The file-sharing, copyright and piracy debate continues to burn just as aggressively today as it did with the dawn of Napster. When compared to the seemingly endless wars of words over religion, however, it's only just begun, but the opposing sides in both debates seem equally polarized. So, for an argument that will probably never end, let's bring them both together.
I quoted the article. I read it, and it’s stupid. Also, religious ≠ believes in gods. 28% of Americans are “Nones” and growing, and that number includes religious people.
But whether someone cares about the status of gods’ existence matters insomuch as it’s the core precondition of the article. If gods don’t exist, wondering what they think is like wondering what Harry Potter thinks about piracy—interesting as a shower thought, but hardly relevant to making real moral decisions.
If someone is going to bring religion into this community, I’m justified commenting on it.
The number you quoted is practically the same the one i quoted. I’m not sure why you bothered.
I completely missed your quoting the article. My bad. Even the article is saying the premise in the title is silly / unknowable. I was wondering why you were saying the same things the article was; that arguing for piracy using religion is a bit of a mixed bag.
The core question is not moot because more than half the population agrees with the articles core premise. It doesn’t matter if god exists, it matters that most everybody thinks one exists. Using that belief to discuss piracy is not a flawed discussion, and it is not dependent on the actual existence of a god, just the existence of people’s belief in them.
And here’s where we disagree. I suppose I can see this logic, but my issue is that anyone can and will interpret “God’s will” in their own way. How the author presents their case is less reasonable than simply talking about the moral justifications from a secular standpoint. People who rely on God’s opinion that much are likely some variety of fundamentalist and not likely to be engaging in piracy in the first place.
So for the rest, why bother with the religious part, since they’ll just interpret in their own way?
Let’s ignore the fact that none of the major religions, or major sects of major religions, is internally consistent enough that it would be possible for a rational take on what their god’s opinion is on anything modern using any kind of logic. Let’s ignore that none of the sects agree with each other and that every one of them arbitrarily picks and chooses from their book and random external writings to determine “what god thinks”.
It doesn’t matter how many people are religious. It’s still spam not actually relevant to piracy in any way.