lorriman

Low-level anxiety, procrastination, jittery energy useless for humdrum work, bad overall energy levels if you consume alot of strong coffee, painful wakeup in the morning, adrenalised brain geared to snap decisions rather than measured reasoning.

Or

Bounce out of bed at 100% energy, fluid easy reasoning, easier learning, relaxed, enjoy slow movies, good overall energy, fine with humdrum activities, far less procrastination. Less impatient with people.

The caffeine-energy thing is pretty bogus. The problem for me is that I find it fun.

Just realise that giving up caffine means tapering for many people as the migrained a heavy coffee drinker can get form cold-turkey can be the worst, worse than anything I;ve ever had before. Also, even decaf and cocoa have too much caffeine, and with the reduction in tolerance as you come down in dose, so you become more sensitive. You really have to give it up completely, which is a shame. But the upside is massive.

How was what I wrote a 'flamewar'? And especially in the context of the anti-religious views that elsewhere were not flagged nor called flamewars. What's your agenda, Dang?

Politics, religion, philosophy, these are worthwhile things to discuss.

And fun.

Now leave us be to have fun.

Yet I spelled out that much of Christianity (at least; if not other religions) have no issue with the fundamental scientific claims that are said to disprove religious claims.

That the Big Bang, 14 billion years, and evolution are all the product of famous scientist Christians was just the icing on the cake.

The fact is that science does not in any way disprove the existence of a god.

You mean you suppose it to be imaginary.

The example isn't the same as religious claims. Firstly because all religious people claim that the 'invisible' friend will talk back if you make the effort to make contact (with few exceptions, but some are: the arrogant, the idly curious, those who wouldn't change their lives even if they knew).

And unlike fairies at the bottom of the garden, a supreme being has by definition the power to prove its own existence to the individual. Nothing else does. Think about it, you can't even prove your own sanity to yourself, or that anything around you exists. Even science can't deal with that one.

So sure, I can't prove a god's existence to you but I could witness to my own contact with one. Depending on your evaluation of me as a person of integrity and sensibleness, you may be encouraged to make contact. But to dismiss a person as not sensible because of such a claim is clearly fallacy. First you would need to prove it can't be true.

cannoneshamster: "Your post is full of strawmen and logical fallacies."

You've made a lot of assertions about my 'logical fallacies' without any reasoned demonstration.

How am I meant to argue with that?

Meanwhile, what's your best atheist argument?

"Nope. A-theist simply means someone who lacks theism."

Actually it was coined by theists without a strict reference to the greek and was defined as "To Deny the gods/God".

Lately, the OED modified the definition to "To Deny or disbelieve in the gods/God", which is actually quite a radical change and has thoroughly muddied the waters of discourse.

But really, think about it: if atheists are going to call religious persons deluded, or even think it, as they consistently do then they are true believers.

Also let's break it down (especially to counter the confused nonsense that is the wikipedia article on the definition of atheist):

Either you:

1)believe there is a god 2)beleive there isn't a god 3)have no belief either way.

Now, we need a word for the 2nd. What is it to be if it isn't 'atheist', as you are claiming. And why should it not be 'atheist' when that was its original meaning? And that's what most non-atheists think it means. And by that definition it only has one meaning, which is seriously helpful in debate.

We should also ask, why are atheists telling us they merely lack belief when they walk and talk like they genuinely believe there is no god, even to callign religious instruciton child abuse (Dawkins). And why are they insisting on redefining 'atheist'?

Is it perhaps because the more educated atheists know their position and belief isn't provable, and so such a belief would be rightly called out as irrational? After all, beleiving in the unproven is not reaosnable. Belief means certainty, and you can't be certian without proof.

A great deal of speculation in that article. Sounds more like psycotherapy ideas than real psychology/neuroscience.

Meanwhile, let's look at the (paraphrased) claims:

"Science is not compatible with religion."

Yet the Big Bang theory was invented by a physicist who went on to become a Catholic priest, George Lemaitre. And the father of modern genetics is not Darwin but a catholic monk, Gregor Mendel. hmmm. Both had google doodles recently.

"Evolution and creationism are not reconcileable."

But Christianity has never had a formal dogma that the Bible is literally true as a historical document (but neither any reason prior to modern science to think otherwise, but that misses the point). 3/4 of Christianity is fine with evolution and the Big Bang, and 14 billion years, and for Catholics even the existence of aliens. It's arguable that the rest are just reacting to Atheist claims, clutching to a dogma that doesn't exist because they are simple and uneducated Christians who don't know better.

"There is no evidence of a god."

But this claim has to discount those who claim to personally know a god as deluded. That's clearly a fallacy. Sure, spiritual 'contact' doesn't give 3rd party verification (the 3rd party being an agnostic who hasn't had such contact), and will not satisfy the determinedly materialistic who will only accept physical evidence, but what evidence of a spiritual God can we expect in the material universe?

More importantly, wouldn't a god be able to give proof of itself? And wouldn't that proof, if it were a personal god as claimed, be person to person communing? The author evidently did not actually personally know the god she eventually rejected and by a Christian standard never had faith.

Faith "Belief without evidence". Thanks for that presumptious redefinition, Bertrand Russell, but that is not a Christian or religious definition and has no etymological roots. Sure makes them look silly, though. The real definition of faith is more to do with direct personal knowledge of a god.

Or let's take Dawkins favourite argument "Who made God?". But this was answered by Thomas Aquinas centuries ago. A thing whose nature/essence is existence, to exist, self-evidently exists. Since it must also self-evidently exist of itself, and is therefore self-referencing, the real question is not "Is there a god" but "Is this self-referencing fundamental thing also self-aware?". Either Dawkins is ignorant or he's lying by ommission (which he already does with evolution).

But here's the kicker: an atheist beleives that there is no god - which is why they quite outrageously call religious persons deluded as no agnostic would - yet there is no proof of the non-existence of a supreme being.

So while atheists are always irrational whether or not there is a god, religious persons are only irrational if there isn't a god.

The irony is wonderful. Faith as "Belief without evidence" applies to atheists more than religious persons.

What's your best atheist argument? I can pretty much defeat any atheist argument.

Veganism unavoidably implies a moral superiority where vegetarianism doesn't.

That's pretty irritating.

It also just doesn't mesh with most people's understanding of simple animals as simple and food-driven, not in any way equal to the long existential agonies and traumas of humans.

Their implied moral high-ground, in the face of rampant predator killings in the natural world, adds up to too much Disney and too little sense.

...and lions eat their own young let alone warthogs.

This is only an issue because Donald Trump is misrepresented as being racist and anti-immigration when he has only talked of illegal immigration and the problem of Islamic migrants (ie, the Islamic version of democracy which is not compatible with any Western Liberal democracy).

Before anyone goes vegan, check-out the numerous ex-vegan videos on youtube. Even with supplementation veganism isn't sustainable for most people past 3 years, 10 if you're lucky, very few get to 15. Just keep in mind that without vitamin B12 supplements-->certain death.

This is not a human diet, and humans are not herbivores. Herbivores have complex stomachs or eat their own poop (eg, gorrillas and rabbits).

After the health flush of the first few months, veganism is a downward spiral to pasty skin, mood-swings, depression, dark circles, fatigue, skinny-but-fat, Joint paint, constant hunger/lack-of-satisfaction, excessive volume of eating. Vegans eat like you wouldn't believe. And a great deal of wildlife dies due to agricultural farming.

And despite what people say, anthropologically we are not omnivores but carnivores. Radio-isotope analysis has us eating a diet close to a wolf by preference over the last million years. Unlike a pig, a genuine omnivore, we do not have a proper cecum.

But sure, a few humans are better adapted to a plant-based diet than others, and our distant genetics was herbivore which means these genes can re-express, but for most people veganism becomes a nightmare and explains why the level has historically been at 0.3%.

The wonderfully mad thing about UK politics is that the socialists are very much against the EU and for leaving, but their nominally socialist party, the Labour Party, is Remainer while their leader is a capitulating Brexiter, and grassroots conservatives are Brexiters while the Conservative Party is significantly Remainer with a (now ex) Remainer primeminister and remainer Chancellor of the Exchequor.

What makes a lot more sense it that while the ideological Economist Magazine and academic economists are Remainer (of the same 125 who jointly wrote to Thatcher telling her how wrong she was in 1982; that didn't turn out so well, haha!), Money Week (which is only interested in making money) and the capitalist pundits at the Daily Telegraph are essentially Brexiters.

"As long as everyone gets the same voucher, same amount for voucher, and has guaranteed public transportation to the same schools as others, with no regard for race, ethnicity, background, then sure go for vouchers.... if you can't guarantee those things then it's just another system that can be gamed."

Anything can be gamed if you are adequately cunning. That's the problem of the "public parasite". And your conditions are arbitrary and ride roughshod over private liberty and the choices of the parents.

A voucher system would induce the creation of local schools, so the transportation thing is irrelevent (and in anycase the responsiblity of parents not the State).

"Pegging CEO pay to average of ALL employees including outsourced, freelance, and contractors (even janitorial staff), would go a long way towards making capitalism more fair."

That would result in socialism. A healthy system looks for liberty based solutions, not coercions. More liberty intelligently applied (as with vouchers) requires politicans with backbone and brains. Able to withstand emotional blackmail and do the right thing for the long term instead of pretending to solve problems by banning stuff and throwing money around.

A healthy capitalism is expressed by G K Chesterton, and is an argument against liberal capitalism,which even Thatcher did not support:

“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

Like anything, capitalism must be humanised with restraint and constraint, the application of intelligent regulations and actively fighting the private monopolist (Hayek, The Road to Serfdom). For example, to avoid race-to-the-bottom competition by mandating certain features as non-optional. Or for safety. Obvious stuff really. And not burdensome regulations to please a Media campaign or emotional blackmail from the Left.

Liberal capitalism, totally free market capitalism, ends with monopolies as beast eats beast. It's what Marx criticised though he made no distinction between capitalism and capitalism.

And this is what has happened, with monopolies so large that their power to blackmail and bribe is undermining government, threatening free speech and disenfranchising.

...or trust the government with the education of your children. As much as the Left sneer at it, a voucher system would give people the liberty to choose the schools they want and not what they are forced to accept.

Meanwhile, governments support doctrines that have turned out to be false, even just basic things like diet. Animal fat and dietary cholesterol for instance, is no longer believed to be the cause of heart disease. And can aid weight loss.

Social doctrines also are arguably causing widespread misery for people trapped by government welfare systems at such a high cost that it depresses local economic activity.

Self-help rather than government help is the conservative way. And a healthy capitalism is part of that.

The problem here is that modern capitalism is quite evidently not healthy. With the historical profit margin on goods of 3% now at a mad 11% due to monopoly power.

I heard Fred Hoyle when he came to lecture at my school in the 80s (a prestigious, rich boys school). It was one of the few places willing to give him the time as his views were vaguely in line with Christian creationism though he was an atheist, ironically. It was doubly ironic in that the school was Catholic and Catholic Christianity is not biblically literalist. In fact the inventor of the Big Bang theory eventually became a Catholic priest. hahaha!

Desktop development was a dream with Delphi but Microsoft decided to compete against it and then undermine it instead of supporting it. Not just a dick move, but DaF.

Aquisition/immersion learning is rapid. Thegovernment metrics are likely based on academic learning methods.

Forget the books and turn on the radio and TV instead.

Languages don't need to keep up with trends to stay used. But updating languages is the fun stuff; there won't be a problem with volunteers for that especially at universities. All the hard work has been done, unless an update would require a complete rewrite of the compilers which, sure, isn't likely.

Flutter needs an update once a year at most, and is mostly cosmetic and a bit of wrapping. Again, the heavy lifting has been done.

Coding from the bottom up....has been done.

I think you may be overstating the 'commitment'.

What we need to keep in mind here, is the context, that dart/flutter is easy access - it's no Angular or Cocoa - and that no sane, mature dev programs in only one language and one platform unless it's legacy.

We're not talking about a massive commitment from a dev, so talk of 'being burned' by Dart 1.0 is already a bit of a headscratcher when google didn't drop it, rather changed up and arguably improved Dart. How can that be called 'being burned'. For instance, dropping the need for 'new'. So, sure, it makes the code slightly less readable, but it also opens Dart to neat code and even maybe DSLs. Then they added Flutter.

That argument applies to something like Linux. Here we are talking about a language and wrappers and an essentially completed framework (granted new ideas mean no framework is every completed).

And unlike a google service, which requires continued resource usage and high cost, flutter+dart has low needs. It may get outdated, but it can't be disappeared like other dropped google projects.

In any case, Unless Dart+flutter becomes an undesirable competitor to another google offering, there is no reason for Google to drop it unless it fails to get sufficient adoption. But I think that's unlikely.

Javascript devs are widening their horizons these days (as opposed to their rejection of Dart 1.0), and Dart only needs a few of those javascript devs to take an interest. The framework is an easy crossover for many of them, with an almost instant access to app development and little commitment needed to spin up.

What do you mean by "burned by Dart 1.0"?

Dart was rejected by the community it was aimed at, Javascripts devs (and for pretty dumb reasons, I don't have much respect for either Javascript or its devs).

Google understandably took the opportunity to reboot it.

None of this is the same as dropping it, which for sure would merit "being burned".

It's now a modernised and slick version of Javascript (minus the functional, which no one uses anyway) with a full Android and IOS framework and extensive and properly documented libraries. And it's opensource.

At this point it's not possible for it to be 'dropped'.

The win gap was at least 4%. (48 vs 52).

Further, the native population was far higher pro Brexit.

As for misinformation, I don't know any Brexiters who were voting based on Boris Johnson's obviously politically gamed claims from someone who is a Brexiter purely for political reasons (I don't think the population is as naive as you give them credit for, and presuming Brexiters to be stupid is BS fallacy), but on the basis that the EU is not properly democratically accountable and the Brit economic/business attitude and politics is not compatible with European ways (ie, high State control). We want to go back to a low paper-work, low-bureaucracy, liberally-inclined environment. Brexit is a start.

I have lived a significant proportion of my life in Europe, and the UK is not meaningfully European. It should have never have been a member, and has been a problem to the EU ever since. It should have been consulted on joining the EU at the very least, and it was not. Now that it has had 20 years of the EU, a 52% vote against remaining is significant.

Explain again why saying "I don't accept your claim that there is a god" is irrational?

I addressed that in what I wrote.

But these are wikipedia's crazy mashup of definitions coming straight out of the authors' butts.

The original definition, and defined by those that coined it, to be positively "there is no god" was

"To deny the Gods/god". Ref Encyclopdia Brittannica which goes in to the history of this issue.

Anything else is just atheists trying to get around the logical fallacy it represents, of an unprovable assertion.

Wikipedia definitions better fit the Huxlien idea of an agnostic. The fact is that there are only three concrete states in terms of belief/certainty:

Belief that there is no god. Lack of belief in a god. Belief in a god.

And there are three words that cover these states (four if you include an impersonal god as a valid god, deist).

Atheist Agnostic Theist

Anything else is just confusing terms and definitions and causes unnecessary argument that is unhelpful to debate.

Wikipedia needs to repent.

One of the interesting, teeth-gnashing ironies is that the father of modern genetics is a Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel, and the inventor of the Big Bang theory is a Catholic priest, George Lemaitre. George Lemaitre was given a papal award for his efforts.

Odd that Hitchens and Dawkins never mention that fascinating fact that their audiences would have been fascinated to know.

Nor mention that most of Christianity never had a dogma of a literal translation of the Bible. hmmmmm...

Nor tell them that most monotheisms define their supreme beings identically, ie it's the same god. Nor that the Catholic Church, that rigid institution that will not be polite enough to die or bend, teaches that the supreme being has manifested in most other monotheisms. Indeed few of them are exclusivist as atheists like to wrongly assert.

Meanwhile, it is a fact that something in the universe has the property of 'existence'. Logically, it exists of itself and could not have ever not existed. Existing of itself, it appears to be a logical feedback loop. Which leads straight to a possibility, the grandest of feedback loops: self-awareness.

And Dawkins main objection "Who made God?" is answered since...

The real question has never been "Is there a god?", but rather "Is the fundamental thing self-aware, and if it is, does it care?".

Meanwhile, despite the objections of atheists and agnostics, especially in what they see as the otherwise incomprehensible suffering of the innocent and children, the answer has always been to ask.

Ie, "If you exist, God being, please reveal yourself, and show me why it is that the innocent must suffer".

Atheism has a long history of redefining terms.

The OED changed from

"To deny the Gods/God" to

"To deny or disbelieve in the gods/God"

The latter - disbelieve - fits the greek, but the former was the intended meaning by those who coined it three centuries back, as a derogatory term (ref, encycolopdia Brittanicca which goes in to the history of this issue unlike Wikipedia). The OED mixes and confuses two definitions and reflects a common modern redefining, by atheists themselves, of 'atheism' to mean 'lacking belief' which dodges the problem that to positively believe there is no God or gods is clearly irrational without proof, which is thought to be logically impossible.

That's why educated atheists claim to be agnostic, and uneducated atheists claim to be atheists.

But the proof in the pudding is in how the individual expresses themselves towards religious persons, ie "The God Delusion".

Dawkins claims to be 9/10ths atheist, "technically agnostic".

But that book is a statement that religious believers are delusional, so revealing that he is in fact a true atheist. No genuine agnostic would ever make such a presumption in to minds they cannot see.

Dawkins is therefore irrational.

The irony of the situation is that :

-while a religious believer might be rational (if there were, in fact, a god, and it were proving its own existence, as they claim, as opposed to faith as "Belief without evidence" is in fact an atheist redefinition, by Bertrand Russell to be precise, now also in the dictionary).

-a true atheist is always irrational whether or not there is a god