Blog for Tuesday, 20th February 2007
20/02/2007: Re: A treatise on how religious Atheism is
TomP wrote:
[Atheists] do not believe in the existence of a soul.
Although most Buddhists do not believe in any gods, and can therefore be described as atheists, they most certainly do believe in the concept of a soul — indeed, a soul that can continue to exist after death.
You do not believe in any source for ethical conduct except sources within human beings
There have been several good ethical theories put forward that go further than “look within yourself and you’ll know what’s right”. Arguably, the two that seem to gel best with current observed human ethics are Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism.
Kantian ethics look at the means rather than the ends.
- We ask, should one do X?
- We imagine a world where everyone does X.
- Is this world flawed?
- If so, one should never do X.
- If not, one may do X.
That is, if we want to know whether it is morally acceptable to lie, we imagine a world where everyone lied all the time. Nobody would be able to get anything done in such a world. (Imagine a…
20/02/2007: Re: Views on XHTML 1.1 site
The upcoming revision to the XHTML 1.1 spec gets savaged on Usenet.