When used properly, guns don't injure people - they go straight from being a live to being dead, without bothering to pass through Injuryville along the way.
Well I mean just look at all the previous Final Fantasies - they're literally the anti-MMO. No options, no sidequests, no choice; your only states are advancing the main plot or grinding. Even when you're given the ability to roam freely over the entire planet, the only thing to do is advance the plot.
Yes, they'll occasionally throw in some sidequests, optional bosses or what have you, but those are inevitably tiny and stunted. A single boss battle, a couple of characters, that's pretty much it. Sure, Final Fantasy VI had that one segment where you're playing as Celes and have to gather people back up, but I think that one part is the most sidetrack-heavy part of any Final Fantasy and even then it's kind of weaksauce in terms of the whole "sidequest" thing.
Basically, I don't understand why Square thinks they can come up with a reasonable MMO using the Final Fantasy development group. Being mainly linear is fine in a single-player game (because after all, the world does revolve around you), but not so much when either every other player in the MMO is following the exact same script as you at the same time, or things are so heavily instanced that you rarely see anyone else.
... you're going to work with your hands in space? That's a really good way to lose your hands. And why are you assuming that "techno-weenies" either don't have muscles or can't get them if they really needed to? It would certainly take less time than getting a PhD in astrophysics.
Those "teabaggers" you praise might not be stupid, but the qualities you claim they have (muscles, willingness to work with hands, not being able to deal with stuff if it breaks (and how exactly do those last two work, when at least one of the "techno-weenies" is likely to have been deeply involved in creating the stuff in the first place?)) are things that are much easier to attain than the knowledge the "techno-weenies" would have.
You realize that a morally sound person will refuse to engage in this type of activity on principle, no matter how hard up they are? These people are the scum of the earth, their parents should never have had children because certainly they had no idea how to raise them. These opportunists are out to make a quick buck because they think the world owes them something, and they have no interest (or are probably amused by) the damage they cause to society. I'm just sad that because of bleeding heart like you we're not allowed to shoot them.
Excellent idea! Let's shoot everyone who is not morally sound. Personally, I think wanting to shoot anyone who isn't "morally sound" is absolutely repugnant, so let's start with you.
Not very likely. Evolution is like a trillion monkeys hammering away at potential genomes; if creating one that was viciously deadly to humans were easy, it probably would have happened already. One more monkey hammering away at it won't change much.
Or overloaded an operator just for the sake of overloading it - operator overloading back in my day was the most over used and abused feature in C++.
Indeed! The fact that it was so hideously abused is the reason why it's simply not possible in Java (except for the String class, but that's another discussion). Back then, though, it made sense to not have it. Without modern IDEs, it's almost impossible to just look at a line like c = a + b and actually know what's going on unless you have a thorough understanding of classes a, b and c. I mean, does it somehow append data from a and b and then replace some part of c? Or does it actually do a set sum from a and b and then append that to c? Or does it make monkeys fly out your nostril? Who knows?
It's slightly better with a modern IDE where you can just say "show me the code and/or docs for a's + overload and c's = overload", but even then while reading the code you have to keep in mind that + actually means "sum of sets" and = actually means "make monkeys fly".
And the only thing you gain from it is more concise code. I mean seriously, does it really save you that much over, say, c.appendData(a.setSum(b))? Sure, the first thing is shorter, but I would argue that you spend more time thinking about the former than you do the latter.
Yo dawg we herd you like glasses so we put glasses on your glasses so you can see while you see in three dee.
And that's why 3D TVs don't work for me - either I use my normal glasses and it's blurry, or I use the 3D glasses and it's blurry. Hmm, which to choose? I'll go with 2D.
Exactly - this is a classic case of confirmation bias. How many other people did that chiropractor send to an MD, convinced they had multiple sclerosis when really all they had was a stomach flu or something? How many people who actually had multiple sclerosis did that chiropractor not send to an MD (probably none given how rare that condition is, but still).
I mean, the exact same thing happened to me once - my mother took me to a acupuncturist several years ago, because apparently sticking needles in your ear helps with something or other. As we were leaving, my mother started asking the guy if there was anything they could do for my weight and the symptoms of depression I was having back then. He mentioned that I might have Cushing's syndrome. On the car ride back home, my mother literally screamed with relief (she's kind of crazy) - we finally knew what was wrong with me! At home, she immediately set up an appointment with an endocrinologist (and ended up screaming again later that week in the middle of the hospital, because their appointment system had eaten the consultation she scheduled - maybe she shouldn't have said that I was being referred directly to an endocrine specialist by an acupuncture clinic? I really can't say I blame them, and I wouldn't be surprised if the first endocrinologist did that on their own.)
Next week, the second endocrinologist took one look at me and immediately said "fuck no, you don't have Cushings, just change your diet, get some exercise, and maybe see a therapist".
See, referring people with vague symptoms to MDs with a diagnosis of some rare disease works very well for alt-med practitioners. If they're wrong, people just say "oh well, it was a mistake" - but if they're right, people like you come around and say "the chiropractor knew my wife had MS even though the MDs said there was nothing wrong with her!"
Funny how we never hear people saying "my MD diagnosed the multiple sclerosis immediately, even though my chiropractor didn't get it". I guess it's because it's amazing when a chiropractor does that, but absolutely normal when an MD does.
Look, there's a very simple question that solves this problem:
What number would you add 0.99999... to make it equal to 1?
You would add 0.000....001 to it, of course.
Except that's an infinite number of zeros.
Which means that this number is infinitesimally small - literally, it would have to be the smallest number greater than zero (in other words, it's epsilon).
So we can re-write the equation as 0.999... + epsilon = 1.
However, epsilon doesn't exist. There is no smallest number greater than zero.
Which means that in order to make 0.999... + epsilon = 1, you have to use a non-existant number.
Uh huh, you lucked out - a good chiropractor is basically a physical therapist without that accreditation, or an actual physical therapist going by another name for some reason. It doesn't really matter that the fundamental chiropractic theory is complete and utter unsubstantiated bullshit equivalent to Chi or ghost stories; if the treatment works, after all, it works (though I and I'm sure many other people have philosophical objections to that, it's hard to come up with pragmatic ones).
Unfortunately, not all chiropractors are as good as yours, and not all people who go to chiropractors are as lucky as you. There's definitely bad chiropractors out there, who say that their manipulations can cure literally everything. I mean, don't you remember the three or four Slashdot articles about the British Chiropractor Association suing Simon Singh for libel? They sued him because he said that a lot of their claims were bogus (literally, they sued him for using that word), and they eventually dropped the case because the claims are bogus.
Here's the problem, though: you can't tell which kind it will be before you go to them. Sure, you can look up reviews and ask your friends, but that is pretty meaningless; unless your friends are trained medical professionals, they're not really going to have a good idea of whether or not the chiropractor knows wtf they're doing. If you were designing a house, you wouldn't just find a random architect on Yelp - you'd make sure you found one who had a good reputation and was a licensed architect. The problem with chiropractors, though, is that there's very little if any regulation on who can call themselves a chiropractor, and there's almost no educational requirements; Joe Random off the street can basically just decide he's a chiropractor one day and open up shop, which is not how it works for the MD you so casually disregard.
"Fine," you say, "it doesn't really matter! From a pragmatic standpoint, they're not really hurting anyone, right? Either they cure you, or they send you off to a real doctor who does." Unfortunately, it often doesn't work like that; in terms of actual medical problems, the time a chiropractor spends trying to fix you by adjusting your sublaxations and crackin' your bones is time that's wasted unless you actually had certain classes of muscular or skeletal problem. If you had, say, severe joint pain and spent a couple of weeks going to a chiropractor instead of going to a doctor, the chiropractor might not even know to look for lupus. In the worst cases, unethical chiropractors might refrain from referring a patient with problems they can't handle to a doctor, simply because there's really no standards of conduct for them.
And even then, the contention that what they can only harm you by delaying treatment might not even be true! It's been argued (quite convincingly, I think) that certain kinds of chiropractic manipulations on the neck can cause stroke.
So yeah, it boils down to this: the actual art chiropractors practice (i.e, chiropractic) is a sham and a scam with absolutely no medical backing. Though there are actual chiropractors that know enough to heal you out there, there is no way of guaranteeing that any specific chiropractor won't try to adjust your neck and potentially give you a stroke, or give you bad advice that doesn't work, or string you along and delay effective treatment.
If you don't believe me, check your chiropractor's website or pamphlets - if they're in the USA, I bet you anything that they have something like the Quack Miranda Warning somewhere in there. And if they don't, they're not just a chiropractor - they almost certainly have some sort of real medical certification, which means that they don'
Here's a citation. Question: where did you go to those Catholic sex ed programs? Because if it was in one of the more civilized Western nations, it may very well be that they only taught such things because they are required to, or because Catholics in first world nations are more liberal than the ones in the Vatican.
For example, many people in the drug de-criminalization effort seek to have drugs de-criminalized because it's not hurting anybody else if you only hurt yourself. It's a sinful thing to do, yes, but you can't force people to obey your moral standards by criminalizing the things you don't like.
That is hilarious, because this is exactly what the Catholic Church does in countries where it has power. Indeed, carrying out or aiding in an abortion for any reason is grounds for immediate and automatic excommunication (basically the only autonomous power they have left) - even if you're aborting a nine year old rape victim's pregnancy. As for an example of that - well, why do you think abortion is illegal in Peru?
Anyway, here's some quotes from my citation, since I hate it when people give me a huge wad of text and say "my point is in here somewhere" - and note that it's from 2001, so when it says "recently" it means eight years ago:
Despite the rising toll of AIDS since 1989, the Vatican has consistently opposed safe sex education at UN meetings. The Vatican delegations to all of the major humanitarian meetings of the 1990s--the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), and the five-year follow up meeting to the ICPD--unequivocally condemned the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
In addition to insisting that there is no room within Catholic theology to allow the compassionate use of condoms, officials of the Catholic church have repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the effectiveness of condoms in fighting AIDS. In Kenya, even as the government belatedly declared that the AIDS epidemic was reaching crisis levels, Catholic Bishop John Njue propagated false scientific information by claiming that condoms are to blame for the spread of AIDS.
In Africa and around the world the hierarchy of the Catholic church has worked actively to suppress condom use, education and distribution. In 1996, the local Roman Catholic church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, prevented the distribution of one million condoms by health and election officials at polling stations during a primary election. Honduras has the highest incidence of AIDS in Central America.44 That same year, in Nairobi, Kenya, Cardinal Maurice Otunga, Kenya's leading Roman Catholic church official, burned boxes of condoms and safe sex literature.45 After Brazil launched an innovative AIDS prevention program that stressed the need for the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, Brazilian Roman Catholic officials criticized the program for not stressing abstinence. Cardinal Eugenio Sales of Rio de Janeiro said the campaign would stimulate sexual activity, thereby spreading AIDS.46 Just this year in Zambia, health officials withdrew a hard-hitting anti-AIDS campaign that urged safe sex and condom use after the church complained that it promoted promiscuity.47
So is that good enough for you? The Catholic Church only "allows" condom use in the first world because they don't have nearly as much political power here as they're used to having in third-world countries. In places where they have power, they do their best to quash sex ed and condom use and make abortions illegal.
Exactly when in anything that I said had ANYTHING to do with "public policy"?
I like how out of "harboring vile criminals, denying medical treatment to those who need it, and negatively affecting public policy", you chose "public policy".
But anyway, here's where you defended the Catholic Church's stance on a public policy:
If those assumptions are true, which this Catholic church believes, why would the Catholic church ever approve of birth control techniques?
Because of the Catholic Church's political power, children in Africa who are not Catholic are not given proper, modern sexual education. Do you see how that works? Even if they wanted to learn how sexually transmitted diseases work, they are not given the opportunity to because of someone else's religion.
Hell, even if they just keep their children out of sex ed and never teach them what condoms are, they'll still affect other people - because if, for instance, you don't realize that oral or anal sex can lead to certain STDs just as much standard hetero sex, you might think you're safe because you've only blown some dudes when in fact you're spreading Herpes or HPV.
No, you call the local police station and tell them you found a bomb on your car - a thick black cylinder with wires coming out of it and you don't know where it came from. Then you call the local news department and tell them the same thing, potentially with pictures.
Then some embarrassed FBI agents come by after the bomb squad "defuses" the thing in the middle of a media circus.
No, my point is that most critics of the church are ignorant of its teachings and traditions. I am not a Catholic.
But if you believe that the Summa Theologica "should address all of [my] epistemological concerns" as you stated earlier, shouldn't you be a Catholic? If not, can you explain this contradiction?
And it's funny you would say that, because it seems that most defenders of the church are ignorant of its teachings and traditions. A great many Catholics, for instance, don't actually believe in (or don't realize that they're supposed to believe in) the Miracle of Transubstantiation, despite the fact that it's fundamental to Catholicism.
I'm not entirely certain where you pulled the idea that I don't respect Aquinas' works because of his faith from; I was merely pointing out (and you seem to have completely missed) that his works have exactly as much to do with reality as the Harry Potter books. His faith has nothing to do with the fact that he's completely wrong, and his arguments are full of holes.
I mean, just look at your post! You don't do anything to show that the words Aquinas wrote were anything other than a work of fiction; instead, you hammer on his authority, try to show off your historical knowledge, and seem to be arguing that because I compared Aquinas to Rowling I'm wrong. You say nothing to bolster what should be your point, namely that Aquinas is right; instead, you harp about how I'm disrespecting him.
You know what? If the Summa Theologica was such an awesome source of irrefutable logic, then quote it. Paraphrase the best argument from the five volumes, I dare you - because I know for a fact that it will not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. I will not go out and do your dirty work for you; you must be willing to support your hypotheses.
Yes, I was just making an observation about why people believe in God. If you want an example, though, consider Acts 9:3-9.
Oh okay then. So are you saying that God is indistinguishable from any number of things, like fairies or aliens or seizures or (perhaps more relevantly) brain damage?
The Summa Theologica fills five volumes and should address all of your epistemological concerns.
The Harry Potter novels fill seven volumes and should address all of your epistemological concerns.
Do you believe Hogwarts exists? No? Why not?
Now apply the same logic to the Summa Theologica, and you may have the reason why I discount it.
Of course, any logic or evidence, however convincing, will be irrelevant to someone who feels they have personally experienced the presence of their Lord. Such experiences are quite common, especially in deeply religious cultures, and even among non-believers. You might tell them that they're hallucinating, but they experienced it and you didn't; who are you to tell them they imagined it?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If they personally experienced the presence of their Lord, did He provide any means of verifying this fact? Perhaps by telling them something they otherwise wouldn't know? Maybe by doing some healing (since He seems to be fond of claiming that particular miracle)?
Because, you know, without that little bit of external confirmation - well, there's all sorts of drugs that will make you feel like you're in the presence of God (and another class entirely that'll make you feel like you are God). If such effects can be achieved pharmaceutically, why is the actual presence of God more likely than a spontaneous hallucination of God?
I thought it was pretty well-known that the idea of a world more important and more enduring than what we observe is central to the Christian worldview.
That doesn't mean it actually exists.
There is zero evidence for that hypothesis, and depending on how you're defining things and how you're claiming they interact with the universe, there may very well be evidence against the hypothesis.
It's funny, because out of those three professions (medicine, accounting and law) only one deals with a system that is naturally complicated. Accounting and law are only complicated because our society makes them complicated.
You can logically prove that a soul doesn't physically exist in this world. However, the soul just so happens to be spiritual and cannot be represented by matter alone, therefore that conclusion is left up to whether or not you believe God exists (which the Catholic church does).
So let me get this straight: the soul has no observable effect on the universe, yet it exists anyway? Could you clarify what leads you to believe this hypothesis? Or maybe I'm misinterpreting you somehow.
Assume for a second that all life is sacred. Assume for a second that sex was never meant to just be a pleasureful act, and was meant to represent the love of God Himself by allowing us to spread that love another generation by "becoming one" in the act of sexual intercourse.
So what you're saying is, basically, "assume that I'm right"?
How about this: I don't accept your assumptions. I reject them, because they assume facts simply do not exist. You leave the quality "sacred" undefined; you'll have to give a definition if you want me to accept that life is sacred. The entity you term "God" is not in evidence, as there is exactly zero evidence for such a creature - and, lest I start sounding like a broken record, it is also undefined. The existence of meaning behind the existence of an action is not in evidence; you'll have to provide a plausible hypothesis for why such a thing would exist, which I think will be tricky given that there is no evidence for the existence of a God Who "meant" for sex to mean anything.
Basically, your argument boils down to "assuming I'm right, I'm right". Sorry, but for matters of public policy (which covers things like sexual education and the promotion of contraceptives and prophylactics) that just doesn't cut it.
As for the catholic church molestation issues, the Church itself says that if you have deep-rooted, perverted sexual tendencies, you should seek help with those before you become a priest. There are only a few bad eggs in a giant basket of them here, figuratively speaking. The underlying principles that molestation is a grave sexual offense and that it severely separates yourself from God are still true in the Church's eyes; if Pope Benedict XVI truly is covering up these instances without a good reason (which I'm not sure is possible to have), then maybe we just have a bad pope on our hands.
The evidence that Ratzinger did in fact cover up the instances of child molestation is effectively incontrovertible. The evidence that the Catholic Church has a history of covering these things up is also incontrovertible; just look at the recent furor in Ireland, or look at the history of a potential Australian saint (hint: she was temporarily excommunicated because she went public with the fact that a priest was abusing children).
Sorry, but it looks like the rot in the Catholic Church goes back centuries - and that's not even accounting for the hypocrisy inherent in preaching tithes but living in a gilded castle.
tl;dr, It's their beliefs, not yours. Respect them for that please and stop claiming they're so backwards that they don't allow any fun. The problem isn't the church, it's you. Just because a church that you don't agree with and that you are not a part of doesn't approve of things that you want to fulfill your own selfish sexual desires, logically speaking, does NOT mean, in any way, that the Church is backwards; agree to disagree!
No, that's not the way it works. When you are wrong on matters of fact, and your wrongness on matters of fact leads you to encourage bad public policy, you should be opposed. Your beliefs matter very much when they mean the people my children end up having sex with don't know wha
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When used properly, guns don't injure people - they go straight from being a live to being dead, without bothering to pass through Injuryville along the way.
Well I mean just look at all the previous Final Fantasies - they're literally the anti-MMO. No options, no sidequests, no choice; your only states are advancing the main plot or grinding. Even when you're given the ability to roam freely over the entire planet, the only thing to do is advance the plot.
Yes, they'll occasionally throw in some sidequests, optional bosses or what have you, but those are inevitably tiny and stunted. A single boss battle, a couple of characters, that's pretty much it. Sure, Final Fantasy VI had that one segment where you're playing as Celes and have to gather people back up, but I think that one part is the most sidetrack-heavy part of any Final Fantasy and even then it's kind of weaksauce in terms of the whole "sidequest" thing.
Basically, I don't understand why Square thinks they can come up with a reasonable MMO using the Final Fantasy development group. Being mainly linear is fine in a single-player game (because after all, the world does revolve around you), but not so much when either every other player in the MMO is following the exact same script as you at the same time, or things are so heavily instanced that you rarely see anyone else.
... you're going to work with your hands in space? That's a really good way to lose your hands. And why are you assuming that "techno-weenies" either don't have muscles or can't get them if they really needed to? It would certainly take less time than getting a PhD in astrophysics.
Those "teabaggers" you praise might not be stupid, but the qualities you claim they have (muscles, willingness to work with hands, not being able to deal with stuff if it breaks (and how exactly do those last two work, when at least one of the "techno-weenies" is likely to have been deeply involved in creating the stuff in the first place?)) are things that are much easier to attain than the knowledge the "techno-weenies" would have.
Excellent idea! Let's shoot everyone who is not morally sound. Personally, I think wanting to shoot anyone who isn't "morally sound" is absolutely repugnant, so let's start with you.
Not very likely. Evolution is like a trillion monkeys hammering away at potential genomes; if creating one that was viciously deadly to humans were easy, it probably would have happened already. One more monkey hammering away at it won't change much.
Yeah, but only when followed by "is full of shit".
Wait, so have they patented generic clipart and Venn diagrams? Is that what those figures are showing?
It is a rare invention that's obvious before it's invented, this is true.
Patents, on the other hand...
Indeed! The fact that it was so hideously abused is the reason why it's simply not possible in Java (except for the String class, but that's another discussion). Back then, though, it made sense to not have it. Without modern IDEs, it's almost impossible to just look at a line like c = a + b and actually know what's going on unless you have a thorough understanding of classes a, b and c. I mean, does it somehow append data from a and b and then replace some part of c? Or does it actually do a set sum from a and b and then append that to c? Or does it make monkeys fly out your nostril? Who knows?
It's slightly better with a modern IDE where you can just say "show me the code and/or docs for a's + overload and c's = overload", but even then while reading the code you have to keep in mind that + actually means "sum of sets" and = actually means "make monkeys fly".
And the only thing you gain from it is more concise code. I mean seriously, does it really save you that much over, say, c.appendData(a.setSum(b))? Sure, the first thing is shorter, but I would argue that you spend more time thinking about the former than you do the latter.
Yo dawg we herd you like glasses so we put glasses on your glasses so you can see while you see in three dee.
And that's why 3D TVs don't work for me - either I use my normal glasses and it's blurry, or I use the 3D glasses and it's blurry. Hmm, which to choose? I'll go with 2D.
Exactly - this is a classic case of confirmation bias. How many other people did that chiropractor send to an MD, convinced they had multiple sclerosis when really all they had was a stomach flu or something? How many people who actually had multiple sclerosis did that chiropractor not send to an MD (probably none given how rare that condition is, but still).
I mean, the exact same thing happened to me once - my mother took me to a acupuncturist several years ago, because apparently sticking needles in your ear helps with something or other. As we were leaving, my mother started asking the guy if there was anything they could do for my weight and the symptoms of depression I was having back then. He mentioned that I might have Cushing's syndrome. On the car ride back home, my mother literally screamed with relief (she's kind of crazy) - we finally knew what was wrong with me! At home, she immediately set up an appointment with an endocrinologist (and ended up screaming again later that week in the middle of the hospital, because their appointment system had eaten the consultation she scheduled - maybe she shouldn't have said that I was being referred directly to an endocrine specialist by an acupuncture clinic? I really can't say I blame them, and I wouldn't be surprised if the first endocrinologist did that on their own.)
Next week, the second endocrinologist took one look at me and immediately said "fuck no, you don't have Cushings, just change your diet, get some exercise, and maybe see a therapist".
See, referring people with vague symptoms to MDs with a diagnosis of some rare disease works very well for alt-med practitioners. If they're wrong, people just say "oh well, it was a mistake" - but if they're right, people like you come around and say "the chiropractor knew my wife had MS even though the MDs said there was nothing wrong with her!"
Funny how we never hear people saying "my MD diagnosed the multiple sclerosis immediately, even though my chiropractor didn't get it". I guess it's because it's amazing when a chiropractor does that, but absolutely normal when an MD does.
Look, there's a very simple question that solves this problem:
What number would you add 0.99999... to make it equal to 1?
You would add 0.000....001 to it, of course.
Except that's an infinite number of zeros.
Which means that this number is infinitesimally small - literally, it would have to be the smallest number greater than zero (in other words, it's epsilon).
So we can re-write the equation as 0.999... + epsilon = 1.
However, epsilon doesn't exist. There is no smallest number greater than zero.
Which means that in order to make 0.999... + epsilon = 1, you have to use a non-existant number.
Which means that 0.999... = 1 already.
Uh huh, you lucked out - a good chiropractor is basically a physical therapist without that accreditation, or an actual physical therapist going by another name for some reason. It doesn't really matter that the fundamental chiropractic theory is complete and utter unsubstantiated bullshit equivalent to Chi or ghost stories; if the treatment works, after all, it works (though I and I'm sure many other people have philosophical objections to that, it's hard to come up with pragmatic ones).
Unfortunately, not all chiropractors are as good as yours, and not all people who go to chiropractors are as lucky as you. There's definitely bad chiropractors out there, who say that their manipulations can cure literally everything. I mean, don't you remember the three or four Slashdot articles about the British Chiropractor Association suing Simon Singh for libel? They sued him because he said that a lot of their claims were bogus (literally, they sued him for using that word), and they eventually dropped the case because the claims are bogus.
Here's the problem, though: you can't tell which kind it will be before you go to them. Sure, you can look up reviews and ask your friends, but that is pretty meaningless; unless your friends are trained medical professionals, they're not really going to have a good idea of whether or not the chiropractor knows wtf they're doing. If you were designing a house, you wouldn't just find a random architect on Yelp - you'd make sure you found one who had a good reputation and was a licensed architect. The problem with chiropractors, though, is that there's very little if any regulation on who can call themselves a chiropractor, and there's almost no educational requirements; Joe Random off the street can basically just decide he's a chiropractor one day and open up shop, which is not how it works for the MD you so casually disregard.
"Fine," you say, "it doesn't really matter! From a pragmatic standpoint, they're not really hurting anyone, right? Either they cure you, or they send you off to a real doctor who does." Unfortunately, it often doesn't work like that; in terms of actual medical problems, the time a chiropractor spends trying to fix you by adjusting your sublaxations and crackin' your bones is time that's wasted unless you actually had certain classes of muscular or skeletal problem. If you had, say, severe joint pain and spent a couple of weeks going to a chiropractor instead of going to a doctor, the chiropractor might not even know to look for lupus. In the worst cases, unethical chiropractors might refrain from referring a patient with problems they can't handle to a doctor, simply because there's really no standards of conduct for them.
And even then, the contention that what they can only harm you by delaying treatment might not even be true! It's been argued (quite convincingly, I think) that certain kinds of chiropractic manipulations on the neck can cause stroke.
So yeah, it boils down to this: the actual art chiropractors practice (i.e, chiropractic) is a sham and a scam with absolutely no medical backing. Though there are actual chiropractors that know enough to heal you out there, there is no way of guaranteeing that any specific chiropractor won't try to adjust your neck and potentially give you a stroke, or give you bad advice that doesn't work, or string you along and delay effective treatment.
If you don't believe me, check your chiropractor's website or pamphlets - if they're in the USA, I bet you anything that they have something like the Quack Miranda Warning somewhere in there. And if they don't, they're not just a chiropractor - they almost certainly have some sort of real medical certification, which means that they don'
Here's a citation. Question: where did you go to those Catholic sex ed programs? Because if it was in one of the more civilized Western nations, it may very well be that they only taught such things because they are required to, or because Catholics in first world nations are more liberal than the ones in the Vatican.
That is hilarious, because this is exactly what the Catholic Church does in countries where it has power. Indeed, carrying out or aiding in an abortion for any reason is grounds for immediate and automatic excommunication (basically the only autonomous power they have left) - even if you're aborting a nine year old rape victim's pregnancy. As for an example of that - well, why do you think abortion is illegal in Peru?
Anyway, here's some quotes from my citation, since I hate it when people give me a huge wad of text and say "my point is in here somewhere" - and note that it's from 2001, so when it says "recently" it means eight years ago:
So is that good enough for you? The Catholic Church only "allows" condom use in the first world because they don't have nearly as much political power here as they're used to having in third-world countries. In places where they have power, they do their best to quash sex ed and condom use and make abortions illegal.
I like how out of "harboring vile criminals, denying medical treatment to those who need it, and negatively affecting public policy", you chose "public policy".
But anyway, here's where you defended the Catholic Church's stance on a public policy:
Because of the Catholic Church's political power, children in Africa who are not Catholic are not given proper, modern sexual education. Do you see how that works? Even if they wanted to learn how sexually transmitted diseases work, they are not given the opportunity to because of someone else's religion.
Hell, even if they just keep their children out of sex ed and never teach them what condoms are, they'll still affect other people - because if, for instance, you don't realize that oral or anal sex can lead to certain STDs just as much standard hetero sex, you might think you're safe because you've only blown some dudes when in fact you're spreading Herpes or HPV.
No, you call the local police station and tell them you found a bomb on your car - a thick black cylinder with wires coming out of it and you don't know where it came from. Then you call the local news department and tell them the same thing, potentially with pictures.
Then some embarrassed FBI agents come by after the bomb squad "defuses" the thing in the middle of a media circus.
But if you believe that the Summa Theologica "should address all of [my] epistemological concerns" as you stated earlier, shouldn't you be a Catholic? If not, can you explain this contradiction?
And it's funny you would say that, because it seems that most defenders of the church are ignorant of its teachings and traditions. A great many Catholics, for instance, don't actually believe in (or don't realize that they're supposed to believe in) the Miracle of Transubstantiation, despite the fact that it's fundamental to Catholicism.
Pray tell, where did I say that nothing can be learned from fiction?
I'm not entirely certain where you pulled the idea that I don't respect Aquinas' works because of his faith from; I was merely pointing out (and you seem to have completely missed) that his works have exactly as much to do with reality as the Harry Potter books. His faith has nothing to do with the fact that he's completely wrong, and his arguments are full of holes.
I mean, just look at your post! You don't do anything to show that the words Aquinas wrote were anything other than a work of fiction; instead, you hammer on his authority, try to show off your historical knowledge, and seem to be arguing that because I compared Aquinas to Rowling I'm wrong. You say nothing to bolster what should be your point, namely that Aquinas is right; instead, you harp about how I'm disrespecting him.
You know what? If the Summa Theologica was such an awesome source of irrefutable logic, then quote it. Paraphrase the best argument from the five volumes, I dare you - because I know for a fact that it will not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. I will not go out and do your dirty work for you; you must be willing to support your hypotheses.
Oh okay then. So are you saying that God is indistinguishable from any number of things, like fairies or aliens or seizures or (perhaps more relevantly) brain damage?
Do you have a bachelor's degree in philosophy and have concluded that Harry Potter contains no meaningful ideas?
You're the one who brought it up; are you saying that you were only making a general statement without having any specific examples in mind?
The Harry Potter novels fill seven volumes and should address all of your epistemological concerns.
Do you believe Hogwarts exists? No? Why not?
Now apply the same logic to the Summa Theologica, and you may have the reason why I discount it.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If they personally experienced the presence of their Lord, did He provide any means of verifying this fact? Perhaps by telling them something they otherwise wouldn't know? Maybe by doing some healing (since He seems to be fond of claiming that particular miracle)?
Because, you know, without that little bit of external confirmation - well, there's all sorts of drugs that will make you feel like you're in the presence of God (and another class entirely that'll make you feel like you are God). If such effects can be achieved pharmaceutically, why is the actual presence of God more likely than a spontaneous hallucination of God?
That doesn't mean it actually exists.
There is zero evidence for that hypothesis, and depending on how you're defining things and how you're claiming they interact with the universe, there may very well be evidence against the hypothesis.
It's funny, because out of those three professions (medicine, accounting and law) only one deals with a system that is naturally complicated. Accounting and law are only complicated because our society makes them complicated.
It's okay, both Moses and Abraham are made up people whose connection to reality is tenuous at best.
Who cares if he gets the name of a fictional character wrong?
So let me get this straight: the soul has no observable effect on the universe, yet it exists anyway? Could you clarify what leads you to believe this hypothesis? Or maybe I'm misinterpreting you somehow.
So what you're saying is, basically, "assume that I'm right"?
How about this: I don't accept your assumptions. I reject them, because they assume facts simply do not exist. You leave the quality "sacred" undefined; you'll have to give a definition if you want me to accept that life is sacred. The entity you term "God" is not in evidence, as there is exactly zero evidence for such a creature - and, lest I start sounding like a broken record, it is also undefined. The existence of meaning behind the existence of an action is not in evidence; you'll have to provide a plausible hypothesis for why such a thing would exist, which I think will be tricky given that there is no evidence for the existence of a God Who "meant" for sex to mean anything.
Basically, your argument boils down to "assuming I'm right, I'm right". Sorry, but for matters of public policy (which covers things like sexual education and the promotion of contraceptives and prophylactics) that just doesn't cut it.
The evidence that Ratzinger did in fact cover up the instances of child molestation is effectively incontrovertible. The evidence that the Catholic Church has a history of covering these things up is also incontrovertible; just look at the recent furor in Ireland, or look at the history of a potential Australian saint (hint: she was temporarily excommunicated because she went public with the fact that a priest was abusing children).
Sorry, but it looks like the rot in the Catholic Church goes back centuries - and that's not even accounting for the hypocrisy inherent in preaching tithes but living in a gilded castle.
No, that's not the way it works. When you are wrong on matters of fact, and your wrongness on matters of fact leads you to encourage bad public policy, you should be opposed. Your beliefs matter very much when they mean the people my children end up having sex with don't know wha