I don't think it is a stretch, I think its irrelevant. I think calling it a faith when the word is used to describe methods clearly exclusive to empiricism is a malapropism, but nonetheless, I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth".

Over the course of what you've written, I suspect you've met people being militant about "atheism". Do you think people are condescending if they think you're wrong? I think you used non-empirical methods to believe something, and I think that line of thinking can be more dangerous than straight empiricism. As I understand it, that is Dawkin's grand point. If you feel emotionally invested in your method, I can empathize with that.

I don't need to be condescending or think about it as us vs them. I don't care what words are used, atheist, agnostic, whatever. It's not about believing in God or not believing in god. It's about the empirical method I used to start and maintain a belief and my continual willingness to examine and synthesize new beliefs with the method. I also believe that I, and everyone else, would be better off if most people agreed with me. I'm not sure I believe that Dawkins should be doing what he's doing, but I suppose he could be a net positive force.

In a way, you're as fanatical, as is everyone. Everyone thinks that morality is something. I'm a relativist, so the only point I'm fanatical about is that morality is different for everyone, and we should keep that in mind when constructing social contracts and trying to be good to each other. Yet, I'm absolutely fanatical about this point, because I live by it, and think other's should, too. Whatever it is, you have an actionable belief that you think is the proper one, which you have clearly indicated by suggesting that Dawkins is just as fanatical as "religious fanatics".

What does fanatic mean? Here's my definition, your reason for acting the way you are acting is absurd. It is a personal judgement. So I avoid the word. The problem is you don't agree, 100%, with Dawkins method, and you don't think he should be trying to convert people to his method. Also, I bet Dawkins is more flexible in his appreciation of slightly differing philosophies than many religions.

Because of the idea contained in this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot To overly clarify, the burden of proof should be on the person making the statement.

We throw the word science around a lot, but this is my view of what it really is: a method for choosing what to believe. Religion is a little bit more than this. It implies that certain methods are necessary, and states what to believe. Science does not do this directly. It does not enumerate what to believe. It only states indirectly, by saying you only should believe this if it follows these guidelines.

Some people who are rightly called scientists use the "scientific method" to choose what to believe about some subset of their life, while not using the scientific method to determine what to believe about metaphysics. IE, some people are scientists and religious. And, there are some people who would split hairs about what reason is vs what science is, whatever.

The punch line is, as a method for choosing what to believe, it comes into conflict with religions, whose implied methods are mutually exclusive with science. Not that people don't try to mix the two.

Dawkin's point is that science is a much better, by large margins, method for choosing what to believe. He might say, the only correct method. This was also the subject of Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. The difference is that Carl Sagan manages to make his point without coming off like an obnoxious twit. I do like Dawkins, but he can seem pushy and militant.

So, science doesn't have to disprove something to suggest that you shouldn't believe it. To overly simplify it, most people would say the method, science that is, says that religious people do not have valid reasons for believing what the believe. You don't have to agree with the point, that science is a much better method, to understand the motivation. Moreover, the meta point is that if all people had a much better method for choosing what to believe, then everyone would benefit. Carl Sagan makes the point, with many cases, that irrational thought, motivated by religion, caused mass suffering.

People might read his books because he could be right, that science is a much better method, and benefit as a result. Also, I believe you don't have to fully agree with someone to learn something from them. So, they might read his books to expose themselves to a wider range of philosophies. I literally die inside with disagreement with Descartes, but he was still worth reading. However, I would suggest Carl Sagan's book more than any other book in the genre that says theistic thinking is dangerous, because he is more articulate and less obnoxious.

Rush's books, on the other hand, are intellectually light polemics stuffed end-to-end with sophistry whose goal isn't to enlighten but possibly to entertain or to gratify by validating prejudices while simultaneously branding through anger so that the reader will purchase more media from Rush. I believe that Dawkins really does believe that society would be better off if they used science to decide what to believe and not faith.

At the risk of saying even more than I should say to convey my point, to put it on its head, the point is, if you didn't use science to arrive at your current belief, you shouldn't believe it.

Mass persuasion is a charged term. As is "ideology". Let us assume, probably correctly, that you believe a certain kind of culture is better than other cultures, then how do you express to people that they should agree? Persuasion on a large scale is a large part of what the United States tried to do when they printed a million common sense pamphlets. "Mass persuasion" is not a bad thing, surely, when we run ads to tell people to use condoms, wash your hands, avoid scams, etc.?

The point I'm trying to make is that Dawkins, and some other atheists, believe that theism is so noxious as to harm society relative to atheistic thinking. You can call it evangelism, or proselytization, or whatever you like. As to the eerieness of it all. How is it eerie if the arguments put forth for the persuasion are not agitprop but rather well-intentioned appeals to self-interest?

Dawkins can be obnoxious.

Rush Limbaugh is simultaneously obnoxious, obviously devoid of integrity in his stated purpose, and doesn't listen to the people he is meant to interview or debate. Oh, and he's a demagogue, intentionally playing against the passions and prejudices of his audience for personal gain.

Rush is worse

I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.

As for the spirit of your statements, there are so many extreme Christians in the United States, quiverful, southern baptists, LDS, etc. and so many middle-class average Christians who toy with theocratic ideas, that there seems to be a very real reason to proselytize atheism, if that would be your political desire, as it is for Dawkins. I can see an argument being made that its more important to advance the quality, culturally and intellectually, of the first world countries than to focus on improving other countries.

There may also be more people who are susceptible to ideological conversion and more people who could be affected by their message generally in the "Western" world.

There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.

It is in violation of the rule of law by showing religious partiality to post it, more than it demonstrates the rule of law by being some other previous society's laws. Also, the original intent for putting them up was religious.

From http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanis1.htm "The CoS' Satan is pre-Christian, and derived from the Pagan image of power, virility, sexuality and sensuality."

They are not about evil, damage, and chaos. Even if they were, their belief and the lawful expression of that belief is constitutional, regardless of what their belief is. You would have to show that putting up this statue is not lawful. By itself, a religion cannot conflict with the constitution.

One man's preversion...

I agree, neither the 10 commandments nor this statue should be displayed on government property. However, it is an amusing jibe at people who want to disregard the 1st amendment and in general are pretty obviously pro theocracy. For full disclosure, I'm neither a satanist nor a Christian. Shrugs.

Funny, your post is. However, accurate it maybe, too.

As people who are using their computers for content consumption switch to mobile devices, the people left over could plausibly be more apt to use or switch to a Linux distribution. For instance, they might be more capable at learning new software for whatever power use they use a desktop for. Similarly, they might be better able to adapt to a new operating system. Obviously, software is king and that will still be true in 2014, where you can't get some of the industry standards kind of software on Linux, yet... But, who knows?

To put it another way, changing the lowest common denominator in a market may change what is offered in the market.

There will always be attempts at subverting the intent of such laws, surely, however, that argument can also be applied to murder laws. In and of itself, it does not recommend not trying to legislate and enforce the law.

It is hard to understand what makes us prosperous as a nation. It is possible that such a law could actually make people want to do more business in the United States, rather than less. So, I don't buy this argument as a given.

Here is an example: Why should we take taxes and spend them on law enforcement? Won't people just flee to other countries where they can keep more of the money they make? Yet, we can easily see that people require a certain level of security to invest and law enforcement, done relatively well, is a reason people probably want to do more investing in the US than ...say...Angola.

Laws, or the lack thereof, can have a profound effect on our society. It is an implied ad hominen to say that the belief in law and order is "magic" just because someone thinks some law may be of the more effectual kind. Of course, I think its pretty obvious laws can do harm as well. To suggest that laws cannot be powerfully to the good and powerfully to the bad seems to be naive.

What is a "free market"? So often it seems to be "the market is rational" and there are many academics and wealthy people strongly on both sides of this argument. I would suggest that regardless of reality, the notion that we live in the "land of opportunity" where via hard work and merit you will be handsomely compensated feels, to me, analogous to a child believing in the existence of St Nicholas. As a counter-example to the free market dream that the best are rewarded and competition always creates better products, why is there career advice that says you have to be able to smoothly promote your own accomplishments? It's not enough to be good at something, you must know how to tell other people that you are good at that thing. The reality seems to be more nuanced than the "Land of Opportunity" idea. Regulation appears to be able to do both good and bad in terms of keeping the social contract intact and promoting healthy economic competition. The fact that they can do well, and very few people really take the position that we should have no laws or executive agencies regulating the market, suggests that a "free market" is not what we really want, but that really we, as a nation, have a difference of opinion in terms of degree.

Its possible that the kind of CEO who would stay in the US to run a company for only 20x his cheapest worker would actually be much better at running the company for the equal benefit of long term stockholders and employees. In my programming department, if I were to create three ranking systems where I ranked developers by how much they were paid (list A), how good they were (list B), and how good they were at negotiating their pay (list C), I believe List A would much more resemble List C. I don't *know* what would happen, but I think you can't, either. I suspect that we would be able to recruit very talented people to run companies anyway.

You said, "Forbidding people from signing contracts that both parties deem as mutually beneficial is wrong and destructive to the economy. " Should we allow antitrust contracts? Can I put a contract on your life, as me and the hitman want to enter into this contract? To the latter you may say, but killing people is against the law. The same argument would apply here were we to enact such legislation. The contract would violate the law. The law is in place because we believe people are harmed by it. So your real argument is that you don't see how we can be harmed by such disparities, but I see a way and you are not making a good case, in my opinion. I don't even think you're making a case. You seem to be stating opinions that inflame.

The prime source of disparity between incomes seems to be education, networking access, and other issues correlated with class. Most young people don't become CEO's.

In sum: I feel like your arguments appeal to passions and prejudices, instead of being the result of careful analysis.

While your post is hilarious, I've never bought anything from a sales rep on the phone and I'm definitely not uncharitable with my frosty condescension if they happen to mislead me into thinking its a phone call I want to take. If I developed a reputation at all, I'd be the guy in the house that the traveling salesman decides to just skip. And, while tracking systems are scary, there can be some incidental positives for the reputation one develops. Who knows, I bet not talking to every telemarketer has a positive correlation with credit score.

However, I'm on the national DNC list and I get a call once a fortnight, maybe. Most of the time its in a foreign language, anyway. I love those Spanish robots. My understanding is you have to reup on the list every year.

Without more information, nobody is going to be able to give you solid advice. However, the particular impression I get from how you phrased your question leads me to believe that you do not truly grok an essential fact, that your job is more than programming and that you do not understand business.

The business types (and this can be a Lead Developer, Project Manager, etc) around you need to understand nuances in your code in order to communicate it to others, to document, and so forth. They also need to be kept informed, on a regular basis, on the timing of deliverables from you. This allows them to adjust business plans and manage expectations as well as shield you better from politics from others. Communicating with them regularly can turn them into allies against the forces of irrationality and business stupidity trying to dictate a bad implementation to you.

They also need to manage your output. You might think you know best, but software requirements can change midstream, or need to purposefully be inefficient and stupid because of a business or political reason. Politics goes all the way down to the developer and you will never escape this in any size company. All of these things apply in small companies, sometimes even moreso, because they need to be able to respond rapidly and business decisions are made faster.

To put it in mathematical terms, at least 20% of your job will be communicating things, if not more. I've seen many a freshly graduated collegiate developer come in and not understand that this is an essential part of their job. You can write perfect code, and if you don't communicate well, you are hindering the business and will likely be less valued as a result. You can also be an a difficult person to get along with and if you're putting out a good result in a timely fashion while still communicating well you will be valued.

I also suspect you're coming off as a bit more prickly than you intend. That bit about not holding your tongue... You know people will swallow a lot from a valuable person, appear friendly and professional on the outside, but walk away thinking you're a person they dislike interacting with. They won't mention you positively to others and they won't have as much respect for you. A lot of people would rather work with a mediocre developer than a guru who is rude. Company size doesn't matter. Formality is still relevant because its an interface people can use to not stomp each other's feelings in a situation where they have to work with each other. That should be a concern for you even if you are a robot without feelings. You still want to be paid well and not fired.

A lot of these notions apply even to other developers you work with because they do not have time to walk all your code all the time and they probably need to interact with it or express a desire that you keep some of their needs in mind when writing an interface. Being a good communicator can speed up the whole team. Also, they probably already know more than you so its an excellent opportunity to learn. Even if you suspect that they aren't your shoelace in general talent, they do know more than you, and you do need to soak up as much of that knowledge as possible.

Remember, your work product is a black box to almost everyone in the company and often to other developers. Do you like working with a black box whose documentation is terrible or nonexistant?

As to the notion of how to make communication work better for you as a developer? Context switches or general requests to communicate do make it much harder to recover your momentum when you get back on task. There are tried and true ways of limiting this pain. As you get the request to communicate, mentally remind yourself what you're doing and where you are. This allows you to "pop the stack" faster after you're done communicating. Also, look for periods of time when you're between subtasks and communicate little status reports to the right people which will definitely cut down on the number of "hardware interrupts" you'll get at other times when its more frustrating. Be absurdly polite and patient and explore with direct questions what it is they need or if they have enough.

You might have great job security in this market, but this market can change, and even in this market, the programmers who are more receptive to business concerns tend to get paid a lot better.

The latter should be regarded as the truth because he says that is his opinion in interviews.