You have not come close to showing that my religious views are irrational.
You believe that nothing save mathematics can be proven. You therefore believe that you can't prove your own views are rational. What's more you can't prove that I can't prove that your views are irrational, since no such proof would be mathematical. Yet you state it as fact. Something you have chided me for doing. You should be stating it as opinion. Not only is your logic is completely flawed and inconsistent, your own actions don't follow from the views you say you hold - they are inconsistent.
You accuse me of intolerance. Yet you say that nothing can be proven to be good or bad. Therefore you can't prove that's good or bad (unless I accept your views of a "higher authority") Yet you can't prove that this higher authority exists. In fact your own logic means you can't prove that he COULD exist. I have to take it on your faith, your beliefs.
So on and so on. You've spent too much time considering the metaphysical and too little considering the concrete.
The real problem here is that you don't consider my opinion to be equally valid at all. You believe that everyone should act according to your own beliefs. You just won't admit it. If all view points are equal and none are provable, you can't prove I'm wrong or a liar. Yet you believe it and you're suprised that I don't when it REQUIRES that I hold your beliefs to be true.
Since you don't believe anything but mathematics can be proven (your argument not mine), you can't prove that I am a liar, nor can you prove that any statement I have made is false. Therefore you are calling me a liar without being able to prove it. By your own argument you can only say you BELIEVE me to be a liar. It's sloppy to say that I am when you can't prove it. If you're so interested in truth, provability and saying precise things, you should by rights preface everything with "I believe" or "In my opinion" (Prediction - you'll ignore this paragraph or say something terse and stupid like "incorrect" without offering any solid refutation)
Yet you claim to be more tolerant than I (another thing you can't prove, by your own admission) while calling me a liar. You don't see how vile this is and how BAD it is. This is an example of doing evil because you believe in superstitious unprovable things.
Since according to you neither of us can prove ourselves to be correct, why are we even having this discussion? Are you in the habit of talking to yourself or arguing unprovable things?
You see you don't even understand the underpinnings of the logical arguments you're making, or the methods of logic. You're clearly well read so how you've managed to twist everything around to fit your own inconsistent preconceived notions I don't quite understand. I can only assume you're desperate to hang on to your "faith" that you're able to so completely deceive yourself such that you can't possibly understand the logical extension of your own argument.
You can say "liar", "troll", "incorrect", call me or my views idiotic or intolerant until you go blue. It doesn't change the fact that your own argument completely undermines each and every thing you say. You're just embarrassing yourself here. You should have taken my good wishes and let it go at that, but you're the definition of an extremist. You can't let it go without repeatedly abusing your opponent and treading their belief into the ground. I bet if I let this go on you'd argue this until we both were old and grey. You'd continue to insult me and I you. You'd insult me for not allowing your inconsistent and flawed views while ignoring each and every valid point I make, and misinterpretting everything you could then accuse me of deceit. I'd insult you for your logical inconsistencies, flawed logic, and deceit. I'm so glad that this conversation is the limit of my interaction with you.
You're the one who claims to be tolerant yet repeatedly calls me a liar and idiotic because my views don't allow me to accept unproven nonsense on the same level as what's proven.
You're the one who repeatedly confuses metaphysics with physics, seeking to call everything unprovable (except by some strange and twisted logic that makes no sense you exclude maths)
You're the one who seeks to twist my words and put words in my mouth. (Show me one place where I said I should force you to believe anything or that I would seek to follow your twisted logic about factions. I've never said people shouldn't believe what they want. I wished you well in your beliefs last time).
You're the one who repeatedly denies your own logical fallacies and inconsistencies.
You're the one who repeatedly and purposefully misinterprets my words in the most dishonest way possble.
You're the one who believes things when there is no proof.
I know your answer each will be a short terse denial ("incorrect", "false" or "liar" seem to be your favourites)
In short you're a religous nutter and a dangerous extremist. If yours is an example of a tolerant religious man thank you for reinforcing my belief that all religion is dangerous. If you were part of the inquisition in Galileo's time I have no doubt whatsoever you're the exact sort of person who'd have been complicit in his imprisonment.
You're a liar and a troll. Go preach somewhere else.
You are far more likely to do harm to others than I am, because you are FAR less tolerant of differences in others than I am, and far less rational than me, to boot.
Yes you tolerate people making decisions that affect their own life and yours based on irrational superstition. Yet you don't see how this could be harmful.
Since you think I can't argue, don't even bother discussing it with me. Go read a single book with an open mind and without your preconceived notions. Demon Haunted World. Carl Sagan. Your next message won't even be read.
I did not lie. Your personal attacks are a waste of time too.
I'll be more precise regarding my "BOOKS BY PEOPLE" comment. Books written by people based on no evidence whatsoever. Not the best evidence. Not selective evidence. None. Nothing. Oh you knew what I meant but if I don't express it precisely you take great pleasure in jumping all over me.
You simply have no concept of how science works (as proven by your attack on Newtonian physics simply because it had been found to be incorrect and a better theory has been found). When a good scientist has their best theory disproven, they don't fall back on metaphysics or superstition or the limits of provability. They accept that their theory has been contradicted and try to find a better one. It's happened time and time again. If it were you, you'd start arguing that nothing is provable which is a line of thought that is unhelpful. If people based their life on your rambling premise "nothing is provable" we'd never have tried to make use of the regular laws of science that have led to modern technology. You can't PROOVE to me that a wheel will always roll. So lets not base our lives on it.
You point to how religion has helped science yet time and again there are examples of science being trampled by religious biggotry. copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler are all good examples of scientists that were persecuted and whose thought was oppressed by religion.
You choose what you believe based on preconceived notions and ignore reality. I wished you well at the end of my last message. This time my message is simple. Stop trying to justify your garbage and go away.
They haven't succeeded. I said few hundred launches. Not 100 launches. Not a few thousand people. When the risk is riduced to a fraction of a percent (similar to what airline travel is today) there will be less reason to argue based on safety that humans shouldn't attempt space travel. 14 lives in 120 launches isn't good enough. If your local airline carried those odds you'd not use it.
Or in other words, using a car metaphor, of course: "Nobody will ever buy a Porsche, because it's got only two seats and a minimal trunk space. For 50'000 EUR *less*, you'd get four seats, a pickup-sized cargo bay AND as much horsepowers, so the Porsche is clearly bad value.":)
Ah now I understand. What you're saying is that this is a niche product that isn't practical for everyday use but is a status symbol and an excellent substitute for having a small willie.
That's fine. If so it doesn't deserve the kind of attention it's getting and we should no more be told how incredible this laptop is than we should be shown porches at a dealership when we walk in wanting a family car. Note that porches don't enjoy or target a large market share.
So long as they don't do what they have already done with the shuttle:
1) Build a flawed machine, with safety standards specified 2) Gradually remove the safeguards, kill some people in the process. 3) Wind up delaying with repeated patch jobs to the flawed design (instead of doing a proper redesign). Re-instate or intensify safeguards that aren't going to fix the issue. 4) Continue to launch despite seeing ongoing problems.
They need to either get this right and kill no one in the first few HUNDRED launches of the vehicle (if it's not superseded by then) or convince people that if we do incur a few deaths they are the price that has to be paid. Good luck with that second option. People are just too prone to a failure to understand why human spacetravel is worthwhile. Others aren't convinced that we've got enough experience with robotic craft to warrant it. All eyes will be on this next generation of spacecraft, and many of those eyes will be seeking to cancel the program from the outset.
I no longer have time for this discussion. I have work to do and chores to do at home, and somewhere in there I fit in the more pleasurable things in life.
You, like all religious people, have no wish to have a rational discussion based on the best evidence we have. Instead you keep pointing to metaphysics and the limits of provability and the fact that theories can be superceded and therefore aren't absolute truth. All while at the same time choosing to believe things written in books by people because you were taught them as a child, that are both less provable, contradictory and much more subjective than any scientific theory. That's your choice. I think it's a terrible thing to base a life on, and it does lead to great harm, as in the case of Galileo. At the same time I see that arguing with you is a complete waste of time because even if I do prove something or point out a flaw in your logic you simply deny it. Again it's your choice to behave that way but it's an awful choice and it means that I'm wasting my time continuing.
Good luck to you in however you choose to live your life. I hope you do neither yourself nor others harm due to your beliefs.
You've addressed ONE of my 3 points. I still don't know how you can want to read/. - knock yourself out though. Pay $1.50 a pop for a crappy 5cm screen. You're subsidising the phone service other users such as myself love.
By the way my experience of web browsing was on a Nokia N70 not something from 1999.
In his opinion, maybe. Not in mine. In my opinion, it is why the cow exists, and it is good for him to die for my sustenance.
Yeah look you're sinking into the ridiculous. Cows generally avoid trying to get killed because they have a survival instinct. There is damage done to the organism and it dies. "In my opinion, it is why the cow exists, and it is good for him to die for my sustenance." is no different than saying that you value your family's sustainence over the life of the cow. You may not see it as "bad" but that's because either you don't believe the cow's life has any value beyond fulfilling your own needs (which I call ignorant since the cow will suffer, there is one less cow, and the cow once dead can't be brought back - at the very least you should view the animal as a resource), which is what I think you're saying, or you've already accepted the trade off of the cow's life for your sustenance.
You keep coming back to silly metaphysical and extreme arguments. However I wasn't talking about killing cows and you know it. I was talking about people. You seem to want to deviate further and further from that. If I were to suggest that killing animals or humans randomly and as cruelly as possible were good, I'm sure you could argue that point of view as well, but I could provide many rational and sound arguments against your subjective belief. Sure you can still hold that belief despite the arguments but a rational safe sane society that didn't approve of mass murders and that sought to provide safety within the community would not agree. It requires only the human condition and rational thought, not some set of rules by a deity to agree. The only subjectivity required is the human condition.
Hell no. Shoot to kill. Trying to disable only increases the chances of his causing harm to me or my family. Never would I try to disarm in such a situation. If I am brought to the point of pointing that gun to protect my family, I will shoot, without hesitation.
You do realize that with that statement you're only a step or two away from the religious extremism of a nut job terrorist suicide bomber don't you?
There are many situations in which your family is threatened but the use of lethal force to restrain the attacker isn't necessary and many of those don't increase the risk to your family. You're alluding to just one in which guns are involved. Again extreme and narrow thinking.
Yes, it is. In fact, it is purely, 100%, subjective. Unless, of course, you believe in a higher power that sets up such rules.
NO NO NO NO AND NO. YOU DO NOT require a higher power to have a non-subjective morality. That is a foul and horrid lie perpetrated by people such as yourself who don't understand the meaning of the word subjective and can't hold a logical or consistent discussion. If the only reason you follow these rules is a belief in a non-existent higher power you're a dangerous person. Tell me exactly what is subjective about the idea that murder and torcher is a bad thing in society and that if people are allowed to go around killing and torchering people this is not good for society because no one is safe. There's nothing subjective about that at all. If people go killing and torchering, the logical conclusion are that people are less safe. Unless you're deranged the safety of yourself (and if you're sane your family too) is desirable. Almost every human being alive will agree on that. The only precondition is that you actually care about yourself and your family.
Question-begging: now you are assuming "rational" means "someone who agrees with my subjective assessment." This is not proof of anything at all.
Not true but even if it were it's still better than your assessment of "good" which is "agrees with my fictional and unprovable higher power and the works of fiction people have written about what he wants us to do".
By the way I don't think you understand what question-begging even means. Please look it up and stop misusing it.
I most certainly am not. Killing a cow for food is good. Killing a person threatening to harm my family is good.
That's a false argument. Killing a cow for food is good for your family (since something must die if they are to eat) but bad for the cow (it has to die). You're making a choice between 2 kinds of bad and deciding correctly that your family's needs to sustain their lives are more important than the cow's. You're picking the most pleasant of 2 unpleasants and since it's a choice you've dealt with many times it's not morally ambiguous.
Now as for killing a person who threatens to harm your family, if it's a choice between your family and someone to whom you don't have strong ties fair enough. I'd at least hope you'd try to disable the person making the threat instead of killing them.
You would hopefully agree killing the cow or a stranger on the street for no good reason or just for pleasure is wrong.
Yes, but only subjectively. The cow and person I killed would not agree with my conclusions. And I cannot prove I am right that those killings were good. I can only assert it as my subjective claim.
That's one intelligent cow. However your point is that it's subjective. It's not really all that subjective as you might think. Given the same situation if a member of your family threatened to kill someone and were killed in trying to do that, a rational person would have to agree that the death of the initial agressor is unfortunate but preferable to death of the innocent person. You may be unhappy, and you may be less willing to believe that your family member did such a thing but if you would condemn someone for actions you yourself say you would take, you're not being rational.
God has nothing to do with what I am saying. The context of this is whether we can "prove" something is bad. Whether we can know it objectively. Getting someone to agree -- hell, getting EVERYONE to agree -- whether or not they believe in God is beside any point I was addressing. I am skipping ahead here because most of the next few paragraphs have nothing to do with me or anything I said.
They're direct responses to the things you've said. You're just chosing to ignore them.
There are degrees of provability. If I tell you I can fly without any machines and refuse to show you, you should not believe me. You certainly shouldn't be pointing to a metaphysical universe in which I'm some detached head to examine the argument and dismiss it as nonsense. Your understanding of physics and human biology should be enough to refute the case. You should challenge me to prove that I can, and only if I prove my claim should you examine how I did it.
No. I firmly believe that is not possible. There are some truths -- very few, and mostly mathematical -- that are objectively identifiable no matter what reality is. I do not believe there is the slightest possibility that 2+2=5 (unless, of course, you change the meanings for those symbols, which is, of course, entirely beside the point).
Your beliefs have nothing to do with it. If you're willing to accept you may be some severed head in an alternate universe, and that the universe you see is all illusion, then you can say NOTHING about the laws of mathematics or physics in that "real" universe unless you find a way to observe it.
If on the other hand you choose to be pragmatic and look at the universe you can observe indeed there are mathematical proofs that you can deduce from observation leading to rules which you can then apply.
Incorrect. Let's examine what YOU said: "If I live a life of poverty and chastity I'll go to heaven." I responded, "I don't know anyone who believes the quoted claim." The monks and nuns I am referring to ALSO do not believe that quoted claim. Taking a vow of chastity and poverty is, in Christianity, is done by some, but NOT in order to go to heaven.
Now you claim to know and understand the motivation for every Christian who takes such vowss. Do you realize h
There's billions of people on this planet and hundreds of millions in this country, and it is impossible for everyone to have the same beliefs, and the decisions of others will always be affecting you.
Exactly. Which is why their beliefs are any concern of mine at all. If your president decides to nuke a town because his deity told him it was right, I'm affected.
Grow some stones.
You mean by not arguing against your flawed logic???
How about you stick to the topics at hand and cut the childish personal attacks. I'm not in your highschool and don't need to pull my "stones" out in gym to prove I'm a man.
Far less so than atrocities committed in the name of things OTHER than religion. And even those things done "in the name of" religion were almost always just using religion as an excuse, as any honest historical examination shows: it was about lust for power and control by leaders, who strung their people along with whatever they had handy, whether religion, nationalism, race, etc.
Ahh I see so the attrocities committed in the name of religion are okay because there are worse ones out there? Yeah very logical.
Regarding lust for power, by your logic we should be punishing leaders, religious and otherwise, who string people along and cause them to commit the atrocities. I don't see any religious movement where what flimsy checks and balances may be in place against this haven't failed miserably. When's the last time you heard of the head of a religious group being ousted for such a thing. Which of the popes that have done wrong were removed?
Indeed. And if the people of Africa followed the Church's teachings--not only on condoms, but on sex in general--HIV would not be an epidemic today.
Yes good luck with stopping people from having pre-marital sex. It's a battle that can't be won as it goes against our strongest drives. Some of the "people of Africa" you are talking about don't have sex because they choose to. Some of them are forced into having sex before they are old enough to understand the consequences. Some of them don't contract HIV through any fault of their own.
Condoms are used in either of two cases. One case is extramarital or premartial sex, which the Church is against in principle. The other is intramarital sex, which doesn't propogate HIV other than in the case of birth. And I think the Church in that case would recommend remaining celibate even within marriage rather than spreading HIV to one's offspring.
What completely and obviously flawed logic. What if you are married, your partner contracts HIV (perhaps through extramartial sex, perhaps through no fault of their own), and you get HIV?
The main use of condoms within a marriage is birth control. So that you can plan the number and timing of the children you have. But the church is against this. It would instead see husbands and wives only have sex as many times as they want children. However that completely ignores the human drive to have sex and the unhappiness that people feel if they don't have sex. Most people simply aren't willing to give up sex. You can ignore that fact, and science can explain why, but it won't change how people actually behave or what makes them happy.
Now you're telling me that the people of Africa, who obviously aren't following the Church's teachings on sexual morality, are afflicted with an HIV epidemic because they are following the Church's teachings on sexual morality?
I never said any such thing. I do believe that the church should not be preventing people from gaining access to condoms, and calling for banning their use. People may or may not follow the churches teaching. In fact the idea that people bottle up their sexuality the way you're suggesting is damaging in itself, and not everyone is willing to make that tradeoff. Nor should they be forced to. With condoms they are safer than without. The church would rather they be unsafe if they don't follow its teachings. This is clearly a form of control not only of what people should believe but what they should do.
It's not a misdirection at all, since it's not intramarital sex that spreads AIDS by and large.
It is misdirection. This has nothing to do with pre-marital sex. The only connection there is the argument that people who have effective birth and STD control may be more promiscuous or engage in pre-marital sex.
The pope doesn't hold a position on the spread of aids per se, though he may do, and if he does I'll bet that he believes it's a punishment by God.
No we were discussing condoms. The pope's position and the official church position I believe is that anything (including condoms) that interfeers with the "sacred" process of contraception is wrong/foul/unholy. Never mind that it may stop STDs from spreading, help keep world population under control (but then there'd be less Christians to control wouldn't theere), allow people to have better control over their lives. No because it is something that God created and how he created life it shouldn't be interfeered with. I could use the same logic to say that all medicine, which interfeers with natural processes, is evil and I believe there are extreme sects of Christianity that do (e.g. The Almish). In other words modern medical inventions are being ignored or vilified due to superstitious beliefs.
If their objection to the Pope is simply that he is a religious leader, then why don't they come out and say so without dancing around the issue?
With a non-religious person you can argue the point on its merits based on the good or harm the use of condoms does. With a religious leader they say "God says it is so" and he won't accept any logical arguments.
Don't know about the parent, but why do I care? Only because people are making life decisions based on the adult equivalent of Santa Claus and many of those decisions affect me. Only because these religions target the young and threaten them with the same things to scare them into compliance. Only because atrocities have been committed in the name of various world religions. In the case of this thread only because religious nonsense has stood in the way of scientific debate with a great scientist (even if his people skills were lacking) being forced to retract his findings and publication only to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.
"bad" is not an objective term. It's inherently subjective, unless it is defined further.
Destructive or harmful however aren't subjective terms. It's also very easy to tell if something is unpleasant. IF you're willing to accept that something that is harmful or destructive or unpleasant is "bad" and if you're willing to accept that there's nothing special about yourself vs your fellow man (ie. that other people also deserve respect and care you would want them to show you) it's quite easy to define something as "good" or "bad" based on how it affects yourself and others. You don't need God for that kind of morality.
Since when is lack of direct or obvious benefit "bad"? Could not the damage done make the individual or community stronger in the long run? And how could you possibly know what all of the indirect consequences are? Unless you can see the entire picture, isn't it impossible for you to say?
Not really. I know a lot of people who don't believe in God who would agree that the murder of an innocent child is bad. Not all actions that damage make the person or community stronger. (In fact most don't. I think you've been taking Nietzsche at face value). Yes there are more ambiguous actions - ones that involve a tradeoff that may harm one person or group but benefit another. First of all you don't need God to logically weight those up either and decide what's good or bad. Secondly even members of the same religion often don't agree on which action is right under those circumstances. Thirdly there are better criteria than ancient texts and myths to use when making a decision about what is right. Fourthly if you do use ancient rules or laws that were written without modern situations in mind you often find they're inadequate.
Let's take a really difficult moral question: Should the atom bomb have been dropped on Hiroshima. On the one hand it killed and mamed a lot of people and had effects generations later. On the other hand a lot more people would have died fighting for Japan at the end of WWII had it not been dropped. I have a very strong opinion on this and that is that they should have dropped the bomb somewhere less inhabitted as a demonstration, however lets restrict ourselves to a binary decision: either it should have been dropped as it was, or it should not have been dropped at all. People within the same religion could take a tennant like "thou shalt not kill" to resolve this, but its application is not straight forward. Does that mean I should not kill regardless of what anyone else does? Does that mean I'm allowed to condone it after the fact and agree it was the right decision? Does it apply when you're talking about war (there are suggestions it means "thou shalt not murder" and that this doesn't apply in war). So a belief in God or ancient text doesn't tell me good from bad or right from wrong, it's just a basis from which to make a moral decision, and it still requires application which is subjective. What's bad about using a rule like that, passed down as law, is that it restricts the reasoning. "Thou shalt not kill" is a good rule for a society since random murder doesn't allow for a cohesive society, however if it had been a bad or outdated or inapplicable law a religious person wouldn't be free to ignore it and use reason instead, where a non-religious person could.
Unless you can see the entire picture, isn't it impossible for you to say?
That's true with or without religiously based morality.
I fail to see how that is hypocritical. You are the one who brought "proof" into this. "Proof" is a higher standard of conclusion. I can say 2+2=4, and I can prove it. I can say I am not merely a head in a jar imagining this world, but I cannot prove it.
Actually who's to say that your proof of 2+2=4 isn't fiction also. Perhaps your head in a jar imagines this world such that 2+2=4 but in the world it actually exists in 2+2=5. When you start to question reality all your logic unravels. It's part of the study of metaphysics.
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone can claim freedom from slavery doesn't make slavery unforgivable. Man, just because you live in a world where rape and murder are illegal, doesn't make rape and murder unforgivable....and so on...
See I can justify any action with handwaving.
He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him.
In some ways that is much WORSE. It means the very people who claim to be the protectors of mankind from all things evil were quite happy to trash scientific truth just to put down anyone that would question their authority.
I also hear this argument a lot and it simply doesn't hold true. You do realize that Copernicus held off publishing his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) until he was old and close to dying for fear of retribution from the church? He didn't go around insulting the pope now did he? His works were still banned.
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point.
You DOUBT? You mean I'm having this argument with someone who doesn't even KNOW the history, but is happy to rabbit on about things he knows nothing about? If you're actually interested in what really happened I can recommend a couple of good books I studied as part of my History of Astronomy subject when I did my Astronomy Masters. Never mind...I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? You're prepared to repeat whatever you've heard without examining it at all.
I didn't say the pope threatened Galileo with anything. I said the current pope condoned the actions of the inquisition that did threaten. Go look up a biography some time.
Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion.
Again you show your ignorance. It's more than just a "cruel expulsion". A man who is excommunicated became a pariah, often had his belongings stripped from him, and was threatened with the fires of hell for eternity. This was no mere slap on the wrist.
I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Ahhh so it's a form of control. A man's life, livelihood, and beliefs mean nothing because he dared to make fun of the holy church. This is no defence. You clearly have no conception whatsoever of what excommunication meant in the 1600s!
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all?
The pope was condoning torture, forcing a person to recant deeply held beliefs, interference of the church with scientific freedom and publication.
But yes strictly speaking you're right. If you're running an evil and descructive totalitarian organisation it is rational to cond
You realize, of course, that the notion that this is "bad" cannot be proven or disproven? So either you are being a hypocrite, or you are conceding that it is not absolute fact that this is bad. Either way you are undermining your own argument.
Who said "bad" can't be "proven or disproven". You can look at the damage done to an organism, an environment or a community and judge whether it is beneficial for yourself, or a community. You're the one being a hypocrite. First you tell me that I am right about not needing to believe in God to have a morality then you tell me I can't prove what's right.
And YOU are claiming that anyone who doesn't believe in this God is NOT necessarily mistaken. How is that any better? Because you say so? Not very rational.
In that statement, I am only claiming that if there is a single God, then the majority of people on the planet are mistaken, and that everyone who does believe in a single God to the exclusion of others therefore has a point of contention which can lead to conflict. That's quite rational, I'm afraid.
False.
Stating that something is false without backing it up means you've proven nothing.
As it cannot be disproven, you must concede therefore that the world MAY be that way, instead of asserting it is not.
There are many things I cannot disprove, but I do not make my decisions based on the fact they are true if I can't prove them. You do.
Second, EVERYONE does the same thing. Including you. Everyone has beliefs that they hold to absolutely that may not be true. Hell, as far as you know, you're just a brain in a jar. Yet you believe you are not, and you encourage others to believe the same. Everyone necessarily does this. To make a categorical statement that this is bad is irrational (and of course, unprovable, thus falling afoul of your first statement).
No, not everyone does the same thing. If you present someone with "faith" with disproof of what they believe they continue to believe it. If you present me with proof that something I hold is true is incorrect, I will believe you. Prove to me that I'm a brain in a jar and I'll happily believe it. Heck prove to me its even likely that I'm a figment of some brain in a jar's imagination and I'll look at your evidence. What I won't believe is faery stories passed down through the ages which have been disproven. That is NOT the same as you, at all.
This criticism is only useful when pointed at specific information, and specific choices based on that information. Saying it is bad to make moral and rational choices on bad information is nonsense. Saying it is bad to make the choice to abort your baby based on the bad information that your baby had an incurable is obvious. So give me an example.
Saying it is bad to make moral and rational choices on bad information is NOT nonsense. If you have bad data/assumptions you come to incorrect conclusions which don't match reality. I could give you many many examples since you ask, but one good one is "If I live a life of poverty and chastity I'll go to heaven". Well if there is no heaven or afterlife you have deprived yourself of good experiences for NOTHING. That's just one good example.
Oh come on. Anything can be divisive. And in this discussion, for example, it is the atheists who are being divisive. I don't see any Christians saying "if you don't believe in Christ then you're an idiotic moron," but see a lot of "if you believe in Christ than you're an idiotic moron." Let's place the blame where it actually lies: with PEOPLE who are divisive.
Yes anything can be divisive but if you are willing to listen to reason and change a point of view, you can overcome that. If on the other hand you have "faith" that something is because a religious authority tells you it is so, there's no arguing.
I see plenty of Christians saying if you don't believe in Christ you'll burn in hell forever. The blame isn't just one of people. Original sin is at the core of the Christian religion.
"Irrationality" is any thought that defies the predetermined narrative (as defined by the mainstream). In the 17th-century, it was any man of science. Today, it's any man of faith. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Irrationality refers to incoherent thoughts or thoughts held as true even after they have been disproven. The main stream has nothing to do with it (except perhaps where the standard of proof comes in). A man of science that holds an irrational thought is just as irrational as a man of faith that does so, and it hasn't changed.
The sad thing is that anyone thinks this needs to be proven. What are they teaching in schools these days?
Apparently in some schools they are teaching that the world is 6000 years old.
Start with science. Science as we know it today was brought into existence by religious people who -- unlike their atheist contemporaries -- believed that, because God exists, the universe must have order, and rules, and that those rules are discoverable. It is because of Isaac Newton's religious beliefs that he brought so much knowledge to our world.
Not all scientists have had a religious background. Most of the earliest scientists we know of certainly didn't believe in the same God or Gods people believe in today.
As for Newton have you read a biography about the man? I have. As well as being a genius he was one very disturbed individual. Who knows what contribution a religious upbringing had to that, or if he'd have faired better without religion. He also believed in alchemy and the occult. That doesn't mean we should too.
Justice. It is from religion that we get the idea that all men are created equal, that equality before the law, equality of rights, equality of worth are good and right and true.
Actually there's plenty of religious teaching that rabbits on about "God's chosen people" and plenty of religious teaching that suggests that non-believers be treated differently. We do not need religion to have a concept of justice or morality. People living in communities saw a need for law in order to facilitate co-existence and the benefits that come from it. The earliest written history does not describe monotheistic religions, but it does describe law.
You could make the case that unthinking religion or nationalism is bad, but that's nothing new, and not unique to any particular idea. For example, courage is not bad, but courage without wisdom is bad, and so on. There's nothing bad inherent in religion.
Oh but there are bad things in religion:
1) All religions work on the basis that you should believe things as absolute fact that cannot be proven or that can actually be disproven 2) Monotheistic religions teach that there is only one God and that anyone who doesn't believe in this God is mistaken.
Both of these things are socially destructive, and irrational. The first encourages us to see the world as something that it is not. Why is this important? Because people will make moral and rational choices based on bad information. Ultimately depending on what they believe they can do something harmful. Steven Weinberg said "Without religion good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but for a good person to do bad things that takes religion"
The second is very divisive and an enabler for people who want to grab power and wage war to brainwash those around them.
He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome. He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage, but so is the Dalai Lama
First of all, it's not okay to do something harmful just because another religious leader does it.
Secondly, I don't think the parent was suggesting other religions or other religious leaders are better. I'd say most people saying things about this pope here today aren't pro-religion.
Thirdly, the pope teaches that using condoms is a sin even within marriage, so your bringing up chastity outside of marriage is at best misdirection. (Then you have the gaul to lecture the GP about misleading people)
You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion.
Are you saying that the pope supporting imprisoning a scientist for the rest of their life, banning their published work, and threatening them with death, torture and excommunication might be okay depending on his reasons for doing so???
Fine, the papacy over-reacted to Galileo. We got it....and by over-reacted we mean imprisoned him for the rest of his life, threatened to kill, torture and excommunicate him if he didn't publicly recant what he believed to be true, and banned his published work.
Incidentally - was Galileo right? Is the sun "fixed". I don't think so. Indeed I'm happy with both geocentric and heliocentric descriptions; but in a "sol" centred frame of reference I'm happier with heliocentric maths (though one of the problems with heliocentricism apparently was that it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables).
Your education has failed you if you believe a geocentric view is workable.
Galileo was more right than Aristotle. His system is closer to an accurate description of what really occurs as we've now been able to prove. Yes the frame of reference of the sun shifts against the galaxy and the galaxy against the local group etc. but that doesn't make geocentric and heliocentric views equivalent.
Heliocentricism it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables in some circumstances while people insisted that the planets had circular orbits. Once Kepler worked out that they were elliptical, the only planet that continued to REALLY deviate was Mercury. That was later explained by General Relativity, which incidentally is "more right" than Special Relativity (on its own) which was in turn "more right" than Newtonian Mechanics in so much as it describes more accurately what we actually observe.
If you label someone an 'irrational nutcase', you are essentially refusing to have a dialogue....which may be the right thing to do when someone continues to argue a point even when it's been disproven, based on beliefs about fictional beings.
Do you argue with trolls instead of refusing to have a dialogue?
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You have not come close to showing that my religious views are irrational.
You believe that nothing save mathematics can be proven.
You therefore believe that you can't prove your own views are rational.
What's more you can't prove that I can't prove that your views are irrational, since no such proof would be mathematical.
Yet you state it as fact. Something you have chided me for doing. You should be stating it as opinion.
Not only is your logic is completely flawed and inconsistent, your own actions don't follow from the views you say you hold - they are inconsistent.
You accuse me of intolerance.
Yet you say that nothing can be proven to be good or bad.
Therefore you can't prove that's good or bad (unless I accept your views of a "higher authority")
Yet you can't prove that this higher authority exists.
In fact your own logic means you can't prove that he COULD exist.
I have to take it on your faith, your beliefs.
So on and so on. You've spent too much time considering the metaphysical and too little considering the concrete.
The real problem here is that you don't consider my opinion to be equally valid at all. You believe that everyone should act according to your own beliefs. You just won't admit it. If all view points are equal and none are provable, you can't prove I'm wrong or a liar. Yet you believe it and you're suprised that I don't when it REQUIRES that I hold your beliefs to be true.
I'm not a liar. You are.
Since you don't believe anything but mathematics can be proven (your argument not mine), you can't prove that I am a liar, nor can you prove that any statement I have made is false. Therefore you are calling me a liar without being able to prove it. By your own argument you can only say you BELIEVE me to be a liar. It's sloppy to say that I am when you can't prove it. If you're so interested in truth, provability and saying precise things, you should by rights preface everything with "I believe" or "In my opinion" (Prediction - you'll ignore this paragraph or say something terse and stupid like "incorrect" without offering any solid refutation)
Yet you claim to be more tolerant than I (another thing you can't prove, by your own admission) while calling me a liar. You don't see how vile this is and how BAD it is. This is an example of doing evil because you believe in superstitious unprovable things.
Since according to you neither of us can prove ourselves to be correct, why are we even having this discussion? Are you in the habit of talking to yourself or arguing unprovable things?
You see you don't even understand the underpinnings of the logical arguments you're making, or the methods of logic. You're clearly well read so how you've managed to twist everything around to fit your own inconsistent preconceived notions I don't quite understand. I can only assume you're desperate to hang on to your "faith" that you're able to so completely deceive yourself such that you can't possibly understand the logical extension of your own argument.
You can say "liar", "troll", "incorrect", call me or my views idiotic or intolerant until you go blue. It doesn't change the fact that your own argument completely undermines each and every thing you say. You're just embarrassing yourself here. You should have taken my good wishes and let it go at that, but you're the definition of an extremist. You can't let it go without repeatedly abusing your opponent and treading their belief into the ground. I bet if I let this go on you'd argue this until we both were old and grey. You'd continue to insult me and I you. You'd insult me for not allowing your inconsistent and flawed views while ignoring each and every valid point I make, and misinterpretting everything you could then accuse me of deceit. I'd insult you for your logical inconsistencies, flawed logic, and deceit. I'm so glad that this conversation is the limit of my interaction with you.
One more time. Go away.
I'm not a liar. You are.
You're the one who claims to be tolerant yet repeatedly calls me a liar and idiotic because my views don't allow me to accept unproven nonsense on the same level as what's proven.
You're the one who repeatedly confuses metaphysics with physics, seeking to call everything unprovable (except by some strange and twisted logic that makes no sense you exclude maths)
You're the one who seeks to twist my words and put words in my mouth. (Show me one place where I said I should force you to believe anything or that I would seek to follow your twisted logic about factions. I've never said people shouldn't believe what they want. I wished you well in your beliefs last time).
You're the one who repeatedly denies your own logical fallacies and inconsistencies.
You're the one who repeatedly and purposefully misinterprets my words in the most dishonest way possble.
You're the one who believes things when there is no proof.
I know your answer each will be a short terse denial ("incorrect", "false" or "liar" seem to be your favourites)
In short you're a religous nutter and a dangerous extremist. If yours is an example of a tolerant religious man thank you for reinforcing my belief that all religion is dangerous. If you were part of the inquisition in Galileo's time I have no doubt whatsoever you're the exact sort of person who'd have been complicit in his imprisonment.
You're a liar and a troll. Go preach somewhere else.
You are far more likely to do harm to others than I am, because you are FAR less tolerant of differences in others than I am, and far less rational than me, to boot.
Yes you tolerate people making decisions that affect their own life and yours based on irrational superstition. Yet you don't see how this could be harmful.
Since you think I can't argue, don't even bother discussing it with me. Go read a single book with an open mind and without your preconceived notions. Demon Haunted World. Carl Sagan. Your next message won't even be read.
I did not lie. Your personal attacks are a waste of time too.
I'll be more precise regarding my "BOOKS BY PEOPLE" comment. Books written by people based on no evidence whatsoever. Not the best evidence. Not selective evidence. None. Nothing. Oh you knew what I meant but if I don't express it precisely you take great pleasure in jumping all over me.
You simply have no concept of how science works (as proven by your attack on Newtonian physics simply because it had been found to be incorrect and a better theory has been found). When a good scientist has their best theory disproven, they don't fall back on metaphysics or superstition or the limits of provability. They accept that their theory has been contradicted and try to find a better one. It's happened time and time again. If it were you, you'd start arguing that nothing is provable which is a line of thought that is unhelpful. If people based their life on your rambling premise "nothing is provable" we'd never have tried to make use of the regular laws of science that have led to modern technology. You can't PROOVE to me that a wheel will always roll. So lets not base our lives on it.
You point to how religion has helped science yet time and again there are examples of science being trampled by religious biggotry. copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler are all good examples of scientists that were persecuted and whose thought was oppressed by religion.
You choose what you believe based on preconceived notions and ignore reality. I wished you well at the end of my last message. This time my message is simple. Stop trying to justify your garbage and go away.
They haven't succeeded. I said few hundred launches. Not 100 launches. Not a few thousand people. When the risk is riduced to a fraction of a percent (similar to what airline travel is today) there will be less reason to argue based on safety that humans shouldn't attempt space travel. 14 lives in 120 launches isn't good enough. If your local airline carried those odds you'd not use it.
Or in other words, using a car metaphor, of course: "Nobody will ever buy a Porsche, because it's got only two seats and a minimal trunk space. For 50'000 EUR *less*, you'd get four seats, a pickup-sized cargo bay AND as much horsepowers, so the Porsche is clearly bad value." :)
Ah now I understand. What you're saying is that this is a niche product that isn't practical for everyday use but is a status symbol and an excellent substitute for having a small willie.
That's fine. If so it doesn't deserve the kind of attention it's getting and we should no more be told how incredible this laptop is than we should be shown porches at a dealership when we walk in wanting a family car. Note that porches don't enjoy or target a large market share.
So long as they don't do what they have already done with the shuttle:
1) Build a flawed machine, with safety standards specified
2) Gradually remove the safeguards, kill some people in the process.
3) Wind up delaying with repeated patch jobs to the flawed design (instead of doing a proper redesign). Re-instate or intensify safeguards that aren't going to fix the issue.
4) Continue to launch despite seeing ongoing problems.
They need to either get this right and kill no one in the first few HUNDRED launches of the vehicle (if it's not superseded by then) or convince people that if we do incur a few deaths they are the price that has to be paid. Good luck with that second option. People are just too prone to a failure to understand why human spacetravel is worthwhile. Others aren't convinced that we've got enough experience with robotic craft to warrant it. All eyes will be on this next generation of spacecraft, and many of those eyes will be seeking to cancel the program from the outset.
I no longer have time for this discussion. I have work to do and chores to do at home, and somewhere in there I fit in the more pleasurable things in life.
You, like all religious people, have no wish to have a rational discussion based on the best evidence we have. Instead you keep pointing to metaphysics and the limits of provability and the fact that theories can be superceded and therefore aren't absolute truth. All while at the same time choosing to believe things written in books by people because you were taught them as a child, that are both less provable, contradictory and much more subjective than any scientific theory. That's your choice. I think it's a terrible thing to base a life on, and it does lead to great harm, as in the case of Galileo. At the same time I see that arguing with you is a complete waste of time because even if I do prove something or point out a flaw in your logic you simply deny it. Again it's your choice to behave that way but it's an awful choice and it means that I'm wasting my time continuing.
Good luck to you in however you choose to live your life. I hope you do neither yourself nor others harm due to your beliefs.
You've addressed ONE of my 3 points. I still don't know how you can want to read /. - knock yourself out though. Pay $1.50 a pop for a crappy 5cm screen. You're subsidising the phone service other users such as myself love.
By the way my experience of web browsing was on a Nokia N70 not something from 1999.
In his opinion, maybe. Not in mine. In my opinion, it is why the cow exists, and it is good for him to die for my sustenance.
Yeah look you're sinking into the ridiculous. Cows generally avoid trying to get killed because they have a survival instinct. There is damage done to the organism and it dies. "In my opinion, it is why the cow exists, and it is good for him to die for my sustenance." is no different than saying that you value your family's sustainence over the life of the cow. You may not see it as "bad" but that's because either you don't believe the cow's life has any value beyond fulfilling your own needs (which I call ignorant since the cow will suffer, there is one less cow, and the cow once dead can't be brought back - at the very least you should view the animal as a resource), which is what I think you're saying, or you've already accepted the trade off of the cow's life for your sustenance.
You keep coming back to silly metaphysical and extreme arguments. However I wasn't talking about killing cows and you know it. I was talking about people. You seem to want to deviate further and further from that. If I were to suggest that killing animals or humans randomly and as cruelly as possible were good, I'm sure you could argue that point of view as well, but I could provide many rational and sound arguments against your subjective belief. Sure you can still hold that belief despite the arguments but a rational safe sane society that didn't approve of mass murders and that sought to provide safety within the community would not agree. It requires only the human condition and rational thought, not some set of rules by a deity to agree. The only subjectivity required is the human condition.
Hell no. Shoot to kill. Trying to disable only increases the chances of his causing harm to me or my family. Never would I try to disarm in such a situation. If I am brought to the point of pointing that gun to protect my family, I will shoot, without hesitation.
You do realize that with that statement you're only a step or two away from the religious extremism of a nut job terrorist suicide bomber don't you?
There are many situations in which your family is threatened but the use of lethal force to restrain the attacker isn't necessary and many of those don't increase the risk to your family. You're alluding to just one in which guns are involved. Again extreme and narrow thinking.
Yes, it is. In fact, it is purely, 100%, subjective. Unless, of course, you believe in a higher power that sets up such rules.
NO NO NO NO AND NO. YOU DO NOT require a higher power to have a non-subjective morality. That is a foul and horrid lie perpetrated by people such as yourself who don't understand the meaning of the word subjective and can't hold a logical or consistent discussion. If the only reason you follow these rules is a belief in a non-existent higher power you're a dangerous person. Tell me exactly what is subjective about the idea that murder and torcher is a bad thing in society and that if people are allowed to go around killing and torchering people this is not good for society because no one is safe. There's nothing subjective about that at all. If people go killing and torchering, the logical conclusion are that people are less safe. Unless you're deranged the safety of yourself (and if you're sane your family too) is desirable. Almost every human being alive will agree on that. The only precondition is that you actually care about yourself and your family.
Question-begging: now you are assuming "rational" means "someone who agrees with my subjective assessment." This is not proof of anything at all.
Not true but even if it were it's still better than your assessment of "good" which is "agrees with my fictional and unprovable higher power and the works of fiction people have written about what he wants us to do".
By the way I don't think you understand what question-begging even means. Please look it up and stop misusing it.
I most certainly am not. Killing a cow for food is good. Killing a person threatening to harm my family is good.
That's a false argument. Killing a cow for food is good for your family (since something must die if they are to eat) but bad for the cow (it has to die). You're making a choice between 2 kinds of bad and deciding correctly that your family's needs to sustain their lives are more important than the cow's. You're picking the most pleasant of 2 unpleasants and since it's a choice you've dealt with many times it's not morally ambiguous.
Now as for killing a person who threatens to harm your family, if it's a choice between your family and someone to whom you don't have strong ties fair enough. I'd at least hope you'd try to disable the person making the threat instead of killing them.
You would hopefully agree killing the cow or a stranger on the street for no good reason or just for pleasure is wrong.
Yes, but only subjectively. The cow and person I killed would not agree with my conclusions. And I cannot prove I am right that those killings were good. I can only assert it as my subjective claim.
That's one intelligent cow. However your point is that it's subjective. It's not really all that subjective as you might think. Given the same situation if a member of your family threatened to kill someone and were killed in trying to do that, a rational person would have to agree that the death of the initial agressor is unfortunate but preferable to death of the innocent person. You may be unhappy, and you may be less willing to believe that your family member did such a thing but if you would condemn someone for actions you yourself say you would take, you're not being rational.
God has nothing to do with what I am saying. The context of this is whether we can "prove" something is bad. Whether we can know it objectively. Getting someone to agree -- hell, getting EVERYONE to agree -- whether or not they believe in God is beside any point I was addressing. I am skipping ahead here because most of the next few paragraphs have nothing to do with me or anything I said.
They're direct responses to the things you've said. You're just chosing to ignore them.
There are degrees of provability. If I tell you I can fly without any machines and refuse to show you, you should not believe me. You certainly shouldn't be pointing to a metaphysical universe in which I'm some detached head to examine the argument and dismiss it as nonsense. Your understanding of physics and human biology should be enough to refute the case. You should challenge me to prove that I can, and only if I prove my claim should you examine how I did it.
No. I firmly believe that is not possible. There are some truths -- very few, and mostly mathematical -- that are objectively identifiable no matter what reality is. I do not believe there is the slightest possibility that 2+2=5 (unless, of course, you change the meanings for those symbols, which is, of course, entirely beside the point).
Your beliefs have nothing to do with it. If you're willing to accept you may be some severed head in an alternate universe, and that the universe you see is all illusion, then you can say NOTHING about the laws of mathematics or physics in that "real" universe unless you find a way to observe it.
If on the other hand you choose to be pragmatic and look at the universe you can observe indeed there are mathematical proofs that you can deduce from observation leading to rules which you can then apply.
Incorrect. Let's examine what YOU said: "If I live a life of poverty and chastity I'll go to heaven." I responded, "I don't know anyone who believes the quoted claim." The monks and nuns I am referring to ALSO do not believe that quoted claim. Taking a vow of chastity and poverty is, in Christianity, is done by some, but NOT in order to go to heaven.
Now you claim to know and understand the motivation for every Christian who takes such vowss. Do you realize h
Question-begging fallacy.
You mean truth you don't wish to face.
There's billions of people on this planet and hundreds of millions in this country, and it is impossible for everyone to have the same beliefs, and the decisions of others will always be affecting you.
Exactly. Which is why their beliefs are any concern of mine at all. If your president decides to nuke a town because his deity told him it was right, I'm affected.
Grow some stones.
You mean by not arguing against your flawed logic???
How about you stick to the topics at hand and cut the childish personal attacks. I'm not in your highschool and don't need to pull my "stones" out in gym to prove I'm a man.
Far less so than atrocities committed in the name of things OTHER than religion. And even those things done "in the name of" religion were almost always just using religion as an excuse, as any honest historical examination shows: it was about lust for power and control by leaders, who strung their people along with whatever they had handy, whether religion, nationalism, race, etc.
Ahh I see so the attrocities committed in the name of religion are okay because there are worse ones out there? Yeah very logical.
Regarding lust for power, by your logic we should be punishing leaders, religious and otherwise, who string people along and cause them to commit the atrocities. I don't see any religious movement where what flimsy checks and balances may be in place against this haven't failed miserably. When's the last time you heard of the head of a religious group being ousted for such a thing. Which of the popes that have done wrong were removed?
Indeed. And if the people of Africa followed the Church's teachings--not only on condoms, but on sex in general--HIV would not be an epidemic today.
Yes good luck with stopping people from having pre-marital sex. It's a battle that can't be won as it goes against our strongest drives. Some of the "people of Africa" you are talking about don't have sex because they choose to. Some of them are forced into having sex before they are old enough to understand the consequences. Some of them don't contract HIV through any fault of their own.
Condoms are used in either of two cases. One case is extramarital or premartial sex, which the Church is against in principle. The other is intramarital sex, which doesn't propogate HIV other than in the case of birth. And I think the Church in that case would recommend remaining celibate even within marriage rather than spreading HIV to one's offspring.
What completely and obviously flawed logic. What if you are married, your partner contracts HIV (perhaps through extramartial sex, perhaps through no fault of their own), and you get HIV?
The main use of condoms within a marriage is birth control. So that you can plan the number and timing of the children you have. But the church is against this. It would instead see husbands and wives only have sex as many times as they want children. However that completely ignores the human drive to have sex and the unhappiness that people feel if they don't have sex. Most people simply aren't willing to give up sex. You can ignore that fact, and science can explain why, but it won't change how people actually behave or what makes them happy.
Now you're telling me that the people of Africa, who obviously aren't following the Church's teachings on sexual morality, are afflicted with an HIV epidemic because they are following the Church's teachings on sexual morality?
I never said any such thing. I do believe that the church should not be preventing people from gaining access to condoms, and calling for banning their use. People may or may not follow the churches teaching. In fact the idea that people bottle up their sexuality the way you're suggesting is damaging in itself, and not everyone is willing to make that tradeoff. Nor should they be forced to. With condoms they are safer than without. The church would rather they be unsafe if they don't follow its teachings. This is clearly a form of control not only of what people should believe but what they should do.
It's not a misdirection at all, since it's not intramarital sex that spreads AIDS by and large.
It is misdirection. This has nothing to do with pre-marital sex. The only connection there is the argument that people who have effective birth and STD control may be more promiscuous or engage in pre-marital sex.
The pope doesn't hold a position on the spread of aids per se, though he may do, and if he does I'll bet that he believes it's a punishment by God.
No we were discussing condoms. The pope's position and the official church position I believe is that anything (including condoms) that interfeers with the "sacred" process of contraception is wrong/foul/unholy. Never mind that it may stop STDs from spreading, help keep world population under control (but then there'd be less Christians to control wouldn't theere), allow people to have better control over their lives. No because it is something that God created and how he created life it shouldn't be interfeered with. I could use the same logic to say that all medicine, which interfeers with natural processes, is evil and I believe there are extreme sects of Christianity that do (e.g. The Almish). In other words modern medical inventions are being ignored or vilified due to superstitious beliefs.
If their objection to the Pope is simply that he is a religious leader, then why don't they come out and say so without dancing around the issue?
With a non-religious person you can argue the point on its merits based on the good or harm the use of condoms does. With a religious leader they say "God says it is so" and he won't accept any logical arguments.
Shrug. Why do you care?
Don't know about the parent, but why do I care? Only because people are making life decisions based on the adult equivalent of Santa Claus and many of those decisions affect me. Only because these religions target the young and threaten them with the same things to scare them into compliance. Only because atrocities have been committed in the name of various world religions. In the case of this thread only because religious nonsense has stood in the way of scientific debate with a great scientist (even if his people skills were lacking) being forced to retract his findings and publication only to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.
"bad" is not an objective term. It's inherently subjective, unless it is defined further.
Destructive or harmful however aren't subjective terms. It's also very easy to tell if something is unpleasant. IF you're willing to accept that something that is harmful or destructive or unpleasant is "bad" and if you're willing to accept that there's nothing special about yourself vs your fellow man (ie. that other people also deserve respect and care you would want them to show you) it's quite easy to define something as "good" or "bad" based on how it affects yourself and others. You don't need God for that kind of morality.
Since when is lack of direct or obvious benefit "bad"? Could not the damage done make the individual or community stronger in the long run? And how could you possibly know what all of the indirect consequences are? Unless you can see the entire picture, isn't it impossible for you to say?
Not really. I know a lot of people who don't believe in God who would agree that the murder of an innocent child is bad. Not all actions that damage make the person or community stronger. (In fact most don't. I think you've been taking Nietzsche at face value). Yes there are more ambiguous actions - ones that involve a tradeoff that may harm one person or group but benefit another. First of all you don't need God to logically weight those up either and decide what's good or bad. Secondly even members of the same religion often don't agree on which action is right under those circumstances. Thirdly there are better criteria than ancient texts and myths to use when making a decision about what is right. Fourthly if you do use ancient rules or laws that were written without modern situations in mind you often find they're inadequate.
Let's take a really difficult moral question: Should the atom bomb have been dropped on Hiroshima. On the one hand it killed and mamed a lot of people and had effects generations later. On the other hand a lot more people would have died fighting for Japan at the end of WWII had it not been dropped. I have a very strong opinion on this and that is that they should have dropped the bomb somewhere less inhabitted as a demonstration, however lets restrict ourselves to a binary decision: either it should have been dropped as it was, or it should not have been dropped at all. People within the same religion could take a tennant like "thou shalt not kill" to resolve this, but its application is not straight forward. Does that mean I should not kill regardless of what anyone else does? Does that mean I'm allowed to condone it after the fact and agree it was the right decision? Does it apply when you're talking about war (there are suggestions it means "thou shalt not murder" and that this doesn't apply in war). So a belief in God or ancient text doesn't tell me good from bad or right from wrong, it's just a basis from which to make a moral decision, and it still requires application which is subjective. What's bad about using a rule like that, passed down as law, is that it restricts the reasoning. "Thou shalt not kill" is a good rule for a society since random murder doesn't allow for a cohesive society, however if it had been a bad or outdated or inapplicable law a religious person wouldn't be free to ignore it and use reason instead, where a non-religious person could.
Unless you can see the entire picture, isn't it impossible for you to say?
That's true with or without religiously based morality.
I fail to see how that is hypocritical. You are the one who brought "proof" into this. "Proof" is a higher standard of conclusion. I can say 2+2=4, and I can prove it. I can say I am not merely a head in a jar imagining this world, but I cannot prove it.
Actually who's to say that your proof of 2+2=4 isn't fiction also. Perhaps your head in a jar imagines this world such that 2+2=4 but in the world it actually exists in 2+2=5. When you start to question reality all your logic unravels. It's part of the study of metaphysics.
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable.
...and so on...
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone can claim freedom from slavery doesn't make slavery unforgivable.
Man, just because you live in a world where rape and murder are illegal, doesn't make rape and murder unforgivable.
See I can justify any action with handwaving.
He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him.
In some ways that is much WORSE. It means the very people who claim to be the protectors of mankind from all things evil were quite happy to trash scientific truth just to put down anyone that would question their authority.
I also hear this argument a lot and it simply doesn't hold true. You do realize that Copernicus held off publishing his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) until he was old and close to dying for fear of retribution from the church? He didn't go around insulting the pope now did he? His works were still banned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point.
You DOUBT? You mean I'm having this argument with someone who doesn't even KNOW the history, but is happy to rabbit on about things he knows nothing about? If you're actually interested in what really happened I can recommend a couple of good books I studied as part of my History of Astronomy subject when I did my Astronomy Masters. Never mind...I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? You're prepared to repeat whatever you've heard without examining it at all.
I didn't say the pope threatened Galileo with anything. I said the current pope condoned the actions of the inquisition that did threaten. Go look up a biography some time.
Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion.
Again you show your ignorance. It's more than just a "cruel expulsion". A man who is excommunicated became a pariah, often had his belongings stripped from him, and was threatened with the fires of hell for eternity. This was no mere slap on the wrist.
I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Ahhh so it's a form of control. A man's life, livelihood, and beliefs mean nothing because he dared to make fun of the holy church. This is no defence. You clearly have no conception whatsoever of what excommunication meant in the 1600s!
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all?
The pope was condoning torture, forcing a person to recant deeply held beliefs, interference of the church with scientific freedom and publication.
But yes strictly speaking you're right. If you're running an evil and descructive totalitarian organisation it is rational to cond
You realize, of course, that the notion that this is "bad" cannot be proven or disproven? So either you are being a hypocrite, or you are conceding that it is not absolute fact that this is bad. Either way you are undermining your own argument.
Who said "bad" can't be "proven or disproven". You can look at the damage done to an organism, an environment or a community and judge whether it is beneficial for yourself, or a community. You're the one being a hypocrite. First you tell me that I am right about not needing to believe in God to have a morality then you tell me I can't prove what's right.
And YOU are claiming that anyone who doesn't believe in this God is NOT necessarily mistaken. How is that any better? Because you say so? Not very rational.
In that statement, I am only claiming that if there is a single God, then the majority of people on the planet are mistaken, and that everyone who does believe in a single God to the exclusion of others therefore has a point of contention which can lead to conflict. That's quite rational, I'm afraid.
False.
Stating that something is false without backing it up means you've proven nothing.
As it cannot be disproven, you must concede therefore that the world MAY be that way, instead of asserting it is not.
There are many things I cannot disprove, but I do not make my decisions based on the fact they are true if I can't prove them. You do.
Second, EVERYONE does the same thing. Including you. Everyone has beliefs that they hold to absolutely that may not be true. Hell, as far as you know, you're just a brain in a jar. Yet you believe you are not, and you encourage others to believe the same. Everyone necessarily does this. To make a categorical statement that this is bad is irrational (and of course, unprovable, thus falling afoul of your first statement).
No, not everyone does the same thing. If you present someone with "faith" with disproof of what they believe they continue to believe it. If you present me with proof that something I hold is true is incorrect, I will believe you. Prove to me that I'm a brain in a jar and I'll happily believe it. Heck prove to me its even likely that I'm a figment of some brain in a jar's imagination and I'll look at your evidence. What I won't believe is faery stories passed down through the ages which have been disproven. That is NOT the same as you, at all.
This criticism is only useful when pointed at specific information, and specific choices based on that information. Saying it is bad to make moral and rational choices on bad information is nonsense. Saying it is bad to make the choice to abort your baby based on the bad information that your baby had an incurable is obvious. So give me an example.
Saying it is bad to make moral and rational choices on bad information is NOT nonsense. If you have bad data/assumptions you come to incorrect conclusions which don't match reality. I could give you many many examples since you ask, but one good one is "If I live a life of poverty and chastity I'll go to heaven". Well if there is no heaven or afterlife you have deprived yourself of good experiences for NOTHING. That's just one good example.
Oh come on. Anything can be divisive. And in this discussion, for example, it is the atheists who are being divisive. I don't see any Christians saying "if you don't believe in Christ then you're an idiotic moron," but see a lot of "if you believe in Christ than you're an idiotic moron." Let's place the blame where it actually lies: with PEOPLE who are divisive.
Yes anything can be divisive but if you are willing to listen to reason and change a point of view, you can overcome that. If on the other hand you have "faith" that something is because a religious authority tells you it is so, there's no arguing.
I see plenty of Christians saying if you don't believe in Christ you'll burn in hell forever. The blame isn't just one of people. Original sin is at the core of the Christian religion.
"Irrationality" is any thought that defies the predetermined narrative (as defined by the mainstream). In the 17th-century, it was any man of science. Today, it's any man of faith. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Irrationality refers to incoherent thoughts or thoughts held as true even after they have been disproven. The main stream has nothing to do with it (except perhaps where the standard of proof comes in). A man of science that holds an irrational thought is just as irrational as a man of faith that does so, and it hasn't changed.
The sad thing is that anyone thinks this needs to be proven. What are they teaching in schools these days?
Apparently in some schools they are teaching that the world is 6000 years old.
Start with science. Science as we know it today was brought into existence by religious people who -- unlike their atheist contemporaries -- believed that, because God exists, the universe must have order, and rules, and that those rules are discoverable. It is because of Isaac Newton's religious beliefs that he brought so much knowledge to our world.
Not all scientists have had a religious background. Most of the earliest scientists we know of certainly didn't believe in the same God or Gods people believe in today.
As for Newton have you read a biography about the man? I have. As well as being a genius he was one very disturbed individual. Who knows what contribution a religious upbringing had to that, or if he'd have faired better without religion. He also believed in alchemy and the occult. That doesn't mean we should too.
Justice. It is from religion that we get the idea that all men are created equal, that equality before the law, equality of rights, equality of worth are good and right and true.
Actually there's plenty of religious teaching that rabbits on about "God's chosen people" and plenty of religious teaching that suggests that non-believers be treated differently. We do not need religion to have a concept of justice or morality. People living in communities saw a need for law in order to facilitate co-existence and the benefits that come from it. The earliest written history does not describe monotheistic religions, but it does describe law.
You could make the case that unthinking religion or nationalism is bad, but that's nothing new, and not unique to any particular idea. For example, courage is not bad, but courage without wisdom is bad, and so on. There's nothing bad inherent in religion.
Oh but there are bad things in religion:
1) All religions work on the basis that you should believe things as absolute fact that cannot be proven or that can actually be disproven
2) Monotheistic religions teach that there is only one God and that anyone who doesn't believe in this God is mistaken.
Both of these things are socially destructive, and irrational. The first encourages us to see the world as something that it is not. Why is this important? Because people will make moral and rational choices based on bad information. Ultimately depending on what they believe they can do something harmful. Steven Weinberg said "Without religion good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but for a good person to do bad things that takes religion"
The second is very divisive and an enabler for people who want to grab power and wage war to brainwash those around them.
Hope you enjoyed your dinner.
He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome. He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage, but so is the Dalai Lama
First of all, it's not okay to do something harmful just because another religious leader does it.
Secondly, I don't think the parent was suggesting other religions or other religious leaders are better. I'd say most people saying things about this pope here today aren't pro-religion.
Thirdly, the pope teaches that using condoms is a sin even within marriage, so your bringing up chastity outside of marriage is at best misdirection. (Then you have the gaul to lecture the GP about misleading people)
You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion.
Are you saying that the pope supporting imprisoning a scientist for the rest of their life, banning their published work, and threatening them with death, torture and excommunication might be okay depending on his reasons for doing so???
Fine, the papacy over-reacted to Galileo. We got it. ...and by over-reacted we mean imprisoned him for the rest of his life, threatened to kill, torture and excommunicate him if he didn't publicly recant what he believed to be true, and banned his published work.
Incidentally - was Galileo right? Is the sun "fixed". I don't think so. Indeed I'm happy with both geocentric and heliocentric descriptions; but in a "sol" centred frame of reference I'm happier with heliocentric maths (though one of the problems with heliocentricism apparently was that it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables).
Your education has failed you if you believe a geocentric view is workable.
Galileo was more right than Aristotle. His system is closer to an accurate description of what really occurs as we've now been able to prove. Yes the frame of reference of the sun shifts against the galaxy and the galaxy against the local group etc. but that doesn't make geocentric and heliocentric views equivalent.
Heliocentricism it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables in some circumstances while people insisted that the planets had circular orbits. Once Kepler worked out that they were elliptical, the only planet that continued to REALLY deviate was Mercury. That was later explained by General Relativity, which incidentally is "more right" than Special Relativity (on its own) which was in turn "more right" than Newtonian Mechanics in so much as it describes more accurately what we actually observe.
If you label someone an 'irrational nutcase', you are essentially refusing to have a dialogue. ...which may be the right thing to do when someone continues to argue a point even when it's been disproven, based on beliefs about fictional beings.
Do you argue with trolls instead of refusing to have a dialogue?