No, I say it because there IS no rational basis for what you said. Meh. It's difficult to argue with a straight faulty assertion. No, it's not. All you'd have to do is show that there is a rational basis for what you said. It's actually very easy... unless, in fact, there is no such rational basis.
No, it's not. That is what the holiday has become to many people, but it is not the reason why the holiday exists for those people in the first place. You are confusing the reason -- the cause -- for the holiday, and how it is practiced. Actually, I'm suggesting that were it not for how it is practiced, it might not still exist at all, and certainly would not be recognizable. Yes, it would. The existence of Christmas would exist regardless of what traditions it happened to encompass, absolutely. And saying it "would not be recognizable" is boring. Fine, something in your alternate reality would not be recognizable by us in actual reality. So what?
For many individuals, I imagine the holiday would not be celebrated at all, were it not for the display of capitalism it has become. And for many more, it would be. Look at Easter. It's got very little capitalism around it -- compared to, say, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Christmas -- and yet it is celebrated by billions of people. Again, there is no rational basis for this assertion.
Look up "straw man." That wasn't one.
Straw man: Misrepresenting your opponent's position.
So you're right. Just a faulty assumption, almost an ad-hominim, but you were most definitely misrepresenting me, and not my position.
No. I was merely using "you" as a general example. Whether you personally have the day off could not matter less to me, or anyone else reading the discussion. It is entirely unimportant to the discussion. It does not fall under any category of logical fallacy, certainly not straw man, nor ad hominem. That you are harping on it, however, is a red herring fallacy.
How many other non-religious (e.g., Christmas), non-historical (e.g., D-Day) holidays are celebrated by billions of people? Yule isn't religious? Correct, it isn't. And even if you want to superimpose "religion" onto it somehow, how would that help your case, seeing as how there are no significant peoples, cultures, or societies who belong to that "religion" today, such that it would be celebrated by millions, let alone billions, of people?
That is, of course, a non sequitur. When you look up "straw man" feel free to look up that one, too. And that's a demonstration of how little you're actually willing to get into this debate. Ad hominem.
How is it a non-sequitur? That would imply that the conclusion does not follow from the premises, but there are any number of ways that could be in a given argument. How is it NOT a non-sequitur? You said, After all, with only causation, I feel like putting up a sign saying "Sex is the reason for the season." After all, were it not for sex, we wouldn't have people to celebrate Christmas, now would we? But that is meaningless. It does not address the unique part that Christianity plays in Christmas, and pretends that any cause is equal to any other.
I don't see any overwhelming evidence that you're an adherent to any particular religion, if you're theistic or deistic at all, but, if you are, I'd love to see how you're going to argue your reasons for coming to be so, using the same display of logic and reason. Shrug. It's very simple, and it's sad that you think it wouldn't be. You apparently believe religion is irrational, which is, itself, an irrational belief.
Most people would not celebrate Christmas if not for our attachment of it to Jesus, and it certainly would not be a national holiday. Well, only if you ignore the simple fact that the planet has been tilted on its axis for far *far* longer than your religion has existed. I defy you to explain how this simple fact has anything to do with what I said. How does the existence of the solstice warrant a national holiday? What historical evidence do you have to show that billions of people celebrate the Christmas holiday primarily because of the solstice, or would do so if we didn't have Christmas? And if the latter, then why don't they do so anyway?
You're spouting nonsense. I can only surmise you are bored and trolling.
Oh wait, you don't actually understand the difference between "settled"... and "founded" I was not talking about anything being settled or founded.
(often radial extremists who were tossed out of their native lands for their murderous ways)" False. It was, in fact, extremely rare for someone to be kicked out of their native land and to wind up in America.
"The vast majority of the founders of the nation we now refer to as America were Deists... False. In fact, very few were Deists. This is a common myth among anti-religionists. There are only a handful of our founders who could reasonably be called Deists, including Jefferson and Franklin. Far more were Episcopalians, Unitatians, and Anglicans. Some people say Washington was a Deist, for example, but it's clearly not true, because a Deist, which explicitly proposes a noninterventionist God, would not have uttered the many phrases that Washington did about "Providence."
... if they had any religion at all,and had seen the evil inherent in religious rule as exemplified by such Christian things as the Salem witch trials, and so explicitly excluded such hateful delusions from the government of a free society Also false. Any student of history who bothers to do the research -- as you believe the "vast majority of the founders of the nation... were Deists," this clearly does not include you -- would recognize that very few of the founders wanted a Jeffersonian "wall of separation" that completely segregated religion from government. In fact, many of the original 13 states had government-established churches at the time the nation was founded, and kept them for some time afterward, and nothing in the Constitution at the time (not until the 14th Amendment was ratified many years later) prohibited that.
No, you'll just claim that the celebration of the solstice, which far predates the invention of your religion or even your god's promotion from wind god of the Hebrew pantheon, would disappear if everybody grew up and forgot anybody ever believed such nonsense. No. I never said anything of the sort. You need to work on your reading comprehension skills. I am saying that, in fact, billions of people DO NOT celebrate the solstice, which is plainly true, and you've provided -- and cannot provide -- any evidence to the contrary.
Keep in mind, Pudgie, that the Earth has been tilted on its axis for *billions* of years. Your religion was invented two *thousand* years ago. Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with anything I said.
Although, I am not sure it is possible for you to keep that in mind. You seem quite incapable of rational thought.
Correct. It is about the birth of Jesus Christ. That is what it is about. That is why it is celebrated around the world, why it is a national holiday, and why you get the day off from work. You say this because you dismissed my earlier comments on the basis of "strawman" and "red herring". No, I say it because there IS no rational basis for what you said.
It is celebrated because it is tradition, and because people love shiny new toys. No, it's not. That is what the holiday has become to many people, but it is not the reason why the holiday exists for those people in the first place. You are confusing the reason -- the cause -- for the holiday, and how it is practiced.
I'm sure I can't speak for everyone, but I strongly suspect that most people are not thinking of Christ on Christmas eve. They are thinking of Santa, of cookies and milk, of the presents they're going to get (or give) the next morning. They're thinking of a turkey dinner, of being home with family, and yes, of getting a day off from work. Shrug. I think of all those things, including Christ.
By the way: Strawman. I am not taking tomorrow off. Look up "straw man." That wasn't one.
Each of those billions may have their own reason for celebrating Christmas, but they wouldn't be celebrating it at all if not for that primary reason. Can you be sure they wouldn't be celebrating Yule anyway, had Christ never been? Of course not. But it is far more likely than not. How many other non-religious (e.g., Christmas), non-historical (e.g., D-Day) holidays are celebrated by billions of people?
So we've basically killed causation and most of the correlation. No, in fact, you've not touched either one, in any way. All you've done is show that some of the symbology of Christmas was appropriated from other sources, which is not in any way meaningful to the current discussion.
After all, with only causation, I feel like putting up a sign saying "Sex is the reason for the season." After all, were it not for sex, we wouldn't have people to celebrate Christmas, now would we? That is, of course, a non sequitur. When you look up "straw man" feel free to look up that one, too.
If what you are saying is true, does that mean I could take the cross and say that to me, it's symbolism is important to my religion? Um. Yes. Of course. How do you think the cross first became a symbol of Christianity? Someone had to just... say it.
Do you honestly think christians the world over would just shrug, and say "well, it's what it means to him...no harm no foul." What's that got to do with your initial question? Your question was whether you could do it. Yes, you can. How people react to what you do is a different question.
Still, to say that people don't care how others interpret their symbols is ludicrous. Of course. And if I had said that, then this would be a valid objection to raise to me. Since I neither said nor implied it, then you are just blowing smoke.
You said that Christians SHOULD care about the origins of some SPECIFIC symbols. I wasn't saying no one gets offended by symbols or alternate interpretations, only that there is no reason anyone HAS to be offended by a particular use of a particular symbol.
Not only that, but you had it backward anyway, since you said earlier that it is Christians who should be pissed off because their symbols had some other origins, but in your example here, it is the Christians whose symbol was appropriated by someone else. So your own example was opposite of what you were trying to show.
Come on. You're talking about a religion that uses a device of torture and murder as its primary symbol. If you think we're going to be scared off because some symbols had some origins in paganism, you don't understand Christianity very well (especially the part where Paul told us that meat sacrificed to idols is just fine to eat, which surely has some bearing here, in the worst possible case).
What I'm trying to understand though is what sense does it make to adopt the celebrations from a group of people that the CHURCH THEMSELVES decided were agents and tools for the devil? First of all, your characterization of the history is -- at best -- shallow. That's not necessarily a criticism, unless you believe it is reasonably fair and accurate: this is Slashdot, not a place for historical dissertations.
My point is that it wasn't "the CHURCH THEMSELVES" that started celebrating Christmas as a Christian holiday. So there's nothing to understand, or not understand.
If I were a christian (I'm not...I wouldn't consider myself anything, insofar as religion is concerned) the very idea that the church accepted and actually ENCOURAGED the celebrations brought forward by converts from a religion that was supposed to be about devil worship and blasphemy of MY god would be enough for me to secede from the church completely. That's stupid. It happened over a period of generations. It's not like they were persecuting people who celebrated the holiday one day, and embracing it the next.
How does it not piss off christians that many of the traditions used in the celebration for the birth of their saviour came from the very people that their church was denouncing and killing? Why would it? In what logical sense is that remotely offensive?
See...this is why religion is stupid to me. If you aren't willing to accept doublespeak in politics...why are you willing to accept it in religion? There is no example of "doublespeak" here.
You're acting like the church today -- as if there is such a monolithic entity that can be called "the church" -- agreed with the church from hundreds of years earlier when it killed people for "heresy." That's rubbish.
Most people today recognize that this is all just symbols, and symbols have no inherent meaning. A Nazi cross means one thing to most of us, but to some South Americans means something completely different. A Confederate flag means different things to different people. A Christmas tree has only whatever meaning we give to it. There is no pagan symbol or Christian symbol: that is, literally, nonsense. There are only pagan and Christian MEANINGS for whatever symbols happen to be present. So as long as your meaning is a valid one, then whatever symbols you have -- Christmas presents, Easter bunnies, whatever -- don't matter one bit.
the holiday that is supposed to celebrate the birth of their saviour is simply a retooling of a much older pagan celebration False. Just because they appropriated some portions of an existing celebration in no way can logically lead one to say that the new celebration is "simply a retooling" of the old one. That's nonsense on the face of it.
While saturnalia, etc., may be a pagan holiday, Christmas itself is very much about Christ. Yeah, because Christ totally wants you to buy that electric train set for your child. Or maybe a laptop, or a skateboard, or a car. Straw man. Two-minute penalty. Red herring. Two-minute penalty.
And it's Christ who compells you to lie to your child about the existence of a fat, jolly man who flies around the world in a single night, to bring presents to everyone -- but hey, you believe in Christ, so why wouldn't you believe in Santa? Who is compelling you to be an asshole? Two more minutes, unsportsmanlike conduct in the guise of an ad hominem.
I get what you're trying to say -- that the spirit of Christmas is about giving and sharing and being cheerful on the darkest of winter days. But that's absolutely not what Christmas is about today. Correct. It is about the birth of Jesus Christ. That is what it is about. That is why it is celebrated around the world, why it is a national holiday, and why you get the day off from work.
Maybe you don't believe in Jesus. But that is, in fact, the reason why Christmas is celebrated by billions of people. Each of those billions may have their own reason for celebrating Christmas, but they wouldn't be celebrating it at all if not for that primary reason.
I couldn't help but notice the huge, annoying, "Jesus is the reason for the season" in those Xmas lights. Maybe if the architect did as much research into history as he did lighting, he might realize that Christmas was appropriated from earlier pagan traditions and has very little, if virtually nothing to do with "Jesus". Most people would not celebrate Christmas if not for our attachment of it to Jesus, and it certainly would not be a national holiday.
Jesus is, indeed, the reason why people care about Christmas at all. Funny how people like you complain about revisionism, and then try to ignore facts like this.
I can only imagine two other possible explanations for the evidence (and I meaning "possible" in the broadest most extreme sense). I have never heard anyone ever offer any additional explanations. One alternative I call the "infinite improbability" explanation, chuckle. Identical chunks of virus DNA by random chance got independently inserted at the identical 1-in-4-billion-location endless times in endless species, and just by random chance results in the same tree arrangement as evolution's claimed tree. Not every plausible, hehe. That's bogus. It's not "very plausible" that limbs can evolve by random chance either. But that is the idea evolution is BASED on: over very long periods of time, the unlikely can happen. Don't abandon that notion now that it can be used against you!
Nobody's claiming man came from a monkey. It was shorthand. I know the science well enough.
The contemporary model of human origins is that we and monkeys share a common ancestor. Quite a distant common ancestor, too; the divergence with monkeys is a good way back, long before the time when our common ancestor with the apes lived. Yes, and the point is that this is the model of human origins. We don't know.
And what links are you looking for? Suppose we found one, bones of an animal between, say, Lucy and H. habilis: does that clinch the deal, or does it just mean there are now two gaps where previously there was just one? Let me know when you find it, and I'll spend time considering it then.
It's rather simply, you can believe in Evolution and God. You don't have to take my world for it, you can take the Pope's word for it, though. I've heard he's often considered to be an expert on religion. Yeah, but he's no expert on evolution.:-)
The official stance of the Catholic church is that evolution and the Bible are compatible: ie. God's days are not human days. Yes, the word used in Genesis is not "24-hour day" but "indeterminate time period." But there's plenty of debate on whether in context it does mean "24-hour day," and the Pope -- for me, at least -- is certainly not authoritative on that subject.
I saw a clip the other day where the same chick said that nothing predates Christians.
Hey, I am a Christian. And I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to many things, including evolution.
It's a misstatement by whatshername, the redhead, to say that four of the Republican candidates don't believe in "evolution," first because it was three, second because evolution is a loaded word. Mike Huckabee properly says it is not a good yes-no question. I'll agree with Mike: if you are asking me if all life happened via perfectly random processes with no designer, then I will disagree; if you are asking me if man came from a monkey, then I don't know, because we've never proven the links. We infer them from other links elsewhere, and from the theory itself. That's not scientific proof, and as a scientifically minded person myself, I won't accept that we know what the answers are when, in fact, we don't.
But that gets me off on a tangent. Huckabee gave a reasoned response, one that is consistent with the science. That View chick... I'll just be polite and say she didn't.:-)
No. She said (and I am paraphrasing here, but this rendering was captured in my original post) that "'science' is wrong," not "science is wrong." She was not referring to all science, or even all science on this issue, but only the science that disagrees with her.
When Jenny McCarthy goes on to Oprah, to the delight of millions of viewers, to say that "science" is wrong because "my son is the science" that proves vaccines cause autism... I don't think YouTube is really a significant factor in this discussion.
The Discovery Institute has put considerable effort into undermining science education in the United States to promote stealth Creationism. It's a legal outfit with a few players like Behe and Dembski who they hope will make it look legitimate. It does not do science, unless you count the laughable B.S. that Behe tried to claim as science in the Dover trial. And that has what to do with the apparent intellectual property violations?
What bothers me about this story is that if the Discovery Institute was pro-Darwinism, this would have been at most a minor footnote. Someone would have said "hey you need to attribute this you bonehead" and they would have fixed it and all would have been well.
But because they have unpopular conclusions, well, that makes what they did a terrible thing. But their conclusions are not the point: if they had properly attributed and followed fair use rules, then this would have been legal. Of course, people STILL would have complained. It's the DI and their views their views that are the perceived problem, not that they violated intellectual property. And I find that to be just a wee bit dishonest, personally.
Not that I am defending DI. If they messed up, they messed up. I don't care either way. I just hate witchhunts... even in the name of "science."
This whole idea is just begging for the Rod Serling treatment.
Meet Mssers. Ortiz and Starr, self-proclaimed protectors of members of society from their own stupidity. If they aren't careful, they may find that the only way to escape the negative characteristics to be found in all men is a trip to... the Twilight Zone.
Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. Including from people who incorrectly, implicitly, claim to be non-idiotic.
In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. I don't usually do language trolls, but that's really rich coming from someone who can't spell "Internet" properly, and who directly implies the clearly false notion that today online, one cannot "communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people."
Huh. I've played many games on my PS2, and never have I ever had any corrupted save file. Weird. I even have PS1 cards still around that have saves on them, that still work.
The problem is, at some point Republicans appear to have decided that the best way to force less spending was to force taxes as low as possible, even if that didn't result in less spending.
It's playing a game of chicken with our grandchildren, and I don't approve. I don't think anyone, of any part, should spend more than we take in in revenue. If we want to spend more, we should take in more. If we want to spend less...well, eventually we should take in less, although with our debt, it could be a while.
If you mean the Republicans NOW, well, I agree with the criticism, except that no, I would much rather have a tax cut with high spending, then no tax cut with high spending. I would rather have deficits with low taxes than no deficits and high taxes.
Yes, it's irresponsible. But so is high spending and high taxes. At least this way, we don't cripple the economy while we're spending ourselves to death. Yes, it means greater liabilities later on: and I'd like to not have a crippled economy that can possibly DEAL with that, rather than one that can't, because otherwise our economy will shrink and we won't be able to pay for the welfare state we've created and the whole thing is going to come crashing down.
Well sure, but you can't fault him for that, since he can only know what the CIA tells him. He had the right idea, and it worked, even if it was overkill.
Almost all government spending has moderately good intentions.:)
Yes, but most of it is not based on good PRINCIPLES. This was.
I just find it annoying that military spending is just completely ignored when it come to shrinking the government.
That's because you don't include the fact that a huge portion of the outrage at the size of government has to do with government doing things it shouldn't be doing. And this is something most of us agreed should have been done.
So fine, complain about the size of the military IF that complaint is directly tied to us doing something we shouldn't be doing. But Reagan's not a good example of that. Maybe Iraq is, I don't know. Maybe Vietnam or Korea was. Maybe Bosnia was.
Most of them have insurance, and get care through it. By far, most people in this country -- which necessarily includes most non-wealthy people -- have health insurance, including most non-wealthy sick people. There is no truth to the claim that non-wealthy sick people are mostly uninsured. By far, most of them are insured.
Yeah, most people 'by far' have health insurance...when you include people on government insurance.
Yes, I do, of course.
The amount of people of people who are on private insurance is 66%, and half the rest are uninsured.
Yes, but many of that half are uninsured by choice. (And HOW INSANE is it that Hillary would REQUIRE everyone to have health insurance?! This is a TAX ON LIVING.)
I am, of course, presuming you don't approve of existing government insurance.
No, I don't; however, let's remeber the context. We are talking about the relative quality of the U.S. system, and I made the point that for those who HAVE care, we have the best health care around. The trick is to bring more people into having care without taking away the choices, liberty, or quality of care from others, and without increasing the size of government. And it is not really that hard.
As many of those are elderly with preexisting conditions who can't get either employee-based insurance or private plans, others are disabled who also can't get either, and the rest are children who can only get insurance if their parent manages to find a job with it
False. There are many more people included there. MANY do not have health insurance BY CHOICE. If I did not have a family and I was self-employed, I likely would not be insured, since it would be a waste of my mon
Yes, the collecting money is an enumerated power for "the common defence and general welfare" is an enumerated power. However, "the common defence and general welfare" is not broad, but specifically defined by the following powers. The phrase "the common defence and general welfare" is a preamble to what follows. So spending money on "the general welfare" is not an enumerated power: spending money on post roads is an enumerated power.
You realize that, by that logic, paying the debt isn't a power, although borrowing on the credit of the US to create a debt is.
Um. No. First, it's right there in the same sentence: "to pay the debts."
Second, there's the necessary and proper clause which would, by anyone's estimation, consider the payment of debts to be a necessary and proper power for the execution of any power creating a debt. There's two types of federal power: enumerated, and implied. That's where "necessary and proper" comes in.
However, that doesn't actually change my point even if it were true. Providing for the common defence is the job of Congress, it literally says it right there, even if that is not an enumerated power.
Only where "providing for the common defence" is defined in the following enumerated powers.
It is not the job of the executive, which demonstrates my original claim that people who say the president is in charge of 'national security' are fools.
Except, he is. Nothing foolish about it. "National security" is a broad term, first of all, which includes the military. But saying he is "in charge" of national security simply means, to most of us, that he is charged with actually executing the laws and powers used to provide that security. Which is, of course, true.
The only question you raised is if Congress is allowed to provide for it 'in general', or only allowed to do so via the powers following that.
Yes, which is not an unimportant one.
Alright, as long as we're in agreement that FISA is a constitutional law, that Congress can direct where and how wiretapping happens because there is no presidential power to wiretap.
Again, for years now I've been skeptical of the claim that there is an inherent constitutional authority to wiretap. But Clinton claimed it, and so did many other Presidents down through history, in various ways (including the directly related claim of inherent power to inspect international mail), and it's been backed up by the rest of the system. So while I've always leaned strongly toward no constitutional authority, I am not willing to say it is clear. It's not, from where I sit.
If it is, the executive is in more trouble, as the gang of eight says they haven't heard of another other program at all the executive could be talking about.
That's mere semantics. What happened is that Gonzales was asked about the legality of the program being questioned. He replied, no. Obviously, the context of the question was the specific terms of this program. So he was in effect saying that whatever was questioned before, does not exist in this program. That is perfectly fine. But in other contexts, it is also perfectly fine to call them the same program.
Am I the same person I was 30 years ago? I have almost completely different actual physical matter. I think differently. Maybe I have the same metaphysical Id. In different contexts, the same question can be answered in apparently opposite ways. He was right to say this is a different program, but that doesn't mean it has to appear as a different program to the Gang of Eight.
To recap this as bluntly as I can: The gang of eight were informed about a wiretapping program.
You DO NOT KNOW that this is ALL they were informed about.
They have repeatedly said that is all they were informed about.
Yes, but his budgets, if implemented as submitted, would have resulted in a balanced budget by the end of his term. It's Democrats who increased spending. Funny how Reagan critics like to ignore that little fact. I'm fairly certain it was both parties that increased spending Yes, but Reagan's budgets, if adopted, would have led to a balanced budget before he left office (assuming revenue remained as it was, of course).
And Republicans who cut taxes. Yes, thankfully.
And Reagan was not even vaguely correct about the size of the military we needed, but that is because no one realized that the Soviet Union would shortly collapse. Well sure, but you can't fault him for that, since he can only know what the CIA tells him. He had the right idea, and it worked, even if it was overkill.
I know about Goldwater, that's what I was talking about. I was arguing that traditional conservative thought didn't show up until him, with it actually peaking in 64 with his Presidential run, and didn't really manage to control the GOP until Reagan. In the sense of winning the Presidency, sure, but that is not really a good measure of party control. The conservative takeover in 1980 was already well underway in the late 60s or early 70s. Nixon and Ford were only the nominees because they were already there. Nixon had his previous inertia from fighting JFK etc., and Ford helped save the party after Nixon and was the incumbent. If Ford is not the incumbent, Reagan wins in '76.
Calvin Coolidge is most remembered as being pro-business (which, of course, is the same as today's conservatives), but he was also what we would today call a "true conservative." I didn't say that no one behaved as a conservative, I said that the theories and concept which, today, make up conservativism, entered mainstream Republican thought with Reagan. Except no, they didn't. Taft and Coolidge prove they were mainstream Republican thought 100 years ago.
Although the theory itself goes back further, but not that far, only to opposite to the New Deal. Obviously not, since the New Deal came more than 20 years after Taft.
I said there are two types of healthy people, those with insurance, and those without. That's actually a tautology, I have no idea how you're disagreeing with it. Bullshit. You went on to say sick people are not insured.
You see sick (And by sick I mean actually ill over a long period of time, not someone with a cold, or even someone with a heart attack.) non-wealthy people who can get and afford the health care they need, either with or without insurance? Most of them have insurance, and get care through it. By far, most people in this country -- which necessarily includes most non-wealthy people -- have health insurance, including most non-wealthy sick people. There is no truth to the claim that non-wealthy sick people are mostly uninsured. By far, most of them are insured.
The liberal propaganda has gotten the better of you.
I didn't say the overwhelming majority did. Oh please. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt: your words used implied ALL of them lost their insurance. I presumed you were using hyperbole, and so gave you "overwhelming majority." If you actually meant "large minority" (and what's large?) then you seriously screwed up what you actually wrote.
And again, by far, most of them are insured.
People who possess medical insurance and a long-term costly medical condition that the insurance actually pays for are an almost unfindable amount of the population. False. By far, most of them have insurance that covers their condition. You're blindly accepting the liberal propaganda.
But seriously, 'billions' for the American people somewhere between $10 to $40 a year per person. That's a pretty silly number to complain about. Regular checkups cost more than that. It's more than smoking, which is what you mentioned, so what are you whining about?
Slashdot Mirror
Straw man: Misrepresenting your opponent's position.
So you're right. Just a faulty assumption, almost an ad-hominim, but you were most definitely misrepresenting me, and not my position.
No. I was merely using "you" as a general example. Whether you personally have the day off could not matter less to me, or anyone else reading the discussion. It is entirely unimportant to the discussion. It does not fall under any category of logical fallacy, certainly not straw man, nor ad hominem. That you are harping on it, however, is a red herring fallacy. How many other non-religious (e.g., Christmas), non-historical (e.g., D-Day) holidays are celebrated by billions of people? Yule isn't religious? Correct, it isn't. And even if you want to superimpose "religion" onto it somehow, how would that help your case, seeing as how there are no significant peoples, cultures, or societies who belong to that "religion" today, such that it would be celebrated by millions, let alone billions, of people? That is, of course, a non sequitur. When you look up "straw man" feel free to look up that one, too. And that's a demonstration of how little you're actually willing to get into this debate. Ad hominem. How is it a non-sequitur? That would imply that the conclusion does not follow from the premises, but there are any number of ways that could be in a given argument. How is it NOT a non-sequitur? You said, After all, with only causation, I feel like putting up a sign saying "Sex is the reason for the season." After all, were it not for sex, we wouldn't have people to celebrate Christmas, now would we? But that is meaningless. It does not address the unique part that Christianity plays in Christmas, and pretends that any cause is equal to any other.You're spouting nonsense. I can only surmise you are bored and trolling. Oh wait, you don't actually understand the difference between "settled"
... if they had any religion at all,and had seen the evil inherent in religious rule as exemplified by such Christian things as the Salem witch trials, and so explicitly excluded such hateful delusions from the government of a free society Also false. Any student of history who bothers to do the research -- as you believe the "vast majority of the founders of the nationAlthough, I am not sure it is possible for you to keep that in mind. You seem quite incapable of rational thought.
You said that Christians SHOULD care about the origins of some SPECIFIC symbols. I wasn't saying no one gets offended by symbols or alternate interpretations, only that there is no reason anyone HAS to be offended by a particular use of a particular symbol.
Not only that, but you had it backward anyway, since you said earlier that it is Christians who should be pissed off because their symbols had some other origins, but in your example here, it is the Christians whose symbol was appropriated by someone else. So your own example was opposite of what you were trying to show.
Come on. You're talking about a religion that uses a device of torture and murder as its primary symbol. If you think we're going to be scared off because some symbols had some origins in paganism, you don't understand Christianity very well (especially the part where Paul told us that meat sacrificed to idols is just fine to eat, which surely has some bearing here, in the worst possible case).
My point is that it wasn't "the CHURCH THEMSELVES" that started celebrating Christmas as a Christian holiday. So there's nothing to understand, or not understand. If I were a christian (I'm not...I wouldn't consider myself anything, insofar as religion is concerned) the very idea that the church accepted and actually ENCOURAGED the celebrations brought forward by converts from a religion that was supposed to be about devil worship and blasphemy of MY god would be enough for me to secede from the church completely. That's stupid. It happened over a period of generations. It's not like they were persecuting people who celebrated the holiday one day, and embracing it the next. How does it not piss off christians that many of the traditions used in the celebration for the birth of their saviour came from the very people that their church was denouncing and killing? Why would it? In what logical sense is that remotely offensive? See...this is why religion is stupid to me. If you aren't willing to accept doublespeak in politics...why are you willing to accept it in religion? There is no example of "doublespeak" here.
You're acting like the church today -- as if there is such a monolithic entity that can be called "the church" -- agreed with the church from hundreds of years earlier when it killed people for "heresy." That's rubbish.
Most people today recognize that this is all just symbols, and symbols have no inherent meaning. A Nazi cross means one thing to most of us, but to some South Americans means something completely different. A Confederate flag means different things to different people. A Christmas tree has only whatever meaning we give to it. There is no pagan symbol or Christian symbol: that is, literally, nonsense. There are only pagan and Christian MEANINGS for whatever symbols happen to be present. So as long as your meaning is a valid one, then whatever symbols you have -- Christmas presents, Easter bunnies, whatever -- don't matter one bit.
Maybe you don't believe in Jesus. But that is, in fact, the reason why Christmas is celebrated by billions of people. Each of those billions may have their own reason for celebrating Christmas, but they wouldn't be celebrating it at all if not for that primary reason.
Jesus is, indeed, the reason why people care about Christmas at all. Funny how people like you complain about revisionism, and then try to ignore facts like this.
The funny thing is he's talking about me, but I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what ANY of this is about.
I saw a clip the other day where the same chick said that nothing predates Christians.
... I'll just be polite and say she didn't. :-)
Hey, I am a Christian. And I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to many things, including evolution.
It's a misstatement by whatshername, the redhead, to say that four of the Republican candidates don't believe in "evolution," first because it was three, second because evolution is a loaded word. Mike Huckabee properly says it is not a good yes-no question. I'll agree with Mike: if you are asking me if all life happened via perfectly random processes with no designer, then I will disagree; if you are asking me if man came from a monkey, then I don't know, because we've never proven the links. We infer them from other links elsewhere, and from the theory itself. That's not scientific proof, and as a scientifically minded person myself, I won't accept that we know what the answers are when, in fact, we don't.
But that gets me off on a tangent. Huckabee gave a reasoned response, one that is consistent with the science. That View chick
No. She said (and I am paraphrasing here, but this rendering was captured in my original post) that "'science' is wrong," not "science is wrong." She was not referring to all science, or even all science on this issue, but only the science that disagrees with her.
When Jenny McCarthy goes on to Oprah, to the delight of millions of viewers, to say that "science" is wrong because "my son is the science" that proves vaccines cause autism ... I don't think YouTube is really a significant factor in this discussion.
Again, proving my point. Thanks!
This just proves my point.
What bothers me about this story is that if the Discovery Institute was pro-Darwinism, this would have been at most a minor footnote. Someone would have said "hey you need to attribute this you bonehead" and they would have fixed it and all would have been well.
... even in the name of "science."
But because they have unpopular conclusions, well, that makes what they did a terrible thing. But their conclusions are not the point: if they had properly attributed and followed fair use rules, then this would have been legal. Of course, people STILL would have complained. It's the DI and their views their views that are the perceived problem, not that they violated intellectual property. And I find that to be just a wee bit dishonest, personally.
Not that I am defending DI. If they messed up, they messed up. I don't care either way. I just hate witchhunts
This whole idea is just begging for the Rod Serling treatment.
... the Twilight Zone.
Meet Mssers. Ortiz and Starr, self-proclaimed protectors of members of society from their own stupidity. If they aren't careful, they may find that the only way to escape the negative characteristics to be found in all men is a trip to
FWIW.
Huh. I've played many games on my PS2, and never have I ever had any corrupted save file. Weird. I even have PS1 cards still around that have saves on them, that still work.
The problem is, at some point Republicans appear to have decided that the best way to force less spending was to force taxes as low as possible, even if that didn't result in less spending.
It's playing a game of chicken with our grandchildren, and I don't approve. I don't think anyone, of any part, should spend more than we take in in revenue. If we want to spend more, we should take in more. If we want to spend less...well, eventually we should take in less, although with our debt, it could be a while.
If you mean the Republicans NOW, well, I agree with the criticism, except that no, I would much rather have a tax cut with high spending, then no tax cut with high spending. I would rather have deficits with low taxes than no deficits and high taxes.
Yes, it's irresponsible. But so is high spending and high taxes. At least this way, we don't cripple the economy while we're spending ourselves to death. Yes, it means greater liabilities later on: and I'd like to not have a crippled economy that can possibly DEAL with that, rather than one that can't, because otherwise our economy will shrink and we won't be able to pay for the welfare state we've created and the whole thing is going to come crashing down.
Well sure, but you can't fault him for that, since he can only know what the CIA tells him. He had the right idea, and it worked, even if it was overkill.
Almost all government spending has moderately good intentions. :)
Yes, but most of it is not based on good PRINCIPLES. This was.
I just find it annoying that military spending is just completely ignored when it come to shrinking the government.
That's because you don't include the fact that a huge portion of the outrage at the size of government has to do with government doing things it shouldn't be doing. And this is something most of us agreed should have been done.
So fine, complain about the size of the military IF that complaint is directly tied to us doing something we shouldn't be doing. But Reagan's not a good example of that. Maybe Iraq is, I don't know. Maybe Vietnam or Korea was. Maybe Bosnia was.
Most of them have insurance, and get care through it. By far, most people in this country -- which necessarily includes most non-wealthy people -- have health insurance, including most non-wealthy sick people. There is no truth to the claim that non-wealthy sick people are mostly uninsured. By far, most of them are insured.
Yeah, most people 'by far' have health insurance...when you include people on government insurance.
Yes, I do, of course.
The amount of people of people who are on private insurance is 66%, and half the rest are uninsured.
Yes, but many of that half are uninsured by choice. (And HOW INSANE is it that Hillary would REQUIRE everyone to have health insurance?! This is a TAX ON LIVING.)
I am, of course, presuming you don't approve of existing government insurance.
No, I don't; however, let's remeber the context. We are talking about the relative quality of the U.S. system, and I made the point that for those who HAVE care, we have the best health care around. The trick is to bring more people into having care without taking away the choices, liberty, or quality of care from others, and without increasing the size of government. And it is not really that hard.
As many of those are elderly with preexisting conditions who can't get either employee-based insurance or private plans, others are disabled who also can't get either, and the rest are children who can only get insurance if their parent manages to find a job with it
False. There are many more people included there. MANY do not have health insurance BY CHOICE. If I did not have a family and I was self-employed, I likely would not be insured, since it would be a waste of my mon
Yes, the collecting money is an enumerated power for "the common defence and general welfare" is an enumerated power. However, "the common defence and general welfare" is not broad, but specifically defined by the following powers. The phrase "the common defence and general welfare" is a preamble to what follows. So spending money on "the general welfare" is not an enumerated power: spending money on post roads is an enumerated power.
You realize that, by that logic, paying the debt isn't a power, although borrowing on the credit of the US to create a debt is.
Um. No. First, it's right there in the same sentence: "to pay the debts."
Second, there's the necessary and proper clause which would, by anyone's estimation, consider the payment of debts to be a necessary and proper power for the execution of any power creating a debt. There's two types of federal power: enumerated, and implied. That's where "necessary and proper" comes in.
However, that doesn't actually change my point even if it were true. Providing for the common defence is the job of Congress, it literally says it right there, even if that is not an enumerated power.
Only where "providing for the common defence" is defined in the following enumerated powers.
It is not the job of the executive, which demonstrates my original claim that people who say the president is in charge of 'national security' are fools.
Except, he is. Nothing foolish about it. "National security" is a broad term, first of all, which includes the military. But saying he is "in charge" of national security simply means, to most of us, that he is charged with actually executing the laws and powers used to provide that security. Which is, of course, true.
The only question you raised is if Congress is allowed to provide for it 'in general', or only allowed to do so via the powers following that.
Yes, which is not an unimportant one.
Alright, as long as we're in agreement that FISA is a constitutional law, that Congress can direct where and how wiretapping happens because there is no presidential power to wiretap.
Again, for years now I've been skeptical of the claim that there is an inherent constitutional authority to wiretap. But Clinton claimed it, and so did many other Presidents down through history, in various ways (including the directly related claim of inherent power to inspect international mail), and it's been backed up by the rest of the system. So while I've always leaned strongly toward no constitutional authority, I am not willing to say it is clear. It's not, from where I sit.
If it is, the executive is in more trouble, as the gang of eight says they haven't heard of another other program at all the executive could be talking about.
That's mere semantics. What happened is that Gonzales was asked about the legality of the program being questioned. He replied, no. Obviously, the context of the question was the specific terms of this program. So he was in effect saying that whatever was questioned before, does not exist in this program. That is perfectly fine. But in other contexts, it is also perfectly fine to call them the same program.
Am I the same person I was 30 years ago? I have almost completely different actual physical matter. I think differently. Maybe I have the same metaphysical Id. In different contexts, the same question can be answered in apparently opposite ways. He was right to say this is a different program, but that doesn't mean it has to appear as a different program to the Gang of Eight.
To recap this as bluntly as I can: The gang of eight were informed about a wiretapping program.
You DO NOT KNOW that this is ALL they were informed about.
They have repeatedly said that is all they were informed about.
No, they did not. You keep saying this, but it's
The liberal propaganda has gotten the better of you. I didn't say the overwhelming majority did. Oh please. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt: your words used implied ALL of them lost their insurance. I presumed you were using hyperbole, and so gave you "overwhelming majority." If you actually meant "large minority" (and what's large?) then you seriously screwed up what you actually wrote.
And again, by far, most of them are insured. People who possess medical insurance and a long-term costly medical condition that the insurance actually pays for are an almost unfindable amount of the population. False. By far, most of them have insurance that covers their condition. You're blindly accepting the liberal propaganda. But seriously, 'billions' for the American people somewhere between $10 to $40 a year per person. That's a pretty silly number to complain about. Regular checkups cost more than that. It's more than smoking, which is what you mentioned, so what are you whining about?