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From New World Encyclopedia

Atheism (from Greek: a + theos + ismos "not believing in god") refers in its broadest sense to a denial of theism (the belief in the existence of a single deity or deities). Atheism has many shades and types. Some atheists strongly deny the existence of God (or any form of deity) and attack theistic claims. Yet certainty as to the non-existence of God is as much a belief as is religion and rests on equally unprovable claims. Just as religious believers range from the ecumenical to the narrow-minded, atheists range from those for whom it is a matter of personal philosophy to those who are militantly hostile to religion.

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"Positive" or "strong" atheism is the assertion that no deities exist while "negative" or "weak" atheism is simply the absence of belief in the existence of any deity

Atheism often buttresses its case on science, yet many modern scientists, far from being atheists, have argued that science is not incompatible with theism.

Some traditional religious belief systems are said to be "atheist" or "non-theist," but this can be misleading. While Jainism technically can be described as philosophically materialist (and even this is subtle vis--vis the divine), the claim about Buddhism being atheistic is more difficult to make. Metaphysical questions put to the Buddha about whether or not God exists received from him one of his famous "silences." It is inaccurate to deduce from this that the Buddha denied the existence of God. His silence had far more to do with the distracting nature of speculation and dogma than it had to do with the existence or non-existence of God.

Many people living in the West have the impression that atheism is on the rise around the world, and that the belief in God is being replaced with a more secular-oriented worldview. However, this view is not confirmed. Studies have consistently shown that contrary to popular assumptions, religious membership is actually increasing globally.

Atheism is a belief that is held for a variety of reasons.

Some atheists base their stance on philosophical grounds, arguing that their position is based on logical rejection of theistic claims. Indeed, many atheists claim that their view is merely the absence of a certain belief, suggesting that the burden of proving God's existence is upon theists. In this line of thought, it follows that if theism's arguments can be refuted, non-theism becomes the default position. Many atheists have argued for centuries against the most popular "proofs" of God's existence, noting problems in the theist lines of reasoning. Atheists who attack specific forms of theism often claim it as being self-contradictory. One of the most common arguments against the existence of the Christian God is the problem of evil, which Christian apologist William Lane Craig has referred to as "atheism's killer argument." This line of reasoning claims that the presence of evil in the world is logically inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. Instead, atheists claim it is more coherent to conclude that God does not exist than to believe that He/She does exist but readily allows the promulgation of evil.

A form of atheism known as "ignosticism," asserts that the question of whether or not deities exist is inherently meaningless. It is a popular view among many logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer, who claim that talk of gods is literally nonsensical. For them, theological statements (such as those affirming god's existence) cannot have any truth value, since they lack falsifiability. This refers to the fact that claims of transcendence and of metaphysical properties cannot be tested by empirical means and must therefore be rejected as null hypotheses. In Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer stated that theism, atheism and agnosticism were equally meaningless terms, insofar as they treat the question of the existence of God as a real question. However, despite Ayer's criticism of atheism as a concept (perhaps using the definition typically associated with strong atheism), ignosticism is still considered as a form of atheism in most classifications of religious thought.

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Richard Dawkins slams video that claims to 'destroy atheism'

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Reuters

Richard Dawkins has dismissed a Christian video that claims to undo atheist reasoning about God, saying the argument was "pathetic".

In the video a woman tells a dentist that saying you don't believe in God because of suffering in the world is like saying you don't believe in dentists because some people have bad teeth.

"If there are dentists in the world, then why are there so many broken, infected and missing teeth?" the woman asks.

The dentist replies: "I can't help people that don't come to me to have their teeth fixed."

Evangelist Joshua Feuerstein shared the video with his million plus Facebook followers in December, but the video has had renewed interest this month.

Speaking to the Huffington Post, Dawkins said: "If this is the best the faith-heads can do by way of 'demolishing atheism', I hope you will give it maximum publicity in order to demonstrate how pathetic the 'argument' is. It's so weak, no reply is needed. To anyone of any intelligence at all, it replies to itself."

This isn't the first time Dawkins has responded to Feuerstein's claims to unpick atheism. The Arizona-based evangelist shared a three-minute video in May last year in which he said he would "demolish evolution" in three minutes. Dawkins subsequently wrote a detailed rebuttal of Feuserstein's arguments in a post on his website.

Dawkins wrote: "Everybody and their grandma is sending me this clip of some random guy in a facebook video who claims to destroy almost the entire field of biology in three minutes. No studies, no experiments, no peer review, no degree (undergrad or otherwise) in biology, just chillin' in the back of a car taking a selfie. This is an unfathomably arrogant pretension for somebody who tries to sound humble by calling himself a nobody in his twitter bio. But then again, apologists have never been renowned for their humility."

The evolutionary biologist continued with an 18-point critique of the evangelist's arguments.

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Richard Dawkins slams video that claims to 'destroy atheism'

Creative AI: The robots that would be painters

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Painting might be the last thing you'd expect computers to excel at. It's abstract, expressive, and tied to cultures, psychology, and subjectivity, whereas computers are objective, precise, and governed by the rules of mathematics. Painting, with its emotional reasoning and unclear meanings, appears to be the antithesis of a feeling, logical computer. But they aren't so far apart as they seem. Painting and other forms of visual art owe much to areas of mathematics such as geometry and perspective, and the algorithms that computers adhere to can in fact be made to generate images as varied and subtle as a human painter.

Much like its musical counterpart, algorithmic art dates back to the time before computers were commonplace and in its purest sense requires no artificial intelligence whatsoever. You've probably seen examples of fractal art, which replicates patterns in a recursive, algorithmic way to often-stunning results that vary in appearance from geometric to organic to alien.

Traditionally, algorithmic art involves a human coming up with a concept that an algorithm then generates or visualizes either from scratch or based on existing material. An extreme example of this is Nagoya University researchers Yasuhiro Suzuki and Tomohiro Suzuki's evolutionary painting algorithm, which takes example paintings of a given style and progressively mutates them cutting and splicing and flipping elements, throwing out at each evolution any images that don't match the user's initial stylistic choices. But algorithmic art is more commonly used in the sense of images that are generated by computer code written by people like Dextro, who is one of the leading practitioners of algorithmic/generative art.

As with music, game development, and writing, much of the attention from artists and scientists has been placed upon algorithms and intelligent tools that augment the artist's creativity. The Processing programming language was designed as an electronic sketchbook for artists and designers, while some of the better-known apps for algorithmic artists include Ultra Fractal, Scribble, and Fragmentarium.

There are now over a dozen separate kinds of algorithmically-based art, including fractal art, genetic art, cellular automata, proceduralism, and transhumanist art. And there are multitudes of websites such as The Algorists, Algorithmic Worlds, and The compArt database Digital Art that celebrate the work of artists who use algorithms.

Harold Cohen watches AARON paint in 1995

But there are some who would teach computers to paint like humans, to push them beyond the point of being an extension of the artist and into the territory of artist themselves. The pioneer in this regard is a former artist and University of California San Diego professor called Harold Cohen. He started working on an art-creating program called AARON in 1973, while a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab.

AARON's capacity to paint improved year after year as its maker taught it more difficult or complex techniques. It learned to situate objects or people in 3D space in the 1980s, and could paint in color from 1990 onwards. In time its paintings found their way into many of the world's major art museums and onward into the hands of private collectors who paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars for AARON's art.

AARON paints not with pixels, we should note, but with real paint on an actual canvas. Cohen built a painting machine for his painting AI. He taught it to mix paint (fabric dyes, not oil), and even gave it an imagination of sorts. Enough of one, at least, that it can paint still life and portraits of human figures without photos or other human input as reference.

AARON learned to use color in a decorative motif in 1992 (Photo: Becky Cohen)

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Creative AI: The robots that would be painters

Would you want to live on Mars?

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One hundred people are still in the running to become humanity's first Mars explorers.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four pioneers on the Red Planet in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, has whittled its pool of astronaut candidates down to 100, organization representatives announced Monday (Feb. 16).

More than 202,000 people applied to become Red Planet explorers after Mars One opened the selection process in April 2013. The latest cut came after Mars One medical director Norbert Kraft interviewed the 660 candidates who had survived several previous rounds of culling.

"The large cut in candidates is an important step towards finding out who has the right stuff to go to Mars," Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "These aspiring Martians provide the world with a glimpse into who the modern day explorers will be."

The remaining pool consists of 50 men and 50 women who range in age from 19 to 60, Mars One representatives said. Thirty-nine come from the Americas (including 33 from the United States), 31 from Europe, 16 from Asia, seven from Africa and seven from Australia.

The remaining candidates will next participate in group challenges, to demonstrate their ability and willingness to deal with the rigors of Mars life. After another round of cuts, the finalists will be divided into four-person teams, which will train in a simulated Red Planet outpost.

Eventually, Mars One intends to select 24 astronauts (six four-person teams), who will become full-time employees of the organization and prepare for the Mars colonization mission.Interior view of a possible habitat on Mars by the Mars One project. Source: Mars One / Bryan Versteeg "Being one of the best individual candidates does not automatically make you the greatest team player, so I look forward to seeing how the candidates progress and work together in the upcoming challenges," Kraft said.

Mars One wants to send new four-person crews to the Red Planet every two years or so after the first touchdown, which would take place in 2025. At the moment, there are no plans to bring any of these Mars colonists home to Earth.

Mars One has also mapped out a number of robotic precursor missions to prepare the ground for people. The first of these, which would deliver a lander and orbiter to Mars, is scheduled to blast off in 2018. (Mars One will not build any Mars-bound spacecraft itself, but instead will contract the work out to aerospace companies.)

The organization plans to pay for its ambitious activities primarily by staging a global media event around the colonization process, from astronaut selection and training to the pioneers' time on Mars.

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Would you want to live on Mars?

Chicago-born man to be inducted into Astronaut Hall of Fame

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CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) -

A retired NASA astronaut who was born in Chicago and worked on the Hubble Telescope will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in May, according to a statement from the Kennedy Space Center.

John H. Grunsfeld, Ph.D, was born in Chicago and graduated from Highland Park High School in the northern suburb in 1976, according to his astronaut bio on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration website.

Grunsfeld then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor of science degree in physics in 1980; then attended the University of Chicago, where he received a master of science degree and a doctor of philosophy degree in physics, according to NASA.

He was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1992 and logged more than 58 days in space on five separate flights, according to the statement. On his last three missions, Grunsfeld worked to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

Grunsfeld, who is married with two children, retired from NASA in December 2009 to become the Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, according to the statement.

He rejoined NASA in 2012 and is currently the Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. His father still lives in Highland Park.

Grunsfeld, along with Steven Lindsey, Kent Rominger, and M. Rhea Seddon, M.D., will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 30.

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Chicago-born man to be inducted into Astronaut Hall of Fame

Bulgaria: ‘NATO out!’ Protesters denounce ‘barbaric US bases’ – Video

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Bulgaria: #39;NATO out! #39; Protesters denounce #39;barbaric US bases #39;
Protesters hit the streets of Sofia, Sunday to denounce NATO #39;s presence on Bulgarian soil and show solidarity with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People #39;s Republic. ---------------------------------...

By: RuptlyTV

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NSA hiding Equation spy program on hard drives

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Kaspersky Labs

Equation infection: Kaspersky Labs says the highest number of machines infected with Equation programs were in Iran, Russia and Pakistan.

The US National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.

Kaspersky Labs

The areas of government Equation has been able to infect by nation.

The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines declined to comment.

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NSA hiding Equation spy program on hard drives

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Suite of Sophisticated Nation-State Attack Tools Found With Connection to Stuxnet

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CANCUN, MexicoThe last two years have been filled with revelations about NSA surveillance activities and the sophisticated spy tools the agency uses to take control of everything from individual systems to entire networks. Now it looks like researchers at Kaspersky Lab may have uncovered some of these NSA tools in the wild on customer machines, providing an extensive new look at the spy agencys technical capabilities. Among the tools uncovered is a worm that appears to have direct connections to Stuxnet, the digital weapon that was launched repeatedly against centrifuges in Iran beginning in late 2007 in order to sabotage them. In fact, researchers say the newly uncovered worm may have served as a kind of test run for Stuxnet, allowing the attackers to map a way to targeted machines in Iran that were air-gapped from the internet.

For nearly a year, the researchers have been gradually collecting components that belong to several highly sophisticated digital spy platforms that they say have been in use and development since 2001, possibly even as early as 1996, based on when some command servers for the malware were registered. They say the suite of surveillance platforms, which they call EquationLaser, EquationDrug and GrayFish, make this the most complex and sophisticated spy system uncovered to date, surpassing even the recently exposed Regin platform believed to have been created by Britains GCHQ spy agency and used to infiltrate computers belonging to the European Union and a Belgian telecom called Belgacom, among others.

The new platforms, which appear to have been developed in succession with each one surpassing the previous in sophistication, can give the attackers complete and persistent control of infected systems for years, allowing them to siphon data and monitor activities while using complex encryption schemes and other sophisticated methods to avoid detection. The platforms also include an innovative module, the likes of which Kaspersky has never seen before, that re-flashes or reprograms a hard drives firmware with malicious code to turn the computer into a slave of the attackers. The researchers, who gave WIRED an advance look at their findings and spoke about them today at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Mexico, have dubbed the attackers the Equation Group and consider them the most advanced threat actor theyve seen to date.

The researchers have published an initial paper on their findings and plan to publish more technical details over the next few days, but theres still a lot they dont know about the Equation Groups activities.

As we uncover more of these cyber espionage operations we realize how little we understand about the true capabilities of these threat actors, Costin Raiu, head of Kasperskys Global Research and Analysis Team told WIRED.

Although the researchers have no solid evidence that the NSA is behind the tools and decline to make any attribution to that effect, there is circumstantial evidence that points to this conclusion. A keywordGROKfound in a keylogger component appears in an NSA spy tool catalog leaked to journalists in 2013. The 53-page document detailswith pictures, diagrams and secret codenamesan array of complex devices and capabilities available to intelligence operatives. The capabilities of several tools in the catalog identified by the codenames UNITEDRAKE, STRAITBAZZARE, VALIDATOR and SLICKERVICAR appear to match the tools Kaspersky found. These codenames dont appear in the components from the Equation Group, but Kaspersky did find UR in EquationDrug, suggesting a possible connection to UNITEDRAKE (United Rake). Kaspersky also found other codenames in the components that arent in the NSA catalog but share the same naming conventionsthey include SKYHOOKCHOW, STEALTHFIGHTER, DRINKPARSLEY, STRAITACID, LUTEUSOBSTOS, STRAITSHOOTER, and DESERTWINTER.

Other evidence possibly pointing to the NSA is the fact that five victims in Iran who were infected with Equation Group components were also key victims of Stuxnet, which was reportedly created and launched by the U.S. and Israel.

Kaspersky wouldnt identify the Iranian victims hit by the Equation tools, but the five key Stuxnet victims have been previously identified as five companies in Iran, all contractors in the business of building and installing industrial control systems for various clients. Stuxnet targeted industrial control systems used to control centrifuges at a uranium-enrichment plant near Natanz, Iran. The companiesNeda Industrial Group, Kala Electric, Behpajooh, CGJ (believed to be Control Gostar Jahed) and Foolad Technicwere infected with Stuxnet in the hope that contractors would carry it into the enrichment plant on an infected USB stick. This link between the Equation Group and Stuxnet raises the possibility that the Equation tools were part of the Stuxnet attack, perhaps to gather intelligence for it.

But the newly uncovered worm created by the Equation Group, which the researchers are calling Fanny after the name of one of its files, has an equally intriguing connection to Stuxnet.

It uses two of the same zero-day exploits that Stuxnet used, including the infamous .LNK zero-day exploit that helped Stuxnet spread to air-gapped machines at Natanzmachines that arent connected to the internet. The .LNK exploit in Fanny has a dual purposeit allows attackers to send code to air-gapped machines via an infected USB stick but also lets them surreptitiously collect intelligence about these systems and transmit it back to the attackers. Fanny does this by storing the intelligence in a hidden file on the USB stick; when the stick is then inserted into a machine connected to the internet, the data intelligence gets transferred to the attackers. EquationDrug also makes use of the .LNK exploit. A component called SF loads it onto USB sticks along with a trojan to infect machines.

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Suite of Sophisticated Nation-State Attack Tools Found With Connection to Stuxnet

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Privacy advocates want amendment to protect personal data

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Privacy advocates are pushing to allow Minnesota voters to decide whether their electronic communication should be protected from unreasonable search and seizure.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers and political organizations is encouraging the Legislature to put the question on the 2016 ballot.

State Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, worries that law enforcement is overstepping its authority in acquiring data like financial and telecommunications records without getting search warrants.

"If data was what it is today if it would have been that way back when the constitution was being written I believe they would have included a person's technological communications as part of those things that would have been protected by the Fourth Amendment," Scott said.

A committee in the Republican-controlled House has scheduled a hearing on the bill this week. No committee hearing is scheduled in the Senate and DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said he's reluctant to put any measures on the ballot next year.

"I think it would be unlikely that we're going to consider something additional for the ballot in 2016," Bakk said. "It's a conversation that I haven't had with the speaker yet if they have any interest to propose something."

Privacy issues are a major theme at the Capitol this year. There are also discussions about the privacy implications of police body cameras and police use of license plate readers.

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Privacy advocates want amendment to protect personal data