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I am not aware of any claim that the devil is the largest evil that could be imagined. Further, such a definition would not make sense in for example traditional Christianity where evil is defined as a privation on good, not something that exists in itself.

Having God and the devil as evenly matched but opposite powers is not something you would find in theology. Learn the basics of it before thinking you have created a proper critique.


> I am not aware of any claim that the devil is the largest evil that could be imagined.

That is completely irrelevant. The ontological proof claims to deduce the existence of an entity from a definition of that entity. It does not matter whether this definition happen to match some current religious dogma or not.


Anselm defined God as "that which nothing greater can be thought." Introducing a devil into this mix doesn't change this reasoning, and basically boils down to "is evil greater than good?", which I don't think anyone can reasonably argue.

It's not the most interesting argument for God I've encountered, but it's not trivially invalidated by elevating evil to the same status as good. That hasn't been a serious element of any real theology since long before the ancient Hebrews.

Theology is the art of imagination, the same way that politics is the art of the possible. Imagining absolute evil is only interesting when you want to attack the idea of absolute good. Absolute good remains interesting without a foil. So therefore people will be willing to believe in it.


The point is that if the ontological argument is valid then you can define all kinds of things into existence also. The devil is just an example, it could also be The Most Perfect Island, The Real Santa Claus and so on. So it is a reductio ad absurdum.


I'm not saying the ontological argument is correct, just that your reasoning doesn't sufficiently refute it.


It doesn't refute it per se. It just shows that The Real Santa Claus also exists by the same token. Which is not really a logical contradiction so if you want to believe that, more power to you.


More generally, you can't attack the reasoning with any amount of imaginary horrors or delights. This is because the ontological argument doesn't try to argue imaginary things that are not God exist. Just that the imagination we have of God does exist, as the greatest thing ever. This is because of God's special property, that of being the greatest thing ever, that any imagination greater would just become the new God.

This property is not shared by things that are not God, such as Santa Claus. So you can't use the ontological argument for God to also show that Santa Claus exists. Santa Claus isn't the greatest thing ever, so Santa Claus isn't bound by the rules of logic to exist.


The real Santa Claus did exist, the one the current myth is based on.


Fair enough, but that is totally beside the point.


Maybe sibling comment is more to your liking.


That sounds as if it were a fact that can be measured. Everything can be conjured into existence by false assumptions.

"The spaghetti monster, by definition, is that for which no more delicious thing can be conceived. The spaghetti monster exists in the understanding. If the spaghetti monster exists in the understanding, we could imagine it to be even more delicious by existing in reality. Therefore, the spaghetti monster must exist."


Your first premise is false. Hooking up your sensory system to a device that generates the maximum signal would give a larger signal since it would bypass degradation in your mouth.

Think your argument through first. Are your premises actually true?


Likewise with god...


it's not 51% of the nodes, it's 51% of the hashing power together with following the agreed upon rules of the network


You're correct. I oversimplified it quite a bit.



"Were" implies "back then". Marine equipment 1989 was likely more plentiful, but less capable, to offset likely losses in the always-imminent WW3.


we do not have a workable definition of intelligence


Surprisingly no, they were not following science.


That's africa, not the west.


There will be several hundred million migrating from Africa to the west.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...


Only if western policy supports it.


A westerner is 10x worse for the environment than an African.



According to Buddhism, is there truth that a self can hold?


No. The separate self is an illusion and can not truly know anything. Only I am is known.


Do Buddhists hold this to be true?


If it is in the publics best interest for the BBC to own the rights then that can be arranged


How?

Say the BBC made a great series in 1978 and paid the composer of the music for enough rights to air it in the UK, but not for media which were not yet invented at the time. The composer is now dead, the heirs moved to NZ and Italy, the will (written in 1982) doesn't make quite clear which heir inherited the internet rights, and none of the heirs really care to pay lawyers for the sake of a £500-1500 sale. How do you propose to arrange acquisition of the rights?

This isn't even very farfetched. A lot of old contracts were written without consideration of the streaming possibilities that eventually ensued. BTDT.


Current government would be strongly against that. They want to BBC to use private production companies who'll make the content that BBC then transmits.

This is seen across a wide range of government departments: moving away from big central (often previously state) providers to smaller local private providers.


Well, to private providers anyway. The preference for most things seems to be huge multinationals rather than small local companies.


If it is in the publics best interest for the BBC to own the rights then that can be arranged

Is it in the public interest?

What is the benefit to the public of the BBC spending the money necessary to reclaim the rights to their old content? I can't think of anything. The shows that have any value (eg Dr Who) have already commericialized. Everything else ... why bother? The obvious point is that it'd be nice to watch some of the old shows again, but really, out of the 97 years of content across radio and television probably 99.9999% would never be looked ay by anyone.

Just as a parallel, there's millions of hours of old content on https://archive.org/ that never gets looked at. Why would the old BBC content be any different?


I'd happily pay to get access to the full BBC catalogue - in fact I'd probably find more to watch there than I do on Netflix & Amazon (which I already subscribe to).


Lots of people say that. I imagine the BBC use data from things like https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/archive/ to demonstrate that most people are not viewing the archive content that is available already, so people's claims that they'd pay are not backed up by evidence.


I wonder if they collect statistics of people who spot that there are some old 'Horizons' on iPlayer and then get seriously disappointed at the meagre selection available.


so those researchers can skip reading the article, the rest of us may like it


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