, it is impossible to acquire the value of life for instrumental purposes.
Life as an ultimate value recognizes a very specific set of requirements: that one must act to acquire, gain, and keep all values that serve the purpose of our life qua human being. Since life qua man is the goal, Objectivism provides the unifying framework for all of manâs actions by defining life as âself-generated actionâ and manâs life as âgoal-directed action.â (Manâs life is âgoal-directedâ in the conscious sense of the term, because we volitional beings could even choose to commit suicide. Animals exhibit goal-directed action as well, albeit to a limited degree, with the goal being survival.)
Metaphysically, man has one goal, one endâ-to live as proper to his nature. Ethically, man has to choose his ultimate goal. Objectivism recommends that man choose his own rational happiness as the moral goal of his life. This recommendation is premised upon a long chain of metaphysical and epistemological analyses.
Objectivism regards happiness as not only possible but also the *proper* state of manâs existence on this earth. To that ethical endâwhich is justified on a metaphysical end, Objectivism builds a framework of moral rights that safeguard the conditions possible (the means) for the achievement of that end and ennumerates a series of values and virtues that are necessary means to achieving that end.
In both cases, the end is the individualâthe man; metaphysically, his life; ethically, his happiness.
4 May, 2008 at 11:48 am
This is not what I mean when I say âabsence of painâ. The goal is not to reach a status where Iâm incapable of feeling pain but rather to achieve a situation where I feel no pain at the current moment. Pain might very well return at a point in time but that only means that my ultimate goal reappears and I have to strive to achieve it once more.
The absence of pain is, pretty much, a goal that you achieve and lose many times during your life and always strive to achieve again, right until the point your life ends.
Once again, I am not going into the specifics of âWhyâ I consider this goal the ultimate. Only, as Evanescent requested, providing an ultimate goal other than life.
4 May, 2008 at 11:54 am
How do you assert this? There is no such need as far as I can see. A value is instrumental because it is used as an instrument for another value. There is no necessity that it be âacquiredâ or âact in order to keep itâ (although you do need to act in order to retain life).
Any such characteristics that you assign to âinstrumental valuesâ are of your devising and you need to provide empirical evidence to support them.