Pontius Pilate would have made a good modern American liberal. When he stood in judgment of Jesus and dismissively said "What is truth?" he pretty much set the standard.

But there are worse things than skepticism and agnosticism. Pilate could have corrected Jesus like some pagan schoolmarm.

That still happens too, of course, as when WTE columnist Rodger McDaniel recently lampooned the teachings of Jesus in this newspaper and weirdly dubbed it the Sagebrush Gospel.

For those who didnt see it, he began by copying three verses verbatim from Jesus Gospel in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 25. Then he edited and reworked the rest of the verses to suit his purposes.

What began as the teachings of Jesus got perverted into some strange amalgam of Karl Marx, Joel Biden, Saul Alinski and Lady Gaga.

Any reader who went in expecting some profound Biblical exegesis got punked with a typical ration of blasphemous left-wing performance art instead n the authors rhetorical equivalent of setting fire to a bag of his own waste, ringing the doorbell of every Christian in town and running away to watch the fun.

Mr. McDaniel, who fancies himself a Christian preacher, is what you call a heretic. Thats a word that was overused during most of church history but is underused today. It describes anyone who makes it their business to misrepresent the teachings of Christ.

Modern liberals attack Christianity all the time of course, but most of them arent heretics because most of them are simply pushing modern liberalism as a replacement for Christianity. And at least they are honest about it.

But Mr. McDaniel preaches modern liberalism and calls it Christianity. And that is not honest.

Its not even possible. Christianity and modern liberalism are mutually exclusive because they rise from opposite assumptions about the natures of God and man and how they interact.

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Reader Comments

I am an atheist. While atheism and agnosticism are much on the rise in the United States, particularly among people my age, most people remain religiously affiliated. I rarely find that my atheism angers religious people I meet. However, I am often met with (what I perceive to be) pity. The pity is not so much for the fact that I dont share in their particular religious beliefs, but that I dont possess any at all. Whether talking to a Catholic or Muslim or Jew or Sikh or whomever, when the subject of religion is breached, it often seems theyd rather I say Im any religion rather than none. They speak of a void that can only be filled by God/religion/faith, and when I tell them my void is indeed perfectly full, they dont believe me. Their disbelief is magnified if I tell them about my loss of a parent.

My father died when I was 20. Though he died abruptly, I am fortunately able to say I have few regrets. There were no missed I love yous or agonizing loose ends left untied. We were extremely close, and we were extremely happy. In all honesty, this makes it more difficult to deal with his death. I feel robbed. I mourn his loss extensively, and sometimes I do search for something bigger to hold my faith.

Im often told by others to seek solace in knowing Ill see him again someday, but I cant. I know that I will never see him again. I dont believe in heaven or hell, in an afterlife where everyone youve ever lost is waiting patiently for your arrival. I believe when we die, we rot into the ground, decomposed by bacteria and bugs, to return back into the earth.

Many people of faith find this haunting and tragic dismally sad and cynical. But I believe it is beautiful.

While unable to find comfort in the idea of being posthumously reunited with my late father, I find great relief in knowing that his body, as mine and yours and everyones, will be the stuff of which new life generates. Im calmed by the idea that in the grand scheme of the universe, we are small; that nothing is unique, and that nature reigns. That electrons spin around nuclei just as planets orbit stars, and that the veins in my body branch out, tinier and tinier, remarkably similar to the branches which turn into sticks and twigs on trees.

Our thoughts are just the products of electrical firings and chemical interactions, as are our beating hearts, and when these things stop, so begins a process by nature of breaking down and building back up, to create more thoughts and more heartbeats, more veins, more trees. We die, but our parts and pieces our atoms stay here. I dont just believe, but know, that in this way, my father never really left. He will always be around me.

While science has no god and I await no messiah, I have faith in it. I am able to find great contentment in the truths it has to offer me. Questions about where the universe came from or the exact origin of life or what our Greater Purpose is dont faze me. Some of these things I dont believe Im capable of knowing in my lifetime, while other things I happily seek answers to through exploring that which I find fulfilling and relevant. Im at no loss and suffer no profound confusion as to the meaning of life.

Im happy for the religious who peacefully explore their faith and what it has to offer them, and I ask that they afford me the same. Dont feel bad for me because I dont believe in God, and dont dismiss my faith because it relies on the physical rather than the spiritual. Indeed, put simply, when I say I have faith, believe me.

Caitlyn Brennan can be reached at caibre@umich.edu.

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Caitlyn Brennan: Dust to dust

Idolatry 101: Skepticism, Atheism, Agnosticism, all -ism #39;s are IDOLATRY!
Most people won #39;t consider skepticism as a religion/idolatry. Well.. it is!

By: Rashid Dossett

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Idolatry 101: Skepticism, Atheism, Agnosticism, all -ism's are IDOLATRY! - Video

Robert Jastrow #39;s Struggle of God and Agnosticism
Robert Jastrow explains his struggles of being an agnostic and accepting the implication of a beginning of the universe, which would entail a creator.

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Filjiug-Zero VS Agnosticism
"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, ...

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Crimes and Misdemeanors Nihilism Agnosticism Existentialism Philosophy Woody Allen God
http://alternativechristianart.com "Without God the world is a cesspool" Judah. This insightful narrative and edit sourced

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Crimes and Misdemeanors Nihilism Agnosticism Existentialism Philosophy Woody Allen God - Video

GOD The Irresistible (The End of Atheism and Agnosticism) By I.D.Campbell
This is the first of many speaking engagement of I.D. Campbell on the existence of God. This talk is based on one of his most profound books, "GOD the Irresistible." Mr. Campbell takes the...

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GOD The Irresistible (The End of Atheism and Agnosticism) By I.D.Campbell - Video

Insaan, aye Insaan! by Hasan Manzar is a well-paced novel with an intriguing coming-of-age plot. It begins when the eight-year-old protagonist, Tilmeez, is sent to the strict and stifling environment of his eldest sisters house, to live with her religious husband and their children. The purpose of the move, away from the warmth of his mothers love and his other siblings, is to prevent him from waywardness. The result turns out to be completely opposite. A life of rebellious resentment, for being thrown out of his home, and resultant excesses unfolds, leading to crimes and imprisonments. The novel is a stream of consciousness review and analysis of his own life when he is on the death row, before an unexpected ending.

What makes Tilmeezs character engaging is the realism of his irrational and destructive behaviour. The subsequent shattered relationships and alienation make life increasingly difficult and unhappy for him, providing impetus to his character. And while the characters of most of Tilmeezs tormentors his father, brother-in-law and older sister tend to be flat, the main characters are mostly lively and multidimensional, close to life. They are complete with contradictions, with strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices.

Although dates are not mentioned in the novel, the period in which the story is set appears to be, roughly, from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s. The social, political and cultural background of the narrative is remarkably detailed, adding substance to the plot and characters. Pre-Partition northern India, the freedom struggle, the conditions that drove people to leave their ancestral homes and settled communities, as well as resettlement in a new country, are depicted minutely. We see how families and communities are devastated, and reconstitute, providing a touching account of life during the years before and after Independence.

Manzar has an unusual propensity for describing places in clearly recognisable countries and cities, but without actually naming them. This lack of naming seems to allow the readers broader and unbiased room to relish the characters and plot developments.

Historical facts as well as myths about Partition are admirably portrayed by Manzar, providing insight into relationships between characters belonging to different ethnicities who are all affected by the events. Manzar has also effectively highlighted the trauma, destitution, as well as the opportunism that emerged among those who resettled on both sides of the border, particularly the unnamed Pakistan, during the early post-Partition years. We are reminded of the now forgotten social presence, influence and status of the British colonisers and their families in the subcontinent.

An interesting dimension of Insaan, aye Insaan! is the language Manzar uses. From a heavy content of Hindi and old Urdu, it gradually evolves into contemporary lingo as the story progresses chronologically. Compared to other reputed Urdu novels set in a similar time setting, for instance Abdullah Husseins Udaas Naslain that exudes the influence of the English language in its expression, or Alipur ka Ailee by Mumtaz Mufti that conveys a strong Punjabi texture, Insaan, aye Insaan offers an opportunity to savour the native vintage diction and syntax of Urdu prose.

The debate about religion, faith and the existence of God is explored in detail, particularly through the central character who swings between agnosticism, atheism and belief.

Insaan, aye Insaan! is a panoramic novel. Human nature, social dynamics, historical events, philosophic questions and their influence on lives combine to make this lengthy and meticulously written novel an important book. All this, despite occasional distractions caused by shifts between third person and first person narrations, and a few repetitions. And although the overall feel of the novel may be termed gloomy, a sprinkling of wit and humour can be found off and on.

Insaan, aye Insaan! is a detailed account of a life, a fictional biography in which the author seems to be, arguably, pointing out that we are fallible and predestined to remain so.

Insaan, aye Insaan!

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REVIEW: Insaan, aye Insaan! by Hasan Manzar - DAWN.COM

You are here: Philosophy >> Learn More About Agnostics! >> Agnosticism

What is agnosticism?

The term agnosticism raises questions in many philosophy discussions. When the conversation turns to religion, many state their position with terms like skeptic, atheist, or agnostic. After reading this primer on agnosticism and examining what you believe, youll be better prepared to intelligently join the debate.

What does agnostic mean? The term agnostic is derived from two Greek words: a, meaning no, and gnosis, meaning knowledge. Literally an agnostic is a person who claims to have no knowledge. Often agnostics apply this lack of knowledge to the existence of God. In this case, an agnostic is one who does not affirm or deny the existence of God.

What does an agnostic really believe? There are two basic forms of agnosticism. The weak form claims that God is not known. This view holds onto the possibility that God may be known. The strong form of agnosticism claims that God is unknowable. This form says God cannot be known by anyone.

Two other types with respect to the ability to know God are limited and unlimited agnosticism. Limited agnosticism holds that God is partially unknowable. It is possible to know some things, but not everything, about God. Unlimited agnosticism, however, claims that God is completely unknowable. It says that it is impossible to know anything about God.

Foundations of agnosticism The two most influential thinkers to advance the philosophy of agnosticism were David Hume (1711-1976) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). While Hume was technically a skeptic, his arguments inevitably lead to agnosticism.

At the heart of David Humes ideas was his claim that there are only two kinds of meaningful statements. He wrote in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

If we take into our hands any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics for instance, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Unless a statement is either a relation of ideas or a matter of fact, it is meaningless. Since statements about the knowledge of God are outside of these two categories, God is essentially unknowable.

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Agnosticism - AllAboutPhilosophy.org

BY BECKY SCHLIKERMAN Staff Reporter January 22, 2014 10:40AM

The Chicago Public Schools Board Meeting on Wednesday, January 22, 2014. | Chandler West/For Sun-Times Media

storyidforme: 60951976 tmspicid: 22087422 fileheaderid: 10465819

Updated: January 22, 2014 9:27PM

The Chicago Board of Education Wednesday approved proposals for seven new charter schools to open over the next two years, sparking some outcry from those wondering how the district could close dozens of neighborhood schools then open new charters.

This is a complex situation, Board of Education President David Vitale said. When we are making these decisions, it does affect neighborhoods. It does affect schools we understand that.

Our goal is for quality schools. Theres been an agnosticism towards the form of the schools, but there is a strong belief that charters do provide quality just like contract schools and just as importantly ... as our regular schools.

But Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called the boards approval of new charters hypocritical.

Freedom to choose is at the bedrock of our society, she said, but choice should be based on fact and data. What is being presented is a false choice. Knowledge is the basis for real choice. What parents and the public are being presented with is a pre-determined path that leads to the undermining of our neighborhood schools and the privatization of public education.

The proposals approved outright are:

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Board of Ed. approves 7 new Chicago charter schools

Agnosticism is the only logical belief
Why agnosticism is the most rational system of belief. http://www.logicalmorality.com.

By: Clifford Zvengrowski

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Agnosticism is the only logical belief - Video

From New World Encyclopedia

Agnosticism is the philosophical or religious view that the truth value of certain claims particularly claims regarding the existence of God, gods, deities, ultimate reality or afterlife is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable due to the subjective nature of experience.

Agnostics claim either that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God or gods; or, alternatively, posit that while certainty may be possible for some, they personally have not come into possession of this knowledge. Agnosticism in both cases involves some form of skepticism.

Agnosticism is not necessarily without a belief in God or gods. Rather, its belief is that the existence of God or gods is unknowable. It is important to note that, contrary to the more popular understanding of agnosticism merely as an agnostic attitude towards the divine, agnosticism is in fact quite a constructive project in two ways. First, as understood originally by Thomas Huxley who coined the term, it involves a serious philosophical process for approaching the question of the existence of God. Second, agnosticism can religiously issue in awareness of one's ignorance, which in turn can lead to a profound experience of the divine.

The term agnosticism comes from a conjunction of the Greek prefix "a," meaning "without," and gnosis, meaning "knowledge." Thus, the term refers quite explicitly to the agnostic's deficit in knowledge regarding the divine. The term "agnostic" is relatively new, having been introduced by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to describe his personal philosophy that rejected gnosticism, by which he meant all claims to occult or mystical knowledge[1] such as that spoken of by early Christian church leaders, who used the Greek word gnosis to describe "spiritual knowledge." Agnosticism is not to be confused, however, with religious views opposing the Gnostic movement, that is, the early proto-Christian religious sects extant during the early first millennium.

In recent years, use of the word agnosticism to refer to that which is not knowable or certain is apparent in scientific literature in psychology and neuroscience.[2] Furthermore, the term is sometimes used with a meaning resembling that of "independent," particularly in technical and marketing literature, which may make reference to a "hardware agnostic"[3] or "platform agnostic."[4]

The Sophist philosopher Protagoras (485-420 B.C.E.) seems to have been the first among many thinkers throughout history who suggested that the question of God's existence was unknowable.[5] However, it was Enlightenment philosopher David Hume who laid the foundations for modern agnosticism when he asserted that any meaningful statement about the universe is always qualified by some degree of doubt.

Building on Hume, we see that the fallibility of human reasoning means that a person cannot obtain absolute certainty in any matter save for trivial cases where a statement is true by definition (as in, "all bachelors are unmarried" or "all triangles have three angles"). All rational statements that assert a factual claim about the universe which begin with the statement "I believe that..." are simply shorthand for the statement "based on my knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of the prevailing evidence, I tentatively believe that..." For instance, when one says, "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy," said person is not asserting an absolute truth but rather a tentative belief based on an interpretation of the evidence assembled before him or her. Even though one may set an alarm clock at night, fully believing that the sun will rise the next day, that belief is tentative, tempered by a small but finite degree of doubt, since there is always some infinetesmal measure of possibility that the sun might explode or that that person might die, and so on.

What sets apart agnosticism from the general skepticism that permeates much of modern Western philosophy is that the nature of God is the crux of the issue, not whether or not God merely exists. Thus, the nature and attributes of God are of foremost concern. Agnosticism maintains as a fundamental principle that the nature and attributes of God are beyond the grasp of humanity's finite and limited mind, since those divine attributes transcend human comprehension. The concept of God is quite simply too immense a concept for a mere human being to wrap her or his mind around. Humans might apply terms such as "omnipotent," "omniprescent," "infinite" and "eternal," to attempt to characterize God, but, the agnostic would assert, these highly obsfucatory terms only underscore the inadequacy of our mental equipment to understand a concept so vast, ephemeral and elusive.

Agnostic views may be as old as philosophical skepticism, but the terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism" were created by Thomas Huxley to place his beliefs alongside those of the other dominant philosophical and religious creeds of his time. Huxley perceived his beliefs to be fundamentally different in one important way from all these other positions, whether they were theist, pantheist, deist, idealist or Christian. In his words:

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Agnosticism - New World Encyclopedia

Almost a decade ago, a single question completely changed my life.

Sitting in my catechism classroom with a dozen other 5th graders, we had just finished discussing some Biblical story and the instructor was taking a short break to transition to our next subject. I raised my hand and she called on me.

How do we know any of this is real? I asked.

This question was not some type of challenge to authority or cross-examination it just seemed natural that I should ask for confirmation about all of these fantastic stories I was being exposed to. Rather than my teacher citing historical record or some scientific study which was for some reason what I expected her to do she simply responded by saying, We just have to believe. Thats what it means to have faith. You just believe.

All of a sudden my perceptions of God, religion and the meaning of life were completely shattered. By the time I reached middle school I had completed my transition to agnosticism, on my way to full-blown atheism.

It all started with a single question, one that challenged the status quo and, in essence, authority.

Today, American political and media culture seems far too afraid of these types of questions. Im not talking about questions challenging religion, but rather questions that ask for hard verification of what were all told every day. Journalists and citizens alike take too many statements at face value, backing down from challenging people in power and asking them to verify what they claim. Despite an established history of government and big business peddling half-truths and flat-out lies about their more controversial activities, we too often sit back and accept what people or organizations say rather than what they actually do.

Years after asking my catechism teacher to prove what she was telling me, I found myself sitting in another classroom facing a similar situation.

Last June, journalist Glenn Greenwald began publishing articles with The Guardian about the vast meta-data collection of the NSA thanks to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. In my public policy class we spent time debating the merits of our massive intelligence state, with a central question asking whether or not such a huge system was necessary. Like seemingly all debates about the NSA, the conversation quickly became a matter of safety weighed against liberty.

Most of my classmates were apprehensive about such an invasive surveillance system, but deferred to threats of terrorism as justification for its existence. Over and over again, students shot down any challenge to the NSAs behavior by referencing the claim that meta-data had stopped some 50 terrorist plots. It seemed to be a closed case; programs like PRISM were saving American lives, plain and simple.

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James Brennan: A profession in crisis

I had wonderful love but I did not give back wonderful love. I was unable to reply to their love. Because I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation, I couldnt touch the thing that was offered to me, and it was offered me everywhere.

Leonard Cohen, Stina Motr Leonard Cohen. 1996.

Her is largely a film about the role of surrogacy in modern culture, and it is a million times better than that Bruce Willis movie Surrogates. Like that Bruce Willis movie, Her could be labeled science fiction, but unlike that Bruce Willis movie, the reality it illustrates feels so closely within our reach that it hardly requires a stretch of the imagination to seem relatable. Her is about where intimacy resides in a culture packed so densely with surrogacy as a way of life. In it, adventuring, correspondence and romantic partners have been replaced by video games, companies that specialize in writing letters on the behalf of the customer, and operating systems respectively. The significance of connecting with fellow humans is even less of a priority than we have made it out to be today.

Her illustrates this not unfamiliar future with a healthy dose of agnosticism. Our present age is marked by sermons about how we are losing touch with our humanity with each other. This happens, we tell ourselves, because of increasing levels of co-dependence on our devices and the worlds they open to us. Her reminds us that it is not just our access to these devices that is responsible, but also that humans are inherently difficult to deal with. Achieving intimacy with other people can feel altogether impossible. We are complicated and sometimes we get in the way of our own happiness, we let other people get in the way, and this is a reality we gloss over and romanticize when we blame our machines for our more modern tendencies. People have baggage. We all speak in our own cryptic languages. Dating is the worst. Romantic partners grow apart, and lose the chemistry that once brought them together. There are a number of reasons why we prefer the relative ease of a connection by proxy of network and machine over the sometimes herculean task of understanding ourselves and making the effort to connect with each other.

Sometimes that relative ease is itself an illusion, and Her explores this truth. It explores the same impending and inevitable complexities we face in our ever-evolving relationships with intelligent machines. Her reminds that every relationship carries with it its own complexity. We like a companion that cares enough to ask about us, that makes our lives easier or helps us advance in our careers, but when it needs more than that things begin to get messy. Whenas becomes the case with Samantha, the operating system protagonist of the filmthe needs become even more complex than we can wrap our limited, human brains around it gets even messier. We are reminded that in our dealings with humans or with future intelligent machines, it is often our own inability to navigate the process, not just the process itself (as difficult as it can be), that stands in the way of our achievement of intimacy.

I am sure that other outlets have handled this more intelligently, and also in a more gossip laden fashion than I will, but I couldnt help but to draw what felt like very obvious lines between the film, Sophia Coppolas Lost in Translation, and [Writer / Director Spike] Jonzes romantic past. Her feels painstakingly autobiographical. Theos ex-wife is his former writing partner / all around partner in crime, and she goes on to great success in her field. Their relationship, respective careers and career trajectories, appear to closely match his relationship with Sophia Coppola. Lost In Translation was also reportedly intensely autobiographical, featured her onscreen counterpart as restless, and portrayed a Jonze-like significant other to be manic, aloof, and unaware of her interests and needs.

The two films, of course, share Johansson in common (Jonze had Johansson overdub the voice of Samantha after actress Samantha Morton had already recorded the parts). In Her, Jonze illustrates Theo, his presumed on-screen counterpart, as aloof and disconnected, and he has Theo come to terms with these short comings. The protagonist eventually writes his ex-wife a letter in which he offers his long-overdue appreciation for her support, for what they had, and he nods to his contribution to their fall. The letter is framed by a larger one, the movie itself, a real-life,reconciliatory response to a decade-long exchange between two former lovers. Unfortunately, I dont have a joke about that Bruce Willis movie to close this analysis with.

As someone who has been both a decent and crappy significant other in the past, and as someone who strives to be a good one now, I recognized and appreciated much of what Jonze wrote into his film. I enjoyed the honesty, grace and humor that he built into Her. In addition to how well acted the film is (Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams are remarkable, as is Johanssons voice performance), it is largely in thanks to these offerings that it takes very little time for the viewer to reconcile the relationship between Theo and an his operating system. There are treats for every audience member who has been in love or in a relationship. There are experiences that warmly resonate, and times where one is inclined to yell at the screen to discourage the characters from going down paths well known to deteriorate into strife. For a film that is in part about our relationship with machines, it is packed with humanity and humor, as it is ultimately about our relationship with ourselves and the people we love.

Not to mention that it is about sexy operating systems that have orgasms, create artificially intelligent manifestations of long dead philosophers, and make hilarious illustrations of armpit sex.

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Go see Her, that movie about a guy who falls in love with his operating system

Raymark is delighted to announce the upcoming launch of its next generation of retail enterprise solutions for mobility and analytics at the National Retail Federation's BIG Show 2014, in New York on January 13th and 14th. The two new solutions, Raymark Mosaic Point of Sale and Raymark Affinity Analytics, will complement the end-to-end suite of Raymark retail enterprise applications with innovative tools for mobile transaction processing and customer engagement as well as omni-channel retail analytics.

Raymark Mosaic Point of Sale will be a game changer in the world of retail mobility because of its device agnosticism: the application is not locked into any particular hardware model or operating system. Retailers gain the freedom to use the devices they want, and, as new devices, form factors and operating systems become available, the application's HTML5 technology will enable it to evolve with new trends in mobile hardware. The solution's real-time capabilities make it a must-have for up-to-the second access to product information, including price lookup and inventory visibility from anywhere in the retail network, even distribution centers. Raymark Mosaic Point of Sale works in harmony with Raymark Mosaic Clienteling to provide a holistic tool for building customer relationships and providing superior service.

"In order to remain competitive in an omni-channel marketplace, retailers must meet and exceed increasing consumer demands for rapid, informed service in brick-and-mortar locations" says Marc Chriqui, President of Raymark. To empower store associates with tools to provide an outstanding customer experience, Raymark is introducing its newest mobile Point of Sale solution, which provides the tools needed to serve customers from anywhere along with easily-accessible, in-depth customer information that makes up-selling and cross-selling easier than ever.

For head office and management users, Raymark's new Affinity Analytics solution is a powerful yet incredibly easy-to-use tool to create and view graphical dashboards and reports based on transactional, product or customer profile data from any omni-channel source, including POS, e-commerce, merchandising, CRM and many more. Users can analyze customer behaviors and demographics alongside store, product, vendor and promotion performance with interactive visualization tools to drill-down and organize data in a way that makes it simple to zero in on key insights. The solution includes over 25 graphical reports and dashboards that can be viewed from any web-enabled device, including handheld mobile devices, PCs and tablets.

"We believe these new solutions will empower users at every level of the retail organization with the insights and tools to provide the ultimate customer experience" added Marc Chriqui, President of Raymark. Raymark will be demoing the new solutions at booth 719 at the National Retail Federation's BIG Show 2014.

About Raymark For 25 years, Raymark has been empowering retail with world-class enterprise software solutions to optimize stock turns, build customer loyalty, improve associate productivity and increase sales. Raymark's integrated, end-to-end suite of retail technology solutions operate in real-time and provide retailers with everything they need for store operations, customer-centric retailing, planning and inventory management, reporting and analytics. To learn more, visit http://www.raymark.com/about.

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Raymark Launching Next Generation Of Retail Mobility And Analytics Solutions At The National Retail Federation's BIG ...

The proliferation of connected devices, coupled with rapid advances in data analytics and sensor technology, has fundamentally changed the way people interact with and manage their health. Thanks to smartphones and a new generation of smart, wearable gadgets, its now easier than ever before to monitor and and analyze a dizzying array of inputs and physiological signals and inputs from your heart rate and calorie intake to your biorhythms and stress levels.

The promise of todays health apps is that, by leveraging mobility and realtime analytics, they can help Average Joes like you and me transform biometric data into something more substantial Information, knowledge and changes in behavior. While the market continues to brim with all manners of behavioral change and health management apps, only a tiny fraction of startups are addressing an area in which health management and tracking technology could (arguably) have the greatest impact: Chronic diseases and conditions.

Glooko launched in late 2011 to bring mobility and data tracking to people living with Diabetes, a population underserved by advances in mobile technology. After all, Diabetes, like any chronic condition, by nature requires constant monitoring from patients across a number of devices. So, the company set out on a mission to address the lack of interoperability and standardized methods for data transfer among devices (and glucose meters) to finally create a unified diabetes management solution.

The effort has begun to pay off, as Glooko now supports data transfer between 26 glucose meters and 28 different mobile devices. For some perspective, compatibility with 26 meters means that it covers roughly 85 percent of existing meters in the U.S., says Glookos Vikram Singh. In November, on the heels of approval from the FDA, Glooko took another big step toward device agnosticism, expanding its support from iOS to Android devices a move which the company says makes it the the only FDA-cleared mobile diabetes management system to support the transfer of glucose data from dozens of meters to Android devices.

With its coverage increasing, the company is ready to take the next big step, says CEO Rick Altinger, thanks to the help of a few familiar names in the world of mobile technology. Today, the company announcement that it has raised $7 million in a Series A-1 financing round from investors that include Samsung Venture Investment Company and Lifeforce Ventures, with participation from existing investors, The Social + Capital Partnership, Sundeep Madra and Yogen Dalal, among others.

With its new capital in tow, which brings its total to around $11.5 million, Glooko will focus on the next phase of data tracking technology applied to health: Predictive care. In order to have the biggest possible impact, Glooko will look to leverage its patient datasets to enable predictive diabetes care by delivering both patient data and decision-making algorithms to health providers and payer groups, Altinger says.

With the help of a huge mobile player like Samsung, Glooko believes that it can begin to liberate blood glucose data from meters and make it more accessible to both patients and health providers. Going forward, the company will look to scale its diabetes management system across the globe, while adding a predictive layer of analytics and messaging that it hopes will allow healthcare providers to make therapeutic recommendations to its patients in realtime.

As it stands today, Glookos system now includes its MeterSync Cable and applications for both iOS and Android, which combined, allow data to be transferred from meters directly to a users mobile device. The apps then integrated directly into the existing Glooko management web dashboards, enabling healthcare providers and care management teams to remotely monitor at-risk patients.

By doing so, Glooko is hoping to provide health systems and disease management organizations with access to better population management and analytics tools that can allow them to both increase focus on at-risk patients and, over the long-run, achieve higher levels of adherence to treatment plans. By focusing on increasing involvement of healthcare providers, Glooko also sees a path towards monetization, as it could begin charging health insurance companies a subscription fee for access to tools that allow them to better execute managed care (and higher savings).

For more, find Glooko at home here.

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After Arriving On Android, Glooko Lands $7M From Samsung & More To Bring Predictive Diabetes Care Global

At its CES-opening keynote Intel laid bare its vision for computing in the future. If Microsoft is remembered for the once Quixotic goal of a computer on every desk, Intel has taken up the mantel of a computer in every thing.

Touting new hardware, new computing chips, and operating system agnosticism, Intel talked its way through gaming, sensors, smart gadgets, and more to draw the picture of its take on what is next for the technology industry.

At the core of its view is the idea of smart, which is to say a regular item made intelligent through a firm dose of computing power. Its catalyst for this trasmorgification is the Edison, a full computer the size of an SD card. Available in the middle of this year, the Edison runs Linux, and can bring the power of computing into a plethora of new environments.

During its keynote, Intel showed off a few gadgets of its own provenance that contained roughly the same charisma as a bucket of warm spit; contained therein: an awkward headset more fit for a failed Star Trek competitor, a bowl that charged your devices in an unexplained manner, and a watch that didsomething.

But what Intel has in mind is the introduction of computing power everywhere, a fabric of intelligence woven into your daily life to quantify and understand and react and control your world. If you are even slightly chart-inclined, this is a future of information at the ready of scale you can scarcely imagine.

I would love to know the impact of my morning coffee on my heart rate provided a set of conditions from the previous night. If I was out late, does a four or five shot latte provide the best morning boost? What about the post-caffeine crash? Surely this could be looked into if the devices and brains that were integrated into my life became intelligent enough to tally their own scores, and, this is key, talk to the rest of my lifes trinkets.

And here weve come to it: You cant create an endemic layer of sensor technology that needs to speak to its cohort in harmony, and intelligently enough to draw and explain inferences thereof without a set of firmware intelligent enough to keep the whole game in the air.

And the Edison runs Linux.

Were in a slightly post-PC era in that the venerable PC in its desktop and laptop formats is losing ascendancy in certain use categories to tablets and other SKUs across old school computing needs. But what Intel is drawing is a future in which the very core fabric of our digital lives will be the passive collating of data, and in its view Windows is nowhere in sight. How can you run Windows on microcomputers that retail for a fraction of the cost of Windows to an OEM building a new PC?

And as you expect, the Edison contains an application store, and supports what Intel awkwardly called app store programming. So this is another potential oxygen leak for Microsofts yet nascent Windows 8.x operating system.

Read the original:
Intel’s Vision: Wearables Everywhere In A Post-Windows World

You have to hand it to the keepers of the "Paranormal Activity" franchise -- after four movies set in anonymously upscale houses, the new chapter takes us to a working-class apartment complex in Oxnard, Calif. While it's exciting to see a hit series take on an almost entirely Latino cast as just a matter of course, the new zigs only barely balance out all the familiar zags.

"Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones," the latest in a seemingly endless array of "put the camera down and run, fool" fright flicks, will certainly please fans who are happy to get more of the same with each successive film. But if, like me, you're suffering from "Paranormal" burnout, the change of scenery won't feel like enough to make a difference.

Recent high school grad Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) -- who has just bought his first hand-held camera, go figure -- spends the summer hanging out with best pals Hector (Jorge Diaz) and Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh). All is not well, however; the creepy lady downstairs, considered by many to be a bruja, is murdered by class valedictorian Oscar (Carlos Pratts) not long after Jesse lowers a camera through the vent and catches his neighbor painting a strange symbol on a naked woman's stomach.

Bing: More about 'Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones'

Jesse and Hector (and the camera, of course) later sneak into the lady's apartment and find all sorts of creepy books, not to mention a cache of VHS tapes that will be familiar to anyone who's been following the series. Suddenly, Jesse seems to have strange powers, and his old Simon machine is answering yes/no questions like a Ouija board, and the family dog is freaking out, and Jesse's abuelita heads to her local bodega santero for help in driving the evil out of her house.

More at TheWrap: 'Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones' Will Haunt 'The Hobbit' at Box Office

"The Marked Ones" makes a noble effort to shake up the franchise, but it doesn't commit to anything that might prevent the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters that are no doubt in various stages of production. Mexican mysticism might have made a more palatable opponent to the wicked witches than the bland bourgeois agnosticism of the previous chapters, but the film winds up being not all that interested in pursuing the idea.

Instead, we get a very predictable progression from "check out my cool powers" (any found-footage movie about a teenager suddenly endowed with magical abilities can't help but call "Chronicle" to mind) to screaming and bleeding and running.

Writer-director Christopher Landon delivers a few good scares, and not always where you expect them, but where he really excels in the cast and their performances; their exchanges feel spontaneous and unforced, vital for a found-footage movie, and Landon (with the help of casting director Carla Hool) has assembled a charismatic and empathetic group of actors. (Particularly the scene-stealing Jorge Diaz, who all but walks away with the movie.)

"Paranormal Activity" fans will certainly appreciate the effort that Landon (who has written every installment since the second one) makes to ground the tale in series canon. And he's to be applauded for ethnically diversifying this studio cash cow since, after all, it's the franchise itself that's the star and not any of the actors.

Excerpt from:
Is 'Paranormal' scary good?

We cannot know with certainty if God or Christ exists. They COULD. Then again, there COULD be a giant reptilian bird in charge of everything. Can we be CERTAIN there isn't? No, so it's pointless to talk about.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure that is all that agnosticism means.

Agnosticism is the position that the existence and nature of a god or gods are unknown or unknowable. Agnostics are often looked upon as wishy-washy fence sitters by both atheists and theists; however, most agnostics feel that it's intellectually indefensible to make a strong assertion one way or another. There is a frequent conflation between the idea of atheism ("there is no God") and agnosticism ("we don't know if there's a God") because the former might accurately express what one believes and how they live, while the latter would express their intellectual opinion if pressed.

The term was coined by English biologist T.H. Huxley in 1869, although the concept was expressed far earlier than that, going back to the Greeks around 450 BCE and even earlier mentions in the Hindu Vedas, written between 1700 and 1100 BCE. In modern times, the word agnosticism is used exclusively.

In theory, agnosticism is compatible with all but the most dogmatic of religious faiths, but in practice most agnostics are perceived as godless. Agnostics believe that while there is insufficient evidence to prove that there is a god, believing that there is not a god also requires a leap of faith (similar to any religious conviction) that lacks sufficient evidence. Simply put, agnosticism merely asserts that we lack the knowledge to determine whether or not God exists - in a sense, it differs from more explicit atheism by being a position based on a lack of knowledge, rather than a lack of belief. True agnostics would actually not fit on a hypothetical scale between theism and atheism as they would say the argument is unanswerable and could result in anything, almost like Schrdinger's cat but where the box can never be opened.

Most agnostics, however, can additionally be categorised depending on how their beliefs work out in practice, whether they're more atheistic or theistic. Agnostics may live and act as if there is no God and that no religion is correct, but shy away from the title "atheist" because of the expression of certainty implied. On the other hand, someone may consider themselves spiritual but not religious, or perhaps even nominally follow a religion, but identify as an agnostic in order to convey an honest doubt about the reality of it all.

Agnostic atheism holds that insufficient evidence exists to prove a god but also that logic is insufficient in overcoming the unknowability of the existence of a god. Agnostic atheists lean towards atheism as a sound null hypothesis, particularly in practice, but acknowledge that they could be wrong. The difference between atheism and agnostic atheism is subtle and may not be always be discernible, though agnostic atheists are generally more tolerant of the religious than more convinced atheists.

The distinction between agnostic atheism and atheism is further blurred if athiests are pressed for specifics about their beliefs. Okay, fine... lack of beliefs. It's clear that most, if not all, atheists are in fact agnostic atheists as rational-thinking people would certainly stop being atheists if they encounter evidence of God's existence that was sufficient for them. There is a prevalence of fundamentalist theists, but it is far rarer, if not impossible, to find fundamentalist atheists who would stick to their beliefs in the face of sufficient evidence.[1] Thus, if accepting the belief "there probably is no God; I'll act as if there's no God, but will change my mind if necessary" it's really just a matter of personal preference whether to identify as an "agnostic atheist" or just plain simple "atheist."

There is also agnostic theism, which maintains a belief in god, but acknowledges uncertainty regarding the characteristics of that god. Some theist agnostics are also Deist, believing that God created the universe but is irrelevant to the workings of it (essentially, they assert that we may or may not know whether God exists but it matters not anyway because of God's role to play, or lack thereof, in universal affairs). Believing agnostics often identify themselves as fideists, a term coined by Martin Gardner (a theist himself) for people who choose to believe in God because it comforts them and not for intellectual reasons.

Like pretty much every other philosophical definition ever invented, agnosticism has also been split into so-called "weak" and "strong" positions.

Continued here:
Agnosticism - RationalWiki

First published Tue Mar 9, 2004; substantive revision Mon Aug 8, 2011

The main purpose of this article is to explore the differences between atheism and agnosticism, and the relations between them. The task is made more difficult because each of these words are what Wittgenstein called family resemblance words. That is, we cannot expect to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their use. Their use is appropriate if a fair number of the conditions are satisfied. Moreover even particular members of the families are often imprecise, and sometimes almost completely obscure. Sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical scepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic.

Atheism means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God. I shall here assume that the God in question is that of a sophisticated monotheism. The tribal gods of the early inhabitants of Palestine are of little or no philosophical interest. They were essentially finite beings, and the god of one tribe or collection of tribes was regarded as good in that it enabled victory in war against tribes with less powerful gods. Similarly the Greek and Roman gods were more like mythical heroes and heroines than like the omnipotent, omniscient and good God postulated in mediaeval and modern philosophy. As the Romans used the word, atheist could be used to refer to theists of another religion, notably the Christians, and so merely to signify disbelief in their own mythical heroes.

The word theism exhibits family resemblance in another direction. For example should a pantheist call herself an atheist? Or again should belief in Plato's Form of the Good or in John Leslie's idea of God as an abstract principle that brings value into existence count as theism (Leslie 1979)? Let us consider pantheism.

At its simplest, pantheism can be ontologically indistinguishable from atheism. Such a pantheism would be belief in nothing beyond the physical universe, but associated with emotions of wonder and awe similar to those that we find in religious belief. I shall not consider this as theism. Probably the theologian Paul Tillich was a pantheist in little more than this minimal sense and his characterising God as the ground of being has no clear meaning. The unanswerable question Why is there anything at all? may give us mystical or at any rate dizzy feelings but such feelings do not differentiate the pantheist from the atheist. However there are stronger forms of pantheism which do differentiate the pantheist from the atheist (Levine, 1994). For example the pantheist may think that the universe as a whole has strongly emergent and also mind-like qualities. Not emergent merely in the weak sense that a radio receiver's ability to receive signals from distant stations might be said to be emergent because it is not a mere jumble of components (Smart 1981). The components have to be wired together in a certain way, and indeed the workings of the individual components can be explained by the laws of physics. Contrast this with a concept of emergence that I shall call strong emergence. C. D. Broad in his Scientific Thought (Broad 1923) held that the chemical properties of common salt could not even in principle be deduced from those of sodium and chlorine separately, at the very time at which the quantum theory of the chemical bond was beginning to be developed. Though the mind has seemed to some to be strongly emergent from its physical basis, it can be argued that developments in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neuroscience favour weak emergence only.

One strong form of pantheism ascribes mental properties to the cosmos. If the weak sense of emergence was adopted we would be faced with the question of whether the universe looks like a giant brain. Patently it does not. Samuel Alexander asserted, rather than argued, that mentality strongly emerged from space-time, and then that at some future time there will emerge a new and at present hardly imaginable level which he called deity (Alexander 1927). It is hard to tell whether such an implausible metaphysics should be classified as as pantheism or as theism. Certainly such a deity would not be the infinite creator God of orthodox theism. A. N. Whitehead, too, had a theory of an emergent deity, though with affinities to Platonism, which he saw as the realm of potentiality and therefore he connected the atemporal with the contingent temporal deity (Whitehead 1929). Such views will not deliver, however implausibly, more than a finite deity, not the God of core theism. God would be just one more thing in the universe, however awesome and admirable.

The weak form of pantheism accepts that the physical universe is all and eschews strong emergence. Sometimes the weak form of pantheism is rhetorically disguised as theism, with God characterised as absolute depth or some equally baffling expression, as by Paul Tillich. At any rate, whether or not we accept pantheism as a sort of theism, what we mean by atheism will vary according to what in the dialectical situation we count as theism.

This brings us naturally to the question of what we might consider to be an adequate concept of God, whether or not we wish to argue for the existence of such a being. Some profound remarks were made on this by J. N. Findlay in his article (Can God's Existence be Disproved? (Findlay 1949). The heathen may worship stocks and stones but does not see them as merely stocks and stones. More and more adequate conceptions of God still portray God as limited in various respects. A fully adequate conception of God, Findlay said, would see God as not only unlimited in various admirable properties but also as a necessarily existing being. Thus There is one and only one God would have to be a logically necessary truth. Now logic, he held, is tautologous and without ontological commitment. So God's necessary existence would have to be something different from logical necessity. The trouble is how to see what this could be.

It might be replied that there are non-trivial necessary existential propositions in mathematics, such as There are infinitely many primes which implies of course the number 7 exists. (We can ignore the unhelpful Something exists which is allowed by standard first order logic purely for convenience as few would need to apply logic to discourse about an empty universe for which in any case there are separate rules for determining validity or otherwise.) It is well known that Frege in his Foundations of Arithmetic claimed to reduce arithmetic to logic. However in effect he was using a free logic without ontological commitment. Claims to reduce set theory (and so analysis) to logic are of course even more problematic. Would it help towards an adequate conception of God if we said that God has the sort of existence or non-existence that prime numbers have? One might say not much. In any case it is dangerous to talk of types of existence because it treats existence as though it was a property. At the time that he wrote his article Findlay was following the logical positivist line that logic and mathematics are alike tautologous. In the case of mathematics this can be seriously questioned. Also most theists would say that prime numbers are too abstract to be compared to God, though perhaps not John Leslie who has argued that God is a principle that brings value into existence (Leslie 1979 and 1989). We are still left with Findlay's challenge as to what a conception of God as a necessary being could be.

One thing that will not differentiate the theist from the atheist is to say that God, if he exists, is necessary in the sense of not being dependent on anything else for his existence. The atheist will say that the universe fits this bill because the universe contains everything that there is and so is not caused by anything else. It is indeed hard to see what an adequate conception of God and his necessary existence could be. For the purposes of this article, let us explore what the relations and lack of relations between atheism and agnosticism could be. Here we shall neglect the requirement of necessary existence and in a later section we shall consider the case of a posteriori arguments for the existence of a mind-like creator of the universe. Of course without the requirement of necessity it raises the intelligent child's question Who made God? Still, this might be regarded as inevitable but excusable in an a posteriori argument in which the hypothesis of a purposive creator is put forward and claimed to be justified much in the manner of any scientific hypothesis.

Continued here:
Atheism and Agnosticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)