tigerstripedcat

You are absolutely right. But read what I wrote again. I'm not justifying either of them. I'm asking you to justify the rationality of your beliefs. Or, if I read that sentence above, maybe you admitted to them being irrational. Sorry. Read. This is one of the most philosophically dense yet unsupported ideas in this entire thread. A completely rational way of thinking (although I'm sure you'll say not) is: There is no objective value to life: the search for truth, rainbows, love, family; I would be lying to myself if I believed that these things (essentially movements of fundamental particles) give meaning to EVERYONE'S life. Now it may give you/I meaning (subjectively) to MY/YOUR life, but then there is no difference between you--a la Camus--pushing your rock up the hill in the form of truth (or whatever you CHOOSE to give meaning to your life) and this other person choosing belief in god. You, in essence, live for "truth"--this gives your meaning to life. (Although I would argue (and I think almost every epistemologist would back me up that) this is called "belief" and not truth. So you live for your beliefs, your Objectivism, what have you, this is what you live and die for. But other people simply can't find any meaning from your beliefs, so they turn to the improbability of the existence of god; they can't live for movements of fundamental particles or simple ideas (like you can) they still need something more. And they understand that even if they are wrong, then they aren't really out much. They lived, they died, and that's it--same as you.

Why not? I can seal a loaf of bread to feed my family, if someone is charging 1000 dollars, and has millions of loaves of bread. And remember, it's not them that are setting the prices. Let's change the situation a bit. What if they were a horrible industry that uped the charges by 10X and you gave money to every person but RIAA including the artist. And remember, I don't think they have a "right" to their "music" anymore than the artist that gave up too soon has a right to his/her nonexistent music.

I'm sorry I didn't do any reading of the thread, I just wanted to make a quick comment. What if this person said to themselves: Look, whether I, via some delusion, believe that I am some Oil-rich sultan in the Middle East, or pursue truth ever-so diligently, I notice, as an atheist, that we end up the same way. It may not be clear to her why truth mattered in the first place. Maybe she figured, in a world of blue skies driven by Raleigh scattering, and love driven by endorphin levels and mammalian procreation, that maybe she doesn't see any reason to live for, including truth. So she subjectively decided to live for god, in the same way that you (subjectively?) find value in blue skies, love and truth, she finds value in god. Sure, in the end she could be wrong, she could be incredibly wrong, and in saying that she could very well be right. But either way, it doesn't really matter. Ok, so maybe I've been toying around with these ideas .

(Really sorry this is so long, I'm a bad writer.) Two things: 1) Music in the form of CDs is one of the few markets where prices have been controlled by the producers rather than competition. But let’s assume I'm wrong, and assume that everything has been streamlined and it becomes EXTREMEMLY efficient to produce music: No costs for advertisements--people go online in great communities to learn about new artists--very little costs for production--suddenly everyone in the world can have a copy of the guy with the piano in the recording studio. Let's also assume that the cost of a CD jumped up three-fold (how about X50). If the cost was determined, not by a free market, but by an economic notion of "artificial scarcity," would it then be morally permissible to download music, while, at the same time, throwing some money the way of the songwriter (and others). We currently have a hyper-abundance of music. This is what is different from going into a music store and stealing a CD and downloading it--it's infinitely reproducible. Everyone in the world can have a copy of a great song, but we're still paying the equivalent of $15 a cd on iTunes. Many people think that we have the same thing going on today, to a lesser extent. What if one believes that RIAA is counterproductive to efficiency and to the wellbeing of everyone up the food chain? Is it ok to download, send money to the artist and not to RIAA? 2) Some also question the entire notion of "copyrights." Maybe, based on the Rawlsian notion of, "Do you deserve your talents?" many believe that these artists are getting huge rewards for simply being lucky, when many others would kill to live their live with 1/1000 of their profits. There is, after all, no real reason why artist X deserves the billions of dollars that they get over and above you. What reason could they give for why they deserve this lifestyle and capital? their talents? their hard work? These are all contingent matters that make them incredibly lucky, not deserving. In a market system, we understand the necessary evils of “copyright,” but it was created (some say) to benefit not only the holder, but society as a whole. It's really too bad someone from Nirobi didn't make it big in the music industry, because in any real sense of the word, I think they deserve it more than others. Again, I’m ignoring the songwriters, et al. for the moment Sure we need to support the people who are working for a living (find out and send them a few bucks), but surely some distinction should be made between stealing a CD and infringing a copyright in the form of an infinitely reproducible good from extremely lucky millionaires.