Sounder mailing list etiquette and future direction

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:08 AM, Amedee Van Gasse (ub)
<amedee-ubuntu at amedee.be> wrote:
> On Fri, December 4, 2009 18:00, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>> Not only am I not willing to play along with these rules, but frankly,
>> I find such insipid and characterless discussions - something I find a
>> particularly American sort of tone in some online fora - to be
>> hatefully and intolerably dull.
>
> Ubuntu is South African, and its corporate HQ is in the UK (Europe).

I know, and I am in the UK myself. Indeed I have even met Mr
Shuttleworth and been to his flat for a drink, after the launch party
for 4.10 I think.

This is why I feel it's particularly inappropriate to attempt to
moderate a SA/UK-sponsored community into a sort of "vanilla American
white-bread blandness", if you see what I mean.

> Being an ignost myself, I consider your atheism as some kind of
> anti-religion and therefor some kind of religion on itself. Why? Because
> religion is all about certain questions. Religious people claim that they
> know the answer and it is yes; atheists like you claim that they know the
> answer and it is no; agnosts don't know the answer but still claim to know
> what the question is; and ignosts just say "what the frak are you guys all
> talking about?" Ignosts aren't so presumptuous to claim that they can
> formulate the right questions (or answers!) when talking about concepts
> that, by definition, are not definable by human language.
> In other words, colorless green ideas sleep furiously...

Well, this is a common point of view, and indeed a few months ago I
went to a very interesting talk at London's Skeptics in the Pub
discussion group...

http://skeptic.org.uk/events/skeptics-in-the-pub

... about "evangelical agnosticism" and how it was the only
intellectually-defensible point of view.

But still, yours seems to be an example of a common error of thinking:
that atheism is another faith position. It is not. Atheism is above
all based on observation of evidence: that there is a complete, valid,
self-consistent naturalistic explanation for the entire universe,
supported lavishly by masses of evidence, whereas there is no
objective, verifiable evidence for the existence of any kind of
deities or deity.

I do not have faith that a rampaging /Apatosaurus/ is about to flatten
my house, even though I have not looked out the window. /Apatosaurus/
became extinct some 150MY ago; I do not need to check to be sure that
I am safe from one. It does not need any kind of faith or other belief
not based upon evidence; I need no evidence that there is *not* a wild
one roaming the south London/Surrey border area.

I need no faith to assert that there are no gods; those who wish to
proclaim that there /are/ gods need to present evidence that they
exist.

To be agnostic is to give the believers the benefit of the doubt that
there might be something to their case and we cannot know. I do not
extend this trust; I don't think there is anything whatsoever to their
case.

Personally I think that our languages are more than adequate for
discussing these concepts (well, my Dutch certainly isn't, but your
excellent English is), I just don't think there's much to discuss. If
there is a god, present him, her or it in court for cross-examination,
and he'd better be willing to demonstrate his credentials! No book
sources or voices inside people's heads are admissible as evidence,
and indeed such voices are a strong indication of an urgent need for
professional psychiatric help.

But I am straying far off-topic...

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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