Religion is merely a primitive form of philosophy, of attempting to understand the nature of the universe and man's place in it.
As such, it was important in the evolution of civilization - a necessary evil - but mankind has long evolved past the need for it's primitive approach to metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
The stories of invisible beings in mystical dimensions that guide us frightened know-nothings were made obsolete when Aristotle identified the foundations of reason and logic.
Today, religion is at best a disease-ridden security blanket, and at worst a dominant force to control man's mind, to subjugate his body, and to obliterate his capacity for rational thought (i.e. his means of survival).
Evolution is not a religion, it is a theory.
The difference is that evolution is subject to investigation and falsification through a process of looking at the world and reasoning about it, whereas religion is a faith-based belief system.
Whether or not a given textbook is accurate or not has no bearing on the issue.
Quoting Popper (or Kuhn, or Feyerabend) doesn't help your claim - they do not speak for science or reason, they are merely little Kantians trying to secularize the religious assault on man's capacity to deal with truth.
Name one, just one example, of an ISP privately negotiating right-of-way easements of any significant number in the USA.
Can you give me a list of ISPs that don't operate under government franchise, license, or subsidy?
I could walk around personally and get all the right-of-way agreements, but would I then be legally allowed to build the infrastructure? No, because government has a monopoly on infrastructure.
The fact that you lack the vision of how free people could live doesn't prove that free people would huddle in hovels without utilities and entertainment.
Not only would free people have cable, but the whole spectrum of entertainment options would blow the shit hole out of forced government network provisioning
landlines require right-of-way easements across large numbers of private properties in order to achieve reasonable levels of coverage.
Which rational people seeking value will gladly work out privately (except you, apparently.)
As long as connectivity providers are also application providers, any application they don't like is a potential candidate for connectivity problems.
As long as ISPs face potential competition, any connectivity problem is a potential candidate for "losing-customers" problems.
Of course, that depends on ISPs not being entrenched in their crony capitalist markets through special licensing, franchises, and subsidies - as bequeathed by your bipartisan fascist overlords.
does not mean that access to the Iraqi oilfields was not a major consideration in the decision to invade Iraq.
Since Iraq was not a major source of intellectual or financial support for Totalitarian Islam (the enemy), I can't say that I have a good argument against your theory - although it needs some rigor to really back it up.
Even if your weather-control dreams came true - if you could bring the state of the environment into your perfect vision of a never-changing climate utopia
Even then...
The "poor who lack the means" will still die. Your grandiose visions of utopian climate equilibrium will not cause the poor to ascend into carefree joy.
What the poor need is not a never-changing climate (which has never existed and never will exist) - what they need is the freedom to pursue profit, and a philosophy that teaches them how to do it.
It wasn't an unchanging climate that led to the wealth of the West, and it is not a changing climate that prevents poor countries from becoming wealthy.
And it is wealth that poor countries need to deal with all of life's issues. If you really give a damn about poor people in poor countries, you should be advocating for capitalism and its' life-giving benefits.
Actually, changing from "global warming" to "climate change" has the nice advantage that it applies no matter what:
Just spread fear about change as such, and the scared sheep will run.
Every international company has to obey laws for that country, or not do business in that country.
The only thing you have to do is die.
Rosa Parks broke the law to give up her seat on the bus, and that's a good thing.
There is a distinction between the legal and the moral, especially when the former is not based on the latter.
Foreign governments don't have a right to impose their coercive whims on their citizens, and we don't have to, a priori, respect the legitimacy of such oppressive regimes.
why would anyone choose an OS that only runs a web browser?
The whole point of a personal computer is the applications
If a person could get the applications they want through a web browser, why wouldn't they want an OS that only runs a web browser?
If you're using a web-based operating system, you do not want to be stuck with 0.05 Mbps.
Forget that. If you're using a web-based operating system, then that is cooler than shit - can you come show me it?
I understand your point entirely. I'm just pointing out that rights are not determined by governments. Rights are sanctions of human action, and must be discovered through an intellectual process.
Rights actually subordinate governments to their proper role, since a government may not violate an individual's rights
Rights come before governments, hierarchically.
That is ridiculous. Do you believe people have a right to food, clothes, a home, entertainment, sex, a car, utilities, and a meaningful job at a decent wage?
There can be no so-called right to force other people to give you things.
Any legal enforcement of master-slave relationships is immoral.
The concept right is a bridge between ethics and politics - it connects the ideas of "what people should do" (to succeed in life) to "what kind of society should there be (that supports a person's achievement of that success)?
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
