Bullshit. Where do you dumbasses pull this stuff out from? Conduct Unbecoming is really "Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" and only applies to "dishonest acts, displays of indecency, lawlessness, dealing unfairly, indecorum, injustice, or acts of cruelty". See wikipedia.
Enlisted personel are not considered gentlemen, despite officers being about as smart as bricks in the Army anyway. So this doesn't even apply to enlisted soldiers (and it would be rediculous to try to pin unbecoming on an officer for an internet discussion, unless he was posting pictures of naked people.)
Nobody gets a copy of the UCMJ, dumbshit. You get a half hour introduction to the UCMJ, but only AFTER you are commited to serving 8 years.
Plus, the UCMJ is nuts. Did you know it is illegal for a member of the armed forces to get a blowjob? AND THAT THEY ENFORCE THE RULE. There are people in federal prison right now for recieving oral sex.
They could have said 'a line of thirty cubits, and a little more, did compass it round'. Unless the brim had negative thickness, there is no way you can end up with a number lower than 3.14.. times the width.
They didn't.
The webpage you link to is pure speculation. All it proves is that it is possible to build a vat such that if you measure it in a way somewhat different than how it is claimed to be measured in the bible, you end up with measurements as quoted without saying that pi = 3.
If I told you that I lived 5 miles from Walmart, and then you looked at the map showing my house to be 200 yards from walmart, I would be wrong. If I said that 'the way *I* go it's five miles, becuase I like to get on the highway and drive around randomly for a while' I would be full of horse shit. That is exactly what the webpage you link to does. It produces fictions from pure thin air to substantiate a claim, and to boot they have to modify the claim to even make their speculation fit.
Now, it is possible that this is exactly what the bible is saying.
What about all the rest of the inconsistancies? Why does the bible refer to multiple gods throughout the old testimate? Ahh, you say, the trinity. The entire trinity theory smacks of exactly the nonsense that I am talking about. Christians have simply changed the meaning of the text to make it consistant.
If the bible said that 'his cloak was red' and 10 seconds later said 'his cloak was never red', christians would come up with some incredible theory about the meaning of this passage. People would read it over and over becuase, since the bible is perfectly true, any apparent contradiction must be a mistake in the reader, not the book.
I'm content not to believe in Zarathustra, even if Zoroastrian texts have no contradictions. However, what is your reason to not worship Mohammed or Zarathustra, and instead worship Jesus? Why not Buhdda? Christianity has no more historical evidence than many other religions, and in fact has much less than many.
Add that to the fact that the Christ story is far from original (and no, not in the prophesy sense). There are probably a dozen other 'gods' who were buried and rose on the third day, had 12 disciples, and were born on December 25th, etc, etc. The cross was a symbol of Mithraism long before Christ is even claimed to have been born.
How about the osirin sacrament? Predating Christ by 2000 years, followers of Osiris believed that taking his sacrament was literally to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Sound familiar? see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris#The_Osiria n_Sacrament
In fact, the Jesus story contains no original elements, other than geography and ethnicity. Thus it very easily could just be a myth which developed over time.
There are no historical records outside of the Gospels of the bible of Jesus's existence as a person. There is no record of his actions outside of the Gospels.
Nope. There are gaping holes in the bible. There are huge gaping holes. Even the bible admits holes, and large parts of the bible carry the discaimer that those parts are merely the opinion of the (human) author, and should not be construed to be the word of god.
Even if you ignore the parts that are clearly nonsense, you end up with widely varying stories.
Jesus says 'turn the other cheek' and 'pick up YOUR cross, and follow me'.
Jesus also says 'I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. '
Of course, this is just the author of the book attributed to Matthew misquoting Micah and attributing it to Jesus.
Then there are all the mis-prophesies of Jesus.
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." "Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done." "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Matthew, Mark, and Luke respectively. Now, Jesus is talking about his return, and the Judgement, etc. Clearly that entire generation, and the next 100 or so generations have now died. Jesus has not returned.
Christians try to say that is because that generation ISN'T really dead. They are in heaven or some such. Yet Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms that he will return before that generation has died as in heart stops beating. Jesus never refers to a soul or any other immaterial representation of the 'self', and neither do the Jews before him. To them the body was all there was, and to be buried in the common grave with criminals was the worst thing they could do to you after you died. There is no discussion of a soul or spirit (except the holy spirit, which is something entirely different, and the simmilarity in terms is just a fluke of translation) anywhere in the bible, whatsoever. And even to punish the supporters of the antichrist in a lake of fire it is necessary that they are alive.
there are volumes discussing and explaining the misunderstandings that lead to the identification of these items as contradictory
In fact, there are not. These so called discussions intentionally confuse the issue, quote more passages from the bible as evidence, and often claim that the bible does not mean what it clearly says. They do mental gymnastics to avoid ever admitting that the bible has contradictions, or what would be even worse, that translations of the bible do not convey the origional meaning. The purpose of these 'discussions' is to satisfy believers that there isn't a problem, and prevent the seed of doubt from being sown.
Here's a tiny doubt for you. If god made man in his image, why did god give man a penis, or more to the point, testicles? Does god have a penis, and testicles? Did Adam need testicles, even before Eve was created? Why would god give him the urge to procreate (via testicles and testosterone) an not give him a mate? Why would god do this, and then have to actually witness Adam being lonely before he (god) realized that he should create Eve? Why does the bible claim that god created woman from the rib of Adam, when men and women have equal numbers of ribs (it was widely believed in antiquity that men had one more rib than women)?
Here is a much bigger doubt for you. The bible makes no mention of dinosaurs, or of massive meteor impacts with the earth. Yet we know all of these things existed. We know, for example, that there were periods of several millions of years in which animals, which do not exist any longer, were the primary life on this planet. Yet the bible mentions none of these. Specifically, the bible can be rather easily shown to claim that the world is around 4000 years old. This is curious, since we now have evidence of civilizations which predate this age, and large numbers of human made tools which predate this by many years. Worse, we have fossils thousands of feet below the ground, in areas where people have continuously
a. Nope, that went corrupt sometime in the 1800s (maybe even earlier).
False. There has never been a government that wasn't corrupt. The founding fathers set up a government that helped their personal interests, sometimes at the expense of other americans (slaves come to mind, but also southerners who imported manufactured goods, and above all Indians. Read about good old Ben Franklin bannning all newspapers but the one he owned from being sent via the mail.)
Wrong. Rome was invaded by barbarians. It was unable to resist them because of the softness of the people living there, possibly lead poisoning, the incredible number of barbarians, deals made with the barbarians over the previous several hundered years, etc, etc, etc.
Capitalism didn't help or hinder it. Capitalism does not magically make your country invulnerable, as you seem to think. In fact, capitalism serves only those with capital, and no one else. It weakens countries and civil institutions, and bends governments to it's will by corruption, if doing so will give a better return on investment. It strengthens other governments or sets up strong men, if it will give a better return on investment.
Capitalism would produce a system where YOU have to live in salt mines your entire life eating rats if that state of affairs would somehow make a few people very wealty. The fact is, this sort of thing does happen, but not to you. You are from a country with plenty of capital.
If you actually believe this crap, explain to me how civilized people have been living in greece since the beginning of greek civilization to now?
When did the roman empire end? If knew any history, you would know that it never really did. It kept petering on and on, until finally it became silly too keep using the name. However, there was never a day when you could say 'it's over! now everyone in the roman empire has to go back to being cavemen!'.
The 'end of the roman empire' is really just a significant change in the empire. The people who lived there continued to live there without much change. Later they called it Italy, France, etc, but in between the change was incredibly gradual.
If we removed the safety net, people would have to learn to take care of themselves.
What you mean to say is, "if you remove the safety net, people would have to learn to take care of themselves, otherwise they will live in horrible squalor and hunger."
And the response is, "And so will their children."
And the result is, "You will pay for their children, in many more ways than just food and clothing. They (the gamblers children) will also be far more likely to violently rob you."
The real solution is to sterilize drug addicts and alchoholics and severe gambling adicts before they get an opportunity to destroy other peoples lives (their children).
It isn't an attractive solution, but it doesn't really harm anyone. There are ways to sterilize which are reversible, in the very unlikely case that the person in question manages to stay clean for a few years. Having children should be a priviledge left to those people who can get through a day without smoking crystal meth. If you disagree, do you support letting people who are hooked on narcotics be responsible for the care and feeding and nurturing of children?
No, suicide is typically about psychological problems.
Why do you suppose it is that some people come out of difficult situations relatively unscathed, while others have crippling mental problems? Why do you suppose some people seem to be drawn to drugs and alcohol and others could care less, despite similar backgrounds and social contexts?
Most of who you are is determined by genetics. Recent research bears this out, and if anything, makes stronger claims than I do.
Identical twins tend to end up very similar, with similar likes, and dislikes, similar hobbies, and so on. This is true whether they are raised together or apart, whether they are raised in similar environments or completely different environments.
Some people have no ability to empathize with other people. Who ends up being a 'sociopath' seems to be highly genetically determined. Some people are conditional sociopaths, in that the sociopath genes seem to only find expression in certain social conditions (that is, with a chaotic life these genes tend to be 'turned on'). Some people could never become a sociopath, regardless of upbringing or trauma.
Psychological problems are almost entirely caused by genetics.
A lot of people in slashdot think that just because they *believe* the type of Government China has is unfair then it is wrong and unfair.
Actually, I don't think anyone anywhere thinks that, except for crazy homeless people.
Let me diagram your assertion, where '=>' means therefore.
"I believe china's government is wrong and unfair" => "China's government is wrong and unfair."
That is called magical thinking. Nobody thinks that thinking something causes it to be true.
Now, it is possible that you mean that people think that china's government is unfair because they think that china's government is unfair. That would be pretty stupid to say though, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you think everyone on slashdot is a whino.
Yahoo MUST comply with local laws if they want to make buisness there
You're right of course. But maybe the point of the article is that WE are allowed (so far) and we would LIKE (all the time) to hear about news like this. Maybe some of us will stop using Yahoo as a result.
In the end, you're not only a dumbass, you're fighting a strawman of your own creation.
The powerful men who run this world don't want it to turn into a dystopian nightmare. After all, they're the ones who would be stuck owning it.
Besides, this thing is being built by the government and those who work for the government. In other words, it won't actually do anything. Probably they'll just build a huge war room with a lot of blinking lights so that they can impress visitors and keep the funding coming.
And that is the NSA, the crown jewel of this system.
So long as the government is run by incompetents, and as long as only incompetents agree to be complicit in the current move toward whatever we're moving toward, I'm sleeping easy.
There aren't *any* shows where significant amounts of information are passed. It is one of the limitations of the media.
On the plus side "Television" is very good at giving you the impression you are learning something, and it is highly addictive.
(How many people do you know who simply don't have a TV because they don't care for it? Now how many people don't have an X where X is anything else? I will bet dollar for dollar that more people don't have heat in America than don't have a TV set. Moreover, I'll bet you that more people don't have any food whatsoever in their house than don't have a working TV. Moreover, I'll bet you that if you did a study of people who have been robbed, the first thing they replace is their TV.
And here is the best part. If you bring this up, people will react very angrily sometimes. It's like you are trying to steal their crack.)
How about putting one or two, or even a hundred non-life derived chemicals together and making a simple cell or even a virus?
Uhm, they pretty much have. Scientists have devised simple forms of RNA which replicate themselves in a nutrient bath. This is the simplest form of life in most theories of the advent of life as far as I know, and so your requirement is met and then some.
Is it? Or is it the astonishing success of religious lunatics getting to them first?
It amazes me that there is a debate about evolution in school, because it 'is just a theory', meanwhile christians send their children to sunday school from the age of 3 on up, to prevent the possibility of them ever doubting what they are taught. There they are taught that Elijah went to heaven in a chariot of fire (not the theory of the chariot of fire heaven journey) and other fables (like the time a snake talked to eve, or the time Jesus flew).
So the point is that christians immunize their children against reality from birth on up, meanwhile preventing the best knowledge we have available from reaching them because it conflicts with their myths and fairy tales.
The astonishing thing is that they succeed in subverting public education to this goal, and then manage to frame the debate in a form which casts them in a less than insane light.
Maybe you are right in the second case. All I am trying to argue in this thread is that if you are right that there is not one morality, then there is nothing that we can sensibly call morality.
You're just about there. Morality is a human creation. There do exist many differen't codes of morality, but none of them can claim to be more 'true' than any other one. In fact, they are only 'true' in the sense that people generally agree with them. This is like saying 'chocolate tastes good'. That is a true statement, BUT some people hate chocolate.
It is right to help poor people. BUT sometimes it is counterproductive to help the poor (for example, when it makes them dependent on said help).
Let's call statements like this true*. Most statements that people make are true*, and very few are true.
My contention is that systems of morality are at best true*. There is no true system of morality, anymore than it is true that chocolate tastes good, or that 80 degrees is too hot to go skiing (abudabi now has an indoor ski dome).
You want to analyze morality as though it is geometry, with axioms and laws which are universal and always true. Morality is much more like poetry. People often disagree about it, and there is really no way to say who is right. At best one might agree with one side and claim that that side is 'right', but you are abusing the word right when you do this. What you really mean is that to your thinking one side or the other is correct (this is the best ANYONE can EVER do, that is, determine to the best of their ability).
Deciding what things are moral and how to tell it is a topic for another day.
How you decide what things are moral IS your morality. Philosophers have tried about 10,000 different systems of ethics, in an attempt to figure out a system that tells us what to do in various situations. The result of every attempt they have made is that in certain (you might say pathological) situations thier system of ethics demands that you do terrible things.
All of these systems are superior to Christianity, however, in that at least they attempt to figure out some sort of common thread in morality, a general rule you can use to devise more specific rules. Christianity's morality is simply the rules declared by some person(s). Perhaps this person made some good rules, but if you actually read the bible you will realize that about 75% of it is complete nonsense.
Saying that contradictory moral claims are equally valid (because they can be held by two different people) rips all the meaning from the word "morality" and in effect leaves us with no morality at all.
Obviously the moral claims aren't equally valid to the two people in the dispute. They each stick to the morality that they believe in. Now, assuming that these people aren't harmed by the disagreement (If one of them thinks it is ok to steal the others car, then one is harmed. If one thinks it is ok to wear hats on Sunday and the other one does not, no one is harmed.) then they should just agree that it doesn't matter.
What happens in reality is that people try to protect god from harm or from being offended. So in the case of wearing a hat on Sunday, the person who thinks it is wrong attempts to act in a righteous way, and force the person wearing the hat to take it off. This is why morality based on religion will only work if everyone has exactly the same (and I mean identical) religions. As soon as one group of people decides that it is Saturday that hats aren't allowed, wars will start.
Now, I don't think that wars actually start over this sort of thing (maybe in certain cases). However, if you are a leader and you are corrupt (I'm being redundant here) then you can use these religious superstitions in order to get people on your side to start a war. Look at the Muslims of the world right now. In many many countries they are burning down embassies because of a cartoon which ran in one newspaper for one day. They wer
It leads directly to contradiction to say that morals are relative.
No, it doesn't.
Morals make statements about what one ought or ought not do.
Granted.
A relative moral system leads allows us to say that one ought to do X and one ought not to do X, at the same time and in the same sense.
Only if you subscribe to two different moral system at the same time. However, more than one moral system does exist. Therefore, according to your logic, all but one are false (not absolute). How do you plan to demonstrate that Christianity is the one true system? Your logic works equally well to make Zoroastrianism the one true system.
Note that I do not say it is easy or even necessarily possible for man to know right and wrong completely or certainly in all cases.
If you can't verify it then it might as well not exist.
Just because a "moral compass" is absolute does not mean it is correct. Christians who have acted wrongly through history do not prove that morality is not absolute. They just prove that Christians do not necessarily act morally.
No, it means that not only do Christians not act morally, they also do not know what is moral (to our best estimate of what morality is). They thought that it was moral to burn people at the stake for reading banned books, or saying the earth revolves around the sun (literally). Therefore a Christians moral compass can be badly skewed, which proves that they are not being told what is right or wrong by god.
You can't have it both ways. If you think it worthwhile to realize my moral system is imperfect and that it might need adjustment, then you are saying that some moral systems are better than others.
Yes, we can have it both ways. I choose to hold the moral beliefs I do, because I feel that it is proper. If you disagree and want to convince me that I am wrong (a noble endeavor to improve and help another human being) you will want to have something more credible than "A magic man who lives in the sky told a group of people thousands of years ago that they should do this and this, but not that".
By the way, I fully realize that my moral system is imperfect. I don't always do the right thing even when I know what it is. I don't have any illusion about always being able to know perfectly what is right.
Aha! You DO believe that your moral system is perfect. You just don't follow it perfectly (that is you give in to temptation). I will be the first to inform you that some things you now think are good you will someday think are bad, and some things you now think are bad you will someday realize are good. That is ok. Some things you think are wrong are ok, but you will never realize this. Your very compass isn't perfect. That is part of being human.
I'm not going to get caught up in defending goofy religious nuts. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Relative morals as an idea is not even self-consistent. "Morals are relative" is an absolute statement about morals. You do the math.
When he says that "Morals are relative" he simply means there is no magical objective truth about morality. You have to decide for yourself what YOU think is right or wrong, but you should realize that you might change your mind later, and if someone disagrees that doesn't make them an enemy (necessarily). There is no virtue in forcing a morality on someone for it's own sake.
Your words make it clear that you think some moral systems are better than others. If so, then morals are not relative.
Only if you don't accept that you are very likely w
If there is an absolute morality how do you determine what it is?
Is there a way that two people who disagree about a moral question to test which person is correct (at least in theory)?
If there isn't a way, then you can't say one person is right or wrong. Therefore it is completely up in the air whether any human system of morality thought up so far corresponds to the absolute morality. Therefore the existence or lack of existence of this absolute morality is pointless to discuss, since even if it does exist we can never know what it is.
Now, on the other hand, I don't think there is some sort of absolute right and wrong. Morality developed along with humanity. What is 'right' is what people generally hold to be right. Unfortunately this makes ethical discussions awful, because you end up saying "no tommy, there is nothing wrong with a calculator, unless you are Amish" or "It is not unethical to get a blood transfusion, although Christian Scientists believe that it is unethical."
In the end religious people are completely certain that they are right, even to the point of one preacher I witnessed one Sunday at church, who said, with tears in his eyes, "I have to accept that my parents went to hell because they weren't full immersion baptized". Meaning that because they were only dunked half way into the water when the preacher dunked them in the onstage bathtub God was going to reward them with eternal Damnation, whereas if they had gone under the water they would have earned eternal salvation.
There is no reason to coddle these lunatics. It is a form of enabling when people kindof nod their heads and pretend the person talking isn't completely nuts. You'll be doing them a favor if you explain to them that there isn't a magical man in the sky, who is all powerful, all knowing, infinite in every way, and completely obsessed with whether you commit covet your neighbors wife or steal gum, and apparently if you clone a human or create a human animal hybrid.
God also bans or endorses virtually everything you can do depending on who you ask.
By moral compass I mean a magical thing which is endowed upon a person by the holy ghost, and gives them the ability to divine what god wants them to do. If you believe this then you cannot be wrong, and anyone who disagrees is an agent (possibly unwittingly) of the devil.
How do the millions of Christians who have been murdered by other Christians for having slightly different beliefs feel about this? (and I mean S L I G H T. The Anabaptists were crusaded against, thousands killed, for wanting to wait until adulthood for babtism instead of doing it at birth) What about the witches which were burned at the stake?
What about all the Christians in prison? Do you trust their moral compass?
The fact is that there is no moral compass. If anything the belief that there is such a thing has given people who otherwise might think twice an unreasonable certainty, and some of those people committed very serious crimes.
And me, as a republican, I think science needs to be left alone for the most part*. *Boldified by me.
Just like every other idiot, fundy! You want science to be left alone, except for those parts which you want to change. Fundy's like to feel like they are very reasonable, and each one additionally thinks that they are the final arbiter of what is right and holy. The irony of this escapes them completely.
So while these nutballs are all for finding a cure for cancer (most of them, some sects believe that all medicine is an affront to God), they also want you to do it in a way that doesn't offend whatever nonsense their sect happens to tell them to believe. Most believe cloning is wrong, some believe that blood transfusions are wrong, some believe that using human tissue for testing is wrong. If you had to satisfy every nutball's crazy and unsubstantiated beliefs (or group's beliefs) you wouldn't be allowed to do anything at all.
So I'm not surprised that you think science should be left alone 'for the most part'. However, I'll be more comfortable when people like you (or those whom you support at least, it's the same thing) who don't believe in science, who instead believe that you are given a magic 'truth/morality compass' by the holy spirit and therefore have the magical ability to determine the rightness of science without resort to arguments or facts (yes, this is what they believe), are not given ANY power to control ANY scientific research.
Only then, when people who think that the first impulse they have (that's disgusting!) is some kind of message from god aren't in positions of power, will I be more comfortable.
Slashdot Mirror
Aaaaawwwww riiiight (quagmire)
Bullshit. Where do you dumbasses pull this stuff out from? Conduct Unbecoming is really "Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" and only applies to "dishonest acts, displays of indecency, lawlessness, dealing unfairly, indecorum, injustice, or acts of cruelty". See wikipedia.
Enlisted personel are not considered gentlemen, despite officers being about as smart as bricks in the Army anyway. So this doesn't even apply to enlisted soldiers (and it would be rediculous to try to pin unbecoming on an officer for an internet discussion, unless he was posting pictures of naked people.)
Nobody gets a copy of the UCMJ, dumbshit. You get a half hour introduction to the UCMJ, but only AFTER you are commited to serving 8 years.
Plus, the UCMJ is nuts. Did you know it is illegal for a member of the armed forces to get a blowjob? AND THAT THEY ENFORCE THE RULE. There are people in federal prison right now for recieving oral sex.
Something you don't know of / haven't experienced!? That's suprising given your well thought out and intelligent post.
Now read this again, but with even more sarcasm and derision.
Sorry, I don't buy it.
r ities_to_Christianity
a n_Sacrament
l s_with_Christianity
"ten cubits from the one brim to the other"
"a line of thirty cubits did compass it round"
They could have said 'a line of thirty cubits, and a little more, did compass it round'. Unless the brim had negative thickness, there is no way you can end up with a number lower than 3.14.. times the width.
They didn't.
The webpage you link to is pure speculation. All it proves is that it is possible to build a vat such that if you measure it in a way somewhat different than how it is claimed to be measured in the bible, you end up with measurements as quoted without saying that pi = 3.
If I told you that I lived 5 miles from Walmart, and then you looked at the map showing my house to be 200 yards from walmart, I would be wrong. If I said that 'the way *I* go it's five miles, becuase I like to get on the highway and drive around randomly for a while' I would be full of horse shit. That is exactly what the webpage you link to does. It produces fictions from pure thin air to substantiate a claim, and to boot they have to modify the claim to even make their speculation fit.
Now, it is possible that this is exactly what the bible is saying.
What about all the rest of the inconsistancies? Why does the bible refer to multiple gods throughout the old testimate? Ahh, you say, the trinity. The entire trinity theory smacks of exactly the nonsense that I am talking about. Christians have simply changed the meaning of the text to make it consistant.
If the bible said that 'his cloak was red' and 10 seconds later said 'his cloak was never red', christians would come up with some incredible theory about the meaning of this passage. People would read it over and over becuase, since the bible is perfectly true, any apparent contradiction must be a mistake in the reader, not the book.
I'm content not to believe in Zarathustra, even if Zoroastrian texts have no contradictions. However, what is your reason to not worship Mohammed or Zarathustra, and instead worship Jesus? Why not Buhdda? Christianity has no more historical evidence than many other religions, and in fact has much less than many.
Add that to the fact that the Christ story is far from original (and no, not in the prophesy sense). There are probably a dozen other 'gods' who were buried and rose on the third day, had 12 disciples, and were born on December 25th, etc, etc. The cross was a symbol of Mithraism long before Christ is even claimed to have been born.
Like Mithraism, which predates Christ by 100 years, and is contemporary with early christinanity.
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism#Simila
How about the osirin sacrament? Predating Christ by 2000 years, followers of Osiris believed that taking his sacrament was literally to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Sound familiar?
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris#The_Osiri
Dionysus turned water into wine before Jesus. Dionysus was fathered by a god but his mother was a mortal woman.
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus#Paralle
In fact, the Jesus story contains no original elements, other than geography and ethnicity. Thus it very easily could just be a myth which developed over time.
There are no historical records outside of the Gospels of the bible of Jesus's existence as a person. There is no record of his actions outside of the Gospels.
Even if you ignore the parts that are clearly nonsense, you end up with widely varying stories.
Jesus says 'turn the other cheek' and 'pick up YOUR cross, and follow me'.
Jesus also says 'I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. '
Of course, this is just the author of the book attributed to Matthew misquoting Micah and attributing it to Jesus.
Then there are all the mis-prophesies of Jesus.
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done."
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Matthew, Mark, and Luke respectively. Now, Jesus is talking about his return, and the Judgement, etc. Clearly that entire generation, and the next 100 or so generations have now died. Jesus has not returned.
Christians try to say that is because that generation ISN'T really dead. They are in heaven or some such. Yet Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms that he will return before that generation has died as in heart stops beating. Jesus never refers to a soul or any other immaterial representation of the 'self', and neither do the Jews before him. To them the body was all there was, and to be buried in the common grave with criminals was the worst thing they could do to you after you died. There is no discussion of a soul or spirit (except the holy spirit, which is something entirely different, and the simmilarity in terms is just a fluke of translation) anywhere in the bible, whatsoever. And even to punish the supporters of the antichrist in a lake of fire it is necessary that they are alive.
In fact, there are not. These so called discussions intentionally confuse the issue, quote more passages from the bible as evidence, and often claim that the bible does not mean what it clearly says. They do mental gymnastics to avoid ever admitting that the bible has contradictions, or what would be even worse, that translations of the bible do not convey the origional meaning. The purpose of these 'discussions' is to satisfy believers that there isn't a problem, and prevent the seed of doubt from being sown.
Here's a tiny doubt for you. If god made man in his image, why did god give man a penis, or more to the point, testicles? Does god have a penis, and testicles? Did Adam need testicles, even before Eve was created? Why would god give him the urge to procreate (via testicles and testosterone) an not give him a mate? Why would god do this, and then have to actually witness Adam being lonely before he (god) realized that he should create Eve? Why does the bible claim that god created woman from the rib of Adam, when men and women have equal numbers of ribs (it was widely believed in antiquity that men had one more rib than women)?
Here is a much bigger doubt for you. The bible makes no mention of dinosaurs, or of massive meteor impacts with the earth. Yet we know all of these things existed. We know, for example, that there were periods of several millions of years in which animals, which do not exist any longer, were the primary life on this planet. Yet the bible mentions none of these. Specifically, the bible can be rather easily shown to claim that the world is around 4000 years old. This is curious, since we now have evidence of civilizations which predate this age, and large numbers of human made tools which predate this by many years. Worse, we have fossils thousands of feet below the ground, in areas where people have continuously
False. There has never been a government that wasn't corrupt. The founding fathers set up a government that helped their personal interests, sometimes at the expense of other americans (slaves come to mind, but also southerners who imported manufactured goods, and above all Indians. Read about good old Ben Franklin bannning all newspapers but the one he owned from being sent via the mail.)
Wrong. Rome was invaded by barbarians. It was unable to resist them because of the softness of the people living there, possibly lead poisoning, the incredible number of barbarians, deals made with the barbarians over the previous several hundered years, etc, etc, etc.
Capitalism didn't help or hinder it. Capitalism does not magically make your country invulnerable, as you seem to think. In fact, capitalism serves only those with capital, and no one else. It weakens countries and civil institutions, and bends governments to it's will by corruption, if doing so will give a better return on investment. It strengthens other governments or sets up strong men, if it will give a better return on investment.
Capitalism would produce a system where YOU have to live in salt mines your entire life eating rats if that state of affairs would somehow make a few people very wealty. The fact is, this sort of thing does happen, but not to you. You are from a country with plenty of capital.
Actually, you couldn't be more wrong.
If you actually believe this crap, explain to me how civilized people have been living in greece since the beginning of greek civilization to now?
When did the roman empire end? If knew any history, you would know that it never really did. It kept petering on and on, until finally it became silly too keep using the name. However, there was never a day when you could say 'it's over! now everyone in the roman empire has to go back to being cavemen!'.
The 'end of the roman empire' is really just a significant change in the empire. The people who lived there continued to live there without much change. Later they called it Italy, France, etc, but in between the change was incredibly gradual.
How do you validate the parts that contradict the other parts?
What you mean to say is, "if you remove the safety net, people would have to learn to take care of themselves, otherwise they will live in horrible squalor and hunger."
And the response is, "And so will their children."
And the result is, "You will pay for their children, in many more ways than just food and clothing. They (the gamblers children) will also be far more likely to violently rob you."
The real solution is to sterilize drug addicts and alchoholics and severe gambling adicts before they get an opportunity to destroy other peoples lives (their children).
It isn't an attractive solution, but it doesn't really harm anyone. There are ways to sterilize which are reversible, in the very unlikely case that the person in question manages to stay clean for a few years. Having children should be a priviledge left to those people who can get through a day without smoking crystal meth. If you disagree, do you support letting people who are hooked on narcotics be responsible for the care and feeding and nurturing of children?
No, suicide is typically about psychological problems.
Why do you suppose it is that some people come out of difficult situations relatively unscathed, while others have crippling mental problems? Why do you suppose some people seem to be drawn to drugs and alcohol and others could care less, despite similar backgrounds and social contexts?
Most of who you are is determined by genetics. Recent research bears this out, and if anything, makes stronger claims than I do.
Identical twins tend to end up very similar, with similar likes, and dislikes, similar hobbies, and so on. This is true whether they are raised together or apart, whether they are raised in similar environments or completely different environments.
Some people have no ability to empathize with other people. Who ends up being a 'sociopath' seems to be highly genetically determined. Some people are conditional sociopaths, in that the sociopath genes seem to only find expression in certain social conditions (that is, with a chaotic life these genes tend to be 'turned on'). Some people could never become a sociopath, regardless of upbringing or trauma.
Psychological problems are almost entirely caused by genetics.
You waited like a week to post this? Nobody will ever see it but me!
Actually, I don't think anyone anywhere thinks that, except for crazy homeless people.
Let me diagram your assertion, where '=>' means therefore.
"I believe china's government is wrong and unfair" => "China's government is wrong and unfair."
That is called magical thinking. Nobody thinks that thinking something causes it to be true.
Now, it is possible that you mean that people think that china's government is unfair because they think that china's government is unfair. That would be pretty stupid to say though, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you think everyone on slashdot is a whino.
You're right of course. But maybe the point of the article is that WE are allowed (so far) and we would LIKE (all the time) to hear about news like this. Maybe some of us will stop using Yahoo as a result.
In the end, you're not only a dumbass, you're fighting a strawman of your own creation.
Listen, this is nothing to worry about.
s aspying/im:/060125/ids_photos_ts/r3992050078.jpg;_ ylt=AgjzYqD_wIQa7YoOayVYmANiWscF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3dmhr OGVvBHNlYwNzc20-w izard_33954.jpg
The powerful men who run this world don't want it to turn into a dystopian nightmare. After all, they're the ones who would be stuck owning it.
Besides, this thing is being built by the government and those who work for the government. In other words, it won't actually do anything. Probably they'll just build a huge war room with a lot of blinking lights so that they can impress visitors and keep the funding coming.
Examples:
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/ts/122805n
http://tyranno.saur.us/rex/link/?id=33953
Money shot:
http://tyranno.saur.us/cache/2006/February/6/nsa-
And that is the NSA, the crown jewel of this system.
So long as the government is run by incompetents, and as long as only incompetents agree to be complicit in the current move toward whatever we're moving toward, I'm sleeping easy.
Yes, this is called "Television".
There aren't *any* shows where significant amounts of information are passed. It is one of the limitations of the media.
On the plus side "Television" is very good at giving you the impression you are learning something, and it is highly addictive.
(How many people do you know who simply don't have a TV because they don't care for it? Now how many people don't have an X where X is anything else? I will bet dollar for dollar that more people don't have heat in America than don't have a TV set. Moreover, I'll bet you that more people don't have any food whatsoever in their house than don't have a working TV. Moreover, I'll bet you that if you did a study of people who have been robbed, the first thing they replace is their TV.
And here is the best part. If you bring this up, people will react very angrily sometimes. It's like you are trying to steal their crack.)
How about putting one or two, or even a hundred non-life derived chemicals together and making a simple cell or even a virus?
Uhm, they pretty much have. Scientists have devised simple forms of RNA which replicate themselves in a nutrient bath. This is the simplest form of life in most theories of the advent of life as far as I know, and so your requirement is met and then some.
Is it? Or is it the astonishing success of religious lunatics getting to them first?
It amazes me that there is a debate about evolution in school, because it 'is just a theory', meanwhile christians send their children to sunday school from the age of 3 on up, to prevent the possibility of them ever doubting what they are taught. There they are taught that Elijah went to heaven in a chariot of fire (not the theory of the chariot of fire heaven journey) and other fables (like the time a snake talked to eve, or the time Jesus flew).
So the point is that christians immunize their children against reality from birth on up, meanwhile preventing the best knowledge we have available from reaching them because it conflicts with their myths and fairy tales.
The astonishing thing is that they succeed in subverting public education to this goal, and then manage to frame the debate in a form which casts them in a less than insane light.
Maybe you are right in the second case. All I am trying to argue in this thread is that if you are right that there is not one morality, then there is nothing that we can sensibly call morality.
You're just about there. Morality is a human creation. There do exist many differen't codes of morality, but none of them can claim to be more 'true' than any other one. In fact, they are only 'true' in the sense that people generally agree with them. This is like saying 'chocolate tastes good'. That is a true statement, BUT some people hate chocolate.
It is right to help poor people. BUT sometimes it is counterproductive to help the poor (for example, when it makes them dependent on said help).
Let's call statements like this true*. Most statements that people make are true*, and very few are true.
My contention is that systems of morality are at best true*. There is no true system of morality, anymore than it is true that chocolate tastes good, or that 80 degrees is too hot to go skiing (abudabi now has an indoor ski dome).
You want to analyze morality as though it is geometry, with axioms and laws which are universal and always true. Morality is much more like poetry. People often disagree about it, and there is really no way to say who is right. At best one might agree with one side and claim that that side is 'right', but you are abusing the word right when you do this. What you really mean is that to your thinking one side or the other is correct (this is the best ANYONE can EVER do, that is, determine to the best of their ability).
Deciding what things are moral and how to tell it is a topic for another day.
How you decide what things are moral IS your morality. Philosophers have tried about 10,000 different systems of ethics, in an attempt to figure out a system that tells us what to do in various situations. The result of every attempt they have made is that in certain (you might say pathological) situations thier system of ethics demands that you do terrible things.
All of these systems are superior to Christianity, however, in that at least they attempt to figure out some sort of common thread in morality, a general rule you can use to devise more specific rules. Christianity's morality is simply the rules declared by some person(s). Perhaps this person made some good rules, but if you actually read the bible you will realize that about 75% of it is complete nonsense.
Saying that contradictory moral claims are equally valid (because they can be held by two different people) rips all the meaning from the word "morality" and in effect leaves us with no morality at all.
Obviously the moral claims aren't equally valid to the two people in the dispute. They each stick to the morality that they believe in. Now, assuming that these people aren't harmed by the disagreement (If one of them thinks it is ok to steal the others car, then one is harmed. If one thinks it is ok to wear hats on Sunday and the other one does not, no one is harmed.) then they should just agree that it doesn't matter.
What happens in reality is that people try to protect god from harm or from being offended. So in the case of wearing a hat on Sunday, the person who thinks it is wrong attempts to act in a righteous way, and force the person wearing the hat to take it off. This is why morality based on religion will only work if everyone has exactly the same (and I mean identical) religions. As soon as one group of people decides that it is Saturday that hats aren't allowed, wars will start.
Now, I don't think that wars actually start over this sort of thing (maybe in certain cases). However, if you are a leader and you are corrupt (I'm being redundant here) then you can use these religious superstitions in order to get people on your side to start a war. Look at the Muslims of the world right now. In many many countries they are burning down embassies because of a cartoon which ran in one newspaper for one day. They wer
Either there is exactly one set of correct morals or there is none and hence there is no compelling reason to care one way or the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_choice
It leads directly to contradiction to say that morals are relative.
No, it doesn't.
Morals make statements about what one ought or ought not do.
Granted.
A relative moral system leads allows us to say that one ought to do X and one ought not to do X, at the same time and in the same sense.
Only if you subscribe to two different moral system at the same time. However, more than one moral system does exist. Therefore, according to your logic, all but one are false (not absolute). How do you plan to demonstrate that Christianity is the one true system? Your logic works equally well to make Zoroastrianism the one true system.
Note that I do not say it is easy or even necessarily possible for man to know right and wrong completely or certainly in all cases.
If you can't verify it then it might as well not exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable
Just because a "moral compass" is absolute does not mean it is correct. Christians who have acted wrongly through history do not prove that morality is not absolute. They just prove that Christians do not necessarily act morally.
No, it means that not only do Christians not act morally, they also do not know what is moral (to our best estimate of what morality is). They thought that it was moral to burn people at the stake for reading banned books, or saying the earth revolves around the sun (literally). Therefore a Christians moral compass can be badly skewed, which proves that they are not being told what is right or wrong by god.
You can't have it both ways. If you think it worthwhile to realize my moral system is imperfect and that it might need adjustment, then you are saying that some moral systems are better than others.
Yes, we can have it both ways. I choose to hold the moral beliefs I do, because I feel that it is proper. If you disagree and want to convince me that I am wrong (a noble endeavor to improve and help another human being) you will want to have something more credible than "A magic man who lives in the sky told a group of people thousands of years ago that they should do this and this, but not that".
By the way, I fully realize that my moral system is imperfect. I don't always do the right thing even when I know what it is. I don't have any illusion about always being able to know perfectly what is right.
Aha! You DO believe that your moral system is perfect. You just don't follow it perfectly (that is you give in to temptation). I will be the first to inform you that some things you now think are good you will someday think are bad, and some things you now think are bad you will someday realize are good. That is ok. Some things you think are wrong are ok, but you will never realize this. Your very compass isn't perfect. That is part of being human.
I'm not going to get caught up in defending goofy religious nuts. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Relative morals as an idea is not even self-consistent. "Morals are relative" is an absolute statement about morals. You do the math.
When he says that "Morals are relative" he simply means there is no magical objective truth about morality. You have to decide for yourself what YOU think is right or wrong, but you should realize that you might change your mind later, and if someone disagrees that doesn't make them an enemy (necessarily). There is no virtue in forcing a morality on someone for it's own sake.
Your words make it clear that you think some moral systems are better than others. If so, then morals are not relative.
Only if you don't accept that you are very likely w
If there is an absolute morality how do you determine what it is?
Is there a way that two people who disagree about a moral question to test which person is correct (at least in theory)?
If there isn't a way, then you can't say one person is right or wrong. Therefore it is completely up in the air whether any human system of morality thought up so far corresponds to the absolute morality. Therefore the existence or lack of existence of this absolute morality is pointless to discuss, since even if it does exist we can never know what it is.
Now, on the other hand, I don't think there is some sort of absolute right and wrong. Morality developed along with humanity. What is 'right' is what people generally hold to be right. Unfortunately this makes ethical discussions awful, because you end up saying "no tommy, there is nothing wrong with a calculator, unless you are Amish" or "It is not unethical to get a blood transfusion, although Christian Scientists believe that it is unethical."
In the end religious people are completely certain that they are right, even to the point of one preacher I witnessed one Sunday at church, who said, with tears in his eyes, "I have to accept that my parents went to hell because they weren't full immersion baptized". Meaning that because they were only dunked half way into the water when the preacher dunked them in the onstage bathtub God was going to reward them with eternal Damnation, whereas if they had gone under the water they would have earned eternal salvation.
There is no reason to coddle these lunatics. It is a form of enabling when people kindof nod their heads and pretend the person talking isn't completely nuts. You'll be doing them a favor if you explain to them that there isn't a magical man in the sky, who is all powerful, all knowing, infinite in every way, and completely obsessed with whether you commit covet your neighbors wife or steal gum, and apparently if you clone a human or create a human animal hybrid.
God also bans or endorses virtually everything you can do depending on who you ask.
By moral compass I mean a magical thing which is endowed upon a person by the holy ghost, and gives them the ability to divine what god wants them to do. If you believe this then you cannot be wrong, and anyone who disagrees is an agent (possibly unwittingly) of the devil.
How do the millions of Christians who have been murdered by other Christians for having slightly different beliefs feel about this? (and I mean S L I G H T. The Anabaptists were crusaded against, thousands killed, for wanting to wait until adulthood for babtism instead of doing it at birth) What about the witches which were burned at the stake?
What about all the Christians in prison? Do you trust their moral compass?
The fact is that there is no moral compass. If anything the belief that there is such a thing has given people who otherwise might think twice an unreasonable certainty, and some of those people committed very serious crimes.
And me, as a republican, I think science needs to be left alone for the most part*.
*Boldified by me.
Just like every other idiot, fundy! You want science to be left alone, except for those parts which you want to change. Fundy's like to feel like they are very reasonable, and each one additionally thinks that they are the final arbiter of what is right and holy. The irony of this escapes them completely.
So while these nutballs are all for finding a cure for cancer (most of them, some sects believe that all medicine is an affront to God), they also want you to do it in a way that doesn't offend whatever nonsense their sect happens to tell them to believe. Most believe cloning is wrong, some believe that blood transfusions are wrong, some believe that using human tissue for testing is wrong. If you had to satisfy every nutball's crazy and unsubstantiated beliefs (or group's beliefs) you wouldn't be allowed to do anything at all.
So I'm not surprised that you think science should be left alone 'for the most part'. However, I'll be more comfortable when people like you (or those whom you support at least, it's the same thing) who don't believe in science, who instead believe that you are given a magic 'truth/morality compass' by the holy spirit and therefore have the magical ability to determine the rightness of science without resort to arguments or facts (yes, this is what they believe), are not given ANY power to control ANY scientific research.
Only then, when people who think that the first impulse they have (that's disgusting!) is some kind of message from god aren't in positions of power, will I be more comfortable.