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My Imaginary GF posted:All we know is that the 613 laws are of divine inspiration and attempt to replicate paradise on earth as best possible. Everything else is conjecture on an unknowable nature for which individual belief in existance matters much less than community adherance to a divinely-based and chiseled-in-stone legal code. I agree with you mostly but would also add that the 613 laws of desert rapists are also conjecture.
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Nov 22, 2014 05:24
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SedanChair posted:I agree with you mostly but would also add that the 613 laws of desert rapists are also conjecture. Yeah, they're conjecture. They're the best conjecture we've had, and their value lies in the traditions of jurisprudence, educational, and social service institutions which developed to interpret, debate, and implement them.
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Nov 22, 2014 05:31
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My Imaginary GF posted:Yeah, they're conjecture. They're the best conjecture we've had I'm not sure about this but I can safely say you've offered some of the worst conjecture I've seen.
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Nov 22, 2014 05:32
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My Imaginary GF posted:Yeah, they're conjecture. They're the best conjecture we've had, and their value lies in the traditions of jurisprudence, educational, and social service institutions which developed to interpret, debate, and implement them.
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Nov 22, 2014 05:38
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My Imaginary GF posted:All we know is that the 613 laws are of divine inspiration and attempt to replicate paradise on earth as best possible. Everything else is conjecture on an unknowable nature for which individual belief in existance matters much less than community adherance to a divinely-based and chiseled-in-stone legal code. Banishing menstruating women from civilization and beating homosexuals to death with rocks is paradise to you?
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Nov 22, 2014 06:04
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Who What Now posted:Banishing menstruating women from civilization and beating homosexuals to death with rocks is paradise to you? Neither of those are in there. Perhaps you've been confused by what "fundamentalists" are told by their pastors in between pleas for another hundred grand for the megachurch's slush fund.
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Nov 22, 2014 06:08
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The Old Testament != Contemporary Judaism. Hope that helps.
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Nov 22, 2014 06:29
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The idea that you need a 'right' to question or judge something is what is itself broken, I thought I made that clear. It's literal thought control. Do you understand how disturbing the idea is free thought can be denied because of 'rights'? Like, every subject is going to have their own subjectivity. Different subjectivities can clash, that's normal. There are no categorical differences between them and, wait for it, there doesn't have to be. We, as members of a society, can communally enforce our common subjectivity between us and call it 'law'. That's it, there's nothing other than that, there's no such thing as a 'super subjectivity' that trumps others, because a subject only cares about their own subjectivity. My 'right' to free thought does not have to be granted to me, it is not some kind of commodity or property. Every single thinking subject must make their own judgements, in order to be a subject and not an object. So, nothing is 'above' judgement, not Kings and not God. rudatron fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 07:59
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I'm all ears about the social services part, though. MIGF can you give me a good example of one of the laws that can help provide good governance for social service institutions?
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Nov 22, 2014 08:06
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Hodgepodge posted:Just to clarify, do you believe that our decisions are 1. essentially predetermined mechanistically, 2. that social power/discipline ultimately overdetermines our will, or 3. just that we have genuine choice within narrow boundaries?  It's really a mix of all three depending on specific situation you're in calling for a decision, falling more often on 2 and 3. 1 is instinctual reactions, and not really decisions at all: not as common as 2 or 3, but in split-second fight or flight reactions, your brain will tell you to do a certain thing to avoid imminent harm. You can condition yourself to have different reactions, so it applies more to things you have not been educated about yet. Our decisions are not predetermined, however they're influenced to various degrees mechanistically. (this might fall under 3.) For instance, when under stress, our endocrine system releases various hormones that point the probable action we take in a certain direction and cloud us from making a completely sound judgment. Your brain build and the build of glands themselves direct the chemistry of your brain at the time of decision-making. In the short term, we have very little control over that; in the long term there are medications you can take to alter hormonal cycles and operations you can get done on parts and glands. 2 would be that our actions are a function of the habitus. quote:In his most well-known work, entitled Distinction (translated into English in 1984), Bourdieu played on the notion of his book’s title to make a specific argument about class positions in modern societies. Bourdieu (1984) observed that class “distinctions” among individuals were not only linked to their economic capital (as Marxist scholars had argued), but were also connected to their social, educational, and cultural capital. Individuals place their class status on display, he wrote, via their taste or consumption patterns (in essence, what makes us individually “distinct” from other individuals in society). Taste, in turn, is a function of the habitus, which is a complex function of an individual’s social, cultural, and economic capital. The habitus “includes the notion of a habitat, the habitants and the processes of inhabiting it, and the habituating ways of thinking that go with it. It encompasses our position within the social space, the ways of living that go with it and what Bourdieu calls the associated ‘dispositions’ of mind, cultural tastes and ways of thinking and feeling” (Fiske, 1992, p. 32). For instance, a college-educated, middle-class individual might purchase tickets to the opera rather than a vaudeville show because doing so is a clear distinct reminder of that person’s social status. It serves as a tool of self-identity and also provides a visible indicator to others of one’s place in the social hierarchy. Bourdieu (1984) proposed that consumption behaviors, rather than comprising a statement of emancipation from social norms, were inextricably linked to the habitus. Bourdieu sought to connect those sociological variables to the consumption of specific cultural products (such styles of furniture or types of music). With 3, if one has awareness of 2 - that is, if they are aware of the causes of their decisions and the biases they might face, then they can make changes to the cycle of feedback to alter their own mindset so they can make a more "genuine" choice. This choice is still limited by lack of full knowledge of all choices and by limited experience and by brain chemistry. Hodgepodge posted:Well, since the ability and desire to overcome opposition to one's well-being is present in the animal kindgom, your proposition would in a real way make humans who are less than many animals. Possibly in terms of IQ. I think you have to keep in mind that the mere existence of a complex human society with billions of people that monopolizes the global environment for its personal comfort comes at the cost of the detriment/oppression of other species. Many that do not go extinct - we're very likely in the middle of a human-caused mass extinction event - have lower qualities of live because we actively exploit them or indirectly hinder their ability to live freely through environment destruction. Ocean acidification is gonna be a hoot. And it's too late to simply scale back human development without major consequences; the web of resources we exploit for human comfort is too entertwined with the basic ability to live for many people. Going back to a primitivist way of life would require probably billions of people to die, and it would be those who live on the margin. No matter what course humanity takes, a bunch of living beings are gonna die and get exploited. I don't think there is any magic way out that doesn't facilitate some kind of oppression of one thing or another. quote:Without AI, robots are sophisticated tools. They have no qualities which would suggest a requirement for moral or ethical treatment (other than safety and maintentence standards) anymore than a rock does. Unlike say, a rabit, which already possesses such qualities- capactity for emotion, limited self-awareness, etc. If you added other such qualities to a robot but not intelligence, that would require some moral and ethical boundaries as well. I'd say you should treat that underclass in that book as an automated, non-human workforce because I think it's important to mention that anything done to the embryos was done only in embryo form, which is consistent with the stated goal of the controllers of wanting to minimize pain in humans. A pre-human embryo does not have capacity for thought; the prefrontal cortex is not yet developed. That's part of the underpinning of why it is considered okay by current US law to abort a fetus in the first two trimesters but not in the last trimester (roughly; since roe v wade the standard is 'undue burden v individual viability'). The cerebral cortex develops around week 26 (in the third trimester). I would not want to force drugs upon someone who doesn't want it; living people taking drugs would have to take it by consensual choice in a non-coercive situation. It could only be forced upon another before they are someone; once they are a person, then you start to infringe upon personal rights. Hence why i'm okay with the willfully-caused death of a living thing through abortion but not the willfully-caused death of a fully grown person. Rodatose fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 12:21
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Since it's sort of related to the last post in helping to define my conception of human-ness, and because abortion and Personhood at Conception is a big rallying cry for Christians, here's a post I made in response to some past abortion thread on here: quote=me] someone else posted:That's a good distinction to make. Plants are alive, lizards are alive, and dogs are alive, and toddlers are alive; most people do not assign equal values to those lives, of course, and in fact usually rank them all differently in importance. While life should not be treated callously, assigning the value of an adult person to a fertilized egg is creating a false equivalence and greatly endangers the one that can be proven and demonstrated to have personhood. That's just my personal opinion, of course. Human life is put on a different pedestal from other biological life in general; a fish's death for a meal is not seen as a moral wrong. So: how is it determined when a being gains humanity? To answer this, you have to get philosophical and ask yourself, 'what makes us us?' The three things I can think of that might be used to determine when life becomes 'human' are a> the soul, b> having biological function (aka ability to live and breathe as an individual human being) and c> having a brain a>Is it one's 'soul?' If so, what is the soul--does this idea of 'soul' come from a theological standpoint? Would you consider it fair to put your own theological standpoint on those who don't believe in such a thing? (Do you believe that moral purity across the population is more important than a society which allows freedom of religious practice and separates church and state to avoid existentially-motivated conflicts and purges?) Why does the combination of sperm and egg specifically imbue a fetus with a soul--why can't it be possible that a soul develops during gestation or is given instantaneously at birth? Are you in a position of spiritual authority to be certain of the answers to this, and if not, do you know someone on this earth who is (and what makes them so?)? b>Is it biological function? If so, then at what degree of autonomy does a human being become an individual human being? If functioning is completely dependent on a host/mother up to a certain point, then would you consider a human being to be a human being at conception or at the point at which the being becomes able to live individually? The current national standard for abortions is that none may take place after a certain point where the fetus's viability of survival outside the mother is high (barring certain exceptions). c>Is it one's thoughts and experiences (the mind?) No other form of life has a brain as developed as human beings' brains, essentially making us the only ones able to assign the idea of humanity to ourselves. If the mind is what makes us human, then human life begins when a being becomes capable of higher cerebral function, which begins rather late in pregnancy. The cerebral cortex, which is what allows us to think, have conscious experiences, do actions voluntarily, remember things and experience sensations of feeling, is the last part of the brain to develop. It starts developing around the 26th week. Before then, the fetus cannot feel anything--not even pain (according to the current scientific consensus) and any responses to outside stimuli the fetus makes are automatic and not perceived, much like the reaction an amoeba has to being poked. *Though we cannot detect pain in any organisms that are unable to explicitly communicate with us, since we can't map sensory experience, we do know that the part of the brain that humans sense pain with are not present in some animals and also aren't there yet for embryos before the start of the third trimester. Even if there were some extraordinary way of a brain being able to feel the sensation of pain with a different part of the nervous system that it, for some reason, soon loses the pain connection to, embryos are already naturally kept from feeling anything at all, until birth. This is thanks to the natural sedatives and anesthetics present in embryonic fluid. My personal belief is C. The current legal standard of abortions being allowed on fetuses before the individual viability point is reached (but not after!) allows for those who do not have the circumstances right for parenthood to be ready and set and good to have the option of not bankrupting themselves over what is, when it comes down to it, something no more human (by that definition) than livestock (which are routinely killed). Some profess that one should not take lives of any animals whatsoever, but that's not an opinion I have. There is an economic reality that I cannot get away from which tells us that mere existence of one thing comes at the cost of other lives; for all of the plants and animals and minerals and energy consumed by one thing could be used by another. Plenty of livestock is raised and killed for the benefit of human society, since we cannot eat some plants that those livestock can eat and millions or billions would not be able to exist without this.[/quote]
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Nov 22, 2014 12:55
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Who would win in a fight? Samson or Achilles?
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Nov 22, 2014 16:32
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Extreme0 posted:Who would win in a fight? The Viewer 
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Nov 22, 2014 16:35
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Nintendo Kid posted:Neither of those are in there. You didn't even look, did you? Here, I'll make it easy for you, they're numbers 103 and 572. Seriously, all it would have taken is two seconds not to look like a fool and you couldn't even manage that.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:09
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Extreme0 posted:Who would win in a fight? Beowulf
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Nov 22, 2014 17:42
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Black Bones posted:
Fixed
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Nov 22, 2014 18:27
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Extreme0 posted:Who would win in a fight? A heel stabbing, hair pulling fight.
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Nov 22, 2014 18:29
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Jesus Christ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/21/texas-oks-most-proposed-new-history-textbooks-despite-outside-objections/ quote:Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses. Go to Netflix and watch Revisionaries and you will see how this happened
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Nov 22, 2014 19:52
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One benefit of this policy - they have to actually buy new textbooks to put it into effect.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:57
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Who What Now posted:You didn't even look, did you? Here, I'll make it easy for you, they're numbers 103 and 572. Seriously, all it would have taken is two seconds not to look like a fool and you couldn't even manage that. Neither of those say what you say. You are the fool.
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Nov 22, 2014 20:12
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Nov 22, 2014 23:17
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Evangelicals are wrong about many things.
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Nov 22, 2014 23:43
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“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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Nov 23, 2014 00:32
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xutech posted:“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” I hate it when Fedora wearing neckbearded internet atheist scumbags have no shame and so rudely waggle his huge critical thinking Why can't they leave believers alone. We have never bothered anyone.
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Nov 23, 2014 01:03
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E: Le Sagan like a baws. Spaghetti monster lol and so on. Who What Now posted:The only way you could do that is by judging the Almighty as beyond your limitations. And some point you took the known qualities of God and you made a judgement on which category he went in. The fact that you then placed him in an arbitrary category you call "N/A" doesn't negate the first judgement to do so. I think "judgement" changes meaning the way you use it here, compared to what we were talking about before. To say that our ability to know something is limited is not the same as passing moral judgment on it. Muscle Tracer posted:If an entity is beyond your comprehension, what makes you think you can understand any part of it? How can anything be supposed about that which is unknowable? Even if the totality of the entity is unknowable, that doesn't mean the entity can't make itself understood. Maybe it could take physical form, or reveal things to prophets and so on. SedanChair posted:I don't understand why we wouldn't be able to judge a God we supposed to be real and our creator. Why not? Part of taking the authority of judgment on yourself is to be willing to have it turned back on yourself (as the Christian God pointed out, apparently). And we don't judge people by balancing the good they did against the bad they did. Or at least, we weigh bad actions more heavily. For example we don't praise Jerry Sandusky for all the money he raised for good causes, or Hitler for commissioning the development of an efficient car. Certain actions put you beyond the pale. "Creating reality as it is" would certainly be the greatest conceivable crime an omnipotent being could commit. I disagree. What you say applies to men but not to God. God sets the rules for men, not the other way around, it's not a two-way street. I think people balance the good against the bad all the time, it's just that - as you point out - some things are (sometimes) considered unforgivable and we apply different standards to friends and enemies. But how is creating reality a crime? A crime according to what law? Who is the victim? rudatron posted:The idea that you need a 'right' to question or judge something is what is itself broken, I thought I made that clear. It's literal thought control. Do you understand how disturbing the idea is free thought can be denied because of 'rights'? You did make it clear, we simply disagree. The right to free thought has in fact been denied to some extent by many regimes and societes throughout history. You present your own worldview as if it was something self-evident and indisputable, when it is in fact a very recent invention. But that is not the issue here. We're not talking about men judging each other. The point is that there is a categorical difference between God and man, between the sacred and the propane. There is always a right involved when we pass moral judgement. We assume that we are in a position to judge, that the entity is accountable and that there exists some standard by which to judge it. In the case of God we are not in any position to judge, He is not answerable to us and we have no standard by which to judge Him.
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Nov 23, 2014 01:15
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Berk Berkly posted:Why can't they leave believers alone. We have never bothered anyone. I believe you are in a sub-forum called Debate and Discussion, not  Don't attack my sacred beliefs
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Nov 23, 2014 01:17
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CommieGIR posted:I believe you are in a sub-forum called Debate and Discussion, not In a thread started by a believer wanting to debate and discuss(or more accurately preach), no less.
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Nov 23, 2014 01:32
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Hodgepodge posted:Isn't the idea, in the wider context in which the Old Testament was written, that Satan is a title that is closer to "devil's advocate" than what we think of as the literal devil? Hence Satan asking God for permission to torment Job (apart from the faithful normally being protected from his power)? Well, no. It literally means "the adversary", so his role is more prosecution and persecution. Judaism traditionally assigned this role to angels like the Metatron, Samael, Mastema, etc. that are described as malevolent in esoteric texts. Within that context, he's the designated motherfucker of heaven. Job does have a fairly interesting alternate (almost Gnostic) reading when you look at it in conjunction with Genesis and Proverbs, but it's not a theistically Satanist one. SedanChair posted:What about Genesis That's a snake, not an angel, fallen or otherwise, outside of the context of Christianity. It's also fairly clearly a just-so story serving as the outer core for the theodicy argument at the core of the Garden of Eden story, just like the Noah's Ark story and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah provide other theodicy arguments. Who What Now posted:God created and controls all evil acts, thus all injustices are directly his fault and responsibility. Satan in not culpable for his actions, only God can be. Angels lacking free will is only a conceit of some versions of Islam, not of Christianity or Judaism. Who What Now posted:He's responsible for all good things and bad things and it just so happens that the bad things waaaaaaaaaaaaay outweigh the good things. All the cute puppies and sappy love stories in the world don't make up for war, famine, diseases, and everything else. Actually, they do, because life is worth living. Thus, God, if such a being exists, does more good than evil. You agree with this deep down. Rodatose posted:1. has the drug destroyed their sense of self in a way that they are not aware of being 'someone' anymore Well, that's a lot of thoughts, but really the basic issue is that if we define oppression or suffering in the colloquial way, I don't see them as purely subjective entities. Someone that is depressed should receive help and care. Someone that is schizophrenic should receive help and care. They are both suffering, even if the depressed individual appears publicly happy or the schizophrenic insists that they're perfectly all right. These are of course far more extreme examples than mere menial labor, but the basic question of whether someone is suffering if drugs prevent them from feeling their body rot away is still worth considering. In fact, Buddhism, which is supposedly all about how suffering is subjective, still has half of the Eightfold Path be about the objective, physical world.
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Nov 23, 2014 01:39
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Sakarja posted:Even if the totality of the entity is unknowable, that doesn't mean the entity can't make itself understood. Maybe it could take physical form, or reveal things to prophets and so on. So, based on those revelations, why would it not be possible to pass moral judgement on what is known about it? If a man tells me "Hey, there's an omnipotent god up there who created all of this and it's sending you to burn in hellfire in eternity because you don't believe in it," why can I not make a moral judgement on that basis? Besides which, even just other people are beyond our comprehension. If a person tortures your grandparents to death, do you withhold moral judgement on them or their actions simply because you don't fully understand or can't comprehend them? Because if a hell of a lot of Christians are right, then that's effectively what their God has done to my grandparents.
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Nov 23, 2014 01:40
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xutech posted:“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” Come on now, that's Not Helpful. That doesn't address the matter at hand, which is
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Nov 23, 2014 01:42
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You don't need a position to judge. Positions are necessary for a judgement to be respected by a group of people, but again, that's political. As a subject, each person has the capability to reach their own judgements - no 'position' required. Like, you brought up this line of conversation because you said you didn't like how atheists discuss the issue: why is a position is necessary for that? And why does whatever you're judging have to be 'accountable'? In discussions on countries here on Something Awful, nothing said on this forum will ever Bring Any Country Into Account. Are those discussion 'invalid'? And mate, everyone has a standard. Everyone judges everything else by their own standard. You can disagree with someone else's standard, but you can't very well deny that they have one. To demand that you need A Right to judge, A Position to judge, and the ability to bring whatever you're judging to Account is honestly really dystopian: you're denying people their own perspectives and subjectivity simply because they lack power. That's tyranny apologia right there. And I think this brings me to something I've always thought, that religion has always been a metaphor for society. So societies with rigid hierarchies have that same hierarchy embedded into their religion. So the idea that God is unaccountable is functionally a mechanism for social control. It's a mental device to justify tyranny. So I say, gently caress that poo poo. If god exists and is a fascist, then it's necessary to murder god. I say that both because I mean it, and that it applies to the metaphorical God as much as the metaphysical one: 'God' as metaphor, as an ideological instrument of justifying dictatorship, must be rended limb from limb, so that it can never be put back together again. rudatron fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 05:18
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xutech posted:“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” The existence of God and a savior Christ has profound consequences for our spiritual condition, the fate of humanity and our world, and the afterlife. An invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire does not. Not all subjective ideas and belief systems imply the same consequences for our existence. Somehow, we can tell the difference, even though rationally they are the same. "Is reason alone baptized? What of the passions?" -Søren Kierkegaard Carl Sagan was a baller and a childhood hero of mine, but his philosophical worldview is essentially logical positivism which even most philosophers have abandoned.
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Nov 23, 2014 05:38
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CowOnCrack posted:The existence of God and a savior Christ has profound consequences for our spiritual condition, the fate of humanity and our world, and the afterlife. I don't see why an unsubstantiated conjecture having ~profound consequences~ makes it somehow more believable than other ~profound consequences~. If the dragon's death freed humankind from mortality forever, would that suddenly make it reasonable for me to believe in it? If belief in Christ is the only road to damnation, rather than salvation, would it be of paramount importance to disbelieve in him?
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Nov 23, 2014 05:43
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I also really like Sagan but there's sometimes this weird strand of "obviously we've basically got everything figured out, meaning all previous ideas that don't fit our current situation now need to be brought into harness with our One True Way, and if they aren't, gently caress 'em" which don't work out so well when you aren't in a hegemonic position like the Catholic Church was in Western Europe. (And even there, I gather the Orthodox roundly critique the RCC for its wholesale adoption of pagan philosophers.) This does not, of course, mean that the scientific method is somehow wrong, or that rational inquiry is somehow bad, but to date everyone who's predicted the end of history has been pretty wrong. It would be awful convenient, and very flattering, if it DID occur while we were alive, of course...
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Nov 23, 2014 05:45
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CowOnCrack posted:The existence of God and a savior Christ has profound consequences for our spiritual condition, the fate of humanity and our world, and the afterlife. What about an immortal, transcendental cosmic horror that feasts on the fears and doubts and hopes of all sentient creatures that seeds universes so that life that it can feast upon when conscious beings that can conceive of its existence in all of its cruel madness? Its not really hard to change the variables so that match up to meet those qualifiers but the points remains the same in all honesty. The only real difference is "I like this one better" or perhaps more sincerely, "I'm already attached this one and hold it in special reverence." Nessus posted:
I think that most assaults on logic, scientific rationalism, empiricism, and so on occur because they tend to at best not directly support, to outright discredit and dismiss, something the opposing group holds dear or build a lot of their ego upon. This could be anything from crank physics theories and pseudo-science bullocks, to various flavors of absurd/silly Fundamentalism, such as Kent Hovind and the like. But the biggest assault comes to those who demand absolute certainties and crystal clear detail with no loose ends. And Science in general really can't do that since it requires falsifiability and works with the assumption of incomplete and imperfect data. At some point the answer to a question is going to be "We don't know" and that is an invalid and unacceptable response to some. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 05:45
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Farecoal posted:lol if u believe in a god I can only understand this if you were taught to believe in one from a very young age. How full grown adults can suddenly begin to believe in stories (AKA "Convert") written 1400 or 2000 years ago about talking snakes or sky virgins—I'll never know.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:36
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Vaall posted:I can only understand this if you were taught to believe in one from a very young age. How full grown adults can suddenly begin to believe in stories (AKA "Convert") written 1400 or 2000 years ago about talking snakes or sky virgins—I'll never know. Because humans as a whole are pretty loving dumb. We literally had to invent a whole discipline(Science) and spend centuries refining and integrating that discipline with both the empirical and metaphysical tools needed to help ourselves slowly become slightly less dumb over a long period of time. But on the whole, we are still really stupid. You can't blame a fish or a bird for not realizing weather is driven by the Sun and Geo-atmospheric interactions. Perhaps only a human is intelligent enough to be stupid enough to think it is a supernatural entity you can persuade with ritual sacrifices. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 07:49
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Berk Berkly posted:Because humans as a whole are pretty loving sinful. We literally had to receive a whole revelation(Jesus) and spend centuries developing and integrating that revelation with both the empirical and metaphysical tools needed to help ourself slowly become slightly less sinful over a long period of time. But on the whole, we are still really sinful.
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Nov 23, 2014 08:19
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Vaall posted:I can only understand this if you were taught to believe in one from a very young age. How full grown adults can suddenly begin to believe in stories (AKA "Convert") written 1400 or 2000 years ago about talking snakes or sky virgins—I'll never know. Belief in religion isn't about religion for plenty of individuals; its about the community which forms under those shared values.
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Nov 23, 2014 08:25
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My Imaginary GF posted:Belief in religion isn't about religion for plenty of individuals; its about the community which forms under those shared values. For most people, yes. But there are absolutely true-believing converts.
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Nov 23, 2014 08:55
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