That is not entirely true, it is difficult to know with certainty the disposition of someone else's soul. We are judge on our relationship to God , which in part has to do with how much we desire to know the truth and live the truth. It is very difficult to know what experiences the devil may have given someone that keeps them back from the knowledge of what is true, but in so much as they are sincerely seeking the truth and are not at fault in not finding it , it becomes more difficult to know what the final consequences will be for them. Hell is something we choose for ourselves by our persistent rejection of the truth so in a persons ignorance, there is at least some hope they will eventually find peace.
Still , a well educated and strident atheist ? My guess would be he will be in purgatory a while and need serious some prayer for his soul if he makes it at all. One of the unanswerable questions is if his rejection of God was sincere or if he was really rejecting what he imagines God to be , which is what most atheists do. Most Christians I know have struggled with a temptation to atheism some are former athiest and so many I'd guess around 30% Christian's have a good understanding of atheism. On the other hand , most atheist I know , I'd guess something like 70% of them, have never really taken the time to understand what they are rejecting , and are instead rejecting either 'the faith there parents taught them poorly' or the character of faith made popular in certain literature, they don't actually reject God or true faith in him because various situations conspire to prevent them from ever knowing the evidence that supports his existence.
So , what will the all knowing judge of the universe do for those souls , will they be punished for what is not their fault. It would not be unjust if they were, but there is also reason to hope he will be Merciful.
Yes many of them. Used to know more of them when I lived in the north east. Most atheist I have met have never really thought out the logic of what they believe and live life driven more by emotion then rational thought. Not that there aren't just as many detest in that boat. Although many of them like to imagine or claim they live rationally. Most become quite uncomfortable when you point out the basic consequences of the atheistic hypothesis and it logical realactions to ethics. That is not to say all. I've met some very few well thought out atheist who accept the full consequences of what they believe.
You seem to disagree with obvios logic. So provery me wrong.
Can you name a single thing that has no effect on you and explain why it _must_ matter to you? Remember having knowledgeable about a thing is an effect.
I'm not imagining how anyone feels who doesn't talk about feelings. I'm talking about what is rational, logical, and concrete and the natural conclusion of specific premises.
controlling something remotely is different then accessing it once it is off the network and shut off.
Still, if you are going to do something illegal , it is best not to create a record of it. ( and probably better just not to do it).
If you are in a country where you feel the need to engage in acts of civil disobedience in the modern age. Good luck and God bless. Also, find a way to get a some cheap disposable mobile phones and don't keep them long term.
Anyone who believe that the 'end times' somehow releaves them of there moral obligation should read there bible. As 'no one knows the time and hour' Mathew 24
Certainly caring for God's creation is one of the prime obligation placed on those who are supposed to be doing all good until his return.
You are mistaken logically, from athiestic world view, the only things that can matter to you are things that affect you. Once you are dead nothing else can. That doesn't mean you are beyond caring about death. Even so that is emotion and instinct. Of course that is one of the rrasons why I've never been an atheist and am a _former_ agnostic, because everyone has a moral compass which either points to a real place or is a biological illusion. If the latter is true, we have no reason to hope for anything to ever improve and all human action and morality is nothing more then interesting and in consequencail chemical reactions. I reject that proposition as unsure and instead choose to believe that morality is more then a mere illusion of chemistry.
Which is relevant in what way after you are dead unless you are somehow conscious of it? So do you think most people would be highly motivated or not much by a remote possible future threat to there grand or great grandchildren. Also would such a response be reasonable or simply irrational emotionalism? The latter probably isn't a good foundation for discussion just global economic systems.
I've alway found your correct and astute observation interesting. All humans have a moral compass, which may or may not be in agreement with others. The thing is where does that compass come from and how do we decide if we should follow it or ignore it because it is faulty. Should we apply logic? Science? Or just do whatever we feel so long as we accept the outcome? Logically it makes a great deal of difference if our compass exist because there is some greater reality it evolved or was creatededited to point too or if it is merely an illusion of are nervous system that exists as a happenstance of our biology. If the former it is evidence for the existence of god. If the latter logically we should exclude any action as irrelevant if they do not personally effect us.
People who believe that God created the world and expects us to act as care takers of His gift for the next generation of humanity should be shocked and appalled and take every responsible action to ensure the gift we have been given by God is preserved and passed down to the next generation.
However I can't think of any reason that would inspire action for those who have no faith because the results of any action on this matter for or against are unlikely to have any effect beyond our lifetime.
That brings the next real question, how can we motivate people to action , how can we ensure that action does not unjustly disenfranchise the poor.
besides that what does it meant to patent a gene. Don't gene's have multiple variants. how do you know one gene is sufficiently like another to infringe? can I patent all genes that produce fatty acids? I mean copywrite would seem more appropriate ( as it is used for code and art ). Does any one know what these patents actually cover. Is the gene or is it something like 'the method to identify the gene'. Or the 'method to replicate' the gene.
I fail to see how anyone can patent something they did not invent , but rather discovered. I'm glad there was no patent on North America;)
Here is the problem. _I_ pay for bandwidth and I have every right to expect and demand that all of the traffic I request be delivered to me with the same priority. If my ISP is making it difficult to access any site because they are slowing down traffic from it's servers or speeding up traffic from someone else. I as a customer can should and will complain. Further, if I don't have a choice about ISP's it is time to make the ISP fight a million little anti-trust suits.
The fact that there are different types of corporate entries at all is part of the government regulations of a free market. Laws need to be balanced to ensure the exercise of Commerce and user choice, while at the same time preventing one actor from destroying the ability of others to conduct commerce. It is a not an easy equation. More over the specific laws need change depending on your goals. Is it better to optimize wealth or optimize average wealth. It is bad for society line general if any business is 'too large to fail' because it is the possibility of failure that inspires the struggle of competition.
That would have nothing to do with net neutrality. T-Mobile has already been doing something similar for years. Not charging a consumer for a specific merchandise (in this case packets received) is no more about net neutrality then buy 1 get 1 free at a grocery store. When it because a issue with net neutrality is AT&T starts giving priority to Direct TV traffic vs Netflix thus making it difficult or impossible to watch Netflix on there network while making it really easy to watch there product. Net neutrally is about treating the packets on the network differently depending on service and or source, it has very little to do with the client ( or how much the consumer pays). That is where to problem comes in. Without net neutrally the ISP gains the ability to manipulate the customer experience with competitors products in a way that is difficult to detect and impossible to overcome. Consumers should be screaming at any company that does not treat all services they want use equally for 2 reasons.
1) it should be your choice what you do with the bandwidth you paid for. Without net neutrality it is a little like buying a car, but the speed limit is different depending on weather you buy a honda or mozda , because mozda and honda own different roads, and while they can't stop a honda from driving on a mozda road they are now allowed to require all competitors cars to travel 5mph and ones owned by them to travel 100. Thus limiting your choice of places to shop and eat to the ones they would like.
2) and more concerning, it means the ISP is snooping on every piece of data you are using. monitoring the packet types and the ip's they are coming from and influencing transmission speeds based on packet content. ( which also means they are likely logging that traffic ). Strong net centrality laws would require that all packets be treated with the same priority and that ISP do not retain any network data unless it is actively being used for problem diagnosis.
The only reason there isn't a huge uproar about it , is because most people understand nothing about it.
Technically it is NOT illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to use your monopoly to take over other markets or other segments of your existing market. However, there is a secondary problem that has developed in the sense that now companies are so diversified that it is impossible to tell which markets they are not part of. I'm not sure the best solution,but one thing that might help would be a 'truth in branding law' that requires a company to a single registered name / brand/ trademark. At least then companies would have to stop pretending they didn't make both superior and inferior products, the reputation risk would be to all their products and so would be much greater. Right now they can keep damaging the consumer and just keep changing the name, so long as they can sell the product. Basically people should be able to own more the one company but a company should not. If it aquires another company they should need to abandon one of the brands ( or at least make their primary brand clearly identifiable with the product).
Something else that 'might' be an interesting idea, would be to make a better use of corporate charters. They could required to be more narrow in there company description. If the owners of a company want to create a different business it should have an independent , board, documents and branding.
Do honey bees understand? slime mold can solve a maze , but I would not impart to it the ability to 'understand' that it is solving a problem. Honey bees recognize quantity , but that seems a vast a difference between that and understanding that nothing is a quantity or even recognizing quantity as a property.
Do computers 'understand' the programs we write? certainly I could program some drones to perform the same task , would a person then claim the computer 'understands' quantity?
Responding to a stimuli and being able to form an abstract concept of that stimuli as a generalization that is then manipulated to solve problems and model predictably ( aka understand a thing or concept) are very very different.
You are mistaken if you had read the writing of Pope Francis Benedict or John Paul the 2nd you would realize I am stating thing that are basic mainstream catholic thought
"I'm sure everyone believes they follow the TRUE path." That may be , do you claim to be any different? It is non-sense at it's highest to claim you assert the truth that there is no truth. "You follow a worm's religion. It is vitally important for you to try reading about Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Keep reading it until you understand what faith meant to Abraham." No I understand precisely what faith meant to Abraham.
He believed that God is the cause of existence itself, that if he willed it We would cease to exist or even be erased from time , with just a thought. That God created all things and is the cause of what we call existence, or as stated later in the Pentateuch 'I am IAM'. He believed that because we are utterly dependent on God , we owe him every loyalty and that he will not fail to deliver what he prom sis because by his nature he cannot fail, nor promise what is untrue.
The relevant question is weather or not what he believed was true? A persons response to reality presupposes it's truth. IF existence and truth are more then simply abstract concepts , illusions without any real meaning , then we owe a proper response to that reality. A person can 'want' or dislike any aspect of what is true , but that will not change what is true, nor will it change the fact that improper response to reality will have negative consequences. That of coarse is part of the difficulty that arises among human beings How best to negotiate our differences in our perception and exposure to the evidence around us.
'Atoms exists because we can detect them.' -- no they most certainly do not. Atoms existed long before human beings climbed out of the slime of the earth ( or there would have been no slime) and will continue even if all human life is destroyed tomorrow. They exist because they 'are' it is our knowledge of them and our ability to gather data about them that has changes. Truth is independent of the existence of an observer.
'Faith on the other hand is a belief in an immutable, permanent, and unerring truth' -- you and I disagree on this definition.
I am using definition 3. you seem to be merging definition 3 and 2. Staying with definition 3, ANYTHING you believe in confidently is evidence of your specific faith.
What a persons believes can and should changes as they gather more information and grow. The relationship between faith and belief being that we 'have faith in what we believe'. What I believe and understand about God has changed over my lifetime, not because God has changed, but because I have. What I believe about my mother has changed over my lifetime as well, because both of us have changed AND because I have greater capability to understand then I once did. Faith is not static, every religion changes and adapts to it's specific environment, the only question is weather or not what they teach is true. You may disagree, but unless you have reviewed the evidence for yourself you are again putting your faith in someone else's data.
"Because we should respect your neighbors." -- why? you are making an ascertaining without evidence or reason, AND assuming other people will agree with you irrationally.
Faith is a positive characteristic IF it is faith in what is TRUE , some people have faith that there are alian life forms ( which likely there are) some people also have faith they are common ( for which there is zero evidence for or against.)
There are however mountains of evidence for the existence of the supernatural and a preponderance of the evidence,in my opinion, for the existence of the Judaeo-Christian God. No faith that is worth having , is a faith based on anything other then evidence. Most people have faith in many things , because faith is a belief you have based partially supported by fact and contains a reasonable element of conjecture based on that fact, which is one of the reasons it is non-sense to take exception to other people who have not have the advantage of seeing the evidence you have reviewed and of understanding in correctly.
On the other hand I will guarantee you you have faith in many things. Do atoms exists? unless you can do the experiment yourself to prove it or have seen the experiments with your own eyes, you are placing your faith in the words of others whom you trust who are have gathered and interpreted partial information from you.
One of the advantages of faith in God is that everyone is able to take direct actions and experience the evidence for themselves without the use of expensive equipment. That is why proving God exists and proving water exist are similar. We believe such things through experience. Have you read any scientific papers lately proving water exists?
wikipedia lists it as 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%) . I can't really say myself that I have on opinion beyond that because I haven't reviewed the method and data , but I don't have any reason to think the experts who study such things are intentionally making a mistake.
I hate having to choose between rupuklicans and deomancrates when it comes to our general election. I would really like a candidate who believed in laws that discouraged the centralization of wealth and power with a few individuals and who thought it should be accomplished with laws that create fair competition rather then having the central government collect all that money a redistribute it. Right now we basically get to choose between a party that believes the rich elete should control society and a party who believe the government should control society and every aspect of our lives. Of coarse it is worsened because one party pays lip service to morality and the other party shows out right disdain for it, to the point of booing at the idea of mentioning God in tier parties platform. So we are stuck either voting for the worshipers of the worldly wealth, who slowly erode basic freedoms and make things hard for people of color because is serves better the almighty dollar or the worshipers of murder, and bestiality and sexual depravity and it is hard to tell which one is worse. Of coarse both of them contribute in there own way to the problems with 1 in 3 women being raped or attacked. The republicans by ignoring the problem and acting like the powerful can do no wrong and the democrats by promoting sex as toy and by proxies women as play things.
The whole things reminds me that if there is no God, there is no hope because no human being or human action is going to save us from this mess.
fair enough. Survival instinct is not 'reasonable' though. There are far too many people out there who claim to be living 'rationally' and 'scientifically' ( not to mention using those terms as a way to be derogatory to people who have faith) and as I think you very aptly pointed out , are doing nothing like it, they live almost entirely by instinct, with very little actual thought behind their actions. Not that I have anything against atheist , but if you don't believe and live only by what you feel, own it and stop trying to claim you are doing something else;)
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I had not yet been created. Simply because you being does not prove you end.
That is not entirely true, it is difficult to know with certainty the disposition of someone else's soul. We are judge on our relationship to God , which in part has to do with how much we desire to know the truth and live the truth. It is very difficult to know what experiences the devil may have given someone that keeps them back from the knowledge of what is true, but in so much as they are sincerely seeking the truth and are not at fault in not finding it , it becomes more difficult to know what the final consequences will be for them. Hell is something we choose for ourselves by our persistent rejection of the truth so in a persons ignorance, there is at least some hope they will eventually find peace.
Still , a well educated and strident atheist ? My guess would be he will be in purgatory a while and need serious some prayer for his soul if he makes it at all. One of the unanswerable questions is if his rejection of God was sincere or if he was really rejecting what he imagines God to be , which is what most atheists do. Most Christians I know have struggled with a temptation to atheism some are former athiest and so many I'd guess around 30% Christian's have a good understanding of atheism. On the other hand , most atheist I know , I'd guess something like 70% of them, have never really taken the time to understand what they are rejecting , and are instead rejecting either 'the faith there parents taught them poorly' or the character of faith made popular in certain literature, they don't actually reject God or true faith in him because various situations conspire to prevent them from ever knowing the evidence that supports his existence.
So , what will the all knowing judge of the universe do for those souls , will they be punished for what is not their fault. It would not be unjust if they were, but there is also reason to hope he will be Merciful.
Yes many of them. Used to know more of them when I lived in the north east. Most atheist I have met have never really thought out the logic of what they believe and live life driven more by emotion then rational thought. Not that there aren't just as many detest in that boat. Although many of them like to imagine or claim they live rationally. Most become quite uncomfortable when you point out the basic consequences of the atheistic hypothesis and it logical realactions to ethics. That is not to say all. I've met some very few well thought out atheist who accept the full consequences of what they believe.
You seem to disagree with obvios logic. So provery me wrong.
Can you name a single thing that has no effect on you and explain why it _must_ matter to you? Remember having knowledgeable about a thing is an effect.
I'm not imagining how anyone feels who doesn't talk about feelings. I'm talking about what is rational, logical, and concrete and the natural conclusion of specific premises.
controlling something remotely is different then accessing it once it is off the network and shut off.
Still, if you are going to do something illegal , it is best not to create a record of it. ( and probably better just not to do it).
If you are in a country where you feel the need to engage in acts of civil disobedience in the modern age. Good luck and God bless.
Also, find a way to get a some cheap disposable mobile phones and don't keep them long term.
Anyone who believe that the 'end times' somehow releaves them of there moral obligation should read there bible. As 'no one knows the time and hour' Mathew 24
Certainly caring for God's creation is one of the prime obligation placed on those who are supposed to be doing all good until his return.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/f...
This some it up well.
Agreed.
You are mistaken logically, from athiestic world view, the only things that can matter to you are things that affect you. Once you are dead nothing else can. That doesn't mean you are beyond caring about death. Even so that is emotion and instinct. Of course that is one of the rrasons why I've never been an atheist and am a _former_ agnostic, because everyone has a moral compass which either points to a real place or is a biological illusion. If the latter is true, we have no reason to hope for anything to ever improve and all human action and morality is nothing more then interesting and in consequencail chemical reactions. I reject that proposition as unsure and instead choose to believe that morality is more then a mere illusion of chemistry.
Which is relevant in what way after you are dead unless you are somehow conscious of it? So do you think most people would be highly motivated or not much by a remote possible future threat to there grand or great grandchildren. Also would such a response be reasonable or simply irrational emotionalism? The latter probably isn't a good foundation for discussion just global economic systems.
I've alway found your correct and astute observation interesting. All humans have a moral compass, which may or may not be in agreement with others. The thing is where does that compass come from and how do we decide if we should follow it or ignore it because it is faulty. Should we apply logic? Science? Or just do whatever we feel so long as we accept the outcome? Logically it makes a great deal of difference if our compass exist because there is some greater reality it evolved or was creatededited to point too or if it is merely an illusion of are nervous system that exists as a happenstance of our biology. If the former it is evidence for the existence of god. If the latter logically we should exclude any action as irrelevant if they do not personally effect us.
People who believe that God created the world and expects us to act as care takers of His gift for the next generation of humanity should be shocked and appalled and take every responsible action to ensure the gift we have been given by God is preserved and passed down to the next generation.
However I can't think of any reason that would inspire action for those who have no faith because the results of any action on this matter for or against are unlikely to have any effect beyond our lifetime.
That brings the next real question, how can we motivate people to action , how can we ensure that action does not unjustly disenfranchise the poor.
besides that what does it meant to patent a gene. Don't gene's have multiple variants. how do you know one gene is sufficiently like another to infringe? can I patent all genes that produce fatty acids? I mean copywrite would seem more appropriate ( as it is used for code and art ).
Does any one know what these patents actually cover. Is the gene or is it something like 'the method to identify the gene'. Or the 'method to replicate' the gene.
I fail to see how anyone can patent something they did not invent , but rather discovered. I'm glad there was no patent on North America ;)
Here is the problem. _I_ pay for bandwidth and I have every right to expect and demand that all of the traffic I request be delivered to me with the same priority. If my ISP is making it difficult to access any site because they are slowing down traffic from it's servers or speeding up traffic from someone else. I as a customer can should and will complain. Further, if I don't have a choice about ISP's it is time to make the ISP fight a million little anti-trust suits.
The fact that there are different types of corporate entries at all is part of the government regulations of a free market. Laws need to be balanced to ensure the exercise of Commerce and user choice, while at the same time preventing one actor from destroying the ability of others to conduct commerce. It is a not an easy equation. More over the specific laws need change depending on your goals. Is it better to optimize wealth or optimize average wealth. It is bad for society line general if any business is 'too large to fail' because it is the possibility of failure that inspires the struggle of competition.
That would have nothing to do with net neutrality. T-Mobile has already been doing something similar for years. Not charging a consumer for a specific merchandise (in this case packets received) is no more about net neutrality then buy 1 get 1 free at a grocery store. When it because a issue with net neutrality is AT&T starts giving priority to Direct TV traffic vs Netflix thus making it difficult or impossible to watch Netflix on there network while making it really easy to watch there product. Net neutrally is about treating the packets on the network differently depending on service and or source, it has very little to do with the client ( or how much the consumer pays). That is where to problem comes in. Without net neutrally the ISP gains the ability to manipulate the customer experience with competitors products in a way that is difficult to detect and impossible to overcome. Consumers should be screaming at any company that does not treat all services they want use equally for 2 reasons.
1) it should be your choice what you do with the bandwidth you paid for. Without net neutrality it is a little like buying a car, but the speed limit is different depending on weather you buy a honda or mozda , because mozda and honda own different roads, and while they can't stop a honda from driving on a mozda road they are now allowed to require all competitors cars to travel 5mph and ones owned by them to travel 100. Thus limiting your choice of places to shop and eat to the ones they would like.
2) and more concerning, it means the ISP is snooping on every piece of data you are using. monitoring the packet types and the ip's they are coming from and influencing transmission speeds based on packet content. ( which also means they are likely logging that traffic ).
Strong net centrality laws would require that all packets be treated with the same priority and that ISP do not retain any network data unless it is actively being used for problem diagnosis.
The only reason there isn't a huge uproar about it , is because most people understand nothing about it.
Technically it is NOT illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to use your monopoly to take over other markets or other segments of your existing market. However, there is a secondary problem that has developed in the sense that now companies are so diversified that it is impossible to tell which markets they are not part of. I'm not sure the best solution ,but one thing that might help would be a 'truth in branding law' that requires a company to a single registered name / brand/ trademark. At least then companies would have to stop pretending they didn't make both superior and inferior products, the reputation risk would be to all their products and so would be much greater. Right now they can keep damaging the consumer and just keep changing the name, so long as they can sell the product. Basically people should be able to own more the one company but a company should not. If it aquires another company they should need to abandon one of the brands ( or at least make their primary brand clearly identifiable with the product).
Something else that 'might' be an interesting idea, would be to make a better use of corporate charters. They could required to be more narrow in there company description. If the owners of a company want to create a different business it should have an independent , board, documents and branding.
oh, I had mod points yesterday but didn't use them.. that is funny :) LOL . Thanks :)
Do honey bees understand?
slime mold can solve a maze , but I would not impart to it the ability to 'understand' that it is solving a problem.
Honey bees recognize quantity , but that seems a vast a difference between that and understanding that nothing is a quantity or even recognizing quantity as a property.
Do computers 'understand' the programs we write? certainly I could program some drones to perform the same task , would a person then claim the computer 'understands' quantity?
Responding to a stimuli and being able to form an abstract concept of that stimuli as a generalization that is then manipulated to solve problems and model predictably ( aka understand a thing or concept) are very very different.
You are mistaken if you had read the writing of Pope Francis Benedict or John Paul the 2nd you would realize I am stating thing that are basic mainstream catholic thought
"I'm sure everyone believes they follow the TRUE path."
That may be , do you claim to be any different? It is non-sense at it's highest to claim you assert the truth that there is no truth.
"You follow a worm's religion. It is vitally important for you to try reading about Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Keep reading it until you understand what faith meant to Abraham." No I understand precisely what faith meant to Abraham.
He believed that God is the cause of existence itself, that if he willed it We would cease to exist or even be erased from time , with just a thought.
That God created all things and is the cause of what we call existence, or as stated later in the Pentateuch 'I am IAM'. He believed that because we are utterly dependent on God , we owe him every loyalty and that he will not fail to deliver what he prom sis because by his nature he cannot fail, nor promise what is untrue.
The relevant question is weather or not what he believed was true? A persons response to reality presupposes it's truth. IF existence and truth are more then simply abstract concepts , illusions without any real meaning , then we owe a proper response to that reality. A person can 'want' or dislike any aspect of what is true , but that will not change what is true, nor will it change the fact that improper response to reality will have negative consequences. That of coarse is part of the difficulty that arises among human beings How best to negotiate our differences in our perception and exposure to the evidence around us.
'Atoms exists because we can detect them.' -- no they most certainly do not. Atoms existed long before human beings climbed out of the slime of the earth ( or there would have been no slime) and will continue even if all human life is destroyed tomorrow. They exist because they 'are' it is our knowledge of them and our ability to gather data about them that has changes. Truth is independent of the existence of an observer.
'Faith on the other hand is a belief in an immutable, permanent, and unerring truth' -- you and I disagree on this definition.
let's look at the dictionary. http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi...
I am using definition 3. you seem to be merging definition 3 and 2.
Staying with definition 3, ANYTHING you believe in confidently is evidence of your specific faith.
What a persons believes can and should changes as they gather more information and grow. The relationship between faith and belief being that we 'have faith in what we believe'. What I believe and understand about God has changed over my lifetime, not because God has changed, but because I have. What I believe about my mother has changed over my lifetime as well, because both of us have changed AND because I have greater capability to understand then I once did. Faith is not static, every religion changes and adapts to it's specific environment, the only question is weather or not what they teach is true. You may disagree, but unless you have reviewed the evidence for yourself you are again putting your faith in someone else's data.
"Because we should respect your neighbors." -- why? you are making an ascertaining without evidence or reason, AND assuming other people will agree with you irrationally.
Faith is a positive characteristic IF it is faith in what is TRUE , some people have faith that there are alian life forms ( which likely there are) some people also have faith they are common ( for which there is zero evidence for or against.)
There are however mountains of evidence for the existence of the supernatural and a preponderance of the evidence ,in my opinion, for the existence of the Judaeo-Christian God. No faith that is worth having , is a faith based on anything other then evidence. Most people have faith in many things , because faith is a belief you have based partially supported by fact and contains a reasonable element of conjecture based on that fact, which is one of the reasons it is non-sense to take exception to other people who have not have the advantage of seeing the evidence you have reviewed and of understanding in correctly.
On the other hand I will guarantee you you have faith in many things. Do atoms exists? unless you can do the experiment yourself to prove it or have seen the experiments with your own eyes, you are placing your faith in the words of others whom you trust who are have gathered and interpreted partial information from you.
One of the advantages of faith in God is that everyone is able to take direct actions and experience the evidence for themselves without the use of expensive equipment. That is why proving God exists and proving water exist are similar. We believe such things through experience. Have you read any scientific papers lately proving water exists?
wikipedia lists it as 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%) . I can't really say myself that I have on opinion beyond that because I haven't reviewed the method and data , but I don't have any reason to think the experts who study such things are intentionally making a mistake.
I hate having to choose between rupuklicans and deomancrates when it comes to our general election.
I would really like a candidate who believed in laws that discouraged the centralization of wealth and power with a few individuals and who thought it should be accomplished with laws that create fair competition rather then having the central government collect all that money a redistribute it. Right now we basically get to choose between a party that believes the rich elete should control society and a party who believe the government should control society and every aspect of our lives. Of coarse it is worsened because one party pays lip service to morality and the other party shows out right disdain for it, to the point of booing at the idea of mentioning God in tier parties platform. So we are stuck either voting for the worshipers of the worldly wealth, who slowly erode basic freedoms and make things hard for people of color because is serves better the almighty dollar or the worshipers of murder, and bestiality and sexual depravity and it is hard to tell which one is worse. Of coarse both of them contribute in there own way to the problems with 1 in 3 women being raped or attacked. The republicans by ignoring the problem and acting like the powerful can do no wrong and the democrats by promoting sex as toy and by proxies women as play things.
The whole things reminds me that if there is no God, there is no hope because no human being or human action is going to save us from this mess.
fair enough. Survival instinct is not 'reasonable' though. There are far too many people out there who claim to be living 'rationally' and 'scientifically' ( not to mention using those terms as a way to be derogatory to people who have faith) and as I think you very aptly pointed out , are doing nothing like it, they live almost entirely by instinct, with very little actual thought behind their actions. Not that I have anything against atheist , but if you don't believe and live only by what you feel, own it and stop trying to claim you are doing something else ;)