Cap'n Refsmmat

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has an account of how the shooting started: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-navy-3-commandos-nearly-taken-hostage-in-gaza-flotilla-raid-1.294114 This would seem to fit with the claims that the Israelis began shooting first, although of course in this case they had good reason to. Then the article says this: I wonder what the rules of engagement were. Were the people who were shot just resisting, or did they pose an immediate threat? I expect we'll be getting more details over the coming days and the raid will begin to be pieced together. At this point I don't think either side is blameless. Screwups all around.

So a God that cannot possibly exist, by virtue of being logically impossible, is greater than one that can? I'm not sure there's a logical way to evaluate that, considering that it defies logic by definition. Of course. God could alter the results of our experiments. But things like irreducible complexity, if it were adequately demonstrated that no physical process could result in the complexity, may suffice. For example, the Discworld in Terry Pratchett's novels would need a creator, albeit one with a wicked sense of humor. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged If you conceive of it having the property of existence, then it has the property of being conceived to exist. Of course, this could all be resolved by going the Kant route and arguing that existence isn't a property at all. That argument makes much more sense to me. I think perhaps the wording could be significantly improved to remove some of the equivocation. I'm using a version my philosophy professor constructed, not what Anselm originally presented.

The argument I present doesn't intend to say that God cannot exist in the understanding. The point is that God cannot exist only in understanding; it must exist in reality also. Not "a God with more properties." One has the property of existence in reality, the other has the property of non-existence in reality. And Anselm's definition of perfection includes existence; something that does not exist at all cannot be perfect, because it cannot be experienced and its properties are meaningless. Very true. However, Anselm's Proslogion goes through quite a few properties God must have, like being immaterial. But if we did have the benefit of greater knowledge, could a greatest possible God be better defined? The Perfect Island can't be defined even if you know everything about islands, but a Perfect God might be definable if, say, you understand the true nature of the multiverse, or something like that. I'd say the greatest God would be one whose existence is so necessary to the universe that He can be proven to exist with ease, either empirically or not. He is greater if He is intrinsically required for every part of the universe to function.

Until you find the Babel fish, there is no proof of God's existence, and you're still left with faith. Saying "well, it could exist" doesn't prove that it does, or that God exists. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Much like "an island than which a greater cannot be conceived" cannot in fact be conceived, and thus the Perfect Island argument doesn't work?

I wonder what proportion of the people on the ships intended to be violent and what number had no intention of harming anyone. There's only perhaps 20 or 30 violent people evident in the videos, vs. 600 on board. I also still wonder about the claims that Israel fired first. It'd be nice if the complete videos appeared somewhere instead of Greatest Hits compilations. Also, in the first video, in the last scene, in the lower right, is that a protester or a soldier who appears to run away and then fall down? I wonder what's up with him.

No, that's not the same at all. Premise 3 is empirical; it is based in reality and can be proved or disproved. (Disproved, in this case, because there's no Babel fish and evolution works quite well.) The ontological argument is an a priori proof, but you've presented one that isn't.

Why not? Two possible beings. Being 1: Omnipotent Omniscient Omnibenevolent Imaginary Being 2: Omnipotent Omniscient Omnibenevolent Real Being 2 is clearly greater than Being 1, at least according to Anselm. I can conceive of either Being 1 or Being 2. (That doesn't mean I "imagine" it to be real. That means I'm conceiving of a real object, like conceiving of the laptop I'm typing with vs. typing on an imaginary electric typewriter that has dial-up.) You cannot justify the homophobe idea a priori, because our knowledge is incomplete. (Perhaps God knows something about homosexuals that we don't.) On the other hand, you can definitely prove God to be a non-homophobe: To be homophobic is to have a fear of gay people. Fear is a result of a lack of power. (For example, you are afraid a snake might hurt you because you don't have the power to instantly strike it down with your mind before it can ever hurt you.) If God is homophobic, God lacks a power. God is all-powerful. Thus, God cannot be homophobic. But I don't think you meant genuine fear anyway. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Hmm. Why does existence assume a material form? There are many concepts that we say "exist" that do not have material forms.

If I imagine that it exists, it has the property that I imagine it exists, not the property of actually existing. But it is greater to actually exist than to be imagined to exist, so that than which a greater cannot be conceived cannot be solely imagined to exist. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Anselm uses empirical argument to demonstrate that God must be the Christian God, and have the same properties. He does this mostly through things like "is it greater to be omnipotent or merely slightly powerful?" and so on, and arrives at a definite set of properties. Harder to do that for an island.

...goes something like this: God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. Either God exists only in the understanding or He exists in reality also. God does not exist only in the understanding. God exists. Now, let's support premise 3 with a separate argument: If God exists only in the understanding, than a greater can be conceived; namely, one with the same properties as God, but with the additional property of existing. Then God would not be that than which a greater cannot be conceived. Thus, God cannot exist only in the understanding. Objections There's quite a few objections to the argument. The first, brought up by this blogger, is that conceiving of something as existing doesn't mean it actually exists. But that misses the point. Think of it this way. When I think about something, what I think of refers to a concept. If I think of cats, my mind is referring to the concept of "cat." When I think of unicorns, my mind refers to the concept of "unicorn." Each concept has properties, like "furry" and "mammal," but only the cat has the property of actually existing in reality. The question is not whether I conceive of it existing, but whether the concept I refer to has the actual property of existing. And the concept of "God" has as a necessary property existence. Another objection, a rather famous one, is the "perfect island" argument. Replace "God" with an island that is greater than any other conceivable island, and you seem to prove the existence of a perfect island. And since there is no perfect island, the argument must be wrong. Unfortunately, the concept of "perfect island" varies from person to person: is it round? square? lush? warm? cool? what? There cannot be a perfect island because nobody can define what a perfect island is. And so on. What are your views on the ontological argument? Can it hold water?

2,104 tons of cement + 600 tons of steel = 2700 tons of stuff. Given a practical load limit of 45 tons or so, you'd need 60 truckloads. Of course, you can't expect 'em to send 60 truckloads in a day or two, but this also means we'll have to wait a week or two before we know if everything's gotten to Gaza.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/31/gaza.flotilla.aid/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid#Ships_in_flotilla

Ah. And the ships were carrying several thousand tons of cement and construction steel. I wonder if Israel will make an exception.

Indeed. Galaxies can't be magnetic monopoles, so they'd have to attract as well as repel.

mooey was suggesting that the entire load of aid had already been delivered, hence me pointing out that only some of it has been. Ick. Come on. There's a time to make ideological statements and protest your treatment, and that time is not when people are giving you a few thousand tons of humanitarian aid.

There's a good article in The Times today about the legality of the raid, but I can't find it on their site (I read it on my Kindle). So, here's a quote: The author of the article is a Professor of International Law at Cambridge.

Well, mostly getting through, apart from various incidents with Hamas and Israel stopping shipments. And they'd very much like to bring far more stuff in. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/me...aid/index.html Not so fast. http://www.smh.com.au/world/israel-t...0602-wvtb.html Not all of it. Some of it. It remains to be seen if things like cement, which cannot be imported as it is, will be passed on. The flotilla organizers did not want to let Israel decide what could get through because they'd reject the construction materials: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/me...aid/index.html

Rockets and explosives are not the only banned material, and Turkish officials said they searched the ships anyway. The Israeli blockade includes cement and construction materials, which are banned because the Gazans might make bunkers. I don't think the raid on the flotilla was conducted purely for security reasons. No, even if the Red Cross put a bunch of aid on a boat and sent it straight for Gaza, Israel would likely demand it go through an Israeli port. Letting some people through the blockade symbolically weakens it, no matter what their intentions. It starts you down a slippery slope.

Dunno. There's plenty of open tunnels, and weapons take far less space than significant amounts of aid. Also, I don't think many humanitarian aid organizations are willing to send their goods into Gaza illegally. Hamas would have to purchase the aid itself, and Gaza's economy isn't the greatest. Indeed. According to some of the sources Wikipedia cites, some of the rocket firing was done by groups other than Hamas. They'll have to clamp down pretty hard. Prosperity, incidentally, is not helped by a blockade.

Because (a) you need thousands of tons and (b) the Egyptians were actively trying to dismantle the tunnels for a while. They succeeded in bringing down rocket attacks significantly in the 2008 ceasefire. Presumably they could succeed again if Israel made significant concessions in an agreement. Hamas isn't about to stop rocket attacks when Israel is still making regular airstrikes in Gaza. In fact, during the ceasefire, 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks and no Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_ceasefire#Fatalities Yeah, safety schmafety. It still made me chuckle a bit. And they were abseiling, not being winched down, so the helicopter's not about to pull them back up.

Yes, I have seen video clips. But we don't know what the video left out. Like, say, Israelis firing first. Unless the IDF releases comprehensive footage of the entire raid, the he-said-she-said will go unsettled.

Er, no. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/31/gaza.flotilla.aid/index.html Not so fast. http://www.smh.com.au/world/israel-transfers-seized-aid-to-gaza-20100602-wvtb.html Not all of it. Some of it. It remains to be seen if things like cement, which cannot be imported as it is, will be passed on. The flotilla organizers did not want to let Israel decide what could get through because they'd reject the construction materials: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/31/gaza.flotilla.aid/index.html

Evidence? The only evidence you can conceivably get is eyewitness accounts, since the IDF confiscated video cameras and phones, and they aren't about to release video showing them shooting first. Zoabi is an Israeli PM, so I suppose CNN counts her as more reputable than other possible eyewitnesses.

Why does the Red Cross have to inspect them in Gaza? It could've happened anywhere, and then the protesters could have sailed to Gaza.

Berlin's population at the beginning of the Berlin Airlift was about 2.8 million. At its peak they brought in 5,500 tons of aid daily. The Gaza Strip has a population of about 1.5 million. About half, so they'd need, say, 2,750 tons of aid daily. Now, using the numbers here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/aidgaza.html we average 25 tons per truck. So we get about 2,500 tons of aid daily. That's just under the bare survival numbers of the Berlin Airlift. Considering that the Gazans have to not only survive but also completely rebuild their destroyed buildings (a sizable percentage of their buildings were blown up by the Israelis), they probably need far more than 2,500 tons, if only they could truck in building materials. Well, for one thing, sending special forces to pacify civilians isn't great. Riot police seem like a better choice. For another thing, they could have just said, "We'll let them in if the Red Cross inspects them and says there's no rockets, bombs or guns on board." Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Yes, and if you watch the movie Jesus Camp, you'd get the impression that most Americans are fanatical Christians preparing their children for spiritual warfare. They're not. No. I'd prefer you stop them without harming the lives of far more people than you are helping. You act as though the blockade is a great tactic that works, but has unfortunate side effects, and there are just no good alternatives. That's not true. Israel has rationed what can enter Gaza to a bare minimum, and excluded things like building materials. Gaza cannot have an economy of its own without smuggling. It's as simple as that. On the other hand, the brokered ceasefire in 2008 worked for six months. Hamas managed to imprison rocket launchers and slow down firing significantly. Israel loosened the blockade, although they didn't loosen it as much as the agreement required, and supplies were minimal. And then Israel briefly invaded the Strip, breaking the terms of the truce, and rocket attacks flared right up again. Which proves that a truce could work, if both sides stuck to the terms of the agreement. Hamas was certainly willing in 2008. Your Daily Mail article does not substantiate the "weeks" claim. In any case, you might notice that your links are all pre-Gaza War. That is because of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in 2008, and the fact that 2010 has seen far fewer rocket and mortar attacks. Hardly daily. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2010 I note that the last two months have no listed Israeli casualties. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAlso, no matter whose side you're on, you have to admire the bit where the protesters tied the helicopter's rope to the ship's antenna. That was genius.

I don't think it's the duty of the vast majority of Gazan citizens, who are peaceful, to suffer because of the minority. Nor is it their duty to stop those that are violent -- they don't have the resources. Incidentally, a blockade is a great way to calm anti-Israeli anger and quell violence.