It sounds like what you're talking about is Pascals Wager[0]
The idea being that belief in God pays of well if true. And is alright if false. Disbelief in God pays off poorly if true, and alright if false. Therefore, any logical person ought to be a Christian, since the consequences of belief are net positive either way. Or so the thought goes.
As a person of faith, I will say that this thought experiment is fairly flawed. For one, you must apply Pascals wager to all faith systems simultaneously if you want to be sure you get the best outcome. But of course, it's not equally likely that Pastafarianism is the one true way as is Buddhism as is Atheism. How do you weight the possibilities in such a way to do an honest analysis? These things are based on what you believe already - so then the question of what to believe becomes recursive, really.
I mean, obviously atheism is a pretty broad thing (just like "religion", or even "Christianity" encompasses many views).
But for a lot of people, the essence of atheism isn't about anything to do with final judgement. It's just... not believe that God exists. For lots of atheists, it's not a rebellion of anything like that. We don't believe in God in pretty much the same way you probably don't believe in Shiva.
I’m agnostic. I was raised in a relatively strict, traditional Roman Catholic family. At age 18, I embraced a strong atheist stance, influenced by the books by Hitchens and Dawkins being published around that time. Eventually my interest in this stance lessened.
However, I dislike this “act of faith” line of reasoning and find it disingenuous. In the Roman Catholic tradition, believing is an act of faith. There isn’t a “proof” so to speak for why one should believe in God, etc. That’s not to say there aren’t various reasons proposed by religious thinkers.
But to say that an atheist’s not believing in God is an act of faith in itself is strange to me. I think it’s sort of a mischaracterization of atheism. Not believing in God isn’t an act of faith. It’s declining to take that act of faith in the first place. Arguments about the influence science aren’t even necessary here.
As to my own beliefs, my position is to decline the leap of faith. I don’t believe in God, but neither do I rule out the possibility that there is a God, especially in a more pantheistic or possibilian sense (see David Eagleman).
I think it’s fair to say that science hasn’t explained everything about the universe yet. I think it’s presumptuous to argue otherwise.
Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s fair to say my lack of a leap is itself an act of faith.
...unless we want to go down the rabbit hole in which every thought or action is an act of faith...
I disagree with a lot of what you wrote, but I think the most obvious one is - this exact argument can be used to show that you must believe in the Hindu gods. Or in Islam. Or in Mormonism. Or in any of a number of other (mutually exclusive) religions.
What makes you think any particular God is the right one?
Edit: cleared up the language to make the point clearer.
Even though it's unknowable, science prefers simplicity. As scientist we should prefer the model of the world with the fewest number of assumptions. The existence of something is more complex than non-existence (which is the default). If we could explain the world without a god just as well as with one then there is no reason to go for the more complex theory. That is especially true in e.g. the Christian sense of god, which comes with a ton more assumptions.
I don’t know if a god exists or not, but I feel pretty confident that it wouldn’t be the puerile and judgmental, contradictory, oh-so-Human prick described in Abrahamic religions. Hopefully any creator is going to recognize the many limitations of its creations, and if not, good luck guessing its whims.
There hasn't been a serious "war on drugs" for over 30 years in the UK. Most drugs are de-facto legal since the laws are simply not enforced. To say "prohibition of drugs is a counterproductive failure" is a straw-man, because there is no enforcement. The laws would probably have been dropped many years ago were it not for international treaty obligations.
> Most drugs are de-facto legal since the laws are simply not enforced
Sorry, but I just can't agree with this. The laws are there, the government says they still apply and have zero interest in any sort of repeal or reduction of illegality. Every attempt to push forward a more sensible policy say on Cannabis, in particular, is shot down. Eg the recent response on [1].
The police might be turning a blind eye (in some regions more so than others) to some possession but it is still illegal and you still run the risk of someone deciding to charge or fine you. If you're caught in possession multiple times you will end up in some sort of trouble, however minimal [2]. Actually getting hold of the these drugs involves interacting with actual criminals and I doubt they're submitting tax returns on the profits.
If anything this unclear muddy state is in my opinion much worse - it's a complete mess purporting to be the moral highground.
Nobody is doing prison time in UK for posessing or selling drugs?
Pharmaceutically pure drugs can be brought by any adult?
People are not dying because they thought they bought heroin when in fact the bought Fentanyl?
But if you decriminalize it, you can a) save a lot of money in the law enforcement sector, b) tax it, so you make even more money, both of which frees up cash to c) spend a lot more on prevention of rehabilitation.
Plus, as long as drug trade remains illegal, you have secondary problems such as bribery of officials, gang violence.
Maybe in the USA, in Europe (and probably other parts of the world, too) it is a different story.
AFAIK, we do not have anything like asset seizure in Germany. And the prison system over here is much less privatized / industrialized, so is not exactly a profit center.
A well-staffed, well-trained law enforcement apparatus is fairly expensive, too.
And consider that without proper treatment, widespread drug use incurs costs that do not show up on government budgets as such. Drug-related crime (theft, burglaries, etc.) comes to mind.
I can't speak for adnam but I would consider YC's cannabis-related investments questionable for reasons beyond just "it has to do with pot." If you are going to make your fortune selling pot, IMO you have a moral obligation to assist those (predominantly young men of color) whose lives have been ruined cracking that market for you. Meadow is just another gross Uber-esque intermediary (not to mention the YC partner working as part of the most tough-on-drugs executive branch in decades).
More generally, if you want to establish yourself as a "good person" I think you need to make the argument when you fund the thing as to why your loans aren't predatory, or your pot isn't white people getting rich on the back of black lives, or your laundry service won't leave a community unable to wash their clothes. Part of "doing good" is working with people affected to establish your bona fides. YC doesn't attempt this; they are concerned with "being good" which, as the article covers, is a semantic game that lets you justify any behavior you want.
> [YC] need to make the argument [that their investment in the marijuana industry] isn't white people getting rich on the back of black lives
Sorry, I don't quite understand. Which of these is your view:
1. YC/Meadow is harming black people by connecting marijuana-buyers to doctors and dispensaries.
2. YC/Meadow are more responsible for the problems caused by the marijuana industry than the rest of us, simply because they interact with it more. You're not obligated to help all those people harmed in the marijuana industry, but YC/Meadow is.
If you hold the second view, I'm curious whether you'd find this article[0] on "the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" convincing. Excerpt:
> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you.
Of course, but they will use violence when something that the Catalan gov doesn't like happens. And it's not an hypothesis, it has already happened in the near past.
Rajoy has made a simple calculation: jackboots in the faces of peaceful Catalans trying to vote equals more votes for the Partido Popular in the rest of Spain.
I think it would be really interesting to build something like dispora as a suite of dockerised micro-services which would allow you to add and extend functionality based on a new social-networkong protocol in a language-agnostic way. It would also be very easy to incorporate email and xmpp which are already federated protocols.
Docker should help in general with making services like this more accessible. I can imagine someone like Fastmail using docker to allow a one click process to set up a Diaspora or Mastodon node. That should take the hassle out of it, and if you could just watch a 3 min video to explain the concept/metaphors, and set it up in 30 seconds, it expands the possible audience from system admins and software engineers, up to anyone technically inclined.
