Messages

My information is outdated (I had heard about Macs using Intel processors now, a friend of mine runs OSX on his PC), so that was more directed to the powerPC-based Macs of old.
Nevertheless, I still associate Apple and Mac for some reason with the expensive-designer-PC category, rather than the cheap/bulk kind. The laptop seems to be reasonable-priced, yes.

I'd recommend you stay with XP until it is more beneficial for you to change OS, eg. use the platform that is currently the most productive. Until then, I'd recommend that you stay up to date with the situation so that when the time comes, you won't need to do as much research.
In my case, I'll probably keep XP until 2009 unless something comes up.

My experiences:
Currently XP wins hands down. I am double-booting XP sp 2 and Ubuntu 6.10, also tried Kubuntu. I mainly use Ubuntu for school stuff like programming in C or learning Latex and boot XP for leisure use.
Ubuntu and Kubuntu both installed nicely, the learning process took around a week (pre and post installation).
I could probably do everything I must entirely on XP, I just chose to install and learn Linux better. One day I will be hopefully switching entirely to free & open software, but I cannot see it happening anytime soon.

Regarding Macs (I am both uninformed and biased against them, so my opinion is of little value): The hardware is slow and expensive in comparison to PC hardware, the OS is quite unfamiliar to me but it seems intuitive.

Regarding number of entries:
You may submit as many you want, but choose one of those before the deadline as your official competition entry.

Regarding nudity: You are free to portray whatever you wish on the card, if it is not-work-safe/G-rated, post the image link rather than displaying the picture straight in this topic.

What is a Photoshop Saturday?

Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images. The contest usually lasts for a fortnight. Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, MSPaint, or any other programs can be used, even Mario Paint.

Your task is to design from scratch of one of the Major Arcana Tarot cards, abiding by the above rules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_arcana

Get crackin'!

Sorry for taking so long, at first I was away from computers and then something odd happened, as a result I can only access these servers now via a proxy. New contest coming up.

http://uppit.com/ED7FI

I feel that there is something wrong with how copyright laws (especially regarding intellectual property) work currently.
If an american breaks american copyright law, the RIAA takes action, and doesn't step outside of legal boundaries in the process, everything has happened the way it should, even if they sue a MS patient (as long as that patient was the one responsible for breaking the law).

One problem comes from how money influences opinions that form laws (lobbyism for example), and I don't see the current copyright laws serving the public interest.
Not to mention that America in it's turn pressures other countries to enforce similar copyright-laws.

The hardest part is to motivate citizens to take interest in their society and fight for their moral values. Everything that you do counts, even internet petitions. Breaking the law and stealing mp3s will too, but unless you believe that people should be allowed to break the law when they wish, you are sending the wrong message. The RIAA (and other organisations) might even fight back on the same terms (probably will too, in order to survive), but they have more money than you (and will probably crush you).
Organise yourself, take a stand, fight for what you believe in, don't merely opt for convenience. Luxury products like music should even be quite easy to boycot.

I'm saying we shouldn't live in the world of beliefs of thousands of years ago without questioning it and tkaing  out what's irrelevant, our world has changed, our technology and intelligence has progressed, let's progress with it.

This I agree with, if the instances of the word "progress" are exchanged for "change" (or other words without clearly positive/negative values assigned to them).

I think it is important to realise the possibility that many western moral values are based on god and that belief in the all-seeing judge has kept people working toward common goals. The concept of god supports the idea of moral absolutes.

This next part is stolen from here (http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/decline.html):
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"False ideas are bringing about the decline of western culture. Carl F. H. Henry, in his book Twilight of a Great Civilization, says:

    There is a new barbarism. This barbarism has embraced a new pagan mentality . . . not simply rejecting the legacy of the West, but embracing a new pagan mentality where there is no fixed truth.

Today we live in a world where biblical absolutes are ignored, and unless we return to these biblical truths, our nation will continue to decline."
----

I am of the opinion that moral values are creations, and that we all define good and bad to suit our personal goals.
I see it as a realistic possibility that societies are torn apart by internal conflicts when people begin to pursue their individual goals.

I also believe that christianity is failing (because people do not have faith in it anymore), and if we cling to it, our society that bases it's morals in it might go under unless we see a resurgence of faith. Unlike the above quote, I can see a society function without biblical truths.

I see faith (not neccesarily theistic) as essential for any society to function, and we may be able to restructure this society to function without moral realism. However, absolute values that cannot be questioned will probably be a stronger incentive for acting in a certain way than a questionable agreement between men.

Helm already took this to the direction I was pursuing, but here is my version.

Seeing that you are concerned with limiting this to the major theistic religions, I'll try to limit this to only miracle-believing branches of Christianity and Islam.

Here is a four step reasoning (stolen from here: http://www.comereason.org/phil_qstn/phi060.asp)
that traces back miracles to an omnipotent christian god which should coincide with the religious groups we are targeting
(don't know if the muslims think alike):
   1.  The Bible asserts that an omnipotent God created the universe ex nihilo and governs natural laws.
   2.  If God governs natural laws, God can suspend natural laws
   3.  A suspension of natural laws is a definition of a miracle.
   4.  Therefore if the God of Christianity exists, He can perform miracles.

So, the actual axiom regarding miracles is not if/how/why they happened or not, but if the bible is true. If the bible is true, then there is an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent etc. god which explains everything else inside the bible, no matter how unintuitive those concepts may seem on their own. The weapons we have against disproving the bible (or any of it's individual contents like a specific miracle) must be directed toward the concept of god, the way that the bible presents him/her/it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_nature_of_God_in_Western_theology

The link to deism was not because they reject supernatural events, but because of this: "deists hold that correct religious beliefs must be founded on human reason". Reasoning, deductions and logic can be applied to any axioms to build and explain more constructions (like miracles), and are not luxuries that religion never heard of.

The question I was actually asking was: Are you implying that the concept of an all-knowing, infinite, benevolent, all-powerful judge came out of the blue?
With additional questions to see where I am aiming at:
What was mankind's motivation to create such a concept? What purposes did it serve? Has this concept become obsolete?

Yes, science are based on many axioms. Which do not come out of the blue, but are there to fill the gaps between facts and are the result of research.

Are you implying that religious axioms come out of the blue?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

No, Science is based on facts and proofs. Any ausumptions in it are based on facts. Faith is based on myths and illogical things that can't be proven and are taken for granted because it's written in a holy book.

Science is based on axioms. From wikipedia:
An axiom is any sentence, proposition, statement or rule that forms the basis of a formal system. Unlike theorems, axioms are neither derived by principles of deduction, nor are they demonstrable by formal proofs. Instead, an axiom is taken for granted as valid, and serves as a necessary starting point for deducing and inferencing logically consistent propositions. In many usages, "axiom," "postulate," and "assumption" are used interchangeably.

Axioms/assumptions require faith to become truths. Without any axioms, you wouldn't have science (or religion), example: If we question ZFC, math falls apart, if we question god, most religions fall apart. The arguments you present base themselves on axioms (and go off a tangent so sorry for ignoring the lengthy example about evolution), but should one be capable of disproving an axiom it uses, science would come tumbling down. Science however has been able to use less axioms (and more intuitive ones) to explain more and remain consistent, therefore I see it as a better base than religion for explaining the world.
Science has not yet solved everything though, and I don't mind if god exists in the areas that science has not touched (my concept of him, not the one created by men and doucumented in the bible). Luckily I come in contact with those areas seldomly so I don't have to resort to god or back out of arguments and say "I don't know".
If people continue to question the axioms and the deductions made upon those axioms that make up science, I have no problems with it.

In religious if you question it you're a sinner, a blasphemer, basically you're not allowed to try to prove anything wrong or change anything even if you have proof.

Religion has come a long way since the writing of the old testament, look up discordianism for an example. But yes, I see any unquestionable authority as a negative thing (think of how Aristotle's authority held science down). Still, as long as science is not able to explain everything, I believe religion has room to coexist with it, perhaps man will even come up with a religion that can be questioned in it's deductions.

How I view faith and good and bad:
- We cannot come to any absolute truths, there are no absoute truths, only assumptions of how things are
- Faith is the thing that elevates an assumption to a truth
- Good and bad do not exist as truths or absoutes, we define and create good and bad through faith
- Some assumptions require less faith to become truths (science is a lower-faith assumption, God is a higher-faith assumption)

How do we choose which assumptions to elevate to truth status?
- By amount of faith required
- If the assumption can be used as a mean toward an end (fears/desires/selfishness)

About the nature of man:
-All our actions are deep down motivated by selfish, animalistic and instincual things

About the amount of faith:
- The amount of faith one has dictates how seemingly unselfishly one can act

Now to answer some of your questions:

however it seems like you'd like to believe in god from some of the things you said?

I'd like to have more faith (for example: faith in that the world is worth to save). More faith -> more actions and less obviously selfish actions -> perhaps a better person (in the eyes of others?)

Unacceptable to me. If you believed that then that gets rid of fertility clinics, surrogate mothers, sperm donors, in vitro fertilization and adoption [make a baby, don't claim one already made! SPREAD YOUR DNA!]. Sterilization and hysterectomy are out too, probably.

To further fall into the "It's not natural" mindset there goes plastics, silicone, some vaccinations and geneticall modified foods. Way to ruin it for everyone, the gays!

There exist people that believe that man should live naturally like in the caveman days, and probably a couple individuals on earth do so too. However, the point was that even science can be twisted through faith to serve the same fears and desires. It is indeed harder to use precisely (get rid of the scary gays but give up a bunch of other stuff that is good on the way) than religion.

And in the process of designing your faith based off of fears and desires and selfishness, you've never done anything bad as a result of your faith? Even if you haven't, no one else has in the history of the world?

I do daily bad things due to my faith (and lack thereof). The questions I ask myself are: Would I do less bad if I had more faith, if I was more naive, if I was less egocentrical?
The christians in my surroundings (that seem to have more faith than me) seem to do more good to others than I do (I mostly care about myself and keeping my head above the water). Someone who can devote their time to keep another person afloat in this world must have their own shit sorted out first, and I guess I am jealous of those people, their energy and faith, rather than that I wish to believe in god.

Then your newest question:

So... then faith can motivate people to do negative things?

Yes, without faith we would act only toward instant goals and live in the moment. Faith is the motivator that makes people invest energy in something imaginary/abstract and theoretical and this form of society could not exist without faith (or long term goals).

Lastly, my opinion on religious faith:
Personal faith in god = good (motivates a person to do what they believe is good)
Organised faith in god (example: the bible) = bad (used as a political, social etc. tool, based on outdated concepts, keeps society from redefining good and bad)

MrColossal:
As I see it, I (sort of) make all my decisions based on faith (and in situations involving unknowns) and do not see the stretching of the definition of faith to everything as very silly.
This sterns from my problem with authorities/truths, some (science) are harder to work around/dismiss, while some (religion) are easier.
I have more faith in science, since I feel it relies on less assumptions than religion and therefore is a more solid base to choose my actions upon. I still see science as a neccesary evil (authority), but a much smaller one than religious faith, especially organised religion, since organisation requires cooperation therefore organised religion always influences society (for good or bad).
What science cannot explain, I have no trouble letting religion or "I don't know yet." fill. A large part of the world as I percieve it remains still in the dark and even the parts I think I know don't quite fit.
Taking the leap from nothing (no assumptions) to establishing science requires a leap of faith, as well as the leaps to "I don't know" and "God" ("I don't know" being perhaps the smallest and "God" being the greatest).
I am also sadly in the "nothing happens after death" camp, but I guess this is still an area for me where "I don't know" takes the lead, so God won't sneak into other areas of my universe, create paradoxes and contradict him/herself.
Regarding evidence, I don't believe anything can be proven true (even having some minor problems with I think, therefore I am), but due to stretching faith to encompass everything, small amounts of faith help me function in this world and accept assumptions as truths.

I don't think I am very far from your line of thinking, this side discussion is more of a definition-of-faith thing than a argument about religious faith.

Now on to my opinion on some points you directed at helm:
"Gay people should not be allowed to marry/make love/adopt/exist because God says it is an abomination."
How about this version of the argument?
"Gay people should not be allowed to marry/make love/adopt/exist because it is not natural reproductive behaviour."

So faith is based on human fears/desires/ignorance?
Yes, I see my faith having it's origin in my fears and desires, I believe I am almost incapable of unselfish action.

But I don't think someone has to eventually have faith or faith-like views the more and more one gets into the unknown.

One just has to stop and say "I don't know yet." and that's hard to do sometimes and yet it should be the easiest thing ever. "I don't know" usually means to some people "I haven't thought about it" when it could very well be "I have given a lot of thought to it, weighed all the evidence and there is too little evidence for me to make a proper conclusion at this time, so I don't know yet.". In my opinion at least.

Here is somewhat what I was aiming towards (might be that I misinterpreted again due to obscure words so sorry if this goes off a far tangent):
Driftwood theory (don't know what this is called in english -> didn't wiki -> shitty explanation):
---
Assume that choices exist, the clock is ticking and time is moving forward along a line.
A person is in a situation with x possible outcomes and lacks sufficient information to predict the outcome of any action to 100%.
In case he/she takes no action, factors unrelated to his/her actions might resolve the situation (the time-opportunity-window might close) or eliminate all other options until one possible action remains and force him/her to choose it (kind of a path of least resistance thing).
---
Depending if you view taking no action and saying "I don't know yet." as making a choice, you might still be making some kind of conclusion and acting upon it.

The way I see it, there are so many factors constantly at work in the universe that if I'd just say "I don't know yet.", I'd maybe never get a second chance or my life would take the path of a log in a stream.
I have made several choices with lacking evidence, mostly because I have found that the passive "log in a stream" approach leads usually to erosion.
In order to make more choices and be less passive/pushed around, I have chosen to believe in the following:

- My actions can make a difference
- Everything is not predetermined

This still requires some faith (free will), hard determinism seems like a more logical construction, but could make me more passive.

Sorry, read your posts sloppily and realised after hand that you had not really presented the argument I formulated my question for.

Why couldn't a person with faith-like-views say so?

..people like Sektor 13 should stop trying to put meanings and explanation over so simple stuff.

Why?
If faith motivates somone in this life, I don't see it as a neccesarily negative thing.

I've had a lucid-ish dream of the afterlife.
In it I was informed that I was dead and had the choice of
what I wanted to happen. I replied that I wished my consciousness
to dissolve in a comfortable way, to fade out of all existence
and never return. That kind of happened, I dreamed that first everything
around me faded out of existence until all that remained was my
awareness of that there was nothing left, and I could not be fully
at peace until my thoughts had ceased.
To fade away the world was easy, but to stop all thought and go the
full way was difficult. I had perhaps an 30 minute unaware stretch of
nothing before I awakened. I awoke feeling very calm and refreshed in some way.
I guess exploring space could be cool too. I'd go looking for dwarves in dwarf galaxies.

I do not know myself well enough to say if I would be scared at my deathbed,
but I do not wish for any reward or second chances after my heart stops.

I also had a dream of hell once. Fire and brimstone and 16th-century portrayals of hell do not scare me, but the hell I dreamed of had a cubicle allocated for me by people who knew me better than I do.
I remember wearing an iron mask that cut into my skull and the holes where my eyes had been (and some other kinky shit).
It was not especially scary though as I never(?) dream pain.

If hell and heaven exist, I guess I claimed my place in the former before I turned six.
What I wonder is:
1. If heaven/hell exist, do people spend an eternity there?
If the answer is yes, then I wonder about the following:
2. Are they limited dimensions or subdimensions, or will everything eventually happen
in both places?
3. Who controls all possible outcomes in each dimension?

I guess that most people who believe in an infinite heaven/hell believe it to be limited in the way that in hell only punishes and heaven rewards.
Somehow I don't think that any infinite, limited dimension would seem appealing to me, as I grow bored of repetition.
I guess I hope to achieve some kind of closure to certain things before death, set a couple brave footprints in snow, so I don't really dig the pursuit for Nirvana (as much as I know of it, although the middle road concept in Buddhism is appealing).

I haven't been quite a year here yet, but all kinds of things have happened. In real life:
Girls, parties, drugs, deaths, births, work, etc.

I am beginning to doubt I will ever produce anything with AGS, but the forums have:
-inspired me to write, compose, paint
-made me laugh
-bored me out of my mind (like the internet usually does).

Helm awoke my interest in philosophy, and I have changed to a more analog person
because of that (thank you). Here is a summary of my current philosophical thoughts:
----------------------------------------------------
Of the meaning of life and philosophy

I think the meaning of life is to live.
This happens among other things when I am
immersed in the moment, stop thinking and
analyzing.
Therefore, I believe philosophy should strive
to undo itself, the only time it should be
used is when thoughts are interfering with life,
holding you back.

My experiences with philosophy lead me to
appreciate the path more than the goal;
I have found it more rewarding to discover pieces
and see if they fit rather than read books
(did some wikipedia checkups now and then
to understand the general ideas).
I came to the conclusion that I prefer
the middle-ground best (example: agnosticism)
since it gives me the most flexibility when
my life-situation changes, giving me more time
outside my head instead of analyzing and
re-evaluating everything.

Carpe diem, be vigilant.
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