Apologies
Sorry, things will go dead for awhile. I somehow got a spyware invader (despite antivirus and spysweeper) and it prevents me from getting online so I can’t download the tools to fix it so…I don’t know when I’ll be back.
Sorry!
Tip Jar
Sorry, things will go dead for awhile. I somehow got a spyware invader (despite antivirus and spysweeper) and it prevents me from getting online so I can’t download the tools to fix it so…I don’t know when I’ll be back.
Sorry!
Let me guess. Microsoft Windows?
Oh no! Hope you get it fixed soon.
When mine goes wrong, I don’t bother fixing anything. I keep all my data stored in a different hard drive, so I just format the entire disk and clone an image using Clonezilla: the equivalent of a fresh install plus all relevant programs installed in 15 minutes. Of course Clonezilla is only for computer dorks, but I’m sure there are windows-friendly applications to do the same thing.
Ophelia – bring a flash drive with you when you go back to the library and download the fixit programs onto that drive. Take ’em home and use them on your machine. That’s what the people you pay to sort this stuff for you do; they always have a separate drive.
Charles Sullivan,
First, let me say that I’ve used Macs and PCs, almost equally, for nearly 25 years and one of the ironic results of Apple’s recent (i.e. in the last decade, corresponding to its success with the IPod and IPhone) rise in popularity has been a corresponding rise in malware infections for Macs. In my (programming) experience, it’s no more difficult to infect Mac machines (or even computers running Linux) than Windows machines. The main criterion (for the bad guys) is payoff, efficiency of effort, and if 90% of computers run Windows that’s where the spam/malware effort will be. Windows is simply the biggest target. And, as an aside, by far the worst attack I experienced occurred last year on my Macbook after I lent it to colleague. The infection was so insidious that I was forced to reformat. So your snide reference to “Microsoft Windows” is largely meaningless.
Assuming that Ophelia’s machine is a Windows (Vista or Windows 7) machine, I’ve found that a system restore (boot to Safe Mode via F8) generally extricates you from the trap of normal malware infections. This case may be more serious, however, and booting from an external drive may be required.
I don’t know if it is a good idea to take a flash drive that has been attached to an infected computer to the library. Some viruses can infect removable storage media. While the library *should* have anti-virus programs with up to date info, being promiscuous with flash drives is one vector for viruses. No need to possibly infect the library (or the reverse–the library could have viruses of its own.)
What, no one is talking about fomenting a coup? The Queen’s distracted by the repairs to the castle foundation! Let’s seize the constabulatory!
@ Alain,
I’ve been Linux (Ubuntu, specifically) for the last 5 years, and nary a virus, infection, or malware. None. Are you a Microsoft apologist?
*Constabulary
Couldn’t resist. Please reciprocate should you find any errors in my writing.
No, I looked it up: it’s an even more archaic and old-timey version of “constabulary.”
Charles.
Same here, brilliant isn’t it:-)
Your Free Dictionary says it’s a noun, and that’s according to Merriam Webster 1913. But my Shorter Ox says it’s an adjective, and doesn’t list it under the noun. The online version of MW1913 doesn’t say it’s an adjective. I’ll bet my Shorter Ox against your Merriam Webster!
While we’re here, perhaps we can start a discussion?
I was thinking that the accommodationist strategy is somewhat lopsided. I mean by this that their main goal is to build bridges between theism and science. Only, science does not build bridges towards religion, instead the bridging always goes from theism to science. This has been the general role of theologians, who attempt to reconcile beliefs against the growing advancement of science which appears to contradict them.
Now, is it not odd that accommodationists expect secularists or atheists to build bridges to theism? As we have noticed above, bridge building in social terms means changing with the times. But it is odd, to put it mildly, that accommodationists expect new atheists, who represent the liberal secularism to actually go backwards?
Hence, the lopsidedness, the strangeness. Rather, in order to be consistent, accommodationists should be positioning themselves into making the most conservative elements change with the times, bringing them toward secularism, not us away.
Isn’t that peculiar? Perhaps accommodationists are under the mistaken illusion that new atheism is a form of political extremism, while they perceive themselves as the liberals? Because I see that as completely mistaken, rather, they are the moderates while we are the liberals, and as such, I see no reason for new atheists in building bridges.
I think you’ve touched on some important points. A question that arises in my mind is: where would conservatives go if they were atheists? It seems to me that accommodationism would represent a viable position. Their language does rather suggest, doesn’t it, that you are right about their view of us as extremists.
On the other hand, there seems a strong element of moral relativism in their view or views. It only seems to annoy some of them when we talk about human rights abuses perpetrated by religion. But it may only be apparent, an expression of conservative fear for the old establishment, a fear for the loss of ancient foundations or a sense of identity.
@ Charles Sullivan
You didn’t actually read what Alain said, did you? Are you a Linux fanboi?
Scote–
Flash drives are cheap. In this circumstance, I wouldn’t risk bringing the contamination to the library, I’d spend a few bucks on the cheapest available new/blank flash drive, and put the anti-virus software there.
@ GordonWillis,
All the accommodationists that keep being mentioned a lot (Mooney, Ruse, Rosenau, Stedman) all seem to be somewhat conservative in mind, if not politics, and all seem to live within conservative states in America. I’m sure there is the odd exception, but could it be that is it their conservative attitudes that motivates their dislike of new atheists?
And yes, the relativism might explain their lopsidedness, or the lopsidedness might explain their relativism. They may think themselves liberal while actually being moderate, leading then to think new atheists are extremists who require moderation.
What I’m getting at, is that their attitudes may come from their social interactions or conservative society, and has nothing really to do with reason or the agenda of the general atheist movement.
I just wondered if anyone else had noticed this correlation?
I think that that is more or less what I meant.
That’s another matter. I think that the gnu agenda — of opposing religion at its very roots, which means an opposition even to the views of religious moderates — is too far out. That being so, even their defence of human rights must be compromised, as conservation of at least something of the old ways takes priority.
Stedman lives in New England, doesn’t he?
But sure, accommodationists are on the conservative side of this dispute. They paint us as crazed bomb-throwing radicals, not a whole lot differently than center-left political wheels portray people who reside further to the left.
Perhaps this fear underlies their attacks on us as rude and uncivil. We threaten what they perceive as bastions of civilisation. They don’t see their own unreasonableness or duplicity because they are fighting in a just cause. Religion was ever thus. And so was conservatism.
Thatb was meant to be “just” cause, of course.
I think you guys(/gals?) are onto something with equating the accomodationist stance with conservatism. It seems to me that conservatism, regardless of the form, holds one thing as central truth:
1.) People get what they deserve if they are virtuous.
It explains why accomodationists are capable of ranting for hours about how Gnus need to be more civil but completely turn a blind eye to the fact that they are not. They’re virtuous, you see, and gnus are not. Therefore the Gnus deserve the vitriol put forth and their virtuous selves do not. Of course, they will never admit to it on a base level because that would invalidate their world-view. So Ophelia and Jerry and PZ and all of you are stuck listening to Mooney blather about how he’s an expert in communication and should not be questioned or Phil Plait dickishly tell people not to be a dick or Chris Stedman and Kara Mclaren hem and haw when faced with direct evidence of their decidedly uncivil misrepresentations. It’s because they don’t deserve that. In their minds anyway, they are noble, virtuous activists serving the greater good by appeasing the privileged position, all the while being sure that gnus most definitely do deserve it.
I think it also explains why so many poor to lower middle class workers can vote Republican. The businessmen are rich because they deserve to be rich and if they just worked hard enough everything would work out for them. It blinds people to injustices in the system. Accomodationists can’t see or identify with Gnus because they refuse to acknowledge that life isn’t fair.
I can’t do the library transer thing because they don’t allow any external devices at all. I’m thinking maybe I can use an Internet cafe…but maybe they don’t either. (I’ve never been to one.)
Ophelia,
Have you tried to restore your computer to an earlier date? Say, the day before you experienced trouble? Sometimes this will work, sometimes not. It’s worth a try. If you need help, let me know what platform you are using (like Windows XP) and I can send you the steps.
Rich R.
Rich – I did try that first thing yesterday, but it didn’t work – but I didn’t do it in safe mode. I did it that way just now and behold – it worked. I was able to download the removal tool. Yesssssss!
AND I’ve made a copy – I’m saved!
Whew – glad that’s over. Nearly over.
Excellent! I’m glad going back to an earlier date in safe mode did the trick.
Ophelia,
As I mentioned yesterday, the Windows “system restore” (simply boot into safe mode via F8) will extricate you from most virus/malware infections. And, just to clean things up a bit more, run Msconfig.exe (either from a “Run” box or from the “Start” box) and look to see if anything suspicious is being loaded at “Startup” (and uncheck accordingly; though, having “restored” your system, it is unlikely that the cause of your recent nastiness is still lingering here). Another place to check is in appdata/local/temp. In fact you can simply delete the entire “temp” folder.
Among free anti-malware scanners, the one from Microsoft’s own Security Essentials and the one from Malwarebytes.Org will do a pretty reasonable job…
Of course, being an atheist, you won’t have access to the most powerful protection from malware: faith!
@ Egbert, Rieux and Douglas:
Re bridge-building (it is relevant, promise, even if it does go on a bit).
Because of their conservatism, there is a crucial point which the accommodationists fail to see.
Let’s assume that religion starts from an emotional response to what the mind cannot comprehend: there is some experience which is awe-inspiring and mysterious, and therefore something is felt to be at work which is beyond mere human comprehension. And it proceeds by elevating such experiences into a realm in which the mind is in communion with that which is beyond the merely natural. Science, alas, looks at the same experience and says, “Now that’s really interesting! How does that work, then?” and proceeds to formulate an explanation which resides entirely in the same old world in which we humans find ourselves whenever we get out of bed (or feel hungry, or feel like going to bed…).
To the extent that scientific explanations function accurately within the only world that we can actually be certain of perceiving (give or take a philosophical quibble or two about what we mean by “perceive” and to what extent we can be “certain”) it cannot find any common ground with any belief in the supernatural. Supernaturalists, on the other hand, live in the same hum-drum world (with all its philosophical quibbles) as scientists, and even listen to CDs and have appendectomies and fly in aeroplanes, and they need to find ways to justify the idea that one can somehow participate in or communicate with a realm beyond our ordinary senses, even when they’re eating biscuits (cookies). It follows, then, that science cannot in any way accommodate the supernaturalist view, and if any bridge is to be built between the one view and the other, it must be done by the supernaturalist side. It is thus that we see theologians struggling to find some way of assimilating their view to the scientific view on which they, like the rest of us, depend. And it is entirely their own business. If they persist in maintaining a supernaturalist view, then it is for them to effect a rapprochement to their satisfaction. Science has no business or need to take them into account.
I think that this conclusion is anathema to both theists and accommodationists alike. They both have some interest in preserving a traditional past. However, they are motivated by contradictory reasons. The theists want to preserve actual belief (or a sense of the “transcendent”) in their place in a divine scheme of things, and this can only be justified if everybody shares the same belief (given that their experience of the day-to-day world is contradictory to their preferred view); the accommodationists wish to keep only the tradition of that belief, presumably to “ground” (I keep picking on this stupid word) their “identity” (another and more stupid word). In fact, the accommodationists want to keep the theists in some sort of human zoo which they can inspect from time to time and feel “enriched” by; but in so doing they treat the theists with greater contempt than those of us who simply say “it’s not true: despite protestations to the contrary it destroys our sense of self-worth and enslaves us to what is no more than imaginary, with all the corruptions that follow from our imaginations as limited by our unattended instincts and desires”.
Well, this is my view of the miseries of the conservative-atheist (accommodationist) position. If the gnus are abolished, there will be nothing to prevent the inevitable war between the theists and the (former) accommodationists. The theists, by the nature of their beliefs, will not be able to tolerate an atheist position which functions as what they will see as a corruption or watering-down of their views. They will not be content with a position which regards them as little more than a tradition which furnishes a basis of some sort of cultural identity. Either God is King or life has no meaning, and if God is King, then everyone must bow the knee. I suppose that what I am saying is: if the accommodationists win their battle, then atheism, and science, and reason will lose the war.
Oh, please. Faith is malware.
@GordonWillis
My thesis is that accommodationism only appears within conservative societies, because accommodationists are conservative in their mentality. Since the aims of the atheist movement is to change minds (not necessarily beliefs but attitudes) then accommodationism works against the very point of what we’re trying to achieve by resisting change. And so yes, without atheists doing the vocal disagreements, then change won’t happen (at least change towards reason).
So in a sense, the accommodationists share much in common in terms of identity to theists. They’re not rational atheists, and don’t have anything to contribute to what rational atheists are attempting to achieve both politically and socially. What makes them so contradictory is that they firmly believe they’re actually liberal and pro-science in mentality, when clearly bridge building must only come from the side that needs to change, not science nor rational atheists.
Yes, and I agree, though I think I’d rather say that accommodationism is an expression of conservative tendencies within society: monolithic institutions like “us and them” don’t appeal to my way of thinking. Certainly, from the point of view of one seeking to preserve an ancient tradition new atheism must seem extreme (because the change of attitude you refer to as what we seek must be the result of a new general realisation of the true cost and value of religion), so the accommodationists will naturally see themselves as holding some sort of middle ground. My point is that to maintain their stance they will have to cede too much to religion.
Also, Egbert, though I accept the similarities between accommodationists and theists, there are also contradictions, as I have tried to point out.
Alain – thanks. (You did mention it day before yesterday, and it didn’t sink in. I saw the same advice via google at the library, but mixed in with rafts of other advice which I was trying to sort and arrange in order, so it still didn’t sink in. God I’m dumb!)
Well, “dumb” is the one word I’d never use in any description of you.
Seconded, oldbabe.