Logically, believers do not claim that God's existence can be scientifically proven. Therefore a demand that it must be scientifically proven is a false dilemma. It's practically a religion unto itself: scientism.
Logically, there are questions which science cannot answer, and theories which science cannot prove. Therefore, just because science cannot prove something does not mean it is untrue. Truth is truth, regardless of what method one may use to discover it. Truth existed before science was even conceived of.
Calling someone or something you disagree with "crazy" is an ad hominem, a logical fallacy. Please study logic.
So, you claim that organized efforts to ensure that religious dogma stays out of science classes, or to find ways to avoid the demonization that atheism receives in many communities and societies around the world, would constitute "ritual and tradition for nothing"?
Whoosh.
Atheism can be very much like a religion for some people. The same can be said about science, humanism, etc. Getting together to discuss how to further its views and undermine those of its opponents is just what a lot of religious groups do. It's like atheistic evangelism.
Sure, there are some atheists who are content to just hold their views without trying to convert people to atheism or actively oppose religious groups. But there are also some who do those things.
In a sense, there is no human who is not religious. One either worships (i.e. serves) God or oneself. Atheism is just another god, another idol.
Christianity does not command any of those things. Nor did Jesus, nor any of the other NT writers. And even in the OT, it's quite clear that God favored mercy over sacrifice.
You're guilty here of the same mistake that many Christians make when they want to justify a view they hold strongly: prooftexting. You fail to take into account the whole Bible, or even to attempt an actual exegesis of the texts you are referring to.
You said two things that are true: doing the things you mentioned would indeed be intolerable, and all Christians (indeed, all humans) are hypocrites, in one way or another, at one time or another.
The problem is that you set up a field of strawmen and knocked them over, claiming that you knocked over Christianity with them.
Bah. Software engineering just plain stinks most of the time. PC software is unreliable and slow, and it bloats faster than hardware advances, so computers today don't really let people get things done any faster (excluding, of course, things like media encoding).
There's hardly any feeling of ownership in software made by big companies or groups, so there's little incentive to take pride in one's work, so programmers are lazy, and probably under pressure from bean counters and unreasonable managers and customers.
Our computers ought to be doing so much more for us than they are, but the software just stinks. Even the "amazing" Apple devices stink half the time. iPads and iPhones have apps that crash regularly (usually because of OOM), and apps take way too long to load, and even the stinking camera will sit there for 5-10 seconds before and between taking pictures. Nobody cares except the people who want to throw the device against a wall because it didn't used to be slow but now it is, all because of shoddy software engineering. No matter how fast the hardware or how much memory, the software will always bloat it to the extent that the effective or apparent speed remains the same.
The ESV isn't literally a literal translation, and the NWT is doctrinally biased. The ESV is good, but there isn't really such a thing as a "literal translation". Every translation falls somewhere on a range of dynamic vs. literal. There just isn't always a way to render one language "literally" into another--it always involves interpretation.
Having said that, I agree with you.:) Rules like not beginning a sentence with a conjunction are arbitrary, and English would probably be the last language one could say to have an objective standard.
The problem is, how do you define equal pay? What do you compare one person's salary to? And salaries are relatively private information, anyway. I'm all for fairness, but there is a limit to how much fairness can or should be legislated. You can't make people be nice to each other or like each other.
So where do you draw the line? Every embryo has the potential to develop into a breathing, beating, thinking human being. When does a human being become a human being? It's an entirely arbitrary decision. The only safe decision--and the only reasonable one, since there is no objective standard--is at conception.
If I were the father of an unborn child, I'd be offended by anyone telling me that it is ok to kill my child--my own flesh and blood. If I were an unborn child, I'd--oh wait, I'd be dead, so I wouldn't have the chance to be offended.
You just skip over those issues and repeat "women...GOP...my own body...offended."
Thanks. I found it while reading about Henry Ford. I had to whittle it down to fit in Slashdot's sig box. I think we'd have a much better economy if we hadn't forgotten his nugget of wisdom. Back then it was a race to the top, but now it's a race to the bottom--the bottom line, I suppose.
Equal pay is not an issue of women's rights. No one has a right to get paid anything. It would be better and more fair if women always got paid the same as men for doing the same job, but hey, not all men get paid the same for doing the same job, either. Should men demand equal pay as other men? What if there are some men who get paid less than some women for doing the same job? I don't hear men complaining about that. It's not about equality anymore, it's about retribution.
No one is suggesting that women be denied access to contraception. That is a strawman. The idea that the government should provide it to everyone free of charge is not an issue of rights. No one has a right to get free stuff. Besides, every single woman has free access to contraception: it's called abstinence.
Finally, if abortion is an issue of women's rights, then it's also an issue of fathers' rights and unborn babies' rights. Why don't you explain to fathers why their children being killed before they have a chance to live shouldn't really be important to them. Why don't you explain to unborn babies why life shouldn't really be important to them--oh, wait, you can't, because they were killed--I mean, "aborted"...
Yeah, I generally agree with you. I suppose, to be fair, I should admit that one could say that I just want them to fix the bugs that are important to me. But some of the ones that are neglected do seem much more important than yet another minor UI change, or WebGL, or another fancy web site/logo redesign. Yeah, yeah, not everyone can do the Firefox coding, but money can be put toward anything.
The problem, I think, is that browsers are now far too complex to be effectively maintained as a community project. Sure, you see little browser projects, like how KDE is trying to push Rekonq as their new default browser, but come on: look at how many people it takes just to make Firefox and Chrome secure, and they're fixing security bugs constantly. How could a few guys make a secure browser in their spare time, a browser that does all the modern JS/CSS/HTML5/plugin stuff? I don't think it can be done. The barrier to entry is too high. It's like, sure, some people can build kit planes, but you can't build a kit airliner--it takes a Boeing or Airbus to do that. So I think we're basically stuck with Firefox and Chrome for the foreseeable future--or Opera if you don't care about FOSS.
I keep Chrome around just in case Firefox goes south for a while, but I have gotten so used to Pentadactyl that I hate having to browse the web without it. It saves so much effort, if for no other reason than its simple hotkeys (like T for a new tab, instead of Ctrl+T).
Anyone can download GPL software, make all the changes he wants, and not provide his changes. He's only required to provide his changes if he distributes the result.
In your example, if he distributed the resulting binary but not the source, those who download his binary would lose the freedom to make their own changes.
I ignored your argument because it is based on your ignorance. Just because you have not ever encountered a secular argument for valuing human life does not mean that they do not exist. Go read about secular humanism as a starting point.
I can't help but find it ironic that you criticize me for being ignorant, yet this ad hominem is based on your own ignorance of me.
You're presupposing that, since I don't agree with the idea that value for human life can exist outside of religion, that I must have never heard of such an idea--that anyone who understands such an idea must agree with it. That's obviously a fallacy. And rather than arguing, you're simply asserting that you're right and I'm wrong.
And you are lying - that would be bearing false witness. I said that when I called this an example of the Christian version of Sharia law that I was crediting the idea that they are not equivalent. You now insist that I am playing semantic games, despite my clearly explaining the difference. you just choose to ignore it because it is inconvenient for you.
I didn't ignore it--I disagree with it. You have not explained HOW they are different, you simply assert that they are. You have not "clearly explain[ed] the difference" whatsoever. In spite of your claiming that they are different, you're using your assertion of their similarity as support for your argument. From one side of your mouth you say they are, for the sake of argument, the same, but from the other side of your mouth you say they are different. You are being intellectually dishonest. You're saying, "Sharia law is bad, and Christian law is like Sharia law, so it's bad too. But no, they aren't THE SAME." But you're using their similarity to support your argument--that's the entire point. Yet you have neglected to explain HOW they are alike (other than that they are both related to religion), nor have you explained HOW they are different.
The worst part is that you have neglected to address my point, which is that our laws are already based upon religious values; and that if you insist upon having no religious influence upon our laws whatsoever, then an evolutionary ethicist or evolutionary naturalist who believes in "survival of the fittest" should have the right to commit murder--because if you stop him from doing so, you're forcing religious beliefs upon him.
If you disagree with that, then you must explain HOW one can value human life apart from religion; and by "value" I mean assigning equal value to all human life, because without such equal value, one could still justify murder.
I will give you a non-religious example of why you are wrong:
OSX is Apple's version of an operating system. Windows is Microsoft's version of an operating system. They are not equivalent, they are simply two things that serve the same general purpose, but they are not the same and are in fact very different.
Apples and oranges; this proves nothing. You're dodging the real argument.
Christian law and Sharia law are two things that attempt to perform roughly the same purpose (have religious beliefs shape secular law) but they go about them in different ways and enact different laws. Both seek to force others who do not share those beliefs live by them.
Now I'm going to call you out on this: there is no such thing as "Christian law." This is simply a strawman you have made. Sharia law, on the other hand, actually exists. Every time you make this comparison, you're comparing something real with something made up. It doesn't prove anything. Your only option here is to explain in detail what you mean by "Christian law."
On top of that, you're anthropomorphizing ideas. Ideas do not enact laws, nor do laws enact other laws. Laws do not desire anything.
Finally, the Christianity recorded in the Bible does not advocate imposing any beliefs or behaviors upon anyone--on the contrary, it reco
If your point is that there were people in favor of the war who had ulterior motives, I'm sure that's true, even inside the administration. The government is not monolithic, nor is the Cabinet. So what?
My point is simply this: Saddam and his sons were just plain evil. They committed horrific atrocities and would have continued to do so. Now I'm sure the U.S. government has people in it who have less than altruistic motives, and I'm sure there were plenty of them involved in all the activities surrounding and leading up to the invasion. But I still think it's rather absurd to say that the nation of Iraq would ultimately be better off if Saddam's evil regime were still in place. Has the U.S. made mistakes? Of course. Does that mean it's as bad as or worse than Saddam? Of course not. That's just hyperbole, which obscures truth and hampers rational discourse.
It's easy to twist statistics to prove whatever you want.
Sayeth the pot.
Now, now, I'm not the one citing statistics. Maybe you confused me with other people in this thread.
Regardless of whether one thinks the Iraq War was a good idea or justified, it's mind-boggling that anyone would try to downplay the evils of Saddam Hussein's regime
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
I don't think those are the only ones doing that. I think both sides are doing that. And neither side can prove what WOULD have happened had the U.S. not invaded. It's all speculation.
The real question is whether Iraq is better off now, or whether it can be better off in the future, than it would have been if Saddam and his sons had remained in power. That's not provable either way, either. But that Saddam and his sons were evil is hardly disputable. And while many have died as a result of the invasion, and while the U.S. has made many mistakes, it's rather ludicrous to say that the U.S. is more evil than Saddam and his sons and their regime.
Your argument is based on the presupposition that men cannot think objectively about issues relating to women since they are not women. That is a fallacy.
You talk about women's history. How right you are: calling up "women's rights" brings to bear centuries of baggage like feminism, suffrage, slavery, and misguided religious beliefs used to subjugate women.
But those issues are not the issues here. It's a cheap, manipulative trick. Many people don't see through it, they are simply like dogs who salivate at the bell rather than thinking.
...that kind of self righteous jerk who are impervious to rationality.
The irony is killing me here.
You have elections in America, I believe. That is how you "oppose government". You throw them out. You aren't in Gaddafi's Libya or Washington's British colony. All you have to do is turn up and vote and you can throw your government out on its ear. You want a fascist government? Vote for a fascist. You want a Muslim one? Communist? You can have whatever government you, and 51% of the people, want.
Sure, ignore the problems of the current political system, and argue as if it were ideal.
But if you only represent 1%, well, you're right, you'll have to use murder to take power.
Sure, tear down your strawman, after you set it up again. Second Amendment advocates are not advocating a "1%" minority (this "1%" is just a meaningless buzzword!) taking control of the government by force.
It's also interesting to look at other nations where guns are illegal, like the UK, and see what effect the "government must protect me" mentality has had on society. I think it's quite reasonable to suggest that widespread gun ownership may have an influence on the government's encroachment upon civil liberties without citizens necessarily resorting to armed revolution. At the very least it encourages an independent ethic in which individuals take more personal responsibility for their safety and well-being, rather than expecting the government to do it all. This is my opinion, of course, but I think it's a reasonable one.
Anyway, I'm not going to keep arguing with you. You keep falling back on name-calling instead of reason.
No, I can fathom just fine that many people disagree with my presuppositions and therefore my conclusions.
But you ignored the crux of my argument: the underlying foundation of the ethics and morals which guide our societal rules and laws. Without religion, there is ultimately no reason to value human beings, and therefore ultimately no reason for murder to be illegal, and therefore no reason for abortion to be illegal. The issue of abortion is a distraction from the real problem, which is a devaluing of human life. You neglected to even attempt to address this.
To declare the moment at which human life "begins" after conception is an entirely arbitrary decision. It's a red herring that misses the point.
And I did not say Christian rules and Sharia are the same, I said that they want to implement the Christian version of Sharia, implying that they are not equivalent (since if they were I would not need to specify Christian version)
You're playing semantic games. You equated the value of Christian morals with the effects of Islamic law. That is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst.
within the context of what I wrote it is clear I am talking about them wanting make sir religious beliefs translate into the law of the land.
You again neglected to address my point. Your logic is flawed. If banning abortion would be enforcing religious beliefs, then so is banning murder. There is an atheist who believes murder is simply a process of natural selection. By outlawing murder, you are forcing him to comply with certain religious beliefs. Therefore you must allow him to murder, or you are making religious beliefs the law of the land.
I want to you follow your arguments to their logical conclusion. I want you to deconstruct them and argue rationally. I want to you play devil's advocate against your arguments and then defend them.
The GP asserts an ad hominem against the entire USA. The parent points out that the GP's argument ignores the problems in the rest of the world and creates a false dichotomy. Then you claim the parent's examples are ad hominems against the continent of Europe. WHOOSH. It's ok for one guy to do it, but not the other? Hypocrisy is rampant.
Reverse discrimination is as bad as discrimination. Reverse bullying is as bad as bullying.
His points were from more than just Spain. Pity you ignored that. Pity you asserted your speculation as proof of anything. Pity you missed the point entirely, because where the GP is from is irrelevant.
That's all it boils down to. It's all about short-term economic growth, about "What will you do for me in the next four years?" Nevermind the deeper principles at stake, like "Make them give their money to the government so the government can give some of it to me (in the form of services or benefits)! Feed me, government, feed me! Peep, peep!"
I don't care if tax cuts also benefit "the rich": I want to keep more of my money in my pocket. I want the government to have less of it to spend foolishly and wastefully. I want to have the freedom to make my own decisions.
The GOP platform has nothing whatsoever to do with gender equality. You're simply framing it that way to make them look bad. How ironic, then, that you criticize others for lying.
"The only agenda I have is to be treated like a human being." Your sig is so ironic. You advocate good treatment of human beings, yet at the same time you advocate destruction of human life.
If banning abortion would be a decision based on religion, then why not legalize murder? After all, Christianity is against murder, and we mustn't have laws against things which Christianity declares wrong.
"Because your right to do whatever you want ends when it interferes with my right to life."
Then a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her own body ends when it interferes with an unborn baby's right to life.
The only way to justify abortion is to devalue human life. And, of course, without religion, there is no reason to value human life--humans are just bags of randomly-generated organic goo. Therefore, murder is just as justifiable as abortion. Survival of the fittest, you know.
Of course, you conclude by equating Christian values with Islamic law. It's hard to be much more intellectually dishonest than that.
I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would appoint SCOTUS justices who would defend the Constitution to a greater extent than those whom Republicans would appoint. I'm not saying that Republican-chosen ones would defend it to any great extent, either. I think it's a bit of a false dilemma. There doesn't seem to be any great value placed upon the Constitution by either party.
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Does it make you feel better about yourself to denigrate an entire nation of people?
Logically, believers do not claim that God's existence can be scientifically proven. Therefore a demand that it must be scientifically proven is a false dilemma. It's practically a religion unto itself: scientism.
Logically, there are questions which science cannot answer, and theories which science cannot prove. Therefore, just because science cannot prove something does not mean it is untrue. Truth is truth, regardless of what method one may use to discover it. Truth existed before science was even conceived of.
Calling someone or something you disagree with "crazy" is an ad hominem, a logical fallacy. Please study logic.
So, you claim that organized efforts to ensure that religious dogma stays out of science classes, or to find ways to avoid the demonization that atheism receives in many communities and societies around the world, would constitute "ritual and tradition for nothing"?
Whoosh.
Atheism can be very much like a religion for some people. The same can be said about science, humanism, etc. Getting together to discuss how to further its views and undermine those of its opponents is just what a lot of religious groups do. It's like atheistic evangelism.
Sure, there are some atheists who are content to just hold their views without trying to convert people to atheism or actively oppose religious groups. But there are also some who do those things.
In a sense, there is no human who is not religious. One either worships (i.e. serves) God or oneself. Atheism is just another god, another idol.
Your ignorance (or dishonesty) is showing.
Christianity does not command any of those things. Nor did Jesus, nor any of the other NT writers. And even in the OT, it's quite clear that God favored mercy over sacrifice.
You're guilty here of the same mistake that many Christians make when they want to justify a view they hold strongly: prooftexting. You fail to take into account the whole Bible, or even to attempt an actual exegesis of the texts you are referring to.
You said two things that are true: doing the things you mentioned would indeed be intolerable, and all Christians (indeed, all humans) are hypocrites, in one way or another, at one time or another.
The problem is that you set up a field of strawmen and knocked them over, claiming that you knocked over Christianity with them.
Bah. Software engineering just plain stinks most of the time. PC software is unreliable and slow, and it bloats faster than hardware advances, so computers today don't really let people get things done any faster (excluding, of course, things like media encoding).
There's hardly any feeling of ownership in software made by big companies or groups, so there's little incentive to take pride in one's work, so programmers are lazy, and probably under pressure from bean counters and unreasonable managers and customers.
Our computers ought to be doing so much more for us than they are, but the software just stinks. Even the "amazing" Apple devices stink half the time. iPads and iPhones have apps that crash regularly (usually because of OOM), and apps take way too long to load, and even the stinking camera will sit there for 5-10 seconds before and between taking pictures. Nobody cares except the people who want to throw the device against a wall because it didn't used to be slow but now it is, all because of shoddy software engineering. No matter how fast the hardware or how much memory, the software will always bloat it to the extent that the effective or apparent speed remains the same.
The ESV isn't literally a literal translation, and the NWT is doctrinally biased. The ESV is good, but there isn't really such a thing as a "literal translation". Every translation falls somewhere on a range of dynamic vs. literal. There just isn't always a way to render one language "literally" into another--it always involves interpretation.
Having said that, I agree with you. :) Rules like not beginning a sentence with a conjunction are arbitrary, and English would probably be the last language one could say to have an objective standard.
The problem is, how do you define equal pay? What do you compare one person's salary to? And salaries are relatively private information, anyway. I'm all for fairness, but there is a limit to how much fairness can or should be legislated. You can't make people be nice to each other or like each other.
So where do you draw the line? Every embryo has the potential to develop into a breathing, beating, thinking human being. When does a human being become a human being? It's an entirely arbitrary decision. The only safe decision--and the only reasonable one, since there is no objective standard--is at conception.
If I were the father of an unborn child, I'd be offended by anyone telling me that it is ok to kill my child--my own flesh and blood. If I were an unborn child, I'd--oh wait, I'd be dead, so I wouldn't have the chance to be offended.
You just skip over those issues and repeat "women...GOP...my own body...offended."
Thanks. I found it while reading about Henry Ford. I had to whittle it down to fit in Slashdot's sig box. I think we'd have a much better economy if we hadn't forgotten his nugget of wisdom. Back then it was a race to the top, but now it's a race to the bottom--the bottom line, I suppose.
Equal pay is not an issue of women's rights. No one has a right to get paid anything. It would be better and more fair if women always got paid the same as men for doing the same job, but hey, not all men get paid the same for doing the same job, either. Should men demand equal pay as other men? What if there are some men who get paid less than some women for doing the same job? I don't hear men complaining about that. It's not about equality anymore, it's about retribution.
No one is suggesting that women be denied access to contraception. That is a strawman. The idea that the government should provide it to everyone free of charge is not an issue of rights. No one has a right to get free stuff. Besides, every single woman has free access to contraception: it's called abstinence.
Finally, if abortion is an issue of women's rights, then it's also an issue of fathers' rights and unborn babies' rights. Why don't you explain to fathers why their children being killed before they have a chance to live shouldn't really be important to them. Why don't you explain to unborn babies why life shouldn't really be important to them--oh, wait, you can't, because they were killed--I mean, "aborted"...
Yeah, I generally agree with you. I suppose, to be fair, I should admit that one could say that I just want them to fix the bugs that are important to me. But some of the ones that are neglected do seem much more important than yet another minor UI change, or WebGL, or another fancy web site/logo redesign. Yeah, yeah, not everyone can do the Firefox coding, but money can be put toward anything.
The problem, I think, is that browsers are now far too complex to be effectively maintained as a community project. Sure, you see little browser projects, like how KDE is trying to push Rekonq as their new default browser, but come on: look at how many people it takes just to make Firefox and Chrome secure, and they're fixing security bugs constantly. How could a few guys make a secure browser in their spare time, a browser that does all the modern JS/CSS/HTML5/plugin stuff? I don't think it can be done. The barrier to entry is too high. It's like, sure, some people can build kit planes, but you can't build a kit airliner--it takes a Boeing or Airbus to do that. So I think we're basically stuck with Firefox and Chrome for the foreseeable future--or Opera if you don't care about FOSS.
I keep Chrome around just in case Firefox goes south for a while, but I have gotten so used to Pentadactyl that I hate having to browse the web without it. It saves so much effort, if for no other reason than its simple hotkeys (like T for a new tab, instead of Ctrl+T).
Maybe it should have higher priority, but come on, job #1?
You missed the point.
Anyone can download GPL software, make all the changes he wants, and not provide his changes. He's only required to provide his changes if he distributes the result.
In your example, if he distributed the resulting binary but not the source, those who download his binary would lose the freedom to make their own changes.
I ignored your argument because it is based on your ignorance. Just because you have not ever encountered a secular argument for valuing human life does not mean that they do not exist. Go read about secular humanism as a starting point.
I can't help but find it ironic that you criticize me for being ignorant, yet this ad hominem is based on your own ignorance of me.
You're presupposing that, since I don't agree with the idea that value for human life can exist outside of religion, that I must have never heard of such an idea--that anyone who understands such an idea must agree with it. That's obviously a fallacy. And rather than arguing, you're simply asserting that you're right and I'm wrong.
And you are lying - that would be bearing false witness. I said that when I called this an example of the Christian version of Sharia law that I was crediting the idea that they are not equivalent. You now insist that I am playing semantic games, despite my clearly explaining the difference. you just choose to ignore it because it is inconvenient for you.
I didn't ignore it--I disagree with it. You have not explained HOW they are different, you simply assert that they are. You have not "clearly explain[ed] the difference" whatsoever. In spite of your claiming that they are different, you're using your assertion of their similarity as support for your argument. From one side of your mouth you say they are, for the sake of argument, the same, but from the other side of your mouth you say they are different. You are being intellectually dishonest. You're saying, "Sharia law is bad, and Christian law is like Sharia law, so it's bad too. But no, they aren't THE SAME." But you're using their similarity to support your argument--that's the entire point. Yet you have neglected to explain HOW they are alike (other than that they are both related to religion), nor have you explained HOW they are different.
The worst part is that you have neglected to address my point, which is that our laws are already based upon religious values; and that if you insist upon having no religious influence upon our laws whatsoever, then an evolutionary ethicist or evolutionary naturalist who believes in "survival of the fittest" should have the right to commit murder--because if you stop him from doing so, you're forcing religious beliefs upon him.
If you disagree with that, then you must explain HOW one can value human life apart from religion; and by "value" I mean assigning equal value to all human life, because without such equal value, one could still justify murder.
I will give you a non-religious example of why you are wrong:
OSX is Apple's version of an operating system. Windows is Microsoft's version of an operating system. They are not equivalent, they are simply two things that serve the same general purpose, but they are not the same and are in fact very different.
Apples and oranges; this proves nothing. You're dodging the real argument.
Christian law and Sharia law are two things that attempt to perform roughly the same purpose (have religious beliefs shape secular law) but they go about them in different ways and enact different laws. Both seek to force others who do not share those beliefs live by them.
Now I'm going to call you out on this: there is no such thing as "Christian law." This is simply a strawman you have made. Sharia law, on the other hand, actually exists. Every time you make this comparison, you're comparing something real with something made up. It doesn't prove anything. Your only option here is to explain in detail what you mean by "Christian law."
On top of that, you're anthropomorphizing ideas. Ideas do not enact laws, nor do laws enact other laws. Laws do not desire anything.
Finally, the Christianity recorded in the Bible does not advocate imposing any beliefs or behaviors upon anyone--on the contrary, it reco
If your point is that there were people in favor of the war who had ulterior motives, I'm sure that's true, even inside the administration. The government is not monolithic, nor is the Cabinet. So what?
My point is simply this: Saddam and his sons were just plain evil. They committed horrific atrocities and would have continued to do so. Now I'm sure the U.S. government has people in it who have less than altruistic motives, and I'm sure there were plenty of them involved in all the activities surrounding and leading up to the invasion. But I still think it's rather absurd to say that the nation of Iraq would ultimately be better off if Saddam's evil regime were still in place. Has the U.S. made mistakes? Of course. Does that mean it's as bad as or worse than Saddam? Of course not. That's just hyperbole, which obscures truth and hampers rational discourse.
Sayeth the pot.
Now, now, I'm not the one citing statistics. Maybe you confused me with other people in this thread.
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
I don't think those are the only ones doing that. I think both sides are doing that. And neither side can prove what WOULD have happened had the U.S. not invaded. It's all speculation.
The real question is whether Iraq is better off now, or whether it can be better off in the future, than it would have been if Saddam and his sons had remained in power. That's not provable either way, either. But that Saddam and his sons were evil is hardly disputable. And while many have died as a result of the invasion, and while the U.S. has made many mistakes, it's rather ludicrous to say that the U.S. is more evil than Saddam and his sons and their regime.
Your argument is based on the presupposition that men cannot think objectively about issues relating to women since they are not women. That is a fallacy.
You talk about women's history. How right you are: calling up "women's rights" brings to bear centuries of baggage like feminism, suffrage, slavery, and misguided religious beliefs used to subjugate women.
But those issues are not the issues here. It's a cheap, manipulative trick. Many people don't see through it, they are simply like dogs who salivate at the bell rather than thinking.
...that kind of self righteous jerk who are impervious to rationality.
The irony is killing me here.
You have elections in America, I believe. That is how you "oppose government". You throw them out. You aren't in Gaddafi's Libya or Washington's British colony. All you have to do is turn up and vote and you can throw your government out on its ear. You want a fascist government? Vote for a fascist. You want a Muslim one? Communist? You can have whatever government you, and 51% of the people, want.
Sure, ignore the problems of the current political system, and argue as if it were ideal.
But if you only represent 1%, well, you're right, you'll have to use murder to take power.
Sure, tear down your strawman, after you set it up again. Second Amendment advocates are not advocating a "1%" minority (this "1%" is just a meaningless buzzword!) taking control of the government by force.
It's also interesting to look at other nations where guns are illegal, like the UK, and see what effect the "government must protect me" mentality has had on society. I think it's quite reasonable to suggest that widespread gun ownership may have an influence on the government's encroachment upon civil liberties without citizens necessarily resorting to armed revolution. At the very least it encourages an independent ethic in which individuals take more personal responsibility for their safety and well-being, rather than expecting the government to do it all. This is my opinion, of course, but I think it's a reasonable one.
Anyway, I'm not going to keep arguing with you. You keep falling back on name-calling instead of reason.
No, I can fathom just fine that many people disagree with my presuppositions and therefore my conclusions.
But you ignored the crux of my argument: the underlying foundation of the ethics and morals which guide our societal rules and laws. Without religion, there is ultimately no reason to value human beings, and therefore ultimately no reason for murder to be illegal, and therefore no reason for abortion to be illegal. The issue of abortion is a distraction from the real problem, which is a devaluing of human life. You neglected to even attempt to address this.
To declare the moment at which human life "begins" after conception is an entirely arbitrary decision. It's a red herring that misses the point.
And I did not say Christian rules and Sharia are the same, I said that they want to implement the Christian version of Sharia, implying that they are not equivalent (since if they were I would not need to specify Christian version)
You're playing semantic games. You equated the value of Christian morals with the effects of Islamic law. That is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst.
within the context of what I wrote it is clear I am talking about them wanting make sir religious beliefs translate into the law of the land.
You again neglected to address my point. Your logic is flawed. If banning abortion would be enforcing religious beliefs, then so is banning murder. There is an atheist who believes murder is simply a process of natural selection. By outlawing murder, you are forcing him to comply with certain religious beliefs. Therefore you must allow him to murder, or you are making religious beliefs the law of the land.
I want to you follow your arguments to their logical conclusion. I want you to deconstruct them and argue rationally. I want to you play devil's advocate against your arguments and then defend them.
All you're doing is making assertions.
I didn't get that from email, but thanks for the correction.
The GP asserts an ad hominem against the entire USA. The parent points out that the GP's argument ignores the problems in the rest of the world and creates a false dichotomy. Then you claim the parent's examples are ad hominems against the continent of Europe. WHOOSH. It's ok for one guy to do it, but not the other? Hypocrisy is rampant.
Reverse discrimination is as bad as discrimination. Reverse bullying is as bad as bullying.
His points were from more than just Spain. Pity you ignored that. Pity you asserted your speculation as proof of anything. Pity you missed the point entirely, because where the GP is from is irrelevant.
Thank you for calling him out on this.
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't!"
That's all it boils down to. It's all about short-term economic growth, about "What will you do for me in the next four years?" Nevermind the deeper principles at stake, like "Make them give their money to the government so the government can give some of it to me (in the form of services or benefits)! Feed me, government, feed me! Peep, peep!"
I don't care if tax cuts also benefit "the rich": I want to keep more of my money in my pocket. I want the government to have less of it to spend foolishly and wastefully. I want to have the freedom to make my own decisions.
The GOP platform has nothing whatsoever to do with gender equality. You're simply framing it that way to make them look bad. How ironic, then, that you criticize others for lying.
"The only agenda I have is to be treated like a human being." Your sig is so ironic. You advocate good treatment of human beings, yet at the same time you advocate destruction of human life.
If banning abortion would be a decision based on religion, then why not legalize murder? After all, Christianity is against murder, and we mustn't have laws against things which Christianity declares wrong.
"Because your right to do whatever you want ends when it interferes with my right to life."
Then a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her own body ends when it interferes with an unborn baby's right to life.
The only way to justify abortion is to devalue human life. And, of course, without religion, there is no reason to value human life--humans are just bags of randomly-generated organic goo. Therefore, murder is just as justifiable as abortion. Survival of the fittest, you know.
Of course, you conclude by equating Christian values with Islamic law. It's hard to be much more intellectually dishonest than that.
I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would appoint SCOTUS justices who would defend the Constitution to a greater extent than those whom Republicans would appoint. I'm not saying that Republican-chosen ones would defend it to any great extent, either. I think it's a bit of a false dilemma. There doesn't seem to be any great value placed upon the Constitution by either party.