This is the primary reason why I still use Brave. There is ungoogled chromium and Thorium, but Brave has some useful privacy features that they don't, it just requires some debloat.
Ah, moral relativism. I believe there is no way around the idea that without religion, there is no such thing as morality. It all comes down to the question: how do you know what's right and wrong? If you don't have an external moral code, that is, you decide what is right and wrong, then the odds are stacked against you, 1 out of every individual with a unique opinion to ever exist; it is conceited for anyone to believe they are the one. Not even the majority is always correct; at one point in time the majority of the Earth believed slavery was fine, yet today we are so comfortable to say that was evil. I couldn't agree more strongly that it is evil, but what will the majority of society think about our morals in a millennium? Why start "the 21st century popular culture religion" when it is inevitably fallible to time?
The only possible solution is an external moral code. That is what the Bible, the Koran, etc... are: absolute right and absolute wrong. If that doesn't exist, why should I believe I'm any better than Hitler? He believed he was right. You wouldn't even be able to reason that murder is evil. Ultimately, there is no other basis for an atheist than: "That's what I feel is right, so that's what I believe."
Sidenote: I am a Christian, so I'd like to briefly correct the "(when women were without worth, slavery was acceptable, etc)" phrase pertaining to Christianity solely. At its core, the Bible teaches the very opposite of sexism and racism, however, misconstrued verses and nominal Christians distort the message.
> I am a Christian, so I'd like to briefly correct the ..
With no disrespect toward yourself, just a wry acknowledgement of a plain truth - the essential issue with <Some Text> as the external guidebook is that despite it being "conceited for anyone to believe they are the one" this is more or less the sharding issue of the many many many differing interpretations of (choose your own) <Some Book>.
I've travelled the world a lot in the past six deacades and lost count of how many clearly distinct groups of Christians I've encountered.
The Christian on Christian wars over differing takes on the same material have torn kingdoms asunder.
> without religion, there is no such thing as morality.
Would you agree that non-human animals aren’t religious? Because we see moral behavior in animals. For example [1]:
> In another experiment with rats, researchers find that if a rat is given the choice between two containers—one holding chocolate and one holding a trapped rat who appears to be suffering—the rat will try to help the suffering rat first before seeking the chocolate. Experiments like these show that animals make moral choices and that their behavior cannot be explained through natural selection alone.
There are lots of other examples, like animals that call out to warn their group of an approaching predator, placing themselves at higher risk.
Also, it seems like you’re arguing that an “external” moral code is The Only Way but then excusing people in biblical times for owning slaves because “that was a long time ago.” But shouldn’t their supposed access to this special moral code have been sufficient to conclude that owning humans as property is immoral?
> You wouldn't even be able to reason that murder is evil.
This is just downright silly. As a rational, thinking person, it’s easy to reason why murdering fellow human beings is not good.
> the Bible teaches the very opposite of sexism
Anyone can search for “sexism in the bible” to see what it has to say in its own words. For convenience, here’s one such link [2].
That take presumes that the morals you've been taught came directly from the lips of God. Otherwise, it's other people making stuff up.
The Golden Rule is pretty self-explanatory and is a solid foundation for moral behavior. I don't rape, murder, steal, etc., not because I'm afraid of God's wrath, or that of the police -- it's because I wouldn't want those things to happen to me or my loved ones and am able to understand that others feel this way too.
Meanwhile, that moral absolutism give license to kill people for blasphemy. And there's plenty more horrible things that are done to others because God said so.
Everybody's entitled to have their own relationship with God (even as an atheist I do in my own way), and I acknowledge that there's plenty of good that comes from people practicing their faith, but that is easily countered by very bad stuff that is morally justified by their interpretations of scripture.
And this concern is everybody's -- because there's ongoing efforts to make the US into a theocracy and that would be a very bad thing.
Are you, by "scripture" referring to the Bible, or just in general for religious texts?
I acknowledge that a lot of people do very bad things and supposedly justify them with the Bible. But I suggest that if they did something bad, then their justification is wrong, and can't truly be based on the Bible.
I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself.
> I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself
Then you're down to opinion vs opinion. Add into that the work that Bart Erhman has done on the veracity of the texts themselves, as well as the fact that the bible was assembled by committee (of men).
We're all entitled to our own beliefs, so I normally wouldn't care, except there are active factions trying to make the US be ruled by biblical law. So in that context, this act of interpretation is very much of everybody's interest.
Would you say that you behave in a moral way because you fear the threat of hell (extrinsic, negative motivation), or because you follow the example of Jesus Christ in your heart (intrinsic, positive motivation)?
I think your analysis fails at the step where you propose a universalized, objectively correct morality. Please show me the empirical test for this. Or is it just about whether you feel your actions accord with the word of God? Because even then you're just practicing moral relativism and waving your hands at a book composed by fallible humans, all of whom were doing the same, all the way back to before the canons were written. Is it because the book is supposedly divinely-inspired? How do you know the correct divinity inspired the correct people in the correct way? even standing on the soapbox of "well uh uh uh of course my religion is the correct one you smelly heretic" you literally have nothing to go off of except your own feelings and perspective.
So, in short, I don't find your position very convincing. Also, if Christians were some sort of uniquely enlightened group with special access to the metaphysical groups of the universe, why do they keep falling into the same patterns of behavior as all the other humans who don't have this divine guarantee? Like, if religion was actually some special basis upon which to erect a human morality, why does it achieve such similar outcomes as every other basis? If it's because "humans are fallible and don't always accord perfectly to the perfect divine plan allocated to them," then, again, how is that exactly non-relativistic? Is it because the book exists as some sort of measuring stick by which to determine the essential goodness of someone? Because even that depends on the fallible interpretation of the interpreter, unless you presuppose some special person who is blessed with divine discernment to determine the actual divinely-approved interpretation.
It all ultimately devolves to "you just gotta have faith bro." I do not have faith in an entire group of people thumbing their noses at everyone else like their shit doesn't stink. Antisemitism and hate is literally built into every canonical version of Christianity by way of the Churchfathers.
Maybe we should judge Christianity on the outcomes of Christians, instead of on the most compassionate and kindest way they beg us to take their positions. Actually looking at the facts reveals something most priests blush about... we're all equally clueless. The major difference between me and a Christian is that I don't actively look forward to dying, in the hopes I'll get The Good Ending and have an infinitely good time after I've perished in service to people who have an incentive to get me to live my life in service to them.
Your reply presupposes that "empirical tests" are the only way to establish truth, which is inadequate. What is the "empirical test" for a mother's love for her child? Or a teacher's love for a student? What is the empirical test for someone being the mayor? What is the empirical test for whether someone is in a relationship with someone else?
The empirical test for my subjective experience is my experiencing it, what a mind blowing revelation that things can exist in gradations. Shocking. I never said empirical tests are the only way to establish truth, but if you're presupposing an objective and universalized "correct morality" then it doesn't seem stupid to suppose that such a universal thing might be empirical. Or, failing something you can point to that exists in external objective space, that maybe you're just practicing the same kind of moral relativism an entire group of people are practicing and all loudly crying that "boo it's not relativism because sky daddy loves us :'("
There are many things that are true and real that you can't point to in external objective space. Categories. Concepts. Language. Grammar. Numbers. Something doesn't have to be physical or empirical to be real or useful to human experience. So I repeat: empiricism is inadequate for capturing what is true or real. Check out the writings of David Hume. The needful distinction between physical and metaphysical goes all the way back to Aristotle, to be fair.
Categories are concepts in the mind. Concepts are constructs in the mind. Language is a construct in the mind. Grammar is a construct in the mind. Numbers are constructs in the mind. They're nice easy ways to divide things that like actually exist in external objective space into easy-to-deal-with buckets. The existence of the subjective doesn't make the subjective somehow an objective, externalizable phenomenon, nor does it necessarily imply anything metaphysical.
I'm still waiting to hear how outsourcing your moral judgments to external human artifacts somehow implies moral absolutism, as opposed to self-reinforcing intersubjective moral relativism.
Any concept is metaphysical. It maps onto physical reality, but is above it, separate from it. Same with numbers. Same with everything else I said. They are all metaphysical. When I say "metaphysical" I'm not using it to refer to ghosts or to paranormal stuff. I'm using it with the philosophical definition of being "above the physical". Categories map onto reality, but they are not physical.
I don't have any idea what your last sentence means. But I am making the case that something can be real and objective without being empirical.
Concepts aren't "above" reality, they're just configurations of internal subjective spaces, which is carried out on the computational substrate of the human brain... unless you mean to make the claim that the mind is non-local to the brain, and that the physical realities of the brain have no impact on subjectivity (which would be wild.)
My last sentence is thus: just because you take your morals from a book doesn't somehow imply that there is a universal, correct morality. Christians are all still moral relativists, their morality is just relative to a human artifact and reinforced by the intersubjectivity of the other people who also take moral cues from that book. The only case one can make otherwise is, "Look, I have no evidence for an objective morality, I have no particularly good reason to believe it exists, but I have faith that it does and so should you." Which is fine, even if I find it personally stupid, but I can not imagine a single Christian argument for an objective morality that doesn't necessarily require faith as an axiom. I do not have that faith, yet I am a moral person. Religion is not required to have a conscience or to treat your fellow humans well. Therefore, I will not pay any attention to Christian claims towards uniquely privileged knowledge of the divinely mandated correct morality; instead, I will treat them the same as any other person, based on what they actually do.
Check out a book called Dominion by Tom Holland and you might be surprised to find the true source of your current moral structure. He discusses Roman history and contrasts it to Christian culture, which developed out of the carcass of a fallen Western Rome and flourished for a thousand years in the Eastern Roman Empire. so much of what we think of as "universal human values" are actually Christian values. Your adopted morality is a result of centuries of relative peace and the complete domination of Christian ethics in the Western world.
Yeah lmfao you're literally proving my point, of course there's no such thing as "universal human values," because it's all relative to the individual... hence moral relativism, as opposed to the idea that there is some sort of divinely mandated "correct" universal morality. I certainly do take some moral cues from the Judeo-Abrahamic religions, because even kooky cults can be right every now and then. That doesn't mean the rest of it is sensible, nor even that most people who call themselves Christian are capable of acting like decent people.
EDIT: I also like how not once do you even try to make a clear distinction between absolutism and relativism, nor do you try to explain how outsourcing your conscience to a religious book somehow implies universal absolutism.
We should take what makes sense from religions, cherry picking the parts of social progress that was somehow made under such an authoritarian and mind-numbing mental opium, and discard the rest. Any claims of moral superiority on the basis of religion should be outright rejected. The metaphysics are likewise senseless in my opinion, so I choose to ignore them.
Ah yes, mockery, did Samson not have a good comeback line recorded in the canons for you to lift? After all, I suppose if those of weak minds aren't told that a comeback line has been divinely approved, then how can they know it is in fact a sick burn? curious
Windscribe is on the map with one connected node: their DNS service Control D. I know it seems a bit hypocritical and untrustworthy since it is written by a VPN company, but Windscribe is generally regarded as trustworthy, privacy oriented, and not deceiving customers for money [0]. Companies such as Windscribe, Mullvad, IVPN, and Proton are better in almost all cases than something like Surfshark because they minimize the risk of your personal info falling into the wrong hands. Unlike those proprietary companies that will turn over your full browsing history in a heartbeat when in court, companies like Windscribe will have nothing to turn over in the first place. I use Windscribe all the time personally because even if sites profile me, I dislike the fact that they can know the city in which I love just from connecting to the site, so there are a few other benefits.
It doesn't. Technically, zero-day in the context of exploits means the exploit was circulating and/or being used before the authors of the attacked piece of software were made aware of the vulnerability (or before the vulnerability was made public, or before the day a patch was made available, depending on who you ask).
And yet I’ve received no emails.. the idea that they’re ready to ship to new buyers in 6 weeks when existing ones have not been made whole says it all.
You seem to musunderstand the situation. Your turn did not come yet, but it will come much earlier than in 6 weeks, because all orders will be fulfilled within 6 weeks.
- GrapheneOS, a de-googled fork of open source Android, has amazing privacy features while not compromising on proprietary services that you need to use, UX, or security.
- Glider is the best HN client you can find on Android that is also open sourced and on F-droid
- Proton has amazing VPN, mail, and cloud storage services that are still a bit lackluster in features when it comes to applications (Linux VPN GUI is bad, no cloud storage app or sync) but very capable, affordable, and promising for the future
- Wikipedia. I don't know if this fits exactly, but it has been so useful not only to me in research and studying, but also to voice assistants, web browsers, documentarians, students and countless others.
I don't love the way Glider displays the favicon for the website of each post. I find it makes the UI really noisy. Other than that, it's a great client. I also like Hews.
Jami is more or less completely peer-to-peer. Other than initial bootstrapping all conversations are synced between participant devices without any central servers. I don't know much about Session, but Matrix requires a homeserver that is basically always running to operate which provides a single point of failure for any particular user (as opposed to Jami where each of a user's devices can sync independently) and is easier to use (you don't need to find and pick a homeserver, all you need is your device).
Jami has also been around a long time. It had other names in the past like SFLphone and Ring.
This. Jami is truly distributed, and there's no need to set up and manage any server(s) in the sense that one would do for Jitsi, Matrix, BigBlueButton, etc.
Also, thanks to Jami's distributed nature, it can also function in local networks without internet connectivity:
I'm always fascinated by these ultra-modern middle-eastern projects. While there is undoubtedly a concern to the focus of time, attention, and money on these projects (rather than daily-life for poorer natives), it is still interesting to see a government attempt developing "the future" complete with cinematic videos and "standard infrastructure but now in this cool shape."
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