(sigh). Let's go over this once more. Using condescending language and fitting a story into your stereotype by putting it into your own words means it can mean *gasp* whatever I want it to!! Some points to ponder: At the time of Abraham, Mosaic law had not yet been given (those whole 10 commandments... Abraham didn't have 'em). Also, the word is "murder", not "kill". Also, Abraham did not actually have to kill his son. Point in time, yes, he intended to. God exists outside of time. Conflicting instructions? Love God, love your neighbour. Those don't conflict. For Abraham, it was "obey God". Again, no conflict. How do you define rational? Mathematically consistent? Logically consistent?
Maybe the evil alien never should have created beings that were even capable of suffering? Or struggling? But what would life be without that - I think it would eliminate growth, change... reward... I'm not sure I can conceive of that kind of life and still be a person. I also would resist sacrificing my son (would pull a Jonah and head the other way probably). I can't speak for Abraham (the Bible is fascinating in what it omits as much as in what it includes), however I'm quite sure he had a different perspective on death than you or I - one where it was inevitable and controlled by God, whenever or however it happened. We tend to think of death (if we think of it), as something to put off for as long as possible...
Someone born without sight (and I include myself in this metaphor) won't notice a thing...
One and the same in this case, since God supposedly set up the entire playground.
And, by means beyond my understanding, gave us consciousness. Whatever that is. It apparently implies some responsibility...
It makes no sense to say God is good, then. For God to be good, goodness must be something that exists independently.
For instance, when you say "This apple is red", "red" is defined externally to the apple. If you say that "red" is "whatever color the apple is", then "red" loses any meaning and you might as well remove it, because then no extra information is conferred by saying it's red.
Agreed, you might as well say, "this apple is an apple" - it's a circular definition. Just like "God is good." According to Plato, there was a "perfect" dog somewhere, that all dogs derive their "dog-ness" from. According to Christianity, God is the absolute source of good. With moral relativity, well, everything's relative, so there's no point to even really discussing this all, just do your best and be content (it's moral for you to take my stuff if you can get away with it, just as it's moral for me to work to make it so you can't get away with it).
I actually agree with you on this one. It takes faith... just as it takes faith (or it would, for me) to believe that the universe is an effect without a cause (or that the Big Bang is an effect without a cause, or that we're just bits of cosmic matter that happened to come together in an interesting and self-aware way), and that's all I can say about that when discussing with someone who doesn't share my beliefs (well, I could point to other circumstantial evidence which was instrumental in my own journey, but I'll spare you this time:D).
If God had taught him the lesson "Child Murder Is Bad", and at the same time taught him the lesson "You Shouldn't Be Blindly Loyal To Anyone, Even Me"
The first lesson... did you have to be taught that? Neither did Abraham. The second lesson - "blindly" is a pejorative term. Abraham wasn't blindly loyal, he was completely loyal. He knew and had already interacted with God in other ways, so he knew it was God (how, I don't know, I'm not Abraham... I probably would have doubted), trusted in him, and so he was completely loyal, and believed that God would make it right. The kind of loyalty you could only give someone if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were all-powerful, all-seeing, and totally there for you (and all mankind) 100%. The kind of loyalty you can never give to another person, and that I can't even claim to be able to give to God...
One other interesting thing about the whole story, is how Isaac never seems to hold all of this against Abraham, or against God. If anyone should get offended that his father was willing to kill his own child...
PS. Before you freak out about how this can lead to us "religious fanatics" doing anything with a mistaken belief that it will all be alright in the end, note that the Bible does warn us to "test the spirits" as well - ie, to examine yourself and everything you do and make sure that it doesn't fall foul of "love your neighbour").
Nice - can I assume you also subscribe to the enlightened self-interest defining your morality? I'm pretty sure you'd find someone else to piss you off even if me and all my stupid Christian friends were put in the gas chambers...
Ah, but Abraham is told that his child will suffer horribly - to live in disobedience to God (without a relationship with God) is to suffer horribly. And it isn't "I make him suffer horribly", it's "he will suffer horribly." Again, see my first point. "We" did not already agree that the deity was evil - first we would have to agree on what evil is (and how you can even assert that it exists in an impartial mathematical universe)... Might makes right doesn't apply when speaking about God - we have no metaphor for an omnipotent being who exists outside of (and yet also inside of) our universe.
That's a valid point - that God isn't evil, because he knows the outcome. The limits that are there for the demands of God, are those which God has put in place. If someone today hears a voice telling him to murder his son, he can know that it isn't God - we very clearly have the Bible telling us that this is not God's will. Abraham interacted with God differently, and was able to know that it was God's will to take his son to the altar.
the murder of one's child is simply not a moral act.
It's interesting that you base morality on enlightened self-interest, but then you make this statement. I actually think that self-sacrifice can be very moral, but I agree that murder is immoral... however, that's the opposite of self-interest, that's based on an absolute morality (based on obedience) that has absolutely nothing to do with self-interest. I can only imagine how relieved Abraham was to find out that the God he worshiped was indeed a merciful and kind God, and did not require that kind of thing at all...
Christianity is responsible for more torture and death in the first 19 centuries AD than almost any other human cause
And in the 19 centuries before that, it was various other religions. And in the last century, it was probably communism, followed by... Naziism? The point being, humans are humans, whether religious or not. Your real assertion:
probably stunted development of "civilization" by several hundred years
is not backed up at all. It may have stunted development. And maybe, if it wasn't there, another religion would have stopped it altogether. And maybe it actually enhanced development (you'll come up with many arguments such as the crusades, Galileo, popes, witch burnings, I'll come up with counter-arguments such as the abolition of slavery, the spreading of reading due to the Bible, many individual acts of courageous sacrifice, religiously motivated opposition to the Nazis and care for the sick and poor...), in the end I don't think it can be proven.
In the end, you assume there is no God, and therefore a belief in him is irrational and holds a person back. I assume (have faith) there is a God, and therefore a belief in him is rational and enhances a person's life.
If pro-lifers were willing to accept abortion in some situations, provided it was early enough in the pregnancy, would you be willing to admit that it's wrong in the other 99.9% of cases? Or does the fact that there are rapists in the world mean that the fetus is not a child until it gets through the birth canal?
Also, there are enough people on this planet already and we still do not have the technology to colonize other planets.
So, to clarify, you're in favor of killing people here (can we start with the rapists, and not their by-products?), and abortion is just a convenient method of population control? If that's the case, then can we at least start from that premise and decide who to kill based on rational criteria rather than just "hey, they're a fetus, kill them"?
Unless his powerful benefactor controls life after death... and Abraham obviously absolutely believed that he did. You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth here - on the one hand God is evil for ordering Abraham to kill his son (and Abraham is just listening), on the other Abraham is evil for listening (and God is just a voice in his head). For the first argument (God is evil, if he exists), you're judging God by your morality, which I haven't seen a basis other than "self-interest" (ie, your kid is only good in-so-far as he will benefit you in the future), and for the second, your judging Abraham based on the premise that God does not exist.
Or alternatively, "God is all-powerful. Therefore, he can take something that we perceive as unimaginably evil and use it for unimaginable good." If you could have "smote" Hitler before he came to power, would that have been good or evil? The truth is, we aren't equipped to deal with truly long-term outcomes - only short-term. For example, assuming man-made global warming will bring about the extinction of millions and millions of people, and you could go back and stop the industrial revolution with one little well-placed virus... a few thousand people dead... would that be good, or evil?
I know, you're going to say, well, if I'm that powerful, I can solve it with less collateral damage! Or I can create a world that doesn't have either global warming or viruses!! Or... you could just not create the universe at all, and then there would be no people doing any harm to any other people at all!!! The truth is, you can't do any of that, so you kind of have to leave the big decisions up to the One who can...
If a God did exist, he would by definition be beyond your understanding, including your understanding of "evil". And there's no reason that his intentions should follow what you consider best for the human race, and you couldn't destroy him. Also, even just on purely rational grounds, the human race is very likely to go extinct. Not this year, not next year, but if you had to put odds on our descendants surviving in, say a few hundred thousand years, what would you put them at? Considering that humans have only been around (in current form) for considerably less than 100,000 years, and that we are for all intents and purposes stuck in this solar system (which has a clock running), on this earth (which suffers from catastrophic extinction events regularly)? So what do you consider best for the human race?
but we can't ignore the fact that we have stronger and weaker relationships with people (and animals and things for that matter), that make some connections and responsibilities more important than others.
You're ignoring the fact that, in the context of this story, for Abraham, the strongest relationship of all was with God. You're also ignoring the fact (throughout this thread) that God is not just Creator in the context of this story, but also the in control of everything (life/death/after death). If the evil space alien was able to prove to you that your child was going to suffer horribly if you didn't let the alien take him, but would have a wonderful and fulfilling life if you did let the alien take him, then what is the moral choice? To selfishly hold on to your own child, or to let him have a better life than you could ever hope to provide?
Returning CO2 levels to what's known to support the only biosphere that sustains human life sounds better than possibly throwing it into an equilibrium that either starves much of the human population, or leads to resource wars than end it in other ways.
The problem is coming up with a realistic solution to "return CO2 levels" that doesn't in effect starve much of the human population or lead to resource wars of some sort. The truth is that our modern (western) way of life depends heavily on having a ready supply of energy, and that even as we slooooowly manage to convert to more sustainable habits and energy sources (at a significant cost, I should add... money doesn't come from nowhere, so adding more money to this effort WILL cause pain elsewhere), many other countries (very understandably) are much more quickly bringing themselves up to our standard of living and our levels of energy consumption.
Most solutions to the crisis either involve paying out huge amounts of money without acknowledging that we're already at our fiscal limits and without acknowledging that the payoff will not be immediate, or it involves holding the developing world back (and possibly setting ourselves back as well, somehow) without acknowledging that doing so will piss them off (even if we regress to their level of living ourselves out of some innate sense of fairness that will mysteriously develop in humankind over the next 5 to 10 years). Not trivial problems, and not an easy sell - especially when proponents insist that the result of warming is a doomsday scenario (way in the future) while failing to acknowledge the very real and very immediate (and might I say, occasionally drastic?) consequences of their vague courses of action.
Why else would they vote for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics?
Well, by definition someone has to have voted for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics. And given the type of person who becomes a politician, incompetence and flip flopping are almost inevitable (and not always a bad thing, even).
Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.
In what way? They lean further to the right physically? The left/right spectrum is way too complicated to just make a statement like that...
The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.
I watched your video and saw a media guy branding a Republican as a moron. I've seen politicians on both sides of the aisle say moronic things (you ever watch Barney Frank?) - but I don't see that as making the Republican party any more moronic than the Democrat party. Sorry, I judge people on who they are, not on their party affiliation, and to categorize a large diverse group of people as morons because of party affiliation doesn't make you look any smarter. Especially when you do it based on a media analysis of a small part of one speech, and then say you disagree with the media at the end of your post.
that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective
You're viewing life from the wrong perspective - it's not just about winning seats, it's about getting things right. If you're basing who "wins" on who gets elected, then you're not even thinking policies, you're just exemplifying what I'm saying about people getting voted in based entirely on media persona. Ie, you are the problem.
Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.
I don't think anyone wants either - nice strawman though. Not sure why people want big government (to be taken care of I suppose), but I want small government so that I'm free to make my own choices and my own mistakes. That's called living your own life. I have no interest in propping up a massive bureaucracy just so I don't have to think or live or feel for myself.
Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.
You know what they say about statistics - I look at that graph and I see that 4 of the 5 "best" presidents were Republican, and that for sure 2 of the other 3 republicans were cleaning up after the Democrats. Also, I see nothing about congress, who also has this small role to play...
Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts
So we do actually agree on something - there's hope for you yet!
Hey, it's ok to dream... mmmmm... ponies... (and yeah, that seems like a good system in theory, but it would require a fairly major cultural evolution)
I guess I have a bit of a different perspective when it comes to corporations. No, you can't vote for CEO, but you can directly choose which corporation you work for. You don't depend on 50% of people having the same priorities you do. So yes, we the people *could* turf our politicians if they perform poorly (for the majority), and any one of us *could* run for office in theory... but in practice, a successful run still requires the right connections and the right money, and turfing a politician who has those connections, that money and that image is a Herculean task (and that's assuming that their bad decisions actually affect most people directly enough to have any kind of momentum). Whereas quitting a job and finding another job is... well, a bit scary and requires some planning, but to me is more realistic than getting voted into a federal political office. Then again, I'm pretty laid back and in a pretty good position in my job/life, so it's maybe a bit too easy for me to talk about choosing jobs.
I also think it's a bit sad that for so many people, the workplace is their primary/only community these days - that does indeed give your employer a lot of leverage. In my ideal world people would have communities outside of work (either actual physical community or church or... something!), which would provide a bit of a safety net and comfort zone outside of the federal government and also make work a lot less important (fill that void left by a limited government). I find it interesting that the ancient Greek concept of a polis on which a lot of western philosophy was founded is really not a democratic country-level based philosophy but more of a 5-10,000 person community-based philosophy - things that work well at that level don't necessarily scale up to 300 million in my view.
Anyways, thanks for the food for thought - sometimes Slashdot isn't just a waste of time!:D
Well, I think it's just problem with the scale of our society and democracy.
I agree... and I think the solution is to minimize the size of government at the federal level (the larger the scale of the government, the smaller it's reach should be).
So if the founding fathers thought that that was good enough for democracy, we're in a much better situation by far.
The difference is that in the times of the founding fathers, government was much more limited, and the founding fathers (well, some of them anyways) were actually pretty smart guys who understood the philosophy of government and federalism and limited powers and all of that - politicians nowadays seem to understand only polls and press conferences and getting elected (understandable, but regrettable). They don't try to convince people over to their way of thought any more - instead they move their way of thinking (or at least their rhetoric) over to where they feel they have the most support.
Also, in Italy and Australia, they fine people who don't vote.
I agree with you about having a more democratic voting system than 50.1% gets all the toys. I disagree about fining people who don't vote - what we need is a way to get people informed, not a way to get them to put a mark on a random piece of paper just to avoid a fine. If people don't care enough to vote, then they really shouldn't be voting...
let 'em fail!
Exactly where I stand on the current crisis... sounds like we actually agree there, you'd just be in favor of forcing more 'failures' to break up the strength of big business.
I believe we need a strong check on the power of corporations.
I think Obama's gonna be as disappointing to you as Bush was to small-government conservatives like myself in that case. To the extent that he's limiting the power of corporations, he's just moving it into the federal government (both the actual people and the power), which just makes government the biggest corporation of them all. I actually agree that we need checks on the power of corporations, but I think that we need more checks on the power of government - government has real authority over people's lives as well as over big business. Corporations "only" control your work life. A corporation can't take away your real freedoms (speech, religion, etc), at least, not if the legislative and judicial branches of government do their job properly. To the extent that corporations corrupt and overtake any real power, they do it through government - making government stronger to me is just accomplishing the same ends while giving power to people with a different skillset (the skillset to get elected instead of the skillset to be a CEO). So I guess I am a capitalist, but I'm also an individualist (although not in a Rand-ian sort of every-man-must-work-for-himself-only sort of way)... if that makes sense:D
Read the GP's whole post - the treatments are by virtue of the properties of ASC, not by virtue of the properties of the funding. The Japanese researchers weren't even in the US, so funding wasn't even a difference.
It is NOT (repeat NOT) that you needed to kill/abort the fetus so as to get stem cells.
The fetus was aborted already. It is now medical waste.
So what you really mean is, it is not that YOU (repeat YOU) needed to kill/abort the fetus so as to get stem cells. To a pro-life person (I'll leave your characterization of pro-lifers aside), that's like saying it's ok to use people from death row for medical experiments, as long as you're not the one killing them - keep your own hands clean, and the ethical problems just... *poof*, go away!
It sounds like you and I are on the opposite ends of the spectrum
Nothing wrong with that - and yes, I'm definitely pro-small government (especially at the federal level), although these days that wouldn't actually make me a Republican (by most people's definition), would it?
Most Americans are pretty much in the middle, if not a little to the left.
In the end, I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican), when it slows down, that means pro-big-government (Democrat). Again, those categorizations have too little to do with reality in reality, but that's the way the parties are portrayed.
That's his stage persona.
And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona - if all we do is vote for the persona, what we'll keep on ending up with is the best actor as our leader. The internet does help with this, but the media shouldn't just be able to shrug it off as "well, we're just showing what we see" - look harder!!
If they were simply unhappy with Republicans, they would have just stayed home and not voted.
I think it's been drummed into a LOT of people's heads that staying home is bad - even if you're not really sure who you want in or what they're going to do - your responsibility is to get out there and vote! So what you do is you vote for the guy who's made the best impression (through the media), who might possibly somehow one day in a brighter future potentially make you proud of your country. In other words, we vote based on emotion, instead of on policy. It's too bad that civic responsibility has been dumbed down that much - the way I see it, it's your responsibility to get informed, and only then should you vote...
That sounds pretty corruption free to me. What more can you ask for? ( Geitner to step down? I'd be happy to see that:)
Actually, yes that's one of the things I would ask for... although I'm not sure I'd like to see Reich as the replacement... Like I said, I'm pro-small-government, and I'd rather see people out there looking to reduce the bureaucracy instead of sending trillions (!) of dollars direct from government to industry. That's not a capitalist policy at all (corporatist, maybe?) - and it certainly doesn't make Obama a centrist in my mind. It may make him a big business guy as well as a big government guy, which may move him closer to some Republicans, but it doesn't move him any more centrally towards me!
Anyways, sorry to pick and choose pieces of your post, hopefully I've made my position clearer as well. What I'm hoping for is more exposure and more power for the small-government portion of the Republican party (the tea party folks if you will) - I really do think it's a bigger portion of the party than most people's perceptions allow for. But maybe I'm just an optimist?
So then, in order to win an election, you have to get the swing vote, which is the extremists in the party.
The thing is, it's not just that the Republicans reached out to the swing vote, it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?
As just one example, I disagree with a lot of the Bush/Cheney years (you've got a good list going in your post), but quite frankly I've read enough interviews with both men to know that Bush isn't as stupid as people perceive him to be and Cheney isn't as diabolical - in fact, based on those who broke with that administration, Bush is the hard-nosed no-nonsense guy, while Cheney is a straight-shooter (literally sometimes;) but also a much smoother consensus-builder by nature (why he was chosen VP in the first place). So I ask you, how did their images get switched around so thoroughly in the public perception if it wasn't the media?
the regular midwest Republican said, "This is bullshit, I'm voting for Obama."
And unless things turn around spectacularly pretty soon, they'll be saying "This is bullshit" again through the next election cycle. They left in droves (past tense), but they didn't all of a sudden give up on their country or their principles. Obama's overdoing the spending, overdoing the apologies, and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised... I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).
The thing is your quoting one number, the % of people who voted GOP in the last presidential race, as the litmus test of the number of people who would identify themselves as members of the GOP.
I actually think (though I don't have the stats handy) that those moderates/independents broke pretty hard for Obama/Dems in the last election... the problem I'm seeing is more that most people who aren't Republican but do share some values with most of them (independents and or moderate Democrats) don't see the 'regular' Republicans, they see the extremists, and it's not because the regular Republicans aren't there, it's because the fringe element is so good at promoting itself that there's no space for anyone else in the media, and most people aren't motivated enough to dig a bit to see them.
And I don't think "the right-wing" is putting Glenn Beck out there as their face. I think Glenn Beck is very very good at self-promotion/entertainment and the right wing values loyalty to highly to turf him. We need to separate the media from the politicians - even if someone enjoys watching Glenn Beck, it doesn't mean Glenn Beck is the face of the party. Unfortunately the media does have a disproportionate influence on those who don't obtain their own news, though, so I do realize that it's not just that simple...:S
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(sigh). Let's go over this once more. Using condescending language and fitting a story into your stereotype by putting it into your own words means it can mean *gasp* whatever I want it to!! Some points to ponder: At the time of Abraham, Mosaic law had not yet been given (those whole 10 commandments ... Abraham didn't have 'em). Also, the word is "murder", not "kill". Also, Abraham did not actually have to kill his son. Point in time, yes, he intended to. God exists outside of time. Conflicting instructions? Love God, love your neighbour. Those don't conflict. For Abraham, it was "obey God". Again, no conflict. How do you define rational? Mathematically consistent? Logically consistent?
Maybe the evil alien never should have created beings that were even capable of suffering? Or struggling? But what would life be without that - I think it would eliminate growth, change ... reward ... I'm not sure I can conceive of that kind of life and still be a person. I also would resist sacrificing my son (would pull a Jonah and head the other way probably). I can't speak for Abraham (the Bible is fascinating in what it omits as much as in what it includes), however I'm quite sure he had a different perspective on death than you or I - one where it was inevitable and controlled by God, whenever or however it happened. We tend to think of death (if we think of it), as something to put off for as long as possible ...
News to me. Explain how didn't I notice?
Someone born without sight (and I include myself in this metaphor) won't notice a thing ...
One and the same in this case, since God supposedly set up the entire playground.
And, by means beyond my understanding, gave us consciousness. Whatever that is. It apparently implies some responsibility ...
It makes no sense to say God is good, then. For God to be good, goodness must be something that exists independently. For instance, when you say "This apple is red", "red" is defined externally to the apple. If you say that "red" is "whatever color the apple is", then "red" loses any meaning and you might as well remove it, because then no extra information is conferred by saying it's red.
Agreed, you might as well say, "this apple is an apple" - it's a circular definition. Just like "God is good." According to Plato, there was a "perfect" dog somewhere, that all dogs derive their "dog-ness" from. According to Christianity, God is the absolute source of good. With moral relativity, well, everything's relative, so there's no point to even really discussing this all, just do your best and be content (it's moral for you to take my stuff if you can get away with it, just as it's moral for me to work to make it so you can't get away with it).
Or the corollary, he can't know that it *is* God
I actually agree with you on this one. It takes faith ... just as it takes faith (or it would, for me) to believe that the universe is an effect without a cause (or that the Big Bang is an effect without a cause, or that we're just bits of cosmic matter that happened to come together in an interesting and self-aware way), and that's all I can say about that when discussing with someone who doesn't share my beliefs (well, I could point to other circumstantial evidence which was instrumental in my own journey, but I'll spare you this time :D).
If God had taught him the lesson "Child Murder Is Bad", and at the same time taught him the lesson "You Shouldn't Be Blindly Loyal To Anyone, Even Me"
The first lesson ... did you have to be taught that? Neither did Abraham. The second lesson - "blindly" is a pejorative term. Abraham wasn't blindly loyal, he was completely loyal. He knew and had already interacted with God in other ways, so he knew it was God (how, I don't know, I'm not Abraham ... I probably would have doubted), trusted in him, and so he was completely loyal, and believed that God would make it right. The kind of loyalty you could only give someone if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were all-powerful, all-seeing, and totally there for you (and all mankind) 100%. The kind of loyalty you can never give to another person, and that I can't even claim to be able to give to God ...
One other interesting thing about the whole story, is how Isaac never seems to hold all of this against Abraham, or against God. If anyone should get offended that his father was willing to kill his own child ...
PS. Before you freak out about how this can lead to us "religious fanatics" doing anything with a mistaken belief that it will all be alright in the end, note that the Bible does warn us to "test the spirits" as well - ie, to examine yourself and everything you do and make sure that it doesn't fall foul of "love your neighbour").
Nice - can I assume you also subscribe to the enlightened self-interest defining your morality? I'm pretty sure you'd find someone else to piss you off even if me and all my stupid Christian friends were put in the gas chambers ...
Ah, but Abraham is told that his child will suffer horribly - to live in disobedience to God (without a relationship with God) is to suffer horribly. And it isn't "I make him suffer horribly", it's "he will suffer horribly." Again, see my first point. "We" did not already agree that the deity was evil - first we would have to agree on what evil is (and how you can even assert that it exists in an impartial mathematical universe) ... Might makes right doesn't apply when speaking about God - we have no metaphor for an omnipotent being who exists outside of (and yet also inside of) our universe.
That's a valid point - that God isn't evil, because he knows the outcome. The limits that are there for the demands of God, are those which God has put in place. If someone today hears a voice telling him to murder his son, he can know that it isn't God - we very clearly have the Bible telling us that this is not God's will. Abraham interacted with God differently, and was able to know that it was God's will to take his son to the altar.
the murder of one's child is simply not a moral act.
It's interesting that you base morality on enlightened self-interest, but then you make this statement. I actually think that self-sacrifice can be very moral, but I agree that murder is immoral ... however, that's the opposite of self-interest, that's based on an absolute morality (based on obedience) that has absolutely nothing to do with self-interest. I can only imagine how relieved Abraham was to find out that the God he worshiped was indeed a merciful and kind God, and did not require that kind of thing at all ...
Christianity is responsible for more torture and death in the first 19 centuries AD than almost any other human cause
And in the 19 centuries before that, it was various other religions. And in the last century, it was probably communism, followed by ... Naziism? The point being, humans are humans, whether religious or not. Your real assertion:
probably stunted development of "civilization" by several hundred years
is not backed up at all. It may have stunted development. And maybe, if it wasn't there, another religion would have stopped it altogether. And maybe it actually enhanced development (you'll come up with many arguments such as the crusades, Galileo, popes, witch burnings, I'll come up with counter-arguments such as the abolition of slavery, the spreading of reading due to the Bible, many individual acts of courageous sacrifice, religiously motivated opposition to the Nazis and care for the sick and poor ...), in the end I don't think it can be proven.
In the end, you assume there is no God, and therefore a belief in him is irrational and holds a person back. I assume (have faith) there is a God, and therefore a belief in him is rational and enhances a person's life.
Even if she was raped.
If pro-lifers were willing to accept abortion in some situations, provided it was early enough in the pregnancy, would you be willing to admit that it's wrong in the other 99.9% of cases? Or does the fact that there are rapists in the world mean that the fetus is not a child until it gets through the birth canal?
Also, there are enough people on this planet already and we still do not have the technology to colonize other planets.
So, to clarify, you're in favor of killing people here (can we start with the rapists, and not their by-products?), and abortion is just a convenient method of population control? If that's the case, then can we at least start from that premise and decide who to kill based on rational criteria rather than just "hey, they're a fetus, kill them"?
Unless his powerful benefactor controls life after death ... and Abraham obviously absolutely believed that he did. You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth here - on the one hand God is evil for ordering Abraham to kill his son (and Abraham is just listening), on the other Abraham is evil for listening (and God is just a voice in his head). For the first argument (God is evil, if he exists), you're judging God by your morality, which I haven't seen a basis other than "self-interest" (ie, your kid is only good in-so-far as he will benefit you in the future), and for the second, your judging Abraham based on the premise that God does not exist.
Or alternatively, "God is all-powerful. Therefore, he can take something that we perceive as unimaginably evil and use it for unimaginable good." If you could have "smote" Hitler before he came to power, would that have been good or evil? The truth is, we aren't equipped to deal with truly long-term outcomes - only short-term. For example, assuming man-made global warming will bring about the extinction of millions and millions of people, and you could go back and stop the industrial revolution with one little well-placed virus ... a few thousand people dead ... would that be good, or evil?
I know, you're going to say, well, if I'm that powerful, I can solve it with less collateral damage! Or I can create a world that doesn't have either global warming or viruses!! Or ... you could just not create the universe at all, and then there would be no people doing any harm to any other people at all!!! The truth is, you can't do any of that, so you kind of have to leave the big decisions up to the One who can ...
If a God did exist, he would by definition be beyond your understanding, including your understanding of "evil". And there's no reason that his intentions should follow what you consider best for the human race, and you couldn't destroy him. Also, even just on purely rational grounds, the human race is very likely to go extinct. Not this year, not next year, but if you had to put odds on our descendants surviving in, say a few hundred thousand years, what would you put them at? Considering that humans have only been around (in current form) for considerably less than 100,000 years, and that we are for all intents and purposes stuck in this solar system (which has a clock running), on this earth (which suffers from catastrophic extinction events regularly)? So what do you consider best for the human race?
but we can't ignore the fact that we have stronger and weaker relationships with people (and animals and things for that matter), that make some connections and responsibilities more important than others.
You're ignoring the fact that, in the context of this story, for Abraham, the strongest relationship of all was with God. You're also ignoring the fact (throughout this thread) that God is not just Creator in the context of this story, but also the in control of everything (life/death/after death). If the evil space alien was able to prove to you that your child was going to suffer horribly if you didn't let the alien take him, but would have a wonderful and fulfilling life if you did let the alien take him, then what is the moral choice? To selfishly hold on to your own child, or to let him have a better life than you could ever hope to provide?
Returning CO2 levels to what's known to support the only biosphere that sustains human life sounds better than possibly throwing it into an equilibrium that either starves much of the human population, or leads to resource wars than end it in other ways.
The problem is coming up with a realistic solution to "return CO2 levels" that doesn't in effect starve much of the human population or lead to resource wars of some sort. The truth is that our modern (western) way of life depends heavily on having a ready supply of energy, and that even as we slooooowly manage to convert to more sustainable habits and energy sources (at a significant cost, I should add ... money doesn't come from nowhere, so adding more money to this effort WILL cause pain elsewhere), many other countries (very understandably) are much more quickly bringing themselves up to our standard of living and our levels of energy consumption.
Most solutions to the crisis either involve paying out huge amounts of money without acknowledging that we're already at our fiscal limits and without acknowledging that the payoff will not be immediate, or it involves holding the developing world back (and possibly setting ourselves back as well, somehow) without acknowledging that doing so will piss them off (even if we regress to their level of living ourselves out of some innate sense of fairness that will mysteriously develop in humankind over the next 5 to 10 years). Not trivial problems, and not an easy sell - especially when proponents insist that the result of warming is a doomsday scenario (way in the future) while failing to acknowledge the very real and very immediate (and might I say, occasionally drastic?) consequences of their vague courses of action.
Ah, but which country should have the largest fraction of its population incarcerated?
Why else would they vote for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics?
Well, by definition someone has to have voted for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics. And given the type of person who becomes a politician, incompetence and flip flopping are almost inevitable (and not always a bad thing, even).
Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.
In what way? They lean further to the right physically? The left/right spectrum is way too complicated to just make a statement like that ...
The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.
I watched your video and saw a media guy branding a Republican as a moron. I've seen politicians on both sides of the aisle say moronic things (you ever watch Barney Frank?) - but I don't see that as making the Republican party any more moronic than the Democrat party. Sorry, I judge people on who they are, not on their party affiliation, and to categorize a large diverse group of people as morons because of party affiliation doesn't make you look any smarter. Especially when you do it based on a media analysis of a small part of one speech, and then say you disagree with the media at the end of your post.
that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective
You're viewing life from the wrong perspective - it's not just about winning seats, it's about getting things right. If you're basing who "wins" on who gets elected, then you're not even thinking policies, you're just exemplifying what I'm saying about people getting voted in based entirely on media persona. Ie, you are the problem.
Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.
I don't think anyone wants either - nice strawman though. Not sure why people want big government (to be taken care of I suppose), but I want small government so that I'm free to make my own choices and my own mistakes. That's called living your own life. I have no interest in propping up a massive bureaucracy just so I don't have to think or live or feel for myself.
Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.
You know what they say about statistics - I look at that graph and I see that 4 of the 5 "best" presidents were Republican, and that for sure 2 of the other 3 republicans were cleaning up after the Democrats. Also, I see nothing about congress, who also has this small role to play ...
Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts
So we do actually agree on something - there's hope for you yet!
Hey, it's ok to dream ... mmmmm ... ponies ... (and yeah, that seems like a good system in theory, but it would require a fairly major cultural evolution)
... but in practice, a successful run still requires the right connections and the right money, and turfing a politician who has those connections, that money and that image is a Herculean task (and that's assuming that their bad decisions actually affect most people directly enough to have any kind of momentum). Whereas quitting a job and finding another job is ... well, a bit scary and requires some planning, but to me is more realistic than getting voted into a federal political office. Then again, I'm pretty laid back and in a pretty good position in my job/life, so it's maybe a bit too easy for me to talk about choosing jobs.
... something!), which would provide a bit of a safety net and comfort zone outside of the federal government and also make work a lot less important (fill that void left by a limited government). I find it interesting that the ancient Greek concept of a polis on which a lot of western philosophy was founded is really not a democratic country-level based philosophy but more of a 5-10,000 person community-based philosophy - things that work well at that level don't necessarily scale up to 300 million in my view.
:D
I guess I have a bit of a different perspective when it comes to corporations. No, you can't vote for CEO, but you can directly choose which corporation you work for. You don't depend on 50% of people having the same priorities you do. So yes, we the people *could* turf our politicians if they perform poorly (for the majority), and any one of us *could* run for office in theory
I also think it's a bit sad that for so many people, the workplace is their primary/only community these days - that does indeed give your employer a lot of leverage. In my ideal world people would have communities outside of work (either actual physical community or church or
Anyways, thanks for the food for thought - sometimes Slashdot isn't just a waste of time!
Well, I think it's just problem with the scale of our society and democracy.
I agree ... and I think the solution is to minimize the size of government at the federal level (the larger the scale of the government, the smaller it's reach should be).
So if the founding fathers thought that that was good enough for democracy, we're in a much better situation by far.
The difference is that in the times of the founding fathers, government was much more limited, and the founding fathers (well, some of them anyways) were actually pretty smart guys who understood the philosophy of government and federalism and limited powers and all of that - politicians nowadays seem to understand only polls and press conferences and getting elected (understandable, but regrettable). They don't try to convince people over to their way of thought any more - instead they move their way of thinking (or at least their rhetoric) over to where they feel they have the most support.
Also, in Italy and Australia, they fine people who don't vote.
I agree with you about having a more democratic voting system than 50.1% gets all the toys. I disagree about fining people who don't vote - what we need is a way to get people informed, not a way to get them to put a mark on a random piece of paper just to avoid a fine. If people don't care enough to vote, then they really shouldn't be voting ...
let 'em fail!
Exactly where I stand on the current crisis ... sounds like we actually agree there, you'd just be in favor of forcing more 'failures' to break up the strength of big business.
I believe we need a strong check on the power of corporations.
I think Obama's gonna be as disappointing to you as Bush was to small-government conservatives like myself in that case. To the extent that he's limiting the power of corporations, he's just moving it into the federal government (both the actual people and the power), which just makes government the biggest corporation of them all. I actually agree that we need checks on the power of corporations, but I think that we need more checks on the power of government - government has real authority over people's lives as well as over big business. Corporations "only" control your work life. A corporation can't take away your real freedoms (speech, religion, etc), at least, not if the legislative and judicial branches of government do their job properly. To the extent that corporations corrupt and overtake any real power, they do it through government - making government stronger to me is just accomplishing the same ends while giving power to people with a different skillset (the skillset to get elected instead of the skillset to be a CEO). So I guess I am a capitalist, but I'm also an individualist (although not in a Rand-ian sort of every-man-must-work-for-himself-only sort of way) ... if that makes sense :D
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
They didn't even bother to use statistics here, so I'm thinking it probably falls into either lies or damned lies ... here's to hoping I'm wrong!
Read the GP's whole post - the treatments are by virtue of the properties of ASC, not by virtue of the properties of the funding. The Japanese researchers weren't even in the US, so funding wasn't even a difference.
It is NOT (repeat NOT) that you needed to kill/abort the fetus so as to get stem cells.
The fetus was aborted already. It is now medical waste.
So what you really mean is, it is not that YOU (repeat YOU) needed to kill/abort the fetus so as to get stem cells. To a pro-life person (I'll leave your characterization of pro-lifers aside), that's like saying it's ok to use people from death row for medical experiments, as long as you're not the one killing them - keep your own hands clean, and the ethical problems just ... *poof*, go away!
It sounds like you and I are on the opposite ends of the spectrum
Nothing wrong with that - and yes, I'm definitely pro-small government (especially at the federal level), although these days that wouldn't actually make me a Republican (by most people's definition), would it?
Most Americans are pretty much in the middle, if not a little to the left.
In the end, I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican), when it slows down, that means pro-big-government (Democrat). Again, those categorizations have too little to do with reality in reality, but that's the way the parties are portrayed.
That's his stage persona.
And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona - if all we do is vote for the persona, what we'll keep on ending up with is the best actor as our leader. The internet does help with this, but the media shouldn't just be able to shrug it off as "well, we're just showing what we see" - look harder!!
If they were simply unhappy with Republicans, they would have just stayed home and not voted.
I think it's been drummed into a LOT of people's heads that staying home is bad - even if you're not really sure who you want in or what they're going to do - your responsibility is to get out there and vote! So what you do is you vote for the guy who's made the best impression (through the media), who might possibly somehow one day in a brighter future potentially make you proud of your country. In other words, we vote based on emotion, instead of on policy. It's too bad that civic responsibility has been dumbed down that much - the way I see it, it's your responsibility to get informed, and only then should you vote ...
That sounds pretty corruption free to me. What more can you ask for? ( Geitner to step down? I'd be happy to see that :)
Actually, yes that's one of the things I would ask for ... although I'm not sure I'd like to see Reich as the replacement ... Like I said, I'm pro-small-government, and I'd rather see people out there looking to reduce the bureaucracy instead of sending trillions (!) of dollars direct from government to industry. That's not a capitalist policy at all (corporatist, maybe?) - and it certainly doesn't make Obama a centrist in my mind. It may make him a big business guy as well as a big government guy, which may move him closer to some Republicans, but it doesn't move him any more centrally towards me!
Anyways, sorry to pick and choose pieces of your post, hopefully I've made my position clearer as well. What I'm hoping for is more exposure and more power for the small-government portion of the Republican party (the tea party folks if you will) - I really do think it's a bigger portion of the party than most people's perceptions allow for. But maybe I'm just an optimist?
So then, in order to win an election, you have to get the swing vote, which is the extremists in the party.
The thing is, it's not just that the Republicans reached out to the swing vote, it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?
;) but also a much smoother consensus-builder by nature (why he was chosen VP in the first place). So I ask you, how did their images get switched around so thoroughly in the public perception if it wasn't the media?
As just one example, I disagree with a lot of the Bush/Cheney years (you've got a good list going in your post), but quite frankly I've read enough interviews with both men to know that Bush isn't as stupid as people perceive him to be and Cheney isn't as diabolical - in fact, based on those who broke with that administration, Bush is the hard-nosed no-nonsense guy, while Cheney is a straight-shooter (literally sometimes
the regular midwest Republican said, "This is bullshit, I'm voting for Obama."
And unless things turn around spectacularly pretty soon, they'll be saying "This is bullshit" again through the next election cycle. They left in droves (past tense), but they didn't all of a sudden give up on their country or their principles. Obama's overdoing the spending, overdoing the apologies, and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised ... I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).
The thing is your quoting one number, the % of people who voted GOP in the last presidential race, as the litmus test of the number of people who would identify themselves as members of the GOP.
I actually think (though I don't have the stats handy) that those moderates/independents broke pretty hard for Obama/Dems in the last election ... the problem I'm seeing is more that most people who aren't Republican but do share some values with most of them (independents and or moderate Democrats) don't see the 'regular' Republicans, they see the extremists, and it's not because the regular Republicans aren't there, it's because the fringe element is so good at promoting itself that there's no space for anyone else in the media, and most people aren't motivated enough to dig a bit to see them.
... :S
And I don't think "the right-wing" is putting Glenn Beck out there as their face. I think Glenn Beck is very very good at self-promotion/entertainment and the right wing values loyalty to highly to turf him. We need to separate the media from the politicians - even if someone enjoys watching Glenn Beck, it doesn't mean Glenn Beck is the face of the party. Unfortunately the media does have a disproportionate influence on those who don't obtain their own news, though, so I do realize that it's not just that simple
The GOP has at least 3 candidates they wanted to run against him in the primaries before he made the switch.
So competition is a bad thing?