Why would I care about forgiveness if I didn't believe in God?
I can't imagine the line of thinking that got you to produce that question - you might as well ask me why I think that women are sexually attractive or why I breath oxygen. The social nature of human beings is built into us, and part of that is the feeling of guilt and the desire to asuage it. And it doesn't matter to me if there's a greater purpose or not - I feel better when I'm forgiven, and that's a good enough reason to seek it out.
On the other hand, if the only reason you do good things is because you get rewarded, you have (forgive me) a very shallow view of morality. It makes asking forgiveness like driving on one side of the road - one utterance from God and asking forgiveness is a sin, not a virtuous act.
mixing vaguely related ideas at random... Not at all... Contraception and abortion are about willingness to create the next generation of humanity... have to import 3 million illegal aliens a year... even the athiest George Orwell recognized that
First, the fact that you've found an atheist that supports your position proves my point - that both religious and atheistic people can be both for and against your positions on abortion and contraception - that they are mostly independent. Second we don't need an increasing population every single generation to preserve humanity, and even at present rates it would take millenia just to get our population back to where it was in 1700. Third, the fact that you group "us" with "humanity" and set them apart from "illigal aliens" is very disturbing.
recognized a duty to SPECIES, which I took to mean the human species above other species
Which was why I included Penn Jillette's "chimp killing" statement. He's an atheist who clearly values human beings above all other species, and he's not shy about saying so.
being Roman Catholic and a follower of Papal theology, I consider them to be heretics
Ah! That clears things up a lot. You aren't arguing that "atheism is wrong", you're arguing that "non-Roman Catholics are wrong" - which makes a huge difference. Just so my position is clear: I'm about as sure as I can be that all supernatural things are made up, but I know I could be wrong, and I also know that I can learn from people that disagree with me.
teaching that sex can be recreational... that is an abuse, much like abusing oxycontin or any other proscribed drug
And that just seems odd to me, like trying to hide from children that junk food can be tasty. Sex, drugs, gambling and jogging can all be addictive, and doing them in an unsafe way or addiction to any one of them can kill you - but they all can be enjoyed safely in many different ways if proper precautions are taken.
reducing teen pregnancy AND reducing the divorce rate, as well as reducing contraception down to only the most drastic cases
Except that "abstanance only" doesn't reduce teen pregnancy, and the more anti-divorce parts of the US have higher divorce rates than the more liberal parts, and most contraception is used by married couples. I'm sorry, but what you're suggesting has already been tried, and hasn't had the effect you were expecting.
Ah, for that you have the Asperger's to thank
Thanks! I probably don't have the syndrome, but one whole side of my family has personalities that share many characteristics with aspies. And you're right - having the same quirks probably makes it easier for us to communicate.
Just so you know, I'm not the person you were directing this post toward, but I feel compelled to respond anyway.
as my belief in God faded my sense of obligation to benefit family, future, and species only increased... Then you are unique
I have to disagree - every atheist I've known says that their sense of moral obligation was increased by their lack of belief. Take a look at Penn Jillette's "This I Believe" essay on NPR, especially the part about "Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O..." and "Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around."
it seems that every atheist I meet has problems with a father or with grandparents lurking in their past.
Well, not me. I get along great with my entire family.
Interesting- so you'd disagree with Nietzche then?
I've never found a philosopher that I completely agree with, but I've learned something from all of them. Nietzche's idea that we should take control of our own destiny seems to hold some wisdom, but his overwhelming sense of dispair seems to be a result of his psychological problems, and I don't think that life is "pointless" the way he does.
that is belief in the evils of contraception and abortion and divorce... willing to sacrifice other species to see humanity get ahead
Now you're just mixing vaguely related ideas at random. Plenty of die-hard Christians are strong environmentalists, use contraception and get abortions and divorces. On the other hand, Penn Jillette (our example atheist), has publicly stated that he would kill every chimpanzee on earth with his bare hands to save one person's life. I don't know any "divorce and abortion should be banned" atheists, most think that these are "best of a group of bad options" choices that should be kept as a last resort. As for contraception, there's only a very small (but very vocal) group people that don't like contraception in general, most people are only concerned about giving condoms to kids and questions about where the line between abortion and contraception is and other issues like that.
On a personal note, it's good to see that a strongly Roman Catholic "socially conservative and fiscally liberal" person (per your last journal entry) can have a reasonable conversation with an atheistic socially liberal and fiscally conservative person like me. All too often tempers flare up and all hope of a meaningful discussion disappears. I look forward to your thoughts.
As far as I can tell your post reduces to "God may not exist, but most people need to believe in order to function".
This makes you an outsider of humanity not an enlightened individual who knows whats best for everyone. But that is fine for you, many people are spiritual adolescense.
While disbelief might set him apart from most other people, it actually would suggest that he's more spiritually mature - getting by without making a leap of faith (or at least making a smaller one) is probably a sign of personal growth.
First, nobody believes that the Bible is completely historically inaccurate, most ancient writings contain a mix of factual and mythological writing, and that's how most non-believers interpret the Bible. For a long time the city of Troy (from the The Iliad and The Odyssey) was considered to be a legend, but in 1870 the ruins of the city were discovered. So Homer's stories weren't completely made up, but no one is out looking for cyclops and hydra skeletons, because that's just silly. So from our perspective, looking for evidence of Hebrews in Egypt might make sense, but looking for the wreck of a big barge on a mountain surrounded by desert is just weird.
Second, you're attributing the "make up mind" to the wrong person. Everyone treats most Bronze Age writings the same way that I've described above - you are the one making an exception based on your own personal philosphy or set of belifs.
Third, just to communicate the perspective I have on this, imagine yourself as an ancient Greek a few hundred years after Homer, and you don't believe in the Greek religion. Someone comes up to you asking for funds to go look for a cyclops skull to prove the existance of the Greek pantheon to the Germanic tribes. You tell him that you think that the Iliad is a great epic, but you don't believe that it's a factual account of Hera tormenting Odysseus, because Hera doesn't exist. He freaks out and says "Troy exists, Athens exists, we fought a war, RIGHT??? So the only reason you don't believe in the rest of the Odyssey is because you're close minded and philosophy opposed to the gods!".
Furthermore, you simply don't get to pick and choose your dictionary defnitions--the appropriate definition depends on context
Exactly. I looked at the context of the post and used the appropriate definitions. While he wasn't very clear, it wasn't that hard to interpret his post.
"majority rule" is in itself not a mathematically precise definition... even if you interpreted "majority rule" with mathematical precision
I'll ignore the inconsistancy, and just ask you to give me another common phrase for a political system that is more mathematically precise than "majority rules" (majority = more than half).
you'd simply end up with a term that does not apply to any of the nations calling themselves "democracies"
Which is fine - they're using different definitions. Saddam could have refered to his country as a republic, and someone else could have said things would be better if Iraq was a republic, and both would be using the word correctly.
supposed difference between the US and the rest of the world
Now you've lost me. Many countries would count as republics/democracies under one definition and not another. It's up to writers to make sure it's clear what definition they're using and up to readers to check the context.
the US political system has evolved into a system that is much more akin to tyranny of the majority, due to its various winnner-take-all mechanisms
I agree with the second part, but not the "tyranny of the majority" part. You need more than just a majority to really be tyrannical, with all the 3/4 of the states to ammend the Constitution and X% of congress to override a veto stuff. Plus, since most Americans don't vote, by definition a majority can't be taking over.:)
That doesn't imply a value judgement--the European approach may well result in less effective government as well, but it does represent minority viewpoints more strongly than the US.
As an example, including more minority voices means including more extremists and more single-issue parties. And of course, no voting system is perfect.
She's more consistant than most conservative politicians.
"Consistant" does not mean "unequivocal". She has not doubts about what she says today, but she doesn't care if it's different than what she said yesterday.
Most mature people don't have to share a point of view with someone to read what they have to say, and maybe get a laugh out of it.
Having enough money to feed evey person on the globe, without actually doing so, is not necessarily everyone's primary goal in life (whether a capitalist can believe that or not).
A "capitalist" is someone who advocates a free market, or someone who owns a lot of capital (productive property) - neither definition tells you what their life goals are.
I guess my point is that using "capitalist" where you really mean "money obsessed" is as bad as saying "socialist" in place of "lazy bum". You're insulting a very large group of people when you really should be focusing on a much smaller one that's (at best) only slightly related.
If you don't care about purebreads. Some people do.
If we had any kind of thinking lawmakers, all dog and cat breeding would be outlawed until animal shelters don't have to euthanize millions of animals every day.
So eating meat should be outlawed, so we don't have to kill millions of cattle every day? Plus it's harder to feed the homeless without the free meat. And millions every day? That seems like a stretch.
So, with the internet, the government comes up with an idea, and the market chooses it over its competition. In with net neutrality, the market comes up with an idea, and the government chooses not to allow it. Can't you see those as opposites? The first option simply gave people a new choice, the second takes one away - and we shouldn't be taking options away from people unless we're quite sure of what the consequences will be, not merely "college bull-session sure" like we are on slashdot.
It's not about possible definitions or synonyms that appear in a dictionary.... The second definition simply doesn't matter
So a word's less-used definitions don't matter, because you (or "most people" - who don't know the complete definition anyway) say so.
You however are correct that I made the mistake of taking a hard line in the definition based merely on the fact that this is how the word is used in the world at large
You weren't defending a definition, you were attacking one. You didn't just say that most people (as far as you know) only use _this_ definition, and it would be clearer if he said it _this_ way. You had to go and imply he was wrong, which was incorrect.
allowing pedants to have the opening they need to ply their useless trade.
So your rebuttal to me is "You know what you're talking about.", phrased as an insult. I'd prefer to put too much emphasis on book learning, rather than pretend to have book learning when I don't and then insult people who point out my mistakes.
1. You don't like a word used in a particular way, because of your own uninfomed opinion ("it sounds like an addition") and because you're biased against newer definitions ("modern usage of the word rather than what the word has been traditionally applied to"). So when someone uses the word that way you decide to essentially lie about what it means ("doesn't imply anything about whether the ability to vote on anything even exists") because of this weird personal preference.
2. You think someone used a word incorrectly, and you corrected them somewhat harshly, but it turns out you were wrong, and you're just saying "I [k]new about the second definition of the word" in an attempt to save face.
Next time, I'd suggest either telling him to be clearer about what he means by a particular word, or just realizing you were wrong and dropping it. Because no matter how it really happened, you look like a jackass.
Why does the life of an embryo with no family, or home, or even gurantee of survival, outweigh the life of someone who is already established in society; who loves and is loved, who has built up a life, and who would be sorely missed by many people?
For the same reasons that we don't harvest organs from homeless people! To me killing a blastocyst is just like killing any other type of animal life with no nervous system, but you justification is horrid. Did you really mean to suggest that people outside of "society" or that don't have any loved ones shouldn't have the same rights that the rest of us do? You might as well say that enslaving a hermit is not immoral, as long as they don't have a personal relationship with anyone.
I put boundaries on my work hours and make sure to balance life and work.
That's exactly what I did!
You deride Europeans for this, but there's something to be said for remembering that life is about more than money.
I can't speak for the original poster, but it isn't their balance I dislike, but the fact that they force everyone else to do the same thing. Some people have been unemployed for a long time, and want to get out of debt quickly, and don't mind working 60 hour weeks for a while. Some people just like their work, and want to spend a lot of time there. Some people would rather have 2 weeks in Hawaii rather than 5 weeks watching TV, and are willing to work the other three weeks in order to do that. My parents both worked 2 jobs for a decade before they started a family so they could buy a home almost outright and mom could stay home with the kids. I think people need to be able to choose what they want to do with their own lives, freedom being a good thing and all, but apparently in Europe the government is allowed to make those choices for you, and that's what I don't like.
Unemployment is one thing, but economic "growth" is another.... Someone looking after the employees wouldn't be too worried about that, unless it affects employment and wage levels directly.
Growth leads to new capital investment, and the amount of capital available leads to higher wages, lower prices and new jobs. I know the effect isn't that obvious, but it is there, and in the case of wages and prices it's quite direct.
Employees really only care about 1) being employed, 2) how much money they make (relative to cost-of-living).
and 3) how well their pension, 401K, IRA, savings bonds, CDs, etc are doing. I mean, come on! Growth may benefit richer people more than poorer people, but everyone does benefit. Even beggers have an easier time during booms as opposed to recessions.
That's why I didn't get it: the only time I've ever seen others used is slashdot.
I usually see it used that way when contrasting a pure, direct democracy (51% can legalize murder) with governments that use representatives and/or have a less malliable set of rules (like the US Constitution that requires a super-majority to overrule).
I think that here (Germany, Austria) these would be the definitions of practically everyone.
Now I've learned something, too. I just wish people would define their terms when they mean something in an unusual or very specific way, and that people would give others a break when they don't understand what they said.
I don't completely agree with either of you, I'm just frustrated that you're having an argument about the definition of two words, and neither of you bothered to look in a dictionary. It's like watching two people people who are lost argue over which way they should be going, and deliberately not looking at the street signs.
You folks seem to be using definition 1 for "republic" and definitions 3 and 5 for "democracy", which is fine. Most slashdoters seem to use definition 2 for "republic" and 4 for "democracy, which is also completely correct.
You might as well say "it's wrong to call the killer 'volatile', because he doesn't evaporate easily" - pretending other definitions don't exist is intellectually dishonest.
That's usually a good point, but in this case Mark 9 and the rest of Mark 10 are clearly separate from the first 12 verses. The passage given really is the whole context for the "divorce and remarriage is adultary" statement.
There's no way this passage could've been editorialized, changed by someone, made up, or anything like that.
OK, so you agree with Radtea's first point. If you read it literally, it's clear Jesus was saying that divorce and remarriage constitutes adultary, no exceptions mentioned. The alternative mean that you have to read it the way you suggest, as something other than the direct word of God, but that means that you have to take the whole thing that way (if this is non-literal, Genesis and Revelations have to be). And the moment you take the Crucifiction and Resurection as being non-literal, you aren't really a Christian. Heck, you're already half way toward being an athiest who sees the Bible as the compilation of "Aesop's Fables for Hebrews" and "Jesus: The Paul Bunyan of Rome".
Now I admit that it isn't the best argument I've ever seen, but it hardly "reduces [him] to the level of the reactionary, GodHatesFags (tm) Christian fundamentalists".
I never claimed to be pro-life. I was just trying to illuminate the flaw...
That's fine, neither am I. I'm just trying to understand how someone can claim to value life above almost anything else, and still advocate killing someone when an alternative exists. That alternative may not be perfect, but I can't imagine that choosing execution over life in prison will save enought lives (on average) to "balance out" the deaths.
For the record, I think murderers have forsaken their right to life...
But as you said, you aren't pro-life. I'm sure your ethics are fine, but they aren't the ones I was trying to decipher.
I don't trust the government to make that judgement though
How in God's name could this be taken in any way other than literally? This is a person asking God a point-blank question and getting a direct, unequivocal answer. Just because he points out something you don't like does not mean his arguments are invlid, nor does it make him a troll. The fact that all you could come up with as a response is a bunch of insults speaks quite clearly about how well thought out your position is.
My church teaches that driving or riding in a motor vehicle is a sin. By avoiding the cause, we completely eliminate the risk of dying in a car crash. And since "no country is able to demonstrate a reduction in road fatalities due to passage of a seat belt law", we treat seat belt laws with the same distain you treat the promotion of condom use. All it does is promote a false sence of security while promoting an activity that kills millions every year.
On top of the sillyness I hope my parody has pointed out, you want us to believe that the Church has been pushing this sex-phobic agenda on people for almost 2 millenia in order to protect us against a disease that didn't exist yet! This is the most blatant example of the post hoc fallacy I've ever seen.
In light of this, I posit that the teaching against condoms is a good thing, to prevent the 'sexually expressive culture' from forming in the first place.
Hey - it's 1917, a great influenza pandemic is coming, and we have a treatment that prevents 17/20 people from catching it. But if we have everyone move out of the cities and keep their families on isolated farms, with little contact with their neighbors, we can prevent the whole thing! And as a side effect, it gets rid of those big cities that I don't like (but, of course, that's not my real reason for advocating this position, oh no, perish the thought!).
I'm sorry, no human society has been able to live under the behavioral prescriptions you describe. Trying to prevent people from using the best protection we have (more than enought to make the difference between a permenant epidemic and an one that dies out) is little different from advocating that the FDA shouldn't regulate pork products because eating pork violates your religious code and then ignoring the people that die as a result.
But they've taken that risk for a long time already, during our long, drawn out judicial process. And on top of that, we don't really execute that many people compared to the number that we already put in prison for life, so there isn't much risk added by keeping a few more alive.
One, assuming that we keep the people that would have been executed away from the other inmates, there's still one more person alive after the murder than if both had been executed.
Two, the murder is something that we don't have complete control over - otherwise it wouldn't have happened. An execution, though, is something that we have complete, total control over. I guess that if you say you're pro-life, I expect you to at least stop the killings you can stop, even if you can't stop them all.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't imagine the line of thinking that got you to produce that question - you might as well ask me why I think that women are sexually attractive or why I breath oxygen. The social nature of human beings is built into us, and part of that is the feeling of guilt and the desire to asuage it. And it doesn't matter to me if there's a greater purpose or not - I feel better when I'm forgiven, and that's a good enough reason to seek it out.
On the other hand, if the only reason you do good things is because you get rewarded, you have (forgive me) a very shallow view of morality. It makes asking forgiveness like driving on one side of the road - one utterance from God and asking forgiveness is a sin, not a virtuous act.
mixing vaguely related ideas at random ... Not at all ... Contraception and abortion are about willingness to create the next generation of humanity ... have to import 3 million illegal aliens a year ... even the athiest George Orwell recognized that
First, the fact that you've found an atheist that supports your position proves my point - that both religious and atheistic people can be both for and against your positions on abortion and contraception - that they are mostly independent. Second we don't need an increasing population every single generation to preserve humanity, and even at present rates it would take millenia just to get our population back to where it was in 1700. Third, the fact that you group "us" with "humanity" and set them apart from "illigal aliens" is very disturbing.
recognized a duty to SPECIES, which I took to mean the human species above other species
Which was why I included Penn Jillette's "chimp killing" statement. He's an atheist who clearly values human beings above all other species, and he's not shy about saying so.
being Roman Catholic and a follower of Papal theology, I consider them to be heretics
Ah! That clears things up a lot. You aren't arguing that "atheism is wrong", you're arguing that "non-Roman Catholics are wrong" - which makes a huge difference. Just so my position is clear: I'm about as sure as I can be that all supernatural things are made up, but I know I could be wrong, and I also know that I can learn from people that disagree with me.
teaching that sex can be recreational ... that is an abuse, much like abusing oxycontin or any other proscribed drug
And that just seems odd to me, like trying to hide from children that junk food can be tasty. Sex, drugs, gambling and jogging can all be addictive, and doing them in an unsafe way or addiction to any one of them can kill you - but they all can be enjoyed safely in many different ways if proper precautions are taken.
reducing teen pregnancy AND reducing the divorce rate, as well as reducing contraception down to only the most drastic cases
Except that "abstanance only" doesn't reduce teen pregnancy, and the more anti-divorce parts of the US have higher divorce rates than the more liberal parts, and most contraception is used by married couples. I'm sorry, but what you're suggesting has already been tried, and hasn't had the effect you were expecting.
Ah, for that you have the Asperger's to thank
Thanks! I probably don't have the syndrome, but one whole side of my family has personalities that share many characteristics with aspies. And you're right - having the same quirks probably makes it easier for us to communicate.
as my belief in God faded my sense of obligation to benefit family, future, and species only increased ... Then you are unique
I have to disagree - every atheist I've known says that their sense of moral obligation was increased by their lack of belief. Take a look at Penn Jillette's "This I Believe" essay on NPR, especially the part about "Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O..." and "Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around."
it seems that every atheist I meet has problems with a father or with grandparents lurking in their past.
Well, not me. I get along great with my entire family.
Interesting- so you'd disagree with Nietzche then?
I've never found a philosopher that I completely agree with, but I've learned something from all of them. Nietzche's idea that we should take control of our own destiny seems to hold some wisdom, but his overwhelming sense of dispair seems to be a result of his psychological problems, and I don't think that life is "pointless" the way he does.
that is belief in the evils of contraception and abortion and divorce ... willing to sacrifice other species to see humanity get ahead
Now you're just mixing vaguely related ideas at random. Plenty of die-hard Christians are strong environmentalists, use contraception and get abortions and divorces. On the other hand, Penn Jillette (our example atheist), has publicly stated that he would kill every chimpanzee on earth with his bare hands to save one person's life. I don't know any "divorce and abortion should be banned" atheists, most think that these are "best of a group of bad options" choices that should be kept as a last resort. As for contraception, there's only a very small (but very vocal) group people that don't like contraception in general, most people are only concerned about giving condoms to kids and questions about where the line between abortion and contraception is and other issues like that.
On a personal note, it's good to see that a strongly Roman Catholic "socially conservative and fiscally liberal" person (per your last journal entry) can have a reasonable conversation with an atheistic socially liberal and fiscally conservative person like me. All too often tempers flare up and all hope of a meaningful discussion disappears. I look forward to your thoughts.
This makes you an outsider of humanity not an enlightened individual who knows whats best for everyone. But that is fine for you, many people are spiritual adolescense.
While disbelief might set him apart from most other people, it actually would suggest that he's more spiritually mature - getting by without making a leap of faith (or at least making a smaller one) is probably a sign of personal growth.
Second, you're attributing the "make up mind" to the wrong person. Everyone treats most Bronze Age writings the same way that I've described above - you are the one making an exception based on your own personal philosphy or set of belifs.
Third, just to communicate the perspective I have on this, imagine yourself as an ancient Greek a few hundred years after Homer, and you don't believe in the Greek religion. Someone comes up to you asking for funds to go look for a cyclops skull to prove the existance of the Greek pantheon to the Germanic tribes. You tell him that you think that the Iliad is a great epic, but you don't believe that it's a factual account of Hera tormenting Odysseus, because Hera doesn't exist. He freaks out and says "Troy exists, Athens exists, we fought a war, RIGHT??? So the only reason you don't believe in the rest of the Odyssey is because you're close minded and philosophy opposed to the gods!".
Exactly. I looked at the context of the post and used the appropriate definitions. While he wasn't very clear, it wasn't that hard to interpret his post.
"majority rule" is in itself not a mathematically precise definition ... even if you interpreted "majority rule" with mathematical precision
I'll ignore the inconsistancy, and just ask you to give me another common phrase for a political system that is more mathematically precise than "majority rules" (majority = more than half).
you'd simply end up with a term that does not apply to any of the nations calling themselves "democracies"
Which is fine - they're using different definitions. Saddam could have refered to his country as a republic, and someone else could have said things would be better if Iraq was a republic, and both would be using the word correctly.
supposed difference between the US and the rest of the world
Now you've lost me. Many countries would count as republics/democracies under one definition and not another. It's up to writers to make sure it's clear what definition they're using and up to readers to check the context.
the US political system has evolved into a system that is much more akin to tyranny of the majority, due to its various winnner-take-all mechanisms
I agree with the second part, but not the "tyranny of the majority" part. You need more than just a majority to really be tyrannical, with all the 3/4 of the states to ammend the Constitution and X% of congress to override a veto stuff. Plus, since most Americans don't vote, by definition a majority can't be taking over. :)
That doesn't imply a value judgement--the European approach may well result in less effective government as well, but it does represent minority viewpoints more strongly than the US.
As an example, including more minority voices means including more extremists and more single-issue parties. And of course, no voting system is perfect.
Yay! Insults are fun!
She's more consistant than most conservative politicians.
"Consistant" does not mean "unequivocal". She has not doubts about what she says today, but she doesn't care if it's different than what she said yesterday.
Most mature people don't have to share a point of view with someone to read what they have to say, and maybe get a laugh out of it.
Most people I disagree with I can learn from and see where they're coming from. Someone that says that "There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle." and "These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors." is flipping nuts. And every educated Republican I know personally does their best to distant themselves from her. I do get a laugh out of her, she's the only person that makes Cal Thomas seem sane by comparison.
I think you have a poor sense of history if you think advocating the screening of muslims at American airports is the same as putting Jews into ovens.
I think you have a poor sense of what she advocates if you think the screening of muslims at American airports is the worst she's ever advocated. I mean "Coulter has stated that women are "not as bright" as men[31], "have no capacity to understand how money is earned"[32], and "shouldn't be in the military."[33]." and "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."
A "capitalist" is someone who advocates a free market, or someone who owns a lot of capital (productive property) - neither definition tells you what their life goals are.
I guess my point is that using "capitalist" where you really mean "money obsessed" is as bad as saying "socialist" in place of "lazy bum". You're insulting a very large group of people when you really should be focusing on a much smaller one that's (at best) only slightly related.
If you don't care about purebreads. Some people do.
If we had any kind of thinking lawmakers, all dog and cat breeding would be outlawed until animal shelters don't have to euthanize millions of animals every day.
So eating meat should be outlawed, so we don't have to kill millions of cattle every day? Plus it's harder to feed the homeless without the free meat. And millions every day? That seems like a stretch.
You wouldn't go "OMG, Horses!", would you. I didn't think so.
So, with the internet, the government comes up with an idea, and the market chooses it over its competition. In with net neutrality, the market comes up with an idea, and the government chooses not to allow it. Can't you see those as opposites? The first option simply gave people a new choice, the second takes one away - and we shouldn't be taking options away from people unless we're quite sure of what the consequences will be, not merely "college bull-session sure" like we are on slashdot.
So a word's less-used definitions don't matter, because you (or "most people" - who don't know the complete definition anyway) say so.
You however are correct that I made the mistake of taking a hard line in the definition based merely on the fact that this is how the word is used in the world at large
You weren't defending a definition, you were attacking one. You didn't just say that most people (as far as you know) only use _this_ definition, and it would be clearer if he said it _this_ way. You had to go and imply he was wrong, which was incorrect.
allowing pedants to have the opening they need to ply their useless trade.
So your rebuttal to me is "You know what you're talking about.", phrased as an insult. I'd prefer to put too much emphasis on book learning, rather than pretend to have book learning when I don't and then insult people who point out my mistakes.
1. You don't like a word used in a particular way, because of your own uninfomed opinion ("it sounds like an addition") and because you're biased against newer definitions ("modern usage of the word rather than what the word has been traditionally applied to"). So when someone uses the word that way you decide to essentially lie about what it means ("doesn't imply anything about whether the ability to vote on anything even exists") because of this weird personal preference.
2. You think someone used a word incorrectly, and you corrected them somewhat harshly, but it turns out you were wrong, and you're just saying "I [k]new about the second definition of the word" in an attempt to save face.
Next time, I'd suggest either telling him to be clearer about what he means by a particular word, or just realizing you were wrong and dropping it. Because no matter how it really happened, you look like a jackass.
For the same reasons that we don't harvest organs from homeless people! To me killing a blastocyst is just like killing any other type of animal life with no nervous system, but you justification is horrid. Did you really mean to suggest that people outside of "society" or that don't have any loved ones shouldn't have the same rights that the rest of us do? You might as well say that enslaving a hermit is not immoral, as long as they don't have a personal relationship with anyone.
That's exactly what I did!
You deride Europeans for this, but there's something to be said for remembering that life is about more than money.
I can't speak for the original poster, but it isn't their balance I dislike, but the fact that they force everyone else to do the same thing. Some people have been unemployed for a long time, and want to get out of debt quickly, and don't mind working 60 hour weeks for a while. Some people just like their work, and want to spend a lot of time there. Some people would rather have 2 weeks in Hawaii rather than 5 weeks watching TV, and are willing to work the other three weeks in order to do that. My parents both worked 2 jobs for a decade before they started a family so they could buy a home almost outright and mom could stay home with the kids. I think people need to be able to choose what they want to do with their own lives, freedom being a good thing and all, but apparently in Europe the government is allowed to make those choices for you, and that's what I don't like.
Growth leads to new capital investment, and the amount of capital available leads to higher wages, lower prices and new jobs. I know the effect isn't that obvious, but it is there, and in the case of wages and prices it's quite direct.
Employees really only care about 1) being employed, 2) how much money they make (relative to cost-of-living).
and 3) how well their pension, 401K, IRA, savings bonds, CDs, etc are doing. I mean, come on! Growth may benefit richer people more than poorer people, but everyone does benefit. Even beggers have an easier time during booms as opposed to recessions.
I usually see it used that way when contrasting a pure, direct democracy (51% can legalize murder) with governments that use representatives and/or have a less malliable set of rules (like the US Constitution that requires a super-majority to overrule).
I think that here (Germany, Austria) these would be the definitions of practically everyone.
Now I've learned something, too. I just wish people would define their terms when they mean something in an unusual or very specific way, and that people would give others a break when they don't understand what they said.
I don't completely agree with either of you, I'm just frustrated that you're having an argument about the definition of two words, and neither of you bothered to look in a dictionary. It's like watching two people people who are lost argue over which way they should be going, and deliberately not looking at the street signs.
There are several different definitions of the word "republic". Please don't pretend that your favorite definition is the only one.
You folks seem to be using definition 1 for "republic" and definitions 3 and 5 for "democracy", which is fine. Most slashdoters seem to use definition 2 for "republic" and 4 for "democracy, which is also completely correct.
You might as well say "it's wrong to call the killer 'volatile', because he doesn't evaporate easily" - pretending other definitions don't exist is intellectually dishonest.
That's usually a good point, but in this case Mark 9 and the rest of Mark 10 are clearly separate from the first 12 verses. The passage given really is the whole context for the "divorce and remarriage is adultary" statement.
There's no way this passage could've been editorialized, changed by someone, made up, or anything like that.
OK, so you agree with Radtea's first point. If you read it literally, it's clear Jesus was saying that divorce and remarriage constitutes adultary, no exceptions mentioned. The alternative mean that you have to read it the way you suggest, as something other than the direct word of God, but that means that you have to take the whole thing that way (if this is non-literal, Genesis and Revelations have to be). And the moment you take the Crucifiction and Resurection as being non-literal, you aren't really a Christian. Heck, you're already half way toward being an athiest who sees the Bible as the compilation of "Aesop's Fables for Hebrews" and "Jesus: The Paul Bunyan of Rome".
Now I admit that it isn't the best argument I've ever seen, but it hardly "reduces [him] to the level of the reactionary, GodHatesFags (tm) Christian fundamentalists".
That's fine, neither am I. I'm just trying to understand how someone can claim to value life above almost anything else, and still advocate killing someone when an alternative exists. That alternative may not be perfect, but I can't imagine that choosing execution over life in prison will save enought lives (on average) to "balance out" the deaths.
For the record, I think murderers have forsaken their right to life...
But as you said, you aren't pro-life. I'm sure your ethics are fine, but they aren't the ones I was trying to decipher.
I don't trust the government to make that judgement though
Neither do I.
How in God's name could this be taken in any way other than literally? This is a person asking God a point-blank question and getting a direct, unequivocal answer. Just because he points out something you don't like does not mean his arguments are invlid, nor does it make him a troll. The fact that all you could come up with as a response is a bunch of insults speaks quite clearly about how well thought out your position is.
On top of the sillyness I hope my parody has pointed out, you want us to believe that the Church has been pushing this sex-phobic agenda on people for almost 2 millenia in order to protect us against a disease that didn't exist yet! This is the most blatant example of the post hoc fallacy I've ever seen.
In light of this, I posit that the teaching against condoms is a good thing, to prevent the 'sexually expressive culture' from forming in the first place.
Hey - it's 1917, a great influenza pandemic is coming, and we have a treatment that prevents 17/20 people from catching it. But if we have everyone move out of the cities and keep their families on isolated farms, with little contact with their neighbors, we can prevent the whole thing! And as a side effect, it gets rid of those big cities that I don't like (but, of course, that's not my real reason for advocating this position, oh no, perish the thought!).
I'm sorry, no human society has been able to live under the behavioral prescriptions you describe. Trying to prevent people from using the best protection we have (more than enought to make the difference between a permenant epidemic and an one that dies out) is little different from advocating that the FDA shouldn't regulate pork products because eating pork violates your religious code and then ignoring the people that die as a result.
But they've taken that risk for a long time already, during our long, drawn out judicial process. And on top of that, we don't really execute that many people compared to the number that we already put in prison for life, so there isn't much risk added by keeping a few more alive.
Two, the murder is something that we don't have complete control over - otherwise it wouldn't have happened. An execution, though, is something that we have complete, total control over. I guess that if you say you're pro-life, I expect you to at least stop the killings you can stop, even if you can't stop them all.