Daily Archives: July 4, 2015

Atheism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Posted: July 4, 2015 at 6:43 pm

The term atheist describes a person who does not believe that God or a divine being exists. Worldwide there may be as many as a billion atheists, although social stigma, political pressure, and intolerance make accurate polling difficult.

For the most part, atheists have presumed that the most reasonable conclusions are the ones that have the best evidential support. And they have argued that the evidence in favor of Gods existence is too weak, or the arguments in favor of concluding there is no God are more compelling. Traditionally the arguments for Gods existence have fallen into several families: ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments, miracles, and prudential justifications. For detailed discussion of those arguments and the major challenges to them that have motivated the atheist conclusion, the reader is encouraged to consult the other relevant sections of the encyclopedia.

Arguments for the non-existence of God are deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments for the non-existence of God are either single or multiple property disproofs that allege that there are logical or conceptual problems with one or several properties that are essential to any being worthy of the title God. Inductive arguments typically present empirical evidence that is employed to argue that Gods existence is improbable or unreasonable. Briefly stated, the main arguments are: Gods non-existence is analogous to the non-existence of Santa Claus. The existence of widespread human and non-human suffering is incompatible with an all powerful, all knowing, all good being. Discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe, and about the evolution of life on Earth make the God hypothesis an unlikely explanation. Widespread non-belief and the lack of compelling evidence show that a God who seeks belief in humans does not exist. Broad considerations from science that support naturalism, or the view that all and only physical entities and causes exist, have also led many to the atheism conclusion.

The presentation below provides an overview of concepts, arguments, and issues that are central to work on atheism.

Atheism is the view that there is no God. Unless otherwise noted, this article will use the term God to describe the divine entity that is a central tenet of the major monotheistic religious traditions--Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. At a minimum, this being is usually understood as having all power, all knowledge, and being infinitely good or morally perfect. See the article Western Concepts of God for more details. When necessary, we will use the term gods to describe all other lesser or different characterizations of divine beings, that is, beings that lack some, one, or all of the omni- traits.

There have been many thinkers in history who have lacked a belief in God. Some ancient Greek philosophers, such as Epicurus, sought natural explanations for natural phenomena. Epicurus was also to first to question the compatibility of God with suffering. Forms of philosophical naturalism that would replace all supernatural explanations with natural ones also extend into ancient history. During the Enlightenment, David Hume and Immanuel Kant give influential critiques of the traditional arguments for the existence of God in the 18th century. After Darwin (1809-1882) makes the case for evolution and some modern advancements in science, a fully articulated philosophical worldview that denies the existence of God gains traction. In the 19th and 20th centuries, influential critiques on God, belief in God, and Christianity by Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Camus set the stage for modern atheism.

It has come to be widely accepted that to be an atheist is to affirm the non-existence of God. Anthony Flew (1984) called this positive atheism, whereas to lack a belief that God or gods exist is to be a negative atheist. Parallels for this use of the term would be terms such as amoral, atypical, or asymmetrical. So negative atheism would includes someone who has never reflected on the question of whether or not God exists and has no opinion about the matter and someone who had thought about the matter a great deal and has concluded either that she has insufficient evidence to decide the question, or that the question cannot be resolved in principle. Agnosticism is traditionally characterized as neither believing that God exists nor believing that God does not exist.

Atheism can be narrow or wide in scope. The narrow atheist does not believe in the existence of God (an omni- being). A wide atheist does not believe that any gods exist, including but not limited to the traditional omni-God. The wide positive atheist denies that God exists, and also denies that Zeus, Gefjun, Thor, Sobek, Bakunawa and others exist. The narrow atheist does not believe that God exists, but need not take a stronger view about the existence or non-existence of other supernatural beings. One could be a narrow atheist about God, but still believe in the existence of some other supernatural entities. (This is one of the reasons that it is a mistake to identify atheism with materialism or naturalism.)

Separating these different senses of the term allows us to better understand the different sorts of justification that can be given for varieties of atheism with different scopes. An argument may serve to justify one form of atheism and not another. For Instance, alleged contradictions within a Christian conception of God by themselves do not serve as evidence for wide atheism, but presumably, reasons that are adequate to show that there is no omni-God would be sufficient to show that there is no Islamic God.

We can divide the justifications for atheism into several categories. For the most part, atheists have taken an evidentialist approach to the question of Gods existence. That is, atheists have taken the view that whether or not a person is justified in having an attitude of belief towards the proposition, God exists, is a function of that persons evidence. Evidence here is understood broadly to include a priori arguments, arguments to the best explanation, inductive and empirical reasons, as well as deductive and conceptual premises. An asymmetry exists between theism and atheism in that atheists have not offered faith as a justification for non-belief. That is, atheists have not presented non-evidentialist defenses for believing that there is no God.

See the rest here:
Atheism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Posted in Atheism | Comments Off on Atheism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Digital Dodge: Some Greeks Using Bitcoin to Evade Currency …

Posted: at 3:42 am

There is at least one legal way to get your euros out of Greece these days, to guard against the prospect that they might be devalued into drachmas: convert them into bitcoin.

Although absolute figures are hard to come by, Greek interest has surged in the online "cryptocurrency", which is out of the reach of monetary authorities and can be transferred at the touch of a smartphone screen.

New customers depositing at least 50 euros with BTCGreece, the only Greece-based bitcoin exchange, open only to Greeks, rose by 400 percent between May and June, according to its founder Thanos Marinos, who put the number at "a few thousand." The average deposit quadrupled to around 700 euros.

Using bitcoin could allow Greeks to do one of the things that capital controls were put in place this week to prevent: transfer money out of their bank accounts and, if they wish, out of the country.

"When people are trying to move money out of the country and the state is stopping that from taking place, bitcoin is the only way to move any value," said Adam Vaziri, a board member of the UK Digital Currency Association. "There aren't any other options unless you buy diamonds, and that's very difficult to move."

But Marinos said the bitcoin buyers' main aim was to shield their money against the prospect that Greece might leave the euro zone and convert all the deposits in Greek banks into a greatly devalued national currency. If voters reject the demands of international creditors in a referendum on Sunday, this becomes much more likely.

"A lot of people are keeping all the bitcoins they buy on our platform, until they understand what to do with them," Marinos said. "In their eyes, now they have bitcoins, they're safe."

That said, the value of a bitcoin, a web-based digital currency invented six years ago that floats freely and is not backed by a government or central bank, has been highly volatile.

It peaked at over $1,200 in late 2013 before crashing almost 70 percent in less than a month after a hacking attack on the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in early 2014.

This week, as Greece defaulted on a debt to the IMF, the price jumped to a 3-1/2-month high of $268 BTC=BTSP on the Bitstamp exchange -- up more than 20 percent since the start of June -- while the number of daily transactions reached a record 150,917.

The rest is here:
Digital Dodge: Some Greeks Using Bitcoin to Evade Currency ...

Posted in Bitcoin | Comments Off on Digital Dodge: Some Greeks Using Bitcoin to Evade Currency …

Real time satellite tracking for: SPACE STATION – N2YO.com

Posted: at 3:42 am

RUSSIAN ROCKET POISED FOR CRUCIAL SUPPLY RUN TO SPACE STATION - The stakes are high for a routine cargo mission to the International Space Station, after a string of failures has left the orbiting outpost running somewhat low on supplies. Early Friday, an unmanned Russian rocket will lift off with food, fuel and other essentials. The launch comes less than a week after another unmanned rocket from commercial firm SpaceX disintegrated shortly after liftoff. That was the third failure since October. Normally, the station is stocked with six months of supplies. "Today we're at, give or take, about four months," station manager Mike Suffredini said during a recent NASA press conference. More (Source: NPR - Jul 3)

RUSSIA'S MILITARY SATELLITE DELAY LEAVES COUNTRY VULNERABLE TO NUCLEAR MISSILE ATTACKS - Russia may be working on modernizing its strategic missile force by developing advanced nuclear missile systems, but the country is itself vulnerable to similar attacks after delaying the launch of a new satellite-based missile warning system by four months, local media reported Wednesday. The launch of the military satellite system has been postponed until November, leaving Russia blind in the event of a potential nuclear missile attack, The Moscow Times reported. The country's aging Soviet-era early warning satellites seriously malfunctioned last year when one of three units went offline, followed by the decommissioning of the remaining two satellites in January. More (Source: International Business Times - Jul 2)

RUSSIAN CARGO SPACECRAFT WILL LAUNCH TO SPACE STATION EARLY FRIDAY - A robotic Russian cargo vessel will try to buck a negative recent trend when it launches toward the International Space Station early Friday morning (July 3). Russia's Progress 60 freighter is scheduled to blast off atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan at 12:55 a.m. EDT Friday (0455 GMT, 10:55 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan). The launch comes just five days after SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded less than 3 minutes into flight, ending the California-based company's seventh contracted cargo run to the orbiting lab for NASA - and about two months after the previous Progress freighter (Progress 59) fell back to Earth, victimized by a problem with its Soyuz booster. More (Source: Space.com - Jul 2)

SPACEX ROCKET FAILURE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT SPACE STATION'S VITAL SUPPLIES - NASA prides itself on preparing for the worst, but three rocket explosions in eight months are testing the agency's backup plans. Sunday's explosion of a SpaceX rocket, bound for the International Space Station, followed the fiery end of an Orbital Sciences launch in October and the failure of a Russian resupply vessel in April. As both American companies remain grounded during ongoing investigations, questions are now being raised about how long NASA can keep the scientific researchers at the space station. NASA officials remain confident that the crew has adequate food and water until the end of October, but the agency offered a less rosy outlook even before the last two failures. More (Source: Los Angeles Times - Jul 1)

NASA OFFICIALS CONFIRM MYSTERIOUS FIREBALL IS SPACE JUNK - NASA says a mysterious object that light up the night sky in the southeast was space debris re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Channel 2 Action News received several phone calls into the newsroom and many people posted pictures and videos to social media. The object was spotted around 1:30 a.m. in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. People described it looking like a bright fireball with lights streaming behind it. The flash didn't last very long, it disappeared after a few moments. More (Source: WSB-TV - Jun 30)

SATELLITE OWNERS AMONG BYSTANDERS IN FALCON 9 ACCIDENT - The long queue of satellites waiting on launches aboard SpaceX's Falcon rockets - a backlog the company says is worth $7 billion - will stay grounded while investigators determine what caused a Falcon 9 booster to disintegrate after liftoff Sunday with supplies heading for the International Space Station. Commercial and government satellite operators - from telecom giant SES to NOAA's climate research team - were lined up to fly on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in the coming months, and they will have to wait longer than bargained for when they signed on to launch on the commercial booster. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 30)

RUSSIAN SHIP TO SUPPLY INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION AFTER SPACE X EXPLOSION - The International Space Station crew will be spared any risk of hardship because a regular Russian Progress supply mission will be launched to them on Friday, according to Garcia's blog. On Sunday, a private sector Space X rocket exploded on an unmanned supply mission to the ISS shortly after being launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Space X Dragon cargo craft "was lost about 139 seconds after launch Sunday morning," Garcia noted. More (Source: Sputnik International - Jun 30)

SPACEX'S FALCON 9 ROCKET EXPLODES ON LAUNCH - Sunday's SpaceX launch failure will not delay plans to send three more astronauts to the International Space Station next month, NASA said. Officials said the mishap -- the third in less than a year by three different resupply vehicles -- also showed the wisdom of the agency's strategy for launching astronauts commercially with two providers, SpaceX and Boeing. SpaceX believes a problem with pressure in the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage liquid oxygen tank caused the rocket to break apart more than two minutes after its 10:21 a.m. launch from Cape Canaveral. More (Source: USA Today - Jun 28)

SPACEX READIES DRAGON FOR LAUNCH TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - SpaceX is readying a Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon cargo ship for launch Sunday to deliver more than 4,000 pounds of equipment, supplies and science gear to the International Space Station, including the first of two new docking adapters needed to capture American crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX. The science instruments and supplies cover a wide range of disciplines, including work to help figure out what is causing vision problems in three quarters of the astronauts who make long-duration space flights. A customized camera will photograph shooting stars from above to determine their chemical composition and the station crew will attempt to grow cabbage that can be added to the lab's menu. More (Source: CBS News - Jun 28)

See the rest here:
Real time satellite tracking for: SPACE STATION - N2YO.com

Posted in Space Station | Comments Off on Real time satellite tracking for: SPACE STATION – N2YO.com