You want to be our dictator, but we don't want you.
No, I want the rational implications of the biology of our species to be our dictator, because it's downright stupid to deny that parenthood is the entire reason for life. Life begets life- in all species- and thus the purpose of life is reproduction.
Under your regime, you'd force them to be mothers, with all the duties that contains.
Just as I'd have men be fathers- just as nature has always intended. Part of the definition of life is an organism that replicates. In bisexual species such as humans, that means parenthood. Anything less, add choice into the mixture, and you run the risk of extinction.
No, I'd give them the choice. You're the one arguing to force them to stay out of the business world.
Choice doesn't exist. Free will is an illusion created by our ignorance. A useful illusion, but still and illusion.
Many families are quite happy having the choice to work or not have children.
A family without children isn't a family, it's two people lying to each other.
And have you declined to work so as not to lower wages? Or is that just for others?
I have often declined to work for companies that were overstaffed to begin with, and that's the same reason I'm no longer a civil servant.
Yes, the feminist idea that women should be allowed to work lowers wages. But the feminists I know are also good lefties that argue for checks on narrow business interests, like unions, a minimum wage, regulations, fairer taxation and so on.
All of which are also denials of choice, correct?
That's a baseless argument until you give examples of feminists who want all women to work and not have children.
Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin claimed that all sex is rape back in the 1970s. Planned Parenthood today is trying to get pregnancy itself defined as a disease so that abortion, rather than birth, will be the cost-saving solution to pregnancy under the Affordable Health Care Act. It seems quite obvious that feminism for the past 30 years has been anti-motherhood and anti-child.
You're getting really confused if you thought I was arguing for men giving birth.
You were arguing for absolute equality between the sexes. And that *includes* the right to give birth. Once again, you have failed to understand the logical conclusions of your irrational beliefs.
This might be a shock to you, but some men do choose not to work, to raise kids, etc.
And in doing so, they shirk their responsibility as a FATHER, and are no better than a deadbeat dad.
So many things wrong with that. First, there are other ways to keep wages up.
The law of supply and demand is absolute, any country that tries to circumvent it by a minimum wage just reduces the number of jobs available.
Second, you ignore the case where a woman works and a man doesn't (no increase in the workforce compared to your ideal).
Who breastfeeds the infant?
Third, you ignore that not all adults are or want to be parents.
As I showed before, this is incompatible with the definition of life, as well as the continuation of the species, and thus, is at best, a non-surviving mutation that will cause extinction of those who practice it.
Agreed. Unless they're also pushing for forced procreation.
Which, of course, they should be, shouldn't they?
So your dictator has a dictator. And that helps how? Now you've given the church the right to harm you and your neighbor without punishment.
So you want to force girls to prepare for their life in the home and not have the options the boys have.
Or, conversely, I want women and men to live up to the highest calling any human being can have- parenthood. The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world. There is a reason why, in monarchies, the Queen Mother actually had more power than the King.
That's what we call misogyny. What else do you have slated for women, out of kindness? Do they get to drive? Do they need to wear burkas?
They get to be MOTHERS- with all the duties that contains. And they should be paid what they are worth for that job- more than any CEO of a mere corporation, for the family is more important than any corporation.
Those are a few people. There are many more people in the US that don't like that so much.
And yet you'd force women out of the house and into the business world, destroying families in the process, so that the supply of workers goes up while demand stays constant, thus lowering wages.
Well, if you mean prevalent in the sense of powerful, then we agree. But it's mostly only those profiting off that system that agree with it. The masses don't, and that's what I meant.
And yet feminism itself argues FOR more workers, and thus a lower wage.
You're confusing a personal sentiment (i.e. Motherhood isn't fulfilling enough for me)
If it was a personal sentiment, then they wouldn't be putting down women who don't work.
with the societal goals of equality of opportunity
Until men can give birth, any attempt at equality of opportunity is just an attempt to deny nature.
(i.e. having the choice to work, to raise kids, etc).
Men don't have a choice there. So true equality of opportunity is a *lack* of such choice.
But even apart from that, you're ducking the question. What feminists want to require "*both* parents working outside of the home with no time for the children"?
That's what equality of opportunity DOES. By increasing the number of people in the workforce, wages are depressed, which in turn creates the economic conditions that require both parents to work. Cause and effect.
I think you're mixing up your feminists with your evil capitalist robber barons.
The Robber Barons take advantage of the increase in supply of labor, they don't cause the increase in supply of labor.
If you submit to a dictator, as you prefer, you're giving him/her/it the right to harm you and your neighbor without punishment.
Unless, of course, the dictator also has to submit in return, thus the need for a strong church to balance out the technocrat.
The exercise of liberty does not always harm others.
But when it doesn't, it's called morality, and that's what moral relativists say we can't have because of liberty.
In a rational society, when someone's freedom and someone's well-being conflict, we decide as a society how to weigh each one depending on the circumstances.If you have no single authority, then obviously the freedom will ALWAYS outweigh the mere well-being- or as you put it, those who trade liberty for security end up with neither. Freedom is almost always license, except when constrained by duty- and duty is impossible without rational authority.
If you fear being at the mercy of society in these decisions, you should be doubly afraid of the whims of an individual. You rightly decry the oppression of business leaders, yet comically want to invest even more power in a single individual.
What I fear is random chaos in these decisions, because from where I sit, humans aren't very rational by nature.
So you're either anti-democracy or just think (as I do) that democracy could function better with some changes (e.g. by controls on buying of elections). If you're against democracy itself, what's your preferred form of government. If you want changes, what changes?
Technocratic dictatorship with a strong church for morality, is my preferred as it has been for most rational people for 3000 years now.
It sounds like you're disagreeing with Chesterton on a second point here (the only two I brought up, oddly). I encourage you to disagree more with your authority figures.
Chesterton just says that women need *different* education from men- something we used to accept in the United States. Home Economics classes were common in my high school, were they in yours?
Who is that?
The business leaders who shut down factories in the United States and send jobs where the standard of living is cheaper.And do you think that sentiment is prevalent or is it a straw man you found easy to knock down?
Half of humanity lives on an income of $2/day, so yes, I think the sentiment that labor should be as close to free as possible is quite prevalent. In addition, a decade ago that was $1/day- but they didn't get a raise, the value of a dollar fell by half.
Why don't you point to the feminists that take that stance? The feminists I know and read are quite opposed to that.
Every feminist I know says that "Motherhood isn't fulfilling enough, women need to be in control of the workplace as well". This has been the center of the feminist mantra for 100 years. What feminists are you listening to?
Your defense of slavery is appalling. The rest of the world has mostly agreed that slavery is counter to "human dignity". Your authoritarian worldview may give you the idea of a benevolent dictator or slaveholder, but I contend that democracy has been the best antidote for the conditions you rightly decry.
Only at the expense of creating criminality and a worse world. Liberty is just the right to harm your neighbor without punishment.
I've done no such thing. My senses are not a thinking entity (the definition you agreed to for authority figure), and I don't deny evidence presented by others.
If you accept evidence presented by others, then you take that evidence on the authority of the others, thus you accept authority figures.
But you keep missing this point. What authority figures are you submitting to that aren't filtered through your senses? You listen to your priest or pope with your sense of hearing. You read your bible with your sight. I haven't seen you put the slightest dent in my contention that our senses are foundational.
They are foundational- but they are NOT alone.
Who are you arguing with? Another straw man.
I'm arguing with a paradox:
1. You claimed you accept NO authority other than your own senses.
2. You claimed you accept evidence presented by others on their authority.
Either 1 is true or 2 is true, but both cannot be true. Therefore, based on this last post, 1 was a lie, you accept authority figures just as much as any rational person does.
But since even your senses are indeed an authority figure, it's irrational to deny other authority figures the right to present evidence, unless you're going to build a civilization of one little hermitage, for all else outside of your sight is false. Heck, at that level, you can't even claim that the back wall of your hermitage is the same color it was yesterday- because somebody could have come along and painted it in the mean time.
I hold that in such a chaotic universe as you present- where only what you see with your own eyes is true and everything else is false- the very idea of the scientific method is impossible, and thus, your definition of evidence is in and of itself irrational.
How does "3% failure rate" count as "worse than AIDS"?
It gives a false sense of security that actually increases the overall AIDS transmission rate by encouraging people to make bad decisions.
It prevents human life from being conceived in the first place. That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Only if you're Stalin and trying to cut down on the number of people your communist paradise has to feed.
So does choosing not to have sex. How far must people go to maximize the number of babies conceived?
No further than simple reasonable monogamous morality creates. After all, in my Uganda example- in the same timeframe, by giving up polygamy, the average number of children per family fell from 8 to 3- AND they prevented AIDS.
If you're looking at a single individual, maybe that applies.
When considering HUMAN DIGNITY- only the single individual applies. Just about everything else reduces human beings to mere numbers.
Unless you treat the material quality of life as irrelevant (as "Better a short life full of disease and woe, than no life at all" suggests you do)
Worse than that- I treat that sort of misguided materialism as downright irrational and emotion based.
you then don't have 1 vs. 0, you have a number from, say, 0 to 1, and, if you look at humanity as a whole, you have the sum of all those numbers - and if you have finite resources to support human life,
Which we don't. We'll never even reach 1/10th the carrying capacity of our resources.
that puts an upper bound on that sum, so you then have to decide whether "more lives" or "better lives" is more important. When it comes to the abstract notion of hypothetical lives, I put "better lives" on top; better that fewer people are conceived and have better lives than that more people are conceived and have worse lives. Perhaps the sum of all qualities of life is the same in both cases, but, hey, it's now a two-variable problem, and I'm choosing to maximize "average quality of life" rather than "number of lives", given that I don't actually have to kill anybody to do that.
That's because you are not rational, and are basing your argument on a set of data that has already been disproven.
Yup. And if I lose my faith in one of those authorities, e.g. because (to pick an extreme example) somebody finds that their work is fraudulent, I may well end up believing something else.
But you don't. For instance, the idea of finite resources has been proven to be fraudulent, yet you base your whole philosophy of materialism over humanity upon it.
What you were rejecting in that line of argument was "My point is that rationality requires careful consideration of evidence and that religion requires only faith (i.e. belief based solely on some authority)." I read that as not necessarily rejecting some level of faith; I read it as arguing that religion doesn't require careful consideration of evidence.
Already disproven in this thread by Pope Benedict's separation of rational and irrational religions- rational religions ALWAYS require careful consideration of the evidence and rethinking of assumptions based on the full sum of available evidence (that is, rational religion differs from science only in a lack of belief in reductionism).
Perhaps you read it as arguing both that rationality requires no faith and that religion requires no careful consideration of evidence. Now, I'm more interested in the original poster's idea of what it meant than in either of our readings.
Me to, so on to the next post. Yes, for what it is worth- rational religion requires *faith in authority* to give us *evidence to think about*, with only rejections of ways of life that do not perpetuate the species.
From that standpoint, materialism itself is irrelevant and irrational.
So you're not as extreme as Chesterton. You think women should be allowed to vote.
Well, I'm with Chesterton that voting is largely useless for both women and men. To the average person, voting is like taking a test on a bunch of stuff that they've never studied and that will never affect their life at all.
And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you think women should be allowed to get an education as well.
How else is a mother to teach her children, if she's not educated herself?
Have you encountered someone that wants all women to work 80 hours per week?
Yes, I have. In fact, they'd like to get to the point where everybody, men and women, are working 80 hours a week for $2/day. But that's an entirely different problem than feminism- that's a problem with capitalism.
Do you want to limit the number of hours a woman may work? Feminists want to give each woman the choice.
No they don't- they want to re-structure society so that no family CAN make the choice, so that it requires *both* parents working outside of the home with no time for the children to survive. And in the last 40 years, they've largely succeeded.
So Chesterton wanted to deny women the vote and education out of kindness?
Chesterton would deny everybody the vote out of kindness- it's a waste of time asking people questions about stuff they will never understand. Education? His WIFE was as educated as he was, more in many ways.
Would you find the same sort of condescending argument convincing if given by a mid-1800's slaveholder regarding his slaves?
I'd suggest that he was wasting an excellent opportunity to double his investment, as an educated slave is worth twice as much as an uneducated one. Just as I suggest that the sweatshop owner is treating his employees worse than the intelligent slave owner treats his slaves, because he has failed to provide them with food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and basic medical care that every smart slave owner provides to protect his investment in the slave. I see neither argument as "condescending" because I consider the slave owner and the slave to be as equal as the husband and the wife.
And, objectively, they ARE equal- different and separate, but equal. The attempt to pit one against the other, is the irrational part.
I would point out that Catholics for Choice is an irrational sect that is not based on objective evidence at all- and in fact, is not in communion with Rome on a large number of items, ranging from women's ordination to abortion. They're about as Catholic as Planned Parenthood- and equally guilty of eugenics.
I think you meant one best way to live. And that's a judgment call, and we as a species don't agree on that best way to live
No, I meant what I said- one way to live that is in keeping with the dictates of our DNA. And that's objective based- not irrationally "agree" based.
My point was that we do differ.
But we differ only for irrational reasons, like subjective experience.
As for why, people have different experiences, so they develop their view of morality differently.
Nobody needs to develop their own morality anymore. We've had two million years worth of experimentation into the one morality that works, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
The roots of and evolution of morality in societies is an interesting topic too.
Yes. So why throw it out?
This sounds like Gould's non-overlapping magesteria argument. But of course religions do claim overlapping - that their gods do intervene in the physical world.
Catholicism doesn't. God doesn't need to intervene. His input into the physical world is not intervening, but rather, was a part of the plan from the beginning.
So we at times have evidence in the physical world to evaluate creation myths
Why would you evaluate a moral soul based creation myth that is just an allegory by physical evidence that isn't?
and other claims in holy books
All other claims in holy books are just subjective experience from history. About the only thing that can be checked physically is that the places and people in the stories once existed, through archaeology. And from that standpoint, almost all Holy Books are equal.
the effects of intercessory prayer
which can be explained with quantum physics
miracles
Also known as fortunate coincidences; there are no miracles, just physical laws and parts of God's plan we don't understand yet.
visitations and prophecies.
I don't see anything weird about either visitations or prophecies; there is definitely a dimension beyond that which we can measure, but once you grant that dimension exists, the math becomes drop dead simple, even Einstienian- by the 11th dimension, time is just a point.
No. If you want to debate me, you have to make your own points or direct me to some specific point someone else has made. I'm not just going to read your books with no idea what points you're trying to make with them.
Did it ever occur to you that the point I'm trying to make is more complex than a one sentence sound bite, and that's why I pointed you at the book or speech to begin with?
I'm using the word authority to mean a person (or god), a thinking entity.
So am I. Without a person, a god, a thinking entity, evidence doesn't exist. At all.
Our senses and memories are more fundamental than any authori
What gets me though is that the modern operating systems are so complex, and multitask so much stuff, that they make a 2Ghz Atom Processor feel *SLOWER* than a 16Mhz 286.
"Evidence? (You must have some in order to validly say "objectively" here.)"
3% failure rate, plus it prevents human life from being born in the first place. Better a short life full of disease and woe, than no life at all (1>0). Also, I'd point out the example of Uganda- since embracing monogamy, their AIDS rate has dropped immensely without use of condoms.
"What if there is more than one way to live that is in keeping with the DNA of that species?"
You'd need extraordinary proof for that statement, since there's only one species.
"Yes, indeed, there's no such guarantee. Tomorrow morning the Sun will probably still have fuel to burn, but, eventually, there's a good reason to believe it'll run out."
But the point is, you take that based on authoritative knowledge, that is philosophically no different than religious faith at all. All evidence requires faith in the authority presenting the evidence.
That's nothing compared to the effects of his stance on condom use (i.e. that it's worse than AIDS).
Objectively, it IS worse than AIDS. But of course, most researchers who claim that condom use prevents AIDS, are not objective on the subject.
I think this might just be a difference in terms - having a clear concept of human dignity sounds like morality to me.
What is wrong with morality and insisting that for a given species, there might be one way to live that is in keeping with the DNA of that species?
I think here we differ. Universal morality would be nice, but I think it's not likely to happen as long as there are at least 2 people left to differ.
If there is only one species and one reality, why would anybody differ?
No. He takes that stance to avoid questioning of his god, but over and over throughout the centuries science has eroded his case.
Depends on your definition of God. Science is limited, in Catholic theology, to the visible world- that which can be measured. God is limited to the invisible world, that which cannot be measured. The two data sets do not intersect, at all.
I'm not sure what else from his speech you might find relevant here. I didn't read it all, but read several sections and skimmed the rest looking for relevant passages.
You need to read it all. Skimming doesn't help in reading Benedict any more than skimming helps in reading Chesterton- nor does doing so with a closed mind.
I'm happy to reply to your points, and even read some more, though I'd prefer if you could pick out some key points you'd like a response to to save some time and avoid confusion. My point is that rationality requires careful consideration of evidence and that religion requires only faith (i.e. belief based solely on some authority).
Ah, there's an excellent point that I'd like to discuss- the idea that evidence can exist without an authority- for that is an irrational definition of rationality to begin with.
There are only 5 types of evidence in this world. From the least reliable to the most reliable, they are:
-Eyewitness evidence
-Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Personally Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Mechanically Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Personal Experience
For even the most reliable of evidence- you must have faith in an authority- the authority of your own senses and your own brain. Without that authority, there is no personal experience. Even Mechanically Replicated eyewitness evidence- requires the authority of the brain interpreting the data coming out of the machine.
Go up one level, and you've got two authorities- the person doing the replicating, which is yourself, and the person who told you about the experiment to begin with.
Go up one more level, and you've reached the end of what science can tell us, for unless *two people* can replicate the same experiment *within the error of measurement of the apparatus*, there's no way to know which experiment is correct, which theory is correct.This requires two people to tell us what is true and reality, two authorities.
Which leaves us with a myriad of phenomena that exists for only ONE person- and that is the realm of philosophy and theology. And here, authority is even more important, for it separates rational religion from irrational religion. Rational religions have an authority to bring together all the data, and separate what is true from what is false. Irrational religions have no authority- it's all true, even if it isn't true for the person next to you, even if it requires you to kill the person next to you.
So you see, I reject your definition of rationality for the precise reason that you reject the concept of an authority to give us one reality. For without th
I don't agree that "equality for women" is a rational stance. I believe it to be an emotional one that denies that each gender brings something of equal value to the table- but different. Thus modern feminism is more about an attempt to turn women into men, rather than actually celebrating the unique aspects that women can bring to any given discussion or decision. I'm all for giving women an equal voice- but I'm not for say, destroying motherhood in favor of having large numbers of female CEOs working 80 hour workweeks.
Chesterton's relevance isn't in rationality and religion, however; but the other half of what drives me- the dignity of man (and woman)- what you term mysogynism in him is more chivalry. And as I read somewhere recently- not all women like chivalry, just those who are actually worth dying for. What works for humans isn't denial of our essential nature- yet that's what modernism has done, denied both men and women their essential natures.
but those that use their money to do harm are criminals no matter what political system you subscribe to.
Then why don't we treat them as such? Why do we give them bailouts, lobbying jobs, and cabinet positions instead?
Seems much safer to prevent people from doing a lot, than attempting to catch all the fraud- especially since under normal circumstances, fraud is far more rewarding than any punishment the government is willing to impose.
"I think you're misunderstanding what "limited liability" means. It refers to the liability of shareholders being limited to the nominal amount of share capital they purchase, it has nothing to do with the corporation's liability to lawsuits or whatever. "
I guess I really misunderstood- I thought it meant that you could go after the corporation, but not the shareholders or officers individually.
When you can hold 51% of the shares of a corporation and have voting control, how is that limited in any real sense of the word limited?
Now if you had *truly* limited share capital that one person could purchase, hostile takeovers would be a thing of the past.
At least back then the war was largely limited to the battlefield- the grand majority of Haliburton's kill ratio were Iraqi civilians. Knights at least had honor. Mercenaries don't.
2nd Reply- for my definition of the Christian Concept of Human Dignity, I can think of no better work than GK Chesterton's "What is Wrong with the World and How To Fix It". Chesterton is definitely an example of rational religion- and if you like what you read at this link, I would challenge you to follow it up with Orthodoxy- for a man should not argue against a concept such as rational religion without first studying the concept.
I'm having a hard time figuring how rational and religious isn't a contradiction. Perhaps you could clarify?
I could, but Pope Benedict XVI put it much better than I can in his infamous University of Regansburg speech. Too bad his counter example was Islam and not very well understood- that speech caused the deaths of several priests and nuns throughout the Middle East and pretty much proved his point that Islam is not a rational religion.
Some religions do clearly have a concept of human dignity, but that's defined much differently from religion to religion and within any particular religion. It seems to me that the end goals are what we call morality and rationality comes into it as we try to determine how to get there.
A few religions actually do the reverse- start with a clear concept of what human dignity is, then try very hard to serve that human dignity. Universal morality and a single reality is required for that- concepts that are currently not in vogue with philosophers, but which are nonetheless required if we're going to approach problems rationally. If, for instance, the gravitational constant is different from person to person, it's pretty hard to have a universal science, let alone a universal morality.
Since when does government funding NOT compromise the integrity of the research? Some lines get funded, others not, usually at the agenda of a grant-deciding bureaucrat. The grant system is certainly a form of welfare- and a biased form of welfare at that.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for, in my research, Introducing me to feminists with a radically different point of view
Damn- I broke the rules. Missed a closing italics tag. still, the arguments work- thanks to some unintentional indents.
You want to be our dictator, but we don't want you.
No, I want the rational implications of the biology of our species to be our dictator, because it's downright stupid to deny that parenthood is the entire reason for life. Life begets life- in all species- and thus the purpose of life is reproduction.
Under your regime, you'd force them to be mothers, with all the duties that contains.
Just as I'd have men be fathers- just as nature has always intended. Part of the definition of life is an organism that replicates. In bisexual species such as humans, that means parenthood. Anything less, add choice into the mixture, and you run the risk of extinction.
No, I'd give them the choice. You're the one arguing to force them to stay out of the business world.
Choice doesn't exist. Free will is an illusion created by our ignorance. A useful illusion, but still and illusion.
Many families are quite happy having the choice to work or not have children.
A family without children isn't a family, it's two people lying to each other.
And have you declined to work so as not to lower wages? Or is that just for others?
I have often declined to work for companies that were overstaffed to begin with, and that's the same reason I'm no longer a civil servant.
Yes, the feminist idea that women should be allowed to work lowers wages. But the feminists I know are also good lefties that argue for checks on narrow business interests, like unions, a minimum wage, regulations, fairer taxation and so on.
All of which are also denials of choice, correct?
That's a baseless argument until you give examples of feminists who want all women to work and not have children.
Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin claimed that all sex is rape back in the 1970s. Planned Parenthood today is trying to get pregnancy itself defined as a disease so that abortion, rather than birth, will be the cost-saving solution to pregnancy under the Affordable Health Care Act. It seems quite obvious that feminism for the past 30 years has been anti-motherhood and anti-child.
You're getting really confused if you thought I was arguing for men giving birth.
You were arguing for absolute equality between the sexes. And that *includes* the right to give birth. Once again, you have failed to understand the logical conclusions of your irrational beliefs.
This might be a shock to you, but some men do choose not to work, to raise kids, etc.
And in doing so, they shirk their responsibility as a FATHER, and are no better than a deadbeat dad.
So many things wrong with that. First, there are other ways to keep wages up.
The law of supply and demand is absolute, any country that tries to circumvent it by a minimum wage just reduces the number of jobs available.
Second, you ignore the case where a woman works and a man doesn't (no increase in the workforce compared to your ideal).
Who breastfeeds the infant?
Third, you ignore that not all adults are or want to be parents.
As I showed before, this is incompatible with the definition of life, as well as the continuation of the species, and thus, is at best, a non-surviving mutation that will cause extinction of those who practice it.
Agreed. Unless they're also pushing for forced procreation.
Which, of course, they should be, shouldn't they?
So your dictator has a dictator. And that helps how? Now you've given the church the right to harm you and your neighbor without punishment.
Transparency. The nice thing about religions
So you want to force girls to prepare for their life in the home and not have the options the boys have.
Or, conversely, I want women and men to live up to the highest calling any human being can have- parenthood. The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world. There is a reason why, in monarchies, the Queen Mother actually had more power than the King.
That's what we call misogyny. What else do you have slated for women, out of kindness? Do they get to drive? Do they need to wear burkas?
They get to be MOTHERS- with all the duties that contains. And they should be paid what they are worth for that job- more than any CEO of a mere corporation, for the family is more important than any corporation.
Those are a few people. There are many more people in the US that don't like that so much.
And yet you'd force women out of the house and into the business world, destroying families in the process, so that the supply of workers goes up while demand stays constant, thus lowering wages.
Well, if you mean prevalent in the sense of powerful, then we agree. But it's mostly only those profiting off that system that agree with it. The masses don't, and that's what I meant.
And yet feminism itself argues FOR more workers, and thus a lower wage.
You're confusing a personal sentiment (i.e. Motherhood isn't fulfilling enough for me)
If it was a personal sentiment, then they wouldn't be putting down women who don't work.
with the societal goals of equality of opportunity
Until men can give birth, any attempt at equality of opportunity is just an attempt to deny nature.
(i.e. having the choice to work, to raise kids, etc).
Men don't have a choice there. So true equality of opportunity is a *lack* of such choice.
But even apart from that, you're ducking the question. What feminists want to require "*both* parents working outside of the home with no time for the children"?
That's what equality of opportunity DOES. By increasing the number of people in the workforce, wages are depressed, which in turn creates the economic conditions that require both parents to work. Cause and effect.
I think you're mixing up your feminists with your evil capitalist robber barons.
The Robber Barons take advantage of the increase in supply of labor, they don't cause the increase in supply of labor.
If you submit to a dictator, as you prefer, you're giving him/her/it the right to harm you and your neighbor without punishment.
Unless, of course, the dictator also has to submit in return, thus the need for a strong church to balance out the technocrat.
The exercise of liberty does not always harm others.
But when it doesn't, it's called morality, and that's what moral relativists say we can't have because of liberty.
In a rational society, when someone's freedom and someone's well-being conflict, we decide as a society how to weigh each one depending on the circumstances.If you have no single authority, then obviously the freedom will ALWAYS outweigh the mere well-being- or as you put it, those who trade liberty for security end up with neither. Freedom is almost always license, except when constrained by duty- and duty is impossible without rational authority.
If you fear being at the mercy of society in these decisions, you should be doubly afraid of the whims of an individual. You rightly decry the oppression of business leaders, yet comically want to invest even more power in a single individual.
What I fear is random chaos in these decisions, because from where I sit, humans aren't very rational by nature.
So you're either anti-democracy or just think (as I do) that democracy could function better with some changes (e.g. by controls on buying of elections). If you're against democracy itself, what's your preferred form of government. If you want changes, what changes?
Technocratic dictatorship with a strong church for morality, is my preferred as it has been for most rational people for 3000 years now.
It sounds like you're disagreeing with Chesterton on a second point here (the only two I brought up, oddly). I encourage you to disagree more with your authority figures.
Chesterton just says that women need *different* education from men- something we used to accept in the United States. Home Economics classes were common in my high school, were they in yours?
Who is that?
The business leaders who shut down factories in the United States and send jobs where the standard of living is cheaper.And do you think that sentiment is prevalent or is it a straw man you found easy to knock down?
Half of humanity lives on an income of $2/day, so yes, I think the sentiment that labor should be as close to free as possible is quite prevalent. In addition, a decade ago that was $1/day- but they didn't get a raise, the value of a dollar fell by half.
Why don't you point to the feminists that take that stance? The feminists I know and read are quite opposed to that.
Every feminist I know says that "Motherhood isn't fulfilling enough, women need to be in control of the workplace as well". This has been the center of the feminist mantra for 100 years. What feminists are you listening to?
Your defense of slavery is appalling. The rest of the world has mostly agreed that slavery is counter to "human dignity". Your authoritarian worldview may give you the idea of a benevolent dictator or slaveholder, but I contend that democracy has been the best antidote for the conditions you rightly decry.
Only at the expense of creating criminality and a worse world. Liberty is just the right to harm your neighbor without punishment.
I've done no such thing. My senses are not a thinking entity (the definition you agreed to for authority figure), and I don't deny evidence presented by others.
If you accept evidence presented by others, then you take that evidence on the authority of the others, thus you accept authority figures.
But you keep missing this point. What authority figures are you submitting to that aren't filtered through your senses? You listen to your priest or pope with your sense of hearing. You read your bible with your sight. I haven't seen you put the slightest dent in my contention that our senses are foundational.
They are foundational- but they are NOT alone.
Who are you arguing with? Another straw man.
I'm arguing with a paradox:
1. You claimed you accept NO authority other than your own senses.
2. You claimed you accept evidence presented by others on their authority.
Either 1 is true or 2 is true, but both cannot be true. Therefore, based on this last post, 1 was a lie, you accept authority figures just as much as any rational person does.
Exactly my question- even in TFA, they claim "counterfiets must be destroyed", and I don't really understand WHY.
But since even your senses are indeed an authority figure, it's irrational to deny other authority figures the right to present evidence, unless you're going to build a civilization of one little hermitage, for all else outside of your sight is false. Heck, at that level, you can't even claim that the back wall of your hermitage is the same color it was yesterday- because somebody could have come along and painted it in the mean time.
I hold that in such a chaotic universe as you present- where only what you see with your own eyes is true and everything else is false- the very idea of the scientific method is impossible, and thus, your definition of evidence is in and of itself irrational.
How does "3% failure rate" count as "worse than AIDS"?
It gives a false sense of security that actually increases the overall AIDS transmission rate by encouraging people to make bad decisions.
It prevents human life from being conceived in the first place. That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Only if you're Stalin and trying to cut down on the number of people your communist paradise has to feed.
So does choosing not to have sex. How far must people go to maximize the number of babies conceived?
No further than simple reasonable monogamous morality creates. After all, in my Uganda example- in the same timeframe, by giving up polygamy, the average number of children per family fell from 8 to 3- AND they prevented AIDS.
If you're looking at a single individual, maybe that applies.
When considering HUMAN DIGNITY- only the single individual applies. Just about everything else reduces human beings to mere numbers.
Unless you treat the material quality of life as irrelevant (as "Better a short life full of disease and woe, than no life at all" suggests you do)
Worse than that- I treat that sort of misguided materialism as downright irrational and emotion based.
you then don't have 1 vs. 0, you have a number from, say, 0 to 1, and, if you look at humanity as a whole, you have the sum of all those numbers - and if you have finite resources to support human life,
Which we don't. We'll never even reach 1/10th the carrying capacity of our resources.
that puts an upper bound on that sum, so you then have to decide whether "more lives" or "better lives" is more important. When it comes to the abstract notion of hypothetical lives, I put "better lives" on top; better that fewer people are conceived and have better lives than that more people are conceived and have worse lives. Perhaps the sum of all qualities of life is the same in both cases, but, hey, it's now a two-variable problem, and I'm choosing to maximize "average quality of life" rather than "number of lives", given that I don't actually have to kill anybody to do that.
That's because you are not rational, and are basing your argument on a set of data that has already been disproven.
Yup. And if I lose my faith in one of those authorities, e.g. because (to pick an extreme example) somebody finds that their work is fraudulent, I may well end up believing something else.
But you don't. For instance, the idea of finite resources has been proven to be fraudulent, yet you base your whole philosophy of materialism over humanity upon it.
What you were rejecting in that line of argument was "My point is that rationality requires careful consideration of evidence and that religion requires only faith (i.e. belief based solely on some authority)." I read that as not necessarily rejecting some level of faith; I read it as arguing that religion doesn't require careful consideration of evidence.
Already disproven in this thread by Pope Benedict's separation of rational and irrational religions- rational religions ALWAYS require careful consideration of the evidence and rethinking of assumptions based on the full sum of available evidence (that is, rational religion differs from science only in a lack of belief in reductionism).
Perhaps you read it as arguing both that rationality requires no faith and that religion requires no careful consideration of evidence. Now, I'm more interested in the original poster's idea of what it meant than in either of our readings.
Me to, so on to the next post. Yes, for what it is worth- rational religion requires *faith in authority* to give us *evidence to think about*, with only rejections of ways of life that do not perpetuate the species.
From that standpoint, materialism itself is irrelevant and irrational.
So you're not as extreme as Chesterton. You think women should be allowed to vote.
Well, I'm with Chesterton that voting is largely useless for both women and men. To the average person, voting is like taking a test on a bunch of stuff that they've never studied and that will never affect their life at all.
And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you think women should be allowed to get an education as well.
How else is a mother to teach her children, if she's not educated herself?
Have you encountered someone that wants all women to work 80 hours per week?
Yes, I have. In fact, they'd like to get to the point where everybody, men and women, are working 80 hours a week for $2/day. But that's an entirely different problem than feminism- that's a problem with capitalism.
Do you want to limit the number of hours a woman may work? Feminists want to give each woman the choice.
No they don't- they want to re-structure society so that no family CAN make the choice, so that it requires *both* parents working outside of the home with no time for the children to survive. And in the last 40 years, they've largely succeeded.
So Chesterton wanted to deny women the vote and education out of kindness?
Chesterton would deny everybody the vote out of kindness- it's a waste of time asking people questions about stuff they will never understand. Education? His WIFE was as educated as he was, more in many ways.
Would you find the same sort of condescending argument convincing if given by a mid-1800's slaveholder regarding his slaves?
I'd suggest that he was wasting an excellent opportunity to double his investment, as an educated slave is worth twice as much as an uneducated one. Just as I suggest that the sweatshop owner is treating his employees worse than the intelligent slave owner treats his slaves, because he has failed to provide them with food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and basic medical care that every smart slave owner provides to protect his investment in the slave. I see neither argument as "condescending" because I consider the slave owner and the slave to be as equal as the husband and the wife.
And, objectively, they ARE equal- different and separate, but equal. The attempt to pit one against the other, is the irrational part.
Are you seriously arguing that condoms don't help prevent the transmission of HIV?
Worse- I suggest that it encourages AIDS transmission by creating a false sense of security.
If so, even many of your church's authority figures disagree: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/hivaids/bishopssupportcondoms.asp [catholicsforchoice.org]
I would point out that Catholics for Choice is an irrational sect that is not based on objective evidence at all- and in fact, is not in communion with Rome on a large number of items, ranging from women's ordination to abortion. They're about as Catholic as Planned Parenthood- and equally guilty of eugenics.
I think you meant one best way to live. And that's a judgment call, and we as a species don't agree on that best way to live
No, I meant what I said- one way to live that is in keeping with the dictates of our DNA. And that's objective based- not irrationally "agree" based.
My point was that we do differ.
But we differ only for irrational reasons, like subjective experience.
As for why, people have different experiences, so they develop their view of morality differently.
Nobody needs to develop their own morality anymore. We've had two million years worth of experimentation into the one morality that works, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
The roots of and evolution of morality in societies is an interesting topic too.
Yes. So why throw it out?
This sounds like Gould's non-overlapping magesteria argument. But of course religions do claim overlapping - that their gods do intervene in the physical world.
Catholicism doesn't. God doesn't need to intervene. His input into the physical world is not intervening, but rather, was a part of the plan from the beginning.
So we at times have evidence in the physical world to evaluate creation myths
Why would you evaluate a moral soul based creation myth that is just an allegory by physical evidence that isn't?
and other claims in holy books
All other claims in holy books are just subjective experience from history. About the only thing that can be checked physically is that the places and people in the stories once existed, through archaeology. And from that standpoint, almost all Holy Books are equal.
the effects of intercessory prayer
which can be explained with quantum physics
miracles
Also known as fortunate coincidences; there are no miracles, just physical laws and parts of God's plan we don't understand yet.
visitations and prophecies.
I don't see anything weird about either visitations or prophecies; there is definitely a dimension beyond that which we can measure, but once you grant that dimension exists, the math becomes drop dead simple, even Einstienian- by the 11th dimension, time is just a point.
No. If you want to debate me, you have to make your own points or direct me to some specific point someone else has made. I'm not just going to read your books with no idea what points you're trying to make with them.
Did it ever occur to you that the point I'm trying to make is more complex than a one sentence sound bite, and that's why I pointed you at the book or speech to begin with?
I'm using the word authority to mean a person (or god), a thinking entity.
So am I. Without a person, a god, a thinking entity, evidence doesn't exist. At all.
Our senses and memories are more fundamental than any authori
I remember when, a good 20 years before slashdot, you learned programming by typing in video games from magazines!
Heck, somebody who is 40 today can't even look forward to working at the same company 3 years from now. You're the last generation for a lot of stuff.
What gets me though is that the modern operating systems are so complex, and multitask so much stuff, that they make a 2Ghz Atom Processor feel *SLOWER* than a 16Mhz 286.
"Evidence? (You must have some in order to validly say "objectively" here.)"
3% failure rate, plus it prevents human life from being born in the first place. Better a short life full of disease and woe, than no life at all (1>0). Also, I'd point out the example of Uganda- since embracing monogamy, their AIDS rate has dropped immensely without use of condoms.
"What if there is more than one way to live that is in keeping with the DNA of that species?"
You'd need extraordinary proof for that statement, since there's only one species.
"Yes, indeed, there's no such guarantee. Tomorrow morning the Sun will probably still have fuel to burn, but, eventually, there's a good reason to believe it'll run out."
But the point is, you take that based on authoritative knowledge, that is philosophically no different than religious faith at all. All evidence requires faith in the authority presenting the evidence.
That's nothing compared to the effects of his stance on condom use (i.e. that it's worse than AIDS).
Objectively, it IS worse than AIDS. But of course, most researchers who claim that condom use prevents AIDS, are not objective on the subject.
I think this might just be a difference in terms - having a clear concept of human dignity sounds like morality to me.
What is wrong with morality and insisting that for a given species, there might be one way to live that is in keeping with the DNA of that species?
I think here we differ. Universal morality would be nice, but I think it's not likely to happen as long as there are at least 2 people left to differ.
If there is only one species and one reality, why would anybody differ?
No. He takes that stance to avoid questioning of his god, but over and over throughout the centuries science has eroded his case.
Depends on your definition of God. Science is limited, in Catholic theology, to the visible world- that which can be measured. God is limited to the invisible world, that which cannot be measured. The two data sets do not intersect, at all.
I'm not sure what else from his speech you might find relevant here. I didn't read it all, but read several sections and skimmed the rest looking for relevant passages.
You need to read it all. Skimming doesn't help in reading Benedict any more than skimming helps in reading Chesterton- nor does doing so with a closed mind.
I'm happy to reply to your points, and even read some more, though I'd prefer if you could pick out some key points you'd like a response to to save some time and avoid confusion. My point is that rationality requires careful consideration of evidence and that religion requires only faith (i.e. belief based solely on some authority).
Ah, there's an excellent point that I'd like to discuss- the idea that evidence can exist without an authority- for that is an irrational definition of rationality to begin with.
There are only 5 types of evidence in this world. From the least reliable to the most reliable, they are:
-Eyewitness evidence
-Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Personally Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Mechanically Replicated eyewitness evidence
-Personal Experience
For even the most reliable of evidence- you must have faith in an authority- the authority of your own senses and your own brain. Without that authority, there is no personal experience. Even Mechanically Replicated eyewitness evidence- requires the authority of the brain interpreting the data coming out of the machine.
Go up one level, and you've got two authorities- the person doing the replicating, which is yourself, and the person who told you about the experiment to begin with.
Go up one more level, and you've reached the end of what science can tell us, for unless *two people* can replicate the same experiment *within the error of measurement of the apparatus*, there's no way to know which experiment is correct, which theory is correct.This requires two people to tell us what is true and reality, two authorities.
Which leaves us with a myriad of phenomena that exists for only ONE person- and that is the realm of philosophy and theology. And here, authority is even more important, for it separates rational religion from irrational religion. Rational religions have an authority to bring together all the data, and separate what is true from what is false. Irrational religions have no authority- it's all true, even if it isn't true for the person next to you, even if it requires you to kill the person next to you.
So you see, I reject your definition of rationality for the precise reason that you reject the concept of an authority to give us one reality. For without th
I don't agree that "equality for women" is a rational stance. I believe it to be an emotional one that denies that each gender brings something of equal value to the table- but different. Thus modern feminism is more about an attempt to turn women into men, rather than actually celebrating the unique aspects that women can bring to any given discussion or decision. I'm all for giving women an equal voice- but I'm not for say, destroying motherhood in favor of having large numbers of female CEOs working 80 hour workweeks.
Chesterton's relevance isn't in rationality and religion, however; but the other half of what drives me- the dignity of man (and woman)- what you term mysogynism in him is more chivalry. And as I read somewhere recently- not all women like chivalry, just those who are actually worth dying for. What works for humans isn't denial of our essential nature- yet that's what modernism has done, denied both men and women their essential natures.
but those that use their money to do harm are criminals no matter what political system you subscribe to.
Then why don't we treat them as such? Why do we give them bailouts, lobbying jobs, and cabinet positions instead?
Seems much safer to prevent people from doing a lot, than attempting to catch all the fraud- especially since under normal circumstances, fraud is far more rewarding than any punishment the government is willing to impose.
"I think you're misunderstanding what "limited liability" means. It refers to the liability of shareholders being limited to the nominal amount of share capital they purchase, it has nothing to do with the corporation's liability to lawsuits or whatever. "
I guess I really misunderstood- I thought it meant that you could go after the corporation, but not the shareholders or officers individually.
When you can hold 51% of the shares of a corporation and have voting control, how is that limited in any real sense of the word limited?
Now if you had *truly* limited share capital that one person could purchase, hostile takeovers would be a thing of the past.
At least back then the war was largely limited to the battlefield- the grand majority of Haliburton's kill ratio were Iraqi civilians. Knights at least had honor. Mercenaries don't.
2nd Reply- for my definition of the Christian Concept of Human Dignity, I can think of no better work than GK Chesterton's "What is Wrong with the World and How To Fix It". Chesterton is definitely an example of rational religion- and if you like what you read at this link, I would challenge you to follow it up with Orthodoxy- for a man should not argue against a concept such as rational religion without first studying the concept.
I'm having a hard time figuring how rational and religious isn't a contradiction. Perhaps you could clarify?
I could, but Pope Benedict XVI put it much better than I can in his infamous University of Regansburg speech. Too bad his counter example was Islam and not very well understood- that speech caused the deaths of several priests and nuns throughout the Middle East and pretty much proved his point that Islam is not a rational religion.
Some religions do clearly have a concept of human dignity, but that's defined much differently from religion to religion and within any particular religion. It seems to me that the end goals are what we call morality and rationality comes into it as we try to determine how to get there.
A few religions actually do the reverse- start with a clear concept of what human dignity is, then try very hard to serve that human dignity. Universal morality and a single reality is required for that- concepts that are currently not in vogue with philosophers, but which are nonetheless required if we're going to approach problems rationally. If, for instance, the gravitational constant is different from person to person, it's pretty hard to have a universal science, let alone a universal morality.
The real proof is ask them to program a common pattern like bubble sort on the white board during the interview
Since when does government funding NOT compromise the integrity of the research? Some lines get funded, others not, usually at the agenda of a grant-deciding bureaucrat. The grant system is certainly a form of welfare- and a biased form of welfare at that.
Damn- I mismatched my parenthesis. Same error that plagues me in my career.