What can a physicist tell me about Evolution and Theory of Natural Selection?
A lot, if he's also done a lot of work in Biology, and his doctorate is in Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics.
Got a substantial reason to write this guy off as an idiot? Or do your presuppositions prevent you from acknowledging there is scholarship on the other side of the debate?
That is what you all say, but you people never substantiate that claim, and when you try, you fail.
Well, if you are the judge of who is and who isn't smart enough for your little atheist party, who would be able to convince you?
Never heard of him, so he is not that well known.
Then you haven't take any Philosophy classes, nor have you read anything substantial by atheists. He is well-known, and I find it comical that you believe you are the decider of who is well-known and who isn't. Can I decide who is well-known now?
He is 81 years old
Hmm, didn't realize an appeal to age is an actual logical argument.
The first thing I noted on the URL you supplied, is that Gerald pretends to know Quantum Physics. As a quantum physicist, I was not duped.
Ahh, the elitism is staggering.:)
Your argument with Dr. Schroeder's credentials isn't with me or Dr. Schroeder's himself. Your beef is with MIT for having the gall to let him teach Nuclear Physics in their university for seven years--and for awarding him a Ph.D. in said field.
You should contact that fly-by-night institutution post-haste to let them know of their mistake! After all, you are a quantum physicist!
They are all religious, and do not know what theories or evolution are. They just pretend and believe they know. Remembering this, they are easily exposed, as long as you yourself really know what theories and evoution are.
It is rare to see such ignorance on/. Oh wait, it isn't.:)
You are misinformed. ID is not held by "dumb religionists" but some pretty smart people. Had you been following current events you would know the former atheist (probably the best well-known critic of Theism in general) Anthony Flew jumped ship and is now a Deist. Not a fundamentalist as the slashdot groupthink would believe.
Why did he jump ship? Many reasons, but the primary one is a book written by Gerald Schroeder, who is an MIT-trained physicist with over 60 published articles in scientific journals. And he's a Jew, too. Not the rabid fundamentalist you painted in your post.
I really really enjoyed Joel Spolsky's series on writing Painless Functional Specifications back in 2000. Granted, this doesn't refer to design docs (or technical specifications as Joel calls them), but I think some of the ideas carry over.
You should read the entire series, but I'll give some of the highlights:
You should write the spec before you start the project, not during.
It should have one and only one author
You need to flag Open Issues and Side Notes by themselves so you can search for them later.
The functional spec should be a living document.
Be funny: specs are only good if they are read. The more funny anecdotes the better.
Be pithy and understandable.
Lots of screenshots, tables and diagrams to break up long pages of text.
1. Use assisted GPS, which uses cell towers to help when the GPS signal is deprecated.
2. Require the offender to mount their GPS tracker in the window when they drive. Most have motion detectors so it raises an alarm when the tracker is in motion with no GPS. If the offender breaks this rule he can go back to jail.
GPS is a passive signal...it doesn't broadcast. You can't intercept someone else's GPS.
Now you may be able to intercept someone's ankle transmitter, but I highly doubt you'd be able to know that the signal is an ankle bracelet...and that you'd be able to get an accurate distance from the highly jittery radio waves. RSSI (signal strength) isn't an accurate method for distance measurement.
You're wrong on many counts. GPS tracking devices aren't used just on people on probation.
1. GPS Tracking devices cost about one tenth the price of putting someone in jail. Non-violent offenders (drug offenders, usu.) would be ideal candidates for this.
2. Bail bondsmen love them, too. They'll put up bail for you, but then require you to wear a GPS tracking device to make sure you don't run and they lose their investment.
3. GPS tracking devices can prevent someone from visiting the bars or peeking in on the wife and her new hubby. You can set up an inclusion zone around the offender's house and one around his work and make sure he goes to work on time and comes home on time.
4. Sex offenders on release. Statistics show that sex offenders are at high risk to re-offend. You may put up exclusion zones around schools and other youth hangouts to help ensure safety for the area. (I mean, come on, does the sex offender registry really do anything?)
5. And the best part: You can make the offender pay his own fees. It costs nothing to the state. iSECURETrac does this.
TV channels ALREADY only show what government tells them to show.
Yep. I remember ol' Rumsfeld calling up CBS demanding they show the Abu Ghraib photos.
Did you see any injured iraqis on TV?
All the time. Do you see the new schools and sewer projects on TV in Iraq on TV? Works both ways. The press sequesters themselves in their hotel and reports on the insurgent bombings and not on the good things that are happening.
Some newspapers exercise "self censorship" as well.
Everyone should exercise "self censorship." Choose your words wisely and the world is a better place. Do you tell every overweight person on the street that they are obese? Do you tell ugly people that they shouldn't breed? I hope you censor yourself and just don't blurt out whatever pops into your head.
Newspapers should also be cautious about what information they divulge. Check the facts (ahem, CBS News). And sometimes it isn't prudent to share information. For example, shortly after 9/11, President Bush landed at Offut Air Force Base. All the news stations broke in to report that "Air Force One has landed in Omaha." Come on! Not wise.
I mean, come on, one day you publish something and next day you wake up at Guantanamo bay handcuffed to a railing with a bag over your head.
Do you have an example of this, can you name someone in Guantanomo who was arrested after publishing something on the Internet? Or are you pulling a CBS and just spouting off crap because you want it to be true?
Funny thing is, Americans sincerely believe that they enjoy the most freedoms of any country in the world. For the time being, I think, the freedom has moved to Europe and Canada.
Yeah, like in Sweden--you can't build a house without using an approved design from the government (we must maintain a cookie-cutter appearance). Or if you own a car, it's against the law to change your own oil--you must pay a guy 300 bucks to do it for you. Boy, I yearn for that type of freedom.
I haven't tried them all, that's my disclaimer. But I did come to FreeBSD after 5 years with Linux (mostly Mandrake and RedHat). I'll never go back to Linux. The ports system alone rocks my face off.
Some early gotchas for me: I hated the default shell, I was used to Mandrake setting up bash with colorized ls commands and vim being installed with syntax coloring. I had to learn to do all that from scratch. But once you get it going it's as easy as installing the ports and then modifying your.cshrc and.vimrc files.
The other gotcha was the whole system startup area. FreeBSD has you enable the script (chmod 755, rename) *AND* put a variable in/etc/rc.conf. That sometimes messes me up. There are no runlevels in FreeBSD.
Installation isn't as slick as with the Linuxes, but once you get used to/stand/sysinstall you can handle it.
So, take the plunge. My recommendation is FreeBSD. It's rock-solid. But you couldn't go wrong with the others.
Also, visit Onlamp's BSD Devcenter. It has a ton of great articles for BSD novices and experts. There's an article on there right now called FreeBSD for Linux Users which covers many of the core issues for someone like yourself.
I live by Blair, NE and witnessed the Northern Lights. It's the first time I've ever seen them in Nebraska, and I've lived here almost 20 years. Have scientists figured Northern Lights out yet? They are pretty stinkin' cool.
Hang on - my reason for arguing here is that you claimed that atheists cannot call someone's morality wrong, where as Christians can....I'm saying that everyone has just as much or as little right to call someone else wrong. I'm not the one appealing to authority; you are.
Of course you have the right to say someone else is wrong, the question is does your worldview account for right and wrong? Is the atheist consistent when he says someone else's moral code is wrong?
I'm not the one appealing to authority; you are.
I beg to differ. When an atheist says, for example, "Hitler was wrong to kill millions of Jews," the atheist is appealing to his or her own authority. The basis for any atheist's moral system is his personal beliefs, so when he makes moral judgments he is ultimately appealing to his own belief system.
Also, you ignored the bit where I pointed out that theists do not share a moral basis; each religion chooses its own.
I'm not sure what you mean by "religion" here, but I would agree that there are religions that have different moral codes, but non-Christian religions still cannot account for abstract universal absolutes. Each of them is either internally inconsistent or undermine human reason and experience. For example, the god of Hinduism, named Bhrahman, is defined as the universal soul of which all things are part. Hinduism teaches that all thinking (maya) is an illusion because it presupposes distinctions between different objects in the universe. How can 2 + 2 = 4? Well you shouldn't make a distinction between 2 and 4, says the Hindu. Therefore, Hinduism destroys any system of rationality. The same is true for other religions.
You still haven't proved where they come from. Saying "they come from God" isn't a proof.
But you're missing my point. The very fact that we are using logic and reason proves there is a God. The Christian Theistic Worldview (CTW) is the only one that I have found which provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience, human dignity, logic and sceince. Without the CTW, we cannot use laws of logic nor can one make moral judgments. Absolute laws do not exist in an atheist universe.
Your continuing to use laws of logic presupposes the Christian God.
My basis or morality generally stems from measuring the harm or suffering an action causes people...but there is no one basis - just as not all theists have the same basis of morality.
Thank you for that admission. There is no basis for the atheistic moral code--it is arbitrarily chosen. Therfore, you must allow that other people may arbitrarily choose their moral code, too. Because you have no basis for your morality, you have no grounds to declare someone else's moral system "wrong." On what authority can you say someone else is wrong? Your own? If you can invoke your own authority, then I'll do the same. I declare myself the winner of our little slashdot debate--on my own authority. But then I wouldn't be rational, but arbitrary, just like the atheist who says Hitler was wrong without grounds for doing so.
Actually I meant those are two ways in which anyone can say someone is wrong. I fail to see how you can disagree with my two methods, and then say that a Christian can still say that others are wrong.
Oh, I agree with the methods. I'm just saying that my worldview accounts for these things. The atheist's does not. When an atheist assumes laws of logic, human dignity, and the uniformity of nature, he is borrowing from the Christian theistic worldview because the atheistic worldview does not allow for them. The Christian theist is consistent, the atheist is not.
When you say your morality is coming from God, that is your personal choice of a basis of morality
What we're arguing about here is our presuppositions. Christian theists presuppose God created the world with absolutes: moral and scientific. The atheist can not presuppose these things, because their worldview cannot account for them (but they still do). So yes, it is my personal choice for a basis of morality. But at least my worldview is consistent.
I find it hard to believe that all sorts of actions could be justified just because God says so
Your not liking God's nature has nothing to do with whether he exists. I don't like beets. They still exist, though, whether I like them or not.
you are on no better ground than the atheist, because you cannot prove that uniformity came from God.
Again, we are arguing worldviews. The Christian Theistic worldview is superior to the atheistic because it can account for human dignity, laws of logic, and moral absolutes. An atheist, if he were consistent, would not rely on these absolutes without first proving them.
I can just as reasonably say that nature is uniform because the universe started that way.
You're moving the problem one step back. How would you prove that "the universe started that way?" How can the atheist account for uniformity of nature? You're just assuming it without any basis for doing so.
Christian theists have a basis that comports with their worldview. Atheists do not.
I could use just the same argument as you, and say that whatever method I have used to derive my system of morality is the correct one, and the absolute one, and therefore say that you are wrong.
That's exactly my point. WHAT is the atheist's basis for her system of morality? You still haven't given it.
To say that atheists' morality is based on whims is completely false.
Atheist morality is arbitrarily chosen by the person employing it. In the atheist worldview, one can adopt any moral code he or she wants, who are you to say someone else's moral code is wrong?
You gave two ways in which the atheist can say someone's moral code is wrong: (1) pointing out inconsistencies and (2) disagreeing with the basis for one's moral code. (1) relies on the laws of logic being absolute (which is an assumption that atheists cannot account for), and (2) is arbitrary, which you pointed out.
When someone says that someone is morally wrong, they are either pointing out an inconsistency in their system of morality (something which can be proven)
But how would you prove it? Using laws of logic? How can the atheist account for those? Have you read Hume or Russell's critique of the Inductive Principle?
The laws of logic rely on the worldview that nature is uniform, which the atheist assumes without proof. How do you know the sun will come up tomorrow? Because it did so today? Why do you assume the uniformity of nature when your worldview prohibits it? There are no absolutes in the atheist worldview--even laws of logic can't be relied upon because there is no "proof" for them.
To prove that laws of logic are absolute, one must prove the uniformity of nature. How would you prove uniformity of nature? You can't say from human experience, because human experience assumes uniformity of nature.
I'm not saying atheists don't use laws of logic, they do. They are absolute, too. But the very fact that the atheist assumes they are absolute, when the atheistic worldview cannot account for them, is like telling me that you're not breathing air...right after you took a breath to tell me.
But the Christian Theist can say that nature is uniform because the God that created everything designed it that way. My worldview accounts for laws of logic, moral absolutes, and human dignity. The atheist borrows these from the Christian theistic worldview only to reject it. The atheist is being inconsistent. If the atheist were being consistent she would need to admit that she cannot rely on the unproven laws of logic and Inductive Principle. The atheist is reduced to a skeptic who cannot "know" anything.
Are you saying that an Atheist cannot have morals?
Not at all. I'm saying that an atheist must also recognize that their moral system is based upon an arbitrary framework that she has chosen for herself. The atheist has no grounds to call another person's moral system wrong because their worldview cannot account for moral absolutes. Everyone chooses a moral code for himself or herself and each one is valid, without an absolute to base this moral code upon.
I base my morals on my beliefs.
Exactly, which proves my point. Your moral code is not absolute, but you've simply declared your moral code based on your whims and worldview. Because your moral code is arbitrary, you cannot impose your arbitrary moral code on someone else.
You can have morals, but you can never say your set of morals is superior to anyone else's because you've just declared them.
As a Christian theist, however, my worldview accounts for moral absolutes (and laws of logic for that matter) and can say that someone is right or wrong. My worldview flows from a God who created the universe with absolute laws and an absolute moral code.
Without this worldview you're left with arbitrariness and laws of logic that cannot be accounted for.
Evolution is a theory, not a law, because it cannot so far be tested in a laboratory and no one has a time machine to go back and see it in action in the past.
I'm talking about the origin of life, not evolution. Save that for another debate.
There is still no scientific proof for the atheistic view of life's origin.
Creationists (who prefer to take God out of their own theories to try and insinutate them into schools) basically say that life is too complicated for us to understand, so a higher being must have created it.
Could you name a respected creationist that makes the argument that "life is too complicated for us to understand, so a higher being must have created it." I've never seen that argument from a respected creationist.
What does being a bag of chemicals have to do with morality?
Everything. If there are no moral absolutes than your moral framework is whatever you feel is right. You decide for yourself what morals you will adopt, but you have no complaint when someone else adopts a different moral code. You're being arbitrary. There's no room for arbitrariness in rational dialogue.
Likewise, who are you to say that atheists can't have a basis for their morality?
Because my worldview can account for moral absolutes. The atheist cannot. They can arbitrarily declare that their moral framework is the proper one. But if declaration is all that's needed in rational discourse, then I declare that my moral framework is correct and we can all stop arguing. I'll arbitrarily declare that I'm the winner, too, while I'm at it.
But this sort of behavior is irrational.
I can call someone evil, if their actions go against my moral code. The fact that my moral code might differ from theirs, or the question of where I got my moral code from, is irrelevant to that fact.
Then I can declare that I'm right and you're wrong, too. Without absolutes, your opinion on whether someone is evil or not is irrelevant and useless to fruitful dialogue.
True. But those people are very loud about their credo. Plus, they tend to try make PUBLIC schools teach children their RELIGIOUS credo as if it were legitimate science, with legitimate science being sidelined as merely one of many opinions
Who are these people? All the times I've heard that creationism was to be taught in school was as an alternate theory on the origin of life...which it is. There is no scientific proof for the theistic or the atheistic view on the origin of life. Why the atheistic gets the favored son status in schools is beyond me, when both viewpoints have the same credentials scientifically.
I think many people here would have less problems with creationists if they weren't so damn evil about it.
Those who reject creationism are most likely atheist, so I'm assuming you're an atheist here. This raises the question, how can an atheist call anyone evil? This is curious behavior. I mean if all we are is bags of chemicals, who are you to impose your morality on me? How can you call anyone evil? You may say "I don't like what creationists say" and whatnot, but you can never make the statement that someone is bad or evil because you have no grounds to make a moral judgment like that.
On the other hand, if you believe in God and moral absolutes, you are able to say someone is evil because at least you have a basis for your moral framework.
This is just wrong and absolutely disgusting. I'm a PERSON - not a thing. My services will be charged what I feel are appropriate, and not being forced to BID like a slave. Sheesh.
You can't be serious? Bidding for a job means that you are a thing and not a person? Better stay out of the Freelance/Consulting business. And please tell me that you never ask for a quote when you take your car in to be worked on or when you ask for insurance.
I, for one, think this is a great idea. People work for what they're willing to work for, and the hospital is able to man the shifts.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
on
Mock World Vote
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· Score: 1
Boy I don't recall making the argument that all Americans understand the issues.
Yes, you'll find Americans that don't understand the issues before they vote.
But it's a far cry from "Yes, there are some Americans who don't understand Social Security, etc." than to say "Because there are some Chileans that don't understand Social Security and because there are some Americans who don't understand Social Security, then the rest of the world knows more about the issues than Americans"
It's a flawed argument at best.
Regardless of what news channel anyone watches. At least Fox News doesn't present faked memos as fact, after having them analyzed by "expert" witnesses.
In fact, a recent study by Tim Groseclose (UCLA) and Jiff Milyo (University of Chicago) found that media outlets Fox News Channel and Drudge Report are far closer to the center than all the other news outlets surveyed (including New York Times, CBS Evening News, USA Today, ABC World News Tonight).
I find it funny that people love to portray Fox News as a bumbling conservative network, but they never offer evidence of this bias.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
on
Mock World Vote
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why is this modded 5?
First the poster makes some claim that the rest of the world knows more about issues than the American people do--that people in Portugal can begin to know the details of tort reform, flat taxes, social security lockboxes, the unique immigration issues that Americans face among many other issues? Are you saying a Chilean farmer can tell me how Social Security works and what I should do about the rising cost of medical insurance? Nice unsubstantiated claim, guy.
And then to follow that up with some idea that the rest of the world should vote to determine the American leader? You have read the constitution and understand what a Republic is, right?
Slashdot Mirror
What can a physicist tell me about Evolution and Theory of Natural Selection?
A lot, if he's also done a lot of work in Biology, and his doctorate is in Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics.
Got a substantial reason to write this guy off as an idiot? Or do your presuppositions prevent you from acknowledging there is scholarship on the other side of the debate?
That is what you all say, but you people never substantiate that claim, and when you try, you fail.
:)
Well, if you are the judge of who is and who isn't smart enough for your little atheist party, who would be able to convince you?
Never heard of him, so he is not that well known.
Then you haven't take any Philosophy classes, nor have you read anything substantial by atheists. He is well-known, and I find it comical that you believe you are the decider of who is well-known and who isn't. Can I decide who is well-known now?
He is 81 years old
Hmm, didn't realize an appeal to age is an actual logical argument.
The first thing I noted on the URL you supplied, is that Gerald pretends to know Quantum Physics. As a quantum physicist, I was not duped.
Ahh, the elitism is staggering.
Your argument with Dr. Schroeder's credentials isn't with me or Dr. Schroeder's himself. Your beef is with MIT for having the gall to let him teach Nuclear Physics in their university for seven years--and for awarding him a Ph.D. in said field.
You should contact that fly-by-night institutution post-haste to let them know of their mistake! After all, you are a quantum physicist!
Signed,
Notoriously bad judge of people...
I stand corrected. I knew his name was William of Ockham, and had never seen it spelled with two "c's." Thanks for the correction.
As for those people preaching intelligent design:
/. Oh wait, it isn't. :)
They are all religious, and do not know what theories or evolution are. They
just pretend and believe they know. Remembering this, they are easily exposed,
as long as you yourself really know what theories and evoution are.
It is rare to see such ignorance on
You are misinformed. ID is not held by "dumb religionists" but some pretty smart people. Had you been following current events you would know the former atheist (probably the best well-known critic of Theism in general) Anthony Flew jumped ship and is now a Deist. Not a fundamentalist as the slashdot groupthink would believe.
Why did he jump ship? Many reasons, but the primary one is a book written by Gerald Schroeder, who is an MIT-trained physicist with over 60 published articles in scientific journals. And he's a Jew, too. Not the rabid fundamentalist you painted in your post.
See The Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder for more information.
all theories must be falsifiable to be valid, and occam's razor.. roughly
Ockham's Razor is what you meant, I think.
You should read the entire series, but I'll give some of the highlights:
tS
There's two problems to that solution.
1. Use assisted GPS, which uses cell towers to help when the GPS signal is deprecated.
2. Require the offender to mount their GPS tracker in the window when they drive. Most have motion detectors so it raises an alarm when the tracker is in motion with no GPS. If the offender breaks this rule he can go back to jail.
GPS is a passive signal...it doesn't broadcast. You can't intercept someone else's GPS.
Now you may be able to intercept someone's ankle transmitter, but I highly doubt you'd be able to know that the signal is an ankle bracelet...and that you'd be able to get an accurate distance from the highly jittery radio waves. RSSI (signal strength) isn't an accurate method for distance measurement.
You're wrong on many counts. GPS tracking devices aren't used just on people on probation.
1. GPS Tracking devices cost about one tenth the price of putting someone in jail. Non-violent offenders (drug offenders, usu.) would be ideal candidates for this.
2. Bail bondsmen love them, too. They'll put up bail for you, but then require you to wear a GPS tracking device to make sure you don't run and they lose their investment.
3. GPS tracking devices can prevent someone from visiting the bars or peeking in on the wife and her new hubby. You can set up an inclusion zone around the offender's house and one around his work and make sure he goes to work on time and comes home on time.
4. Sex offenders on release. Statistics show that sex offenders are at high risk to re-offend. You may put up exclusion zones around schools and other youth hangouts to help ensure safety for the area. (I mean, come on, does the sex offender registry really do anything?)
5. And the best part: You can make the offender pay his own fees. It costs nothing to the state. iSECURETrac does this.
Sorry, meant Switzerland.
TV channels ALREADY only show what government tells them to show.
Yep. I remember ol' Rumsfeld calling up CBS demanding they show the Abu Ghraib photos.
Did you see any injured iraqis on TV?
All the time. Do you see the new schools and sewer projects on TV in Iraq on TV? Works both ways. The press sequesters themselves in their hotel and reports on the insurgent bombings and not on the good things that are happening.
Some newspapers exercise "self censorship" as well.
Everyone should exercise "self censorship." Choose your words wisely and the world is a better place. Do you tell every overweight person on the street that they are obese? Do you tell ugly people that they shouldn't breed? I hope you censor yourself and just don't blurt out whatever pops into your head.
Newspapers should also be cautious about what information they divulge. Check the facts (ahem, CBS News). And sometimes it isn't prudent to share information. For example, shortly after 9/11, President Bush landed at Offut Air Force Base. All the news stations broke in to report that "Air Force One has landed in Omaha." Come on! Not wise.
I mean, come on, one day you publish something and next day you wake up at Guantanamo bay handcuffed to a railing with a bag over your head.
Do you have an example of this, can you name someone in Guantanomo who was arrested after publishing something on the Internet? Or are you pulling a CBS and just spouting off crap because you want it to be true?
Funny thing is, Americans sincerely believe that they enjoy the most freedoms of any country in the world. For the time being, I think, the freedom has moved to Europe and Canada.
Yeah, like in Sweden--you can't build a house without using an approved design from the government (we must maintain a cookie-cutter appearance). Or if you own a car, it's against the law to change your own oil--you must pay a guy 300 bucks to do it for you. Boy, I yearn for that type of freedom.
I haven't tried them all, that's my disclaimer. But I did come to FreeBSD after 5 years with Linux (mostly Mandrake and RedHat). I'll never go back to Linux. The ports system alone rocks my face off.
.cshrc and .vimrc files.
/etc/rc.conf. That sometimes messes me up. There are no runlevels in FreeBSD.
/stand/sysinstall you can handle it.
Some early gotchas for me: I hated the default shell, I was used to Mandrake setting up bash with colorized ls commands and vim being installed with syntax coloring. I had to learn to do all that from scratch. But once you get it going it's as easy as installing the ports and then modifying your
The other gotcha was the whole system startup area. FreeBSD has you enable the script (chmod 755, rename) *AND* put a variable in
Installation isn't as slick as with the Linuxes, but once you get used to
So, take the plunge. My recommendation is FreeBSD. It's rock-solid. But you couldn't go wrong with the others.
Also, visit Onlamp's BSD Devcenter. It has a ton of great articles for BSD novices and experts. There's an article on there right now called FreeBSD for Linux Users which covers many of the core issues for someone like yourself.
I live by Blair, NE and witnessed the Northern Lights. It's the first time I've ever seen them in Nebraska, and I've lived here almost 20 years. Have scientists figured Northern Lights out yet? They are pretty stinkin' cool.
Hang on - my reason for arguing here is that you claimed that atheists cannot call someone's morality wrong, where as Christians can....I'm saying that everyone has just as much or as little right to call someone else wrong. I'm not the one appealing to authority; you are.
Of course you have the right to say someone else is wrong, the question is does your worldview account for right and wrong? Is the atheist consistent when he says someone else's moral code is wrong?
I'm not the one appealing to authority; you are.
I beg to differ. When an atheist says, for example, "Hitler was wrong to kill millions of Jews," the atheist is appealing to his or her own authority. The basis for any atheist's moral system is his personal beliefs, so when he makes moral judgments he is ultimately appealing to his own belief system.
Also, you ignored the bit where I pointed out that theists do not share a moral basis; each religion chooses its own.
I'm not sure what you mean by "religion" here, but I would agree that there are religions that have different moral codes, but non-Christian religions still cannot account for abstract universal absolutes. Each of them is either internally inconsistent or undermine human reason and experience. For example, the god of Hinduism, named Bhrahman, is defined as the universal soul of which all things are part. Hinduism teaches that all thinking (maya) is an illusion because it presupposes distinctions between different objects in the universe. How can 2 + 2 = 4? Well you shouldn't make a distinction between 2 and 4, says the Hindu. Therefore, Hinduism destroys any system of rationality. The same is true for other religions.
You still haven't proved where they come from. Saying "they come from God" isn't a proof.
But you're missing my point. The very fact that we are using logic and reason proves there is a God. The Christian Theistic Worldview (CTW) is the only one that I have found which provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience, human dignity, logic and sceince. Without the CTW, we cannot use laws of logic nor can one make moral judgments. Absolute laws do not exist in an atheist universe.
Your continuing to use laws of logic presupposes the Christian God.
My basis or morality generally stems from measuring the harm or suffering an action causes people...but there is no one basis - just as not all theists have the same basis of morality.
Thank you for that admission. There is no basis for the atheistic moral code--it is arbitrarily chosen. Therfore, you must allow that other people may arbitrarily choose their moral code, too. Because you have no basis for your morality, you have no grounds to declare someone else's moral system "wrong." On what authority can you say someone else is wrong? Your own? If you can invoke your own authority, then I'll do the same. I declare myself the winner of our little slashdot debate--on my own authority. But then I wouldn't be rational, but arbitrary, just like the atheist who says Hitler was wrong without grounds for doing so.
Actually I meant those are two ways in which anyone can say someone is wrong. I fail to see how you can disagree with my two methods, and then say that a Christian can still say that others are wrong.
Oh, I agree with the methods. I'm just saying that my worldview accounts for these things. The atheist's does not. When an atheist assumes laws of logic, human dignity, and the uniformity of nature, he is borrowing from the Christian theistic worldview because the atheistic worldview does not allow for them. The Christian theist is consistent, the atheist is not.
When you say your morality is coming from God, that is your personal choice of a basis of morality
What we're arguing about here is our presuppositions. Christian theists presuppose God created the world with absolutes: moral and scientific. The atheist can not presuppose these things, because their worldview cannot account for them (but they still do). So yes, it is my personal choice for a basis of morality. But at least my worldview is consistent.
I find it hard to believe that all sorts of actions could be justified just because God says so
Your not liking God's nature has nothing to do with whether he exists. I don't like beets. They still exist, though, whether I like them or not.
you are on no better ground than the atheist, because you cannot prove that uniformity came from God.
Again, we are arguing worldviews. The Christian Theistic worldview is superior to the atheistic because it can account for human dignity, laws of logic, and moral absolutes. An atheist, if he were consistent, would not rely on these absolutes without first proving them.
I can just as reasonably say that nature is uniform because the universe started that way.
You're moving the problem one step back. How would you prove that "the universe started that way?" How can the atheist account for uniformity of nature? You're just assuming it without any basis for doing so.
Christian theists have a basis that comports with their worldview. Atheists do not.
I could use just the same argument as you, and say that whatever method I have used to derive my system of morality is the correct one, and the absolute one, and therefore say that you are wrong.
That's exactly my point. WHAT is the atheist's basis for her system of morality? You still haven't given it.
To say that atheists' morality is based on whims is completely false.
Atheist morality is arbitrarily chosen by the person employing it. In the atheist worldview, one can adopt any moral code he or she wants, who are you to say someone else's moral code is wrong?
You gave two ways in which the atheist can say someone's moral code is wrong: (1) pointing out inconsistencies and (2) disagreeing with the basis for one's moral code. (1) relies on the laws of logic being absolute (which is an assumption that atheists cannot account for), and (2) is arbitrary, which you pointed out.
When someone says that someone is morally wrong, they are either pointing out an inconsistency in their system of morality (something which can be proven)
But how would you prove it? Using laws of logic? How can the atheist account for those? Have you read Hume or Russell's critique of the Inductive Principle?
The laws of logic rely on the worldview that nature is uniform, which the atheist assumes without proof. How do you know the sun will come up tomorrow? Because it did so today? Why do you assume the uniformity of nature when your worldview prohibits it? There are no absolutes in the atheist worldview--even laws of logic can't be relied upon because there is no "proof" for them.
To prove that laws of logic are absolute, one must prove the uniformity of nature. How would you prove uniformity of nature? You can't say from human experience, because human experience assumes uniformity of nature.
I'm not saying atheists don't use laws of logic, they do. They are absolute, too. But the very fact that the atheist assumes they are absolute, when the atheistic worldview cannot account for them, is like telling me that you're not breathing air...right after you took a breath to tell me.
But the Christian Theist can say that nature is uniform because the God that created everything designed it that way. My worldview accounts for laws of logic, moral absolutes, and human dignity. The atheist borrows these from the Christian theistic worldview only to reject it. The atheist is being inconsistent. If the atheist were being consistent she would need to admit that she cannot rely on the unproven laws of logic and Inductive Principle. The atheist is reduced to a skeptic who cannot "know" anything.
Are you saying that an Atheist cannot have morals?
Not at all. I'm saying that an atheist must also recognize that their moral system is based upon an arbitrary framework that she has chosen for herself. The atheist has no grounds to call another person's moral system wrong because their worldview cannot account for moral absolutes. Everyone chooses a moral code for himself or herself and each one is valid, without an absolute to base this moral code upon.
I base my morals on my beliefs.
Exactly, which proves my point. Your moral code is not absolute, but you've simply declared your moral code based on your whims and worldview. Because your moral code is arbitrary, you cannot impose your arbitrary moral code on someone else.
You can have morals, but you can never say your set of morals is superior to anyone else's because you've just declared them.
As a Christian theist, however, my worldview accounts for moral absolutes (and laws of logic for that matter) and can say that someone is right or wrong. My worldview flows from a God who created the universe with absolute laws and an absolute moral code.
Without this worldview you're left with arbitrariness and laws of logic that cannot be accounted for.
Evolution is a theory, not a law, because it cannot so far be tested in a laboratory and no one has a time machine to go back and see it in action in the past.
I'm talking about the origin of life, not evolution. Save that for another debate.
There is still no scientific proof for the atheistic view of life's origin.
Creationists (who prefer to take God out of their own theories to try and insinutate them into schools) basically say that life is too complicated for us to understand, so a higher being must have created it.
Could you name a respected creationist that makes the argument that "life is too complicated for us to understand, so a higher being must have created it." I've never seen that argument from a respected creationist.
What does being a bag of chemicals have to do with morality?
Everything. If there are no moral absolutes than your moral framework is whatever you feel is right. You decide for yourself what morals you will adopt, but you have no complaint when someone else adopts a different moral code. You're being arbitrary. There's no room for arbitrariness in rational dialogue.
Likewise, who are you to say that atheists can't have a basis for their morality?
Because my worldview can account for moral absolutes. The atheist cannot. They can arbitrarily declare that their moral framework is the proper one. But if declaration is all that's needed in rational discourse, then I declare that my moral framework is correct and we can all stop arguing. I'll arbitrarily declare that I'm the winner, too, while I'm at it.
But this sort of behavior is irrational.
I can call someone evil, if their actions go against my moral code. The fact that my moral code might differ from theirs, or the question of where I got my moral code from, is irrelevant to that fact.
Then I can declare that I'm right and you're wrong, too. Without absolutes, your opinion on whether someone is evil or not is irrelevant and useless to fruitful dialogue.
True. But those people are very loud about their credo. Plus, they tend to try make PUBLIC schools teach children their RELIGIOUS credo as if it were legitimate science, with legitimate science being sidelined as merely one of many opinions
Who are these people? All the times I've heard that creationism was to be taught in school was as an alternate theory on the origin of life...which it is. There is no scientific proof for the theistic or the atheistic view on the origin of life. Why the atheistic gets the favored son status in schools is beyond me, when both viewpoints have the same credentials scientifically.
I think many people here would have less problems with creationists if they weren't so damn evil about it.
Those who reject creationism are most likely atheist, so I'm assuming you're an atheist here. This raises the question, how can an atheist call anyone evil? This is curious behavior. I mean if all we are is bags of chemicals, who are you to impose your morality on me? How can you call anyone evil? You may say "I don't like what creationists say" and whatnot, but you can never make the statement that someone is bad or evil because you have no grounds to make a moral judgment like that.
On the other hand, if you believe in God and moral absolutes, you are able to say someone is evil because at least you have a basis for your moral framework.
Um, yes he has.
:
And he's co-sponsor of S.1431, "Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003"
This bill sounds noble, but it's too zealous, banning almost all semiautomatic rifle or shotgun, because they have a "pistol grip."
See text of the bill at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.1431
I've made it clear I'll do almost anything, and I have not had a single interview.
:)
Judging by this article, maybe you should mention that you'll try being a nurse.
This is just wrong and absolutely disgusting. I'm a PERSON - not a thing. My services will be charged what I feel are appropriate, and not being forced to BID like a slave. Sheesh.
You can't be serious? Bidding for a job means that you are a thing and not a person? Better stay out of the Freelance/Consulting business. And please tell me that you never ask for a quote when you take your car in to be worked on or when you ask for insurance.
I, for one, think this is a great idea. People work for what they're willing to work for, and the hospital is able to man the shifts.
Boy I don't recall making the argument that all Americans understand the issues.
Yes, you'll find Americans that don't understand the issues before they vote.
But it's a far cry from "Yes, there are some Americans who don't understand Social Security, etc." than to say "Because there are some Chileans that don't understand Social Security and because there are some Americans who don't understand Social Security, then the rest of the world knows more about the issues than Americans"
It's a flawed argument at best.
Regardless of what news channel anyone watches. At least Fox News doesn't present faked memos as fact, after having them analyzed by "expert" witnesses.
In fact, a recent study by Tim Groseclose (UCLA) and Jiff Milyo (University of Chicago) found that media outlets Fox News Channel and Drudge Report are far closer to the center than all the other news outlets surveyed (including New York Times, CBS Evening News, USA Today, ABC World News Tonight).
I find it funny that people love to portray Fox News as a bumbling conservative network, but they never offer evidence of this bias.
Why is this modded 5?
First the poster makes some claim that the rest of the world knows more about issues than the American people do--that people in Portugal can begin to know the details of tort reform, flat taxes, social security lockboxes, the unique immigration issues that Americans face among many other issues? Are you saying a Chilean farmer can tell me how Social Security works and what I should do about the rising cost of medical insurance? Nice unsubstantiated claim, guy.
And then to follow that up with some idea that the rest of the world should vote to determine the American leader? You have read the constitution and understand what a Republic is, right?
Sheesh, what is this world coming to?