Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Let's say it is the ontological argument. Refute it.

Even ancient pre-Christian Greeks (at least the philosophically-minded ones) had a solid concept of an abstract God above/beyond all others. Read Plato's Republic and other works for extensive discussion about God without a name. Had Plato been an entrenched polytheist, he surely would have given a name to the god he was referring to. Sure, there are gods with names there too, but this makes it all the more clearer that Plato was able to distinguish between particular gods plus the abstract one.

"Immaterial teapot" is a contradiction in terms. Russell did not make such a mistake.

Instead of immaterial, he suggests it's "too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes". He is clearly talking about detecting. So, no, he is not talking about immaterial. He is enough of a philosopher and logician to know that immaterial is irreconcilable with empirical detection. Consequently, I tend to suspect that he tacitly knew he was not refuting God as defined in theology. He was just making a little joke at the expense of literalist fundies, even though his atheist followers think he was making an actual serious philosophical argument. It's likely that he didn't. It's also possible that he did, but then he was crudely mistaken.

Quote from: Boss

Oh yeah, and there's Elinks—presumably ersi.

What's the [abbr=Am I banned?]shit[/abbr]?

Are you saying that mankind is the greatest and there's nothing greater than mankind? How do you justify this belief?

For me, it's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of inevitable logical deduction. Once you arrive at the conclusion, you either face the consequences of your own thinking or you will deny your own mind to your own detriment. No belief necessary at any stage.

The point that Russell missed in all this was that the "abstract thing" was the universally accepted definition of God in theology all along. Just read some Augustine or Thomas Aquinus (Christians) or Avicenna or Ibn Tufail (Muslims) or absolutely anything about Vedanta or Buddhism. But you don't even need to read those.

Monotheism, which at the beginning of the Antiochan persecution had been the creed of only part of one very small nation, was adopted by Christianity and later by Islam, and so became dominant throughout the whole of the world west of India. From India eastward, it had no success: Hinduism had many gods; Buddhism in its primitive form had none; and Confucianism had none from the eleventh century onward.

In the earliest times of which we have definite history everybody believed in many gods. It was the Jews who first believed in only one. The first commandment, when it was new, was very difficult to obey because the Jews had believed that Baal and Ashtaroth and Dagon and Moloch and the rest were real gods but were wicked because they helped the enemies of the Jews. The step from a belief that these gods were wicked to the belief that they did not exist was a difficult one. There was a time, namely that of Antiochus IV, when a vigorous attempt was made to Hellenize the Jews. Antiochus decreed that they should eat pork, abandon circumcision, and take baths. Most of the Jews in Jerusalem submitted, but in country places resistance was more stubborn and under the leadership of the Maccabees the Jews at last established their right to their peculiar tenets and customs.

But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Why didn't they create an open plugin architecture, like Winamp or Foobar2000 has, to end the silly format "war" between VPx and H.264?

From Opera 15 onwards Ctrl+Tab switches between tabs in the order they are in the tab bar. This is different from older Opera versions and was changed because, for many people, this is more intuitive (since it is easier to predict the order).

Or every user of just about every mainstream and semi-mainstream window manager out there. (Except perhaps Mac and Unity users might expect Ctrl+Tab to switch between domains and Ctrl+` to switch between pages on the same domain or some such.) I have always found this behavior extremely intuitive ever since learning about Alt+Tab in Windows 3.11, because paper documents on my wooden desk stack in the exact same manner.

So, your preferred desktop is Xfce. I tried and didn't find Xubuntu so likeable (stylewise - there's no other reason to try Xubuntu than the desktop, is there?). In the order of my own preference, Manjaro, Mint, and Lite all have easily superior Xfce desktops when compared to Xubuntu.

When I opened up Xubuntu the first time, the desktop looked terribly bleak and screamed for customisation. So, naturally I opened up the settings and got on with it, but the choice of themes was, well, not there. Lite also looks kind of bleak at first, but it's packed with many themes, so it's quick to customise the look, while other defaults were mostly sane and workable for me.

Then maybe you are not so aesthetically inclined.

Cellphones might have radio, but I didn't expect it to be any good.

Do any of these files play for you?

Sounds a bit like SkyNews we have over here. Oh wait,  Rupert Murdoch is responsible for both of them so that figures.

(by chance I happened to stumble upon a mobile phone which could receive most stations in good stereo with a headphones cable)

Is Opera and Opium capable of playing Ogg/Opus files? I suppose Opera isn't since it is a new standard. But in Opium 19 too, the player shows up on application/ogg files, but playback doesn't start. Do I need to declare a specific MIME?

This enables any user to masquerade as any browser they please---mask their browser's identity.

Windows		86,318	68.5 %
Linux		29,561	23.4 %
BSD		7,352	5.8 %
Unknown		1,430	1.1 %
Macintosh	1,164	0.9 %
Java Mobile	133	0.1 %
Java		2	0 %

My name is j7n. I was registered for several years, but didn't post.