that a nontheistic explanation is simpler, explains more, and is more consistent with everything else we know.
Unfortunately, these criteria boil down to matters of opinion. Atheists say "science is simpler." Theists say "what's simpler than 'God says so?'" But I'm certain you are familiar with how that debate falls out.
The first tenet of religions is that gods have to be worth worshipping.
This is more interesting to me. Why do you think this?
The Greek gods were just humans writ large. Odin was an effective but scary bastard. Coyote was interesting, but a dick. Most polytheistic religions seem like soap operas to me. These aren't gods you would put your faith in. More like, you'd just try to not piss them off, or hope they decide to help you out this time instead of your enemy.
As far as the monotheistic religions go, the Old Testament God isn't exactly what you'd call a humanitarian, and it seems that Allah just arranges things how he wants and you just play the hand you're dealt.
Are these gods worth worshipping? Or is the first tenet of religion actually to worship gods because if you don't, you're screwed?
Well it just means you and his other friends are not as interesting as the game and his friends in the game. Step it up a notch become more interesting to hang out with and stop doing the same things over and over again.
Yeah! Like raiding or talking about character builds!
its easy to say its easy when you know how to use it. I think windows is easier since I've been working with it for the better part of 2 decades. Its not that its easier its what I'm used to, OSX is what your used to.
Yeah. Mac OS X isn't Windows, and things are different. Different is not inferior...except that to people who are used to Windows and switch to Mac, different is inferior because they don't know how to do what they want to do and productivity suffers.
They also really need to cut out the secrecy bullshit and let people who don't fork over tons of cash know what direction the API is going. Yeah, that's a common and fully justified complaint a lot of people have about Apple.
An appeal to authority? That's how your hero, Hitler, used to argue.
Hm. Actually, I think he argued using demagoguery and prejudicial rhetoric, not to his own innate authority. That got him authority, but I doubt his speeches went "hey, trust me, I'm the boss and I know stuff."
As I've said, the research I've read say otherwise (I'm unaware of like research that contradicts these results); I don't have a link right now, but you could try googling a bit. The research was conducted in Sweden and the conclusion is that gay marriages have 50% more chance of ending in divorce than heterosexual marriages.
While America is not Sweden, I did a Google search as you suggested, and you may be right about the infidelity rates.
Here's how I'd handle the situation; get in touch with institutes that usually do sociological and medical research in countries gay adoptions are allowed... to find out the impact on children, what's best and worst case scenarios.... If the objectively attained results are favorable present them to the people and governments in non-aggressive way and let them vote about it. Sure, it takes a lot of time, but keep in mind - it's about the children.
Seems reasonable.
This whole "marriage" thing for gays is really about some inner sense of belonging and outside acceptance.
Yep, I think so.
But I disagree that marriage is only about the children. I think marriage is partly about the couple and partly about the children. The State does have an interest in good child-rearing environments; but the State also has an interest in shared property and legal responsibility, next-of-kin situations, and other things that are the result of two people who want to spend their lives together, regardless of children; and the State also has an interest in social stability and the sense of permanence and community that marriage brings. For the latter two things, the State would benefit as much by allowing gay couples to marry as they do by allowing straight couples to marry.
And for the child-rearing thing, you are right that some people should not be allowed to adopt. For a good child-rearing environment, marriage is probably necessary. This is actually a reason to allow gay marriage. Any gay couple who wants to adopt a child really should be married, for the same reason that straight couples who want to adopt should be married.
Marriage is necessary, but not sufficient. Straight married couples also break up or have financial difficulties. There has to be a system in place to deal with that. The same system can deal with a gay couple that breaks up. And even if gay couples break up more often than straight couples, well, it's still better for the child to be adopted by a gay couple than to grow up in foster homes and get thrown to the wolves at 18. For example, the child might be taken in by one of the relatives.
~43.6k deaths from traffic accidents in 2005. ~30.6k deaths from firearms in 2005.
While true, this doesn't matter. Laws aren't written to reduce deaths, but to reduce risk. Specifically, perceived risk. And death-by-shooting is a higher perceived risk, and less tolerated, than death-by-accident.
Forcing people to do labor with people you're literally afraid of isn't a traditional form of therapy.
Sure it is! It's called exposure therapy and is the accepted way of dealing with phobias.
But if you aren't talking literal fear, but rather apprehension or dislike, this is still the right way to make it go away. Read what this article has to say about easing racial prejudice.
This debate is oriented wrong - it's not about homosexuals, it's about children. Do they get a stable home? Some research says that because of their promiscuity gay people tend to "get around" more and it causes gay marriages to split. The process of splitting families is very traumatic for children, especially if they are young.
If it's not about homosexuals, why single them out? Gays who love each other enough to marry aren't any more promiscuous than straights who love each other enough to marry. Straight marriages split because of infidelity as well. In fact, a random marriage between a man and woman is more likely to end badly, because there is no such thing as a gay marriage of convenience. And of course, concern for children is no justification for outlawing marriages if the couple isn't planning children in the first place.
I make a point of not letting them cut in front of me. I'm legally entitled to the area of space my vehicle ocupies (plus a buffer zone in front and behind sufficiently large to prevent fender benders no less). Yet these cheats are *demanding* (with screams and threatening gestures at times) that I *sacrifice my rights* for their momentary convenience.
Traffic would flow faster for everyone, including yourself, if you stopped doing that.
If he dare challenge certain powerful interests, he will be ousted. America has been successful in doing this to democratically elected leaders all around the world.
But not to our own leaders. No American president have ever been "ousted," except Nixon who resigned and the four who were assassinated.
I can't see the problem in each State voting in a Govenor, giving the ability for each elected Govenor to be a presidential candidate. That's one option approaching 1 vote/citizen.
Each state already has a governor that is the head of that state's executive branch. If I've voted in a governor I like, I don't them to leave and run for president! I'd rather have them running my state.
You only say that because you have yet to be involved in a serious shoe-tying accident.
You insensitive clod! My brother was in a shoe-tying accident! To this very day, he can only wear sandals, and to spare his nerves the rest of us only wear socks inside the house. We never did find his left ear and his right pinky...
I think you are confusing yourself with another Anonymous Coward. I was replying to post #25507121. There was no question in that post. It read like a reason why the author abandoned the Republican party, and my response was related to that.
You are quoting yourself from post #25506917. I didn't even read that one, and wasn't trying to answer the question in it.
But having read #25506917, I think I can answer the question you posed. The parent post to #25506917 (#25506777) implied that Republicans are wealthy for reasons other than "an Ayn Randian self-sufficient everyman philosophy of life." You want to know "why a realistic degree of self-sufficiency coupled with good decision-making on the part of an individual does not, alone, explain why that individual is wealthy."
Simple enough. How do people get wealthy? You exclude inheritance and lottery. I bet the author of #25506777 thinks many Republicans are, in fact, wealthy through inheritance or family but believe they are wealthy through self-sufficiency and good sense. But let's set them aside. Other ways to get wealthy are through starting a successful business, owning stock in a successful business, playing the stock market well, making very profitable deals of one sort or another, or by being absolutely the best at what you do and having people pay you obscene sums to do it.
See, the thing is, all those ways depend on partnering with other people, either as customers, co-owners, lenders, or buyers. A person can only get wealthy with the intentional or unintentional assistance of others. No man is an island. In other words, a rich man cannot have gotten that way through self-sufficiency. He must have interacted with and relied on others to hold up their end of the bargain.
You can live a comfortable life without doing much of that. You can build a cabin in the woods and only deal with others for the bare necessities, working just enough to get by, but that obviously won't get you wealthy.
The whole Ayn Rand thing is a red herring. From what I understand, her point is that there is an elite, and the common man either leeches off of them or holds them back from their full potential, and that the elite should really be running things, or at least be left alone to do what they do. Some of her heroes were rich, but not all of them. If they voted at all, they'd probably vote Libertarian.
Explicit right to counsel! Explicit right to counsel! Explicit right to counsel!
tell that to the _citizens_ that are being held and have been held for about eight years on the edge of an island that sits below Florida.
As of June, all Guantanamo Bay detainees have the usual Constitutional rights. Specifically, they can cry "habeas corpus" to be released if they are being held unlawfully, and that is reviewed by the real court system, with a counsel and everything. Just this past week, charges were dropped against 5 of them. Altogether, a lot of them are free to go -- if their own countries will take them back. Not always the case.
Couldn't find anything about U.S. citizens down there, except for a column from 2002. The guy argues that the citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, wasn't actually a citizen after all, and I find his argument persuasive.
Here's what you should do, though. Find similarly disenchanted Republicans, hopefully ones that are local party leaders, convince them to secede and form Republican Party B ("the party we used to have").
I would love to see a third party with prospects out there!
I thought about going with just "primitive," but wanted to move past cavemen to monkeys. I believe the geometrical sense you speak of relates to basic building blocks (i.e. lines, points), which seems entirely off-topic.
Slashdot Mirror
that a nontheistic explanation is simpler, explains more, and is more consistent with everything else we know.
Unfortunately, these criteria boil down to matters of opinion. Atheists say "science is simpler." Theists say "what's simpler than 'God says so?'" But I'm certain you are familiar with how that debate falls out.
The first tenet of religions is that gods have to be worth worshipping.
This is more interesting to me. Why do you think this?
The Greek gods were just humans writ large. Odin was an effective but scary bastard. Coyote was interesting, but a dick. Most polytheistic religions seem like soap operas to me. These aren't gods you would put your faith in. More like, you'd just try to not piss them off, or hope they decide to help you out this time instead of your enemy.
As far as the monotheistic religions go, the Old Testament God isn't exactly what you'd call a humanitarian, and it seems that Allah just arranges things how he wants and you just play the hand you're dealt.
Are these gods worth worshipping? Or is the first tenet of religion actually to worship gods because if you don't, you're screwed?
Well it just means you and his other friends are not as interesting as the game and his friends in the game. Step it up a notch become more interesting to hang out with and stop doing the same things over and over again.
Yeah! Like raiding or talking about character builds!
Wait, which side am I arguing again?
Yeah. Mac OS X isn't Windows, and things are different. Different is not inferior...except that to people who are used to Windows and switch to Mac, different is inferior because they don't know how to do what they want to do and productivity suffers.
They also really need to cut out the secrecy bullshit and let people who don't fork over tons of cash know what direction the API is going.
Yeah, that's a common and fully justified complaint a lot of people have about Apple.
An appeal to authority? That's how your hero, Hitler, used to argue.
Hm. Actually, I think he argued using demagoguery and prejudicial rhetoric, not to his own innate authority. That got him authority, but I doubt his speeches went "hey, trust me, I'm the boss and I know stuff."
While America is not Sweden, I did a Google search as you suggested, and you may be right about the infidelity rates.
Seems reasonable.
Yep, I think so.
But I disagree that marriage is only about the children. I think marriage is partly about the couple and partly about the children. The State does have an interest in good child-rearing environments; but the State also has an interest in shared property and legal responsibility, next-of-kin situations, and other things that are the result of two people who want to spend their lives together, regardless of children; and the State also has an interest in social stability and the sense of permanence and community that marriage brings. For the latter two things, the State would benefit as much by allowing gay couples to marry as they do by allowing straight couples to marry.
And for the child-rearing thing, you are right that some people should not be allowed to adopt. For a good child-rearing environment, marriage is probably necessary. This is actually a reason to allow gay marriage. Any gay couple who wants to adopt a child really should be married, for the same reason that straight couples who want to adopt should be married.
Marriage is necessary, but not sufficient. Straight married couples also break up or have financial difficulties. There has to be a system in place to deal with that. The same system can deal with a gay couple that breaks up. And even if gay couples break up more often than straight couples, well, it's still better for the child to be adopted by a gay couple than to grow up in foster homes and get thrown to the wolves at 18. For example, the child might be taken in by one of the relatives.
While true, this doesn't matter. Laws aren't written to reduce deaths, but to reduce risk. Specifically, perceived risk. And death-by-shooting is a higher perceived risk, and less tolerated, than death-by-accident.
where's the crime section? where's the civil liberties section?
Like most websites, this one includes a Contact Us link. Ask them about Obama's crime and civil liberties agendas.
"Contact Us" links are one of the good things about websites.
You can see that the site WAS modified. Maybe that was just clarification or it could have been in response to the concerns posted all over the place.
Ah, that explains things.
As for whether the change is a clarification, a cover-up, or reflects an updated plan...
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Forcing people to do labor with people you're literally afraid of isn't a traditional form of therapy.
Sure it is! It's called exposure therapy and is the accepted way of dealing with phobias.
But if you aren't talking literal fear, but rather apprehension or dislike, this is still the right way to make it go away. Read what this article has to say about easing racial prejudice.
If it's not about homosexuals, why single them out? Gays who love each other enough to marry aren't any more promiscuous than straights who love each other enough to marry. Straight marriages split because of infidelity as well. In fact, a random marriage between a man and woman is more likely to end badly, because there is no such thing as a gay marriage of convenience. And of course, concern for children is no justification for outlawing marriages if the couple isn't planning children in the first place.
Traffic would flow faster for everyone, including yourself, if you stopped doing that.
Optimal lane merging
Curing lane-merge traffic jams and FAQ
But not to our own leaders. No American president have ever been "ousted," except Nixon who resigned and the four who were assassinated.
you guys are f#ckin dorks...
Oh yeah? Well, eh chu ta to you, too, pal!
Each state already has a governor that is the head of that state's executive branch. If I've voted in a governor I like, I don't them to leave and run for president! I'd rather have them running my state.
Gerrymandering, really? An old Magic player, are you?
There is a "Gerrymandering" Magic the Gathering card, but term gerrymandering predates it.
Actually, what the card ought to do is let you choose which lands each player gets, so long as they get the same number of lands. :-)
You only say that because you have yet to be involved in a serious shoe-tying accident.
You insensitive clod! My brother was in a shoe-tying accident! To this very day, he can only wear sandals, and to spare his nerves the rest of us only wear socks inside the house. We never did find his left ear and his right pinky...
the theory that the space-time continuum is in fact a giant cosmic tangle of shoelaces
Okay, but where does the Flying Spaghetti Monster fit in?
Spawn more Democratic Overlords.
I think you are confusing yourself with another Anonymous Coward. I was replying to post #25507121. There was no question in that post. It read like a reason why the author abandoned the Republican party, and my response was related to that.
You are quoting yourself from post #25506917. I didn't even read that one, and wasn't trying to answer the question in it.
But having read #25506917, I think I can answer the question you posed. The parent post to #25506917 (#25506777) implied that Republicans are wealthy for reasons other than "an Ayn Randian self-sufficient everyman philosophy of life." You want to know "why a realistic degree of self-sufficiency coupled with good decision-making on the part of an individual does not, alone, explain why that individual is wealthy."
Simple enough. How do people get wealthy? You exclude inheritance and lottery. I bet the author of #25506777 thinks many Republicans are, in fact, wealthy through inheritance or family but believe they are wealthy through self-sufficiency and good sense. But let's set them aside. Other ways to get wealthy are through starting a successful business, owning stock in a successful business, playing the stock market well, making very profitable deals of one sort or another, or by being absolutely the best at what you do and having people pay you obscene sums to do it.
See, the thing is, all those ways depend on partnering with other people, either as customers, co-owners, lenders, or buyers. A person can only get wealthy with the intentional or unintentional assistance of others. No man is an island. In other words, a rich man cannot have gotten that way through self-sufficiency. He must have interacted with and relied on others to hold up their end of the bargain.
You can live a comfortable life without doing much of that. You can build a cabin in the woods and only deal with others for the bare necessities, working just enough to get by, but that obviously won't get you wealthy.
The whole Ayn Rand thing is a red herring. From what I understand, her point is that there is an elite, and the common man either leeches off of them or holds them back from their full potential, and that the elite should really be running things, or at least be left alone to do what they do. Some of her heroes were rich, but not all of them. If they voted at all, they'd probably vote Libertarian.
As of June, all Guantanamo Bay detainees have the usual Constitutional rights. Specifically, they can cry "habeas corpus" to be released if they are being held unlawfully, and that is reviewed by the real court system, with a counsel and everything. Just this past week, charges were dropped against 5 of them. Altogether, a lot of them are free to go -- if their own countries will take them back. Not always the case.
Couldn't find anything about U.S. citizens down there, except for a column from 2002. The guy argues that the citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, wasn't actually a citizen after all, and I find his argument persuasive.
Probably OT? Try definitely.
Here's what you should do, though. Find similarly disenchanted Republicans, hopefully ones that are local party leaders, convince them to secede and form Republican Party B ("the party we used to have").
I would love to see a third party with prospects out there!
Hah, wish I had mod points!
I thought about going with just "primitive," but wanted to move past cavemen to monkeys. I believe the geometrical sense you speak of relates to basic building blocks (i.e. lines, points), which seems entirely off-topic.
I'd say these puns were too primate-ive to have been intelligently design.