It might be possible that the system can work, but this isn't an example of it.
The fact that they even considered the possibility that this was an acceptable thing to attempt shows that something is very wrong with the way the system works. This isn't solely an MS problem, it's endemic and frightening.
But you did try to refute it by asserting that they would be a drain on resources in an overcrowded world. And my point was that you were making predictions about the future state of society that might or might not occur. If I want to prove that banning abortion provides the most good to the most amount of people all I have to do is show that the person is likely to make a net contribution to society.
I wasn't making predictions, I was making a statement about the present state of the world which in my opinion has already occurred. Well, showing that someone is likely to make a net positive contribution to society is harder than what I was looking for, but if you can do either, then full speed ahead.
Even criminals can be used productively.
I hope that was just a very unfortunate choice of phrasing. If not, I think your startements about my supposed utilitarization of life pale in comparison. I don't see any people as things to be used. I just feel it is important to assess all the facts before deciding to create another one.
The ultimate judge of the value of any particular life is the person who lives it.
Certainly.
People who start life up for adoption or live in a state funded institution normally have nowhere to go but up. Even so, it does not mean that they can't enjoy life.
Sure.
People should give God a chance.
Arrggghh Must control flame fingers...
This is such a criminally evil attitude. "I can't afford a child, I'm emotionally bankrupt, addicted to crack, and have never spent more than 5 minutes around a child without wanting to strangle them. I got raped and got pregnant. I could do the responsible thing and terminate the pregnancy... no, wait... I'll just have the kid and let god figure it out." This is the attitude of a child, not an adult. Ignore the consequences of your actions and expect daddy to clean up after you.
This is one of the reasons I continue to discuss things with you. You are at least rational enough to recognize that it is not religion itself that causes problems, but *people* who claim to be acting IAW their religion
Well, I don't 100% agree with you on this. I think it will be a great day for humanity when we finally grow out of religion. I think it's Bertrand Russel who I'm about to misquote, "Religion is the primary enemy of moral progress in the world". Obviously, it's a quote, not a proof of anything, but I think it makes a lot of sense. The old testament was written by a bunch of desert nomads thousands of years ago, and the new testament was written by people not much more civilized. The major religions have taken these as the absolute word of god which has put a major hurdle in any changes or improvements since. The day religion (in any form, I'm not picking on yours particularly) dies off the face of the earth will be the day that humanity enters it's adult hood. We will have to look at our actions in the face and own up to the responsibility for them now , in this lifetime without having the ultimate copout, "well god can always make it right later". Now, I do agree that a Christian acting in accordance with Jesus's teachings is, in general, going to be nicer to live around than someone who claims to be one but clearly isn't through their actions. Even better though in my opinion would be someone who is a good person because they feel that it is the right thing to do rather than because some old Hebrew wind demon threatens to spank them. This is the way most people seem to be initially exposed to god, so please don't take that as an attack or me stating what your motivations are.
You're right I haven't.
Come on now. The Crusades, selling keys to heaven, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, The Salem witch trials, The KKK, Aryan Nations, The enslavement, murder, and torture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the tacit support of the holocaust, godhatesfags.com, murdering doctors, hiding away relevant scriptures in the vatican vaults which are contemporary with the current text of the bible etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
These are all cases where Christianity went wrong. Sure, it's easy for you to say, well they weren't Christians because they did ( or didn't do ) 'X'. But your missing the point. Most of those things were done by the Church, the sole source of Christian teachings for many centuries. The bible doesn't even really count since almost nobody could read it even if they could get ahold of a copy. The other things in my (very brief) list were still done by ( in the following, feel free to prepend "people who claim to be" to "Christian") Christians, in the name of god, with backup pulled right from the bible for their actions. Now just because you can pull other quotes that contradict theirs, doesn't necessarily make you right and them wrong within that context. That is what I was saying much earlier about the problems with inconsistencies in the bible.
You're assigning blame to God for things better assigned to the devil, or individuals themselves. Free will and life after death go a long way towards explaining why God allows evil to act in the world, but there are more reasons than these.
Blame the devil?!? God made him and he made him precisely what he is. Now correct me if I'm wrong ( I picked up this from watching "Dogma", so I could be completely off), but isn't it true that angels do not have free will? They were created as servants and we were given free will? That blows away your "blame the devil" argument if true. Regardless, it is irrelevant to the fact that *god created all evil.* The most free will can do is let us pick whether or not to do something. The evil action itself was still created solely by god.
First, you are focusing only on the bad. Not really. I am pointing it out. You seem to be focusing on the good to the exclusion of the bad. In fact you claimed to not even see it (or agreed with my guess to that affect to be completely honest). Which of these is more dangerous?
However, the contributions far outweigh the harm done.
That is going to take more than an unsubstantiated statement for me to swallow. The harm done is totally irreparable. The cultures and knowledge destroyed will never be recovered. Thousands and thousands of years of records, history, stories, and knowledge from all over the world burned. Gone forever. Can you really put a value on this? Can you honestly claim that the church's contributions to society outweigh this act alone ignoring all of the others? I'm sorry, but I don't see it.
Second, all religious and all secular institutions have 'bad' in their history. But what has been the cause, and what institutions have the best records? Probably true. Absolutes are dangerous, but I certainly can't think of any. The Catholic Church has the worst record I would say. A lot of evidence exists to bear this out. Other branches of christianity are pretty bad too, but they don't have the membership or the age of Catholicism to be able to compare. The best? Well, Tibetan Buddhism seems like a likely candidate. but if you're going to claim Christianity is even in the running, that will take a lot of evidence.
Third, I don't think I am unrealistic in my belief that it is people who love themselves and who love sin and not God that's the problem.
I love myself, I love to sin in some people's definition of sin although I can't engage in my favorite sin anymore since I'm recently married;-) I still do it, but it's magicaly not a sin anymore. I don't love god. I don't even believe he exists. Are you claiming that I'm part of "the problem"? I know you don't know me well enough to point out examples or anything like that, but I think this attitude is extremely misguided. Now, it might not be true in your particular case, but there are a *lot* of people out there who wouldn't give me the time of day if they knew I wasn't a Christian, yet will send scum like Jerry Falwell amd Jim Baker etc. their last dollar that they should have spent on money for their children because they claim to be and tell a good story. This is again a very serious danger of religion. Not that those fools (the particular ones mailing checks, not Christians in general) wouldn't necessarily fall for something else that came along, but it's an inherent danger of any such power structure. Ignoring that because this is the "right one" isn't a very good idea
My point is that it is your nature to see things mainly in the negative that gives you this perspective.
No, it isn't. I am a very positive person. I am not idiotically optimistic either though. I tend to take a very realistic viewpoint. I certainly don't think having a kid I'm not ready for and expecting god to take care of everything is either positive or realistic.
Realize that negativism is degenerative and self-fulfilling. I am well aware of this. Probably much more so than you are even. At one point (more of a line segment actually), I was about the most negative hate filled person you've probably ever met. I eventually came to the conclusion that this wasn't doing shit for me and I dropped all of that baggage. Now this doesn't mean that I can no longer recognize bad things for what they are. It also doesn't mean that I have to like everything. I think it actually gives me a much better perspective to recognize evil behind a pretty mask than most people who haven't been where I have.
If you see something you don't like then do something about it,
I do whenever possible. That's part of why I'm still in this discussion. Just because we seem to have slightly;-) different views on what is good and bad, doesn't mean that I'm the negative one. Nor does it mean that you are.
don't blame God.
That's really too funny. Again, I don't at all in any way blame god for anything. I don't give him credit for anything either. I take complete responsibility for my own life and actions. Now, if I did believe in him, I would most certainly blame him for a lot of screwed up things in the world. I wouldn't waste my time walking around blaming him though which is a very important distinction. This world is totally inconsistent with a god who is omniscient, omnipotent, and good. Pick any two and it could work. All three, not possible not even for god.
Get out and do something you like instead of watching that crap on TV
I do, all the time. I watch very little TV and the only reason that that's "very little" rather than "one half-hour a week" (South Park) is that I'm currently on the road for my job in a hotel and I can't do half of the things I normally do out here. I've made quite a few friends, so my TV watching is tapering off.
don't get caught up in unproductive speculative gossip
This has never held any interest for me.
Go to church,
No thank you. I'd much rather watch crap on TV
find new friends,
I have lots of good friends, most of them back home, but I'm doing quite well in that respect out here as well thank you very much.
do anything to get you out of that situation.
I'm not in any such situation. Just because I don't have any love for your god doesn't make me a bad hateful person. Similarly, just because you do doesn't mean you are not. There are too many examples to even start on this.
Quite the opposite, it's making decisions about someone else's life presumptively.
OK, then you are making decisions presumptively about *two* people's lives. And you're making this decision without the perspective of the one who is directly involved.
The time for that decision is before having sex. If someone isn't ready to have children, they shouldn't have sex. If they do anyway, they can give the child up, but they should never kill it.
Hmmm... I see you ignored my comment on this already so I'll repeat it:
Please don't bother with the old tired abstinence approach to this. Sex has many benefits for mental and physical health and well being completely seperate from reproductive purposes.
Sex is a natural, beautiful thing. People have always had it and will always continue to have it. It is healthy, and it is good for you. Telling people, "don't do that" is stupid. I'm not saying you're stupid for thinking that it's the right thing to do. I'm saying expecting it to work when it never has throughout all of human history is very stupid. You're not actually against birth control are you? Reducing sex to a mechanical act of reproduction lowers us to the level of animals when we are supposed to have risen above that. Waiting until marriage is not realistic either. For some very few people this might actually work, but to try and force this is not only stupid, but very evil. People are getting married much later in life than they once did and this is a very good thing. They are much better equipped for it when they have gone out and lived their lives, learned what they are all about, loved and lost and gained the strength to love again, made mistakes and learned from them than they are when they are 18. To enter into a life long commitment when you have never experienced physical intimacy and the emotional whirlwind this creates is not, in general, a very bright idea. To expect it to last when both of you have sooo much personal growth to go through (even more than those who have been around a bit) is crazy. If it works for you, congratulations, but you are in a very very small minority.
Worse than non-religious people at walking the walk? The record proves otherwise.
You say this, but I think we must be looking at different records.
All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the immoral crap promoted and done by non religious sources.
There is moral and there is moral though, isn't there. All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the immoral crap promoted and done by religious sources.
Let's see televangelists, People getting blown to pieces rather than loving each other. What's that you say? Those are from the non-religious? Look at it again my friend, the religious right is so concerned with censoring god's own freaking creation (the human form) that having boobs on TV is illegal, yet explosions murders, beatings, and so many other things are let through. Do you see the blatant stupidity and hypocrisy of these sickos? Physical expression of love is *worse* than brutal murder to these people. Even the human form that god himself created according to these people is worse to look at than a human head being blown apart?!? I mean seriously, I don't like banning anything, but given the choice between the two it's pretty obvious to anybody who isn't trying to make people ashamed of their own freaking bodies.
The churches effectively counter these influences.
In the interest of promoting their own power. And they're quite selective about which immoral influences they are most concerned about. Of course there's nothing immoral about claiming god is broke and needs your cash, now is there?
You must be talking about hollywood churches and TV evangelists.
Nope I was speaking about The Catholic Church. I was under the impression that "The Church" generally referred to this one.
The major churches are strictly non-profit organizations.
Bwahahahahah LOL ROFLMAO Dude, you're killing me. Do you have any clue whatsoever how freaking rich the Catholic Church is? Richer than most countries. They make a very healthy profit. Where did it come from? Some from tithing, but a lot and I mean *a lot* of it came from plundering temples and churches of other religions, the crusades, murder, torture, and enslavemant.
What you meant to say was that they have non-profit status which means they don't get taxed, so they can pick and choose which segments of society they want to contribute back to. Now, smaller local churches are a different story and I'm not talking about them. I'm sure there are good and bad ones and I'm not qualified to discuss any of them in particular.
These things blemish the church of the past, but they are not "the history of the church".
These things are what got them where they are and they were SOP for the majority of the Church's history. There are good things scattered among them, but really, look it up. Do some research. You will be surprised.
. I should point out that all governments and human institutions have these marks on their record. But considering how old, large, and resilient the church is, it is amazing how little can be said against it in comparison to other organizations. All organizations etc., that I know of have black marks, but none of them have continued to propogate their evil ways for as long as the church. There isn't anything other thing in the history of the world that I've ever heard of that is even in the same ballpark as the Catholic church. Forgive me, but you must have a serious case of doublethink if you can even make a statement like that.
My perspective is different. That evil which does exist exists because people ignore God, not because of God.
If he created everything, where did the evil come from then?
The oppressors themselves design systems to keep oppressors in power.
No, I was speaking of the system where by if you're "good" in this life you are rewarded if you are "bad" you will be punished. If you are "good" you will turn your cheek to what the bad people want to do to you.
This was designed by god.
The fact that this is also the perfect system if you happen to be an evil bastard was what I was pointing out. Of course after they're dead they'll get theirs. Somehow that just doesn't give me a warm feeling.
Well, I do appreciate the time you've spent on this discussion and I understand if you don't have yet more time to spend on it, but at least say bye before you finish up if you don't mind.
Bad things to do in Linux: cd/lib/modules;find . -type f -exec insmod {} \;
I see why this is a bad thing, but how bad is it? I mean, will everything be ok after a reboot? I've seen a few sigs like this, and I've been curious to try a few of them just to see what would happen. I always used to try out random pokes on my C64 back in the day, to see the pretty crash screens but there's no way to damage it permenantly that way.
Is there any good rule to tell which stupid things are OK to do if you don't mind rebooting and which stupid things will totally fsck your system?
I think you view God as taking a more active role in the running of the Universe than I do.
Well, not really. I don't view him as taking any role whatsoever. This is the thing that makes discussions like this a little confusing at times. To make a point, I have to have an implied "if god existed" before every statement. So given this caveat, your statement may well hold.
Perfect knowledge of events doesn't neccesitate inevitibility.
Ahh... but it absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt does. Otherwise your knowledge is imperfect. This is a tautology and there is no getting around it. If god, being all powerful, magically makes it possible in some bizarre inconcievable way, then he has limited his knowledge and hence has imperfect knowledge.
All possible outcomes are known to God, which path we choose to traverse as reality is up to us. I'm not denying that it's up to us. You're misssing the point that he still knows which way we will choose.
I don't give God credit for the good, or blame him for the bad. God gave us all of the tools and abilities we need. He no longer has to interfere to force miracles or retribution on us. The bad things we do are our fault, the good things we do are our accomplishments. If God did everything for us, there wouldn't be much need for us, would there?
Well, you seem to have demonstrated that there is no need for god rather than there being no need for us. I'm quite curious why you would spend one second of your life even thinking about him if that is your take on it.
You might as well be angry at the universe for our lack of ability to fly (or other such things) since whether God exists or not is irrelevant to our natural abilities the laws are in place, no matter what put them there.
It has nothing to do with being angry. It was merely an example. I agree completely with your assesment that the laws of the universe are there (well, without getting into abstract philosophical dicussions on the nature of reality and such). To blantantly take what else you said out of context, I also agree that god is completely irrelevant. In truth, it sounds like this is what you are saying, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what you mean.
Re:Why can't we think for ourselves?
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Ready, Steady, Evolve
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I would question the statistics that lead you to this conclusion.
OK, how often is there a world changing discovery? Once every 10 years is a very generous guess. How often is there a murder or a robbery? Or to make it even more honest, throw out multiple offenses and just look at the number of people who have committed these acts. Narrowing it even more, just look at murderers. I think you will find that the latter number blows away the first one. Now, I'm not claiming that a decision to not have an abortion causes all of these murders. In fact, I'm not even pointing out one single case where this has been determined to be true. This is totally irrelevant to my point though. The original assertion that I was addressing was that banning abortion provides the most good to the most people. In order to prove that point, you would need to demonstrate that it is false.
What I believe likely is that you exist in an evironment that is essentially un-Christian in nature and thus your opinions have been formed
I live in America. I have seen some people who are Christians who are very nice people. I have also seen the worst scum around hiding behind a claim of Christianity which seems to blind other Christians to their atrocities.
However, I have seen Christianity work,
Have you seen the times where it doesn't? I suspect you don't really see these. Or rather, that you thank god for the good things that come about from it, yet absolutely forget to mention him when it fucks up lives, cultures, and the world. Of course, that's just free will.
such a negativistic approach to life is prejudiced in unlikely realities.
Not at all. Disliking Christianity isn't negative. It's self preservation based on the history of your religion. Your approach seems much more based in "unlikely realities". If you really can't see the dichotomy between thanking god for the good and ignoring his contributions to the bad, then that is living in unreality.
There is not much point in arging about what the effects of a life may or may not be.
That's kind of my point. The original poster argued that every potential life will have a net positive affect. My point is that this isn't true.
Even if one could make statisticly accurate predictions regarding the probable outcome, such discussion is based only upon a utilitarian approach to the value of life.
Not really. It is letting people make their own decisions about the evolution of their own life.
Essentially, we would be taking upon ourselves judgement that is better left to God. Abortion is an extremely prejudicial act.
Again, not true. It is the mature, rational decision that this is not the time and place to bring a child into the world. ("this" being the person in questions place in the world at the time). You are saying that it is universally better to pop out kids whenever it happens rather than making a mature decision about when and even if you should bring a child into the world. Please don't bother with the old tired abstinence approach to this. Sex has many benefits for mental and physical health and well being completely seperate from reproductive purposes. I think it is better to decide when you are emotionally and financially prepared to have a child. You seem to think it is better for an emotionally and financially unprepared person to have that kid right now rather than waitinguntil they are ready.
Christianity and the Church are given to serve humanity. Christianity itself might have the potential of doing good for humanity, but so many who claim to be christians are so much worse than non-religious people at walking the walk. The overwhelming prevalence of this is, of course, based solely on my own observations, so feel free to discount this point. The church though. You have got to be kidding me. The church exists for the sole purpose of expanding its own power structure. The church has nothing to do with christianity. Please point me to where Jesus said, "Build unto me a power structure that acquires immense wealth and power. Let it torture and murder those who go against this power structure even if they are acting in accordance to my teachings. Destroy all knowledge of older times since we can't have people being exposed to any knowledge contrary to those of my words which you choose to let people see. (The bible in it's present form is just a collection of stories. Many relevant stories were edited out hundreds of years after the fact since they went against the power of the church) Let my people go out and smite the heathen...or if they can't be bothered to get all the way there let them murder and rob any major Christian cities along the way. Yeah, I say let them go forth across the world and enslave torture and murder anybody they want to for just by claiming belief in me they are holy and all others are scum."
This *is* the history of the church.
The Christian concept of justice demands that blessing be withheld from those who tolerate wickedness. Those who practice evil are destroyed. God has manifest himself troughout history in such deterministic fashion.
In fact god has manifest himself throughout history by destroying the good and the evil completely blindly. In fact, if you actually look around you today and look at history, if you believe in any sort of manifestation of god, he is quite squarely in favor of evil since evil is way ahead in the game in this world. Sure, it'll all be squared in the next. Whether this is true or not, I defy you to come up with a better system to keep oppressors in power.
NT was bloat ware, but stable. Not at all. According to Bill Gates himself, NT has an average uptime of 4 days. This is the actual figure he gave. Now, granted it was at the time of the 2K launch party, but it amazed me that CEO's worldwide failed to recognize that by saying this he was also saying, "We have constantly lied to you and you should immediately fire anybody at your company who recommended using our products." Oh well.
Oh, and atrocities in pursuit of knowledge were atrocities we chose to commit, and they were all commited by people who believed they were doing what was right. Not to mention, they were accomplishments, and they did further our knowledge. OK, it did in fact further knowledge. It showed us absolutely that having such an unbalanced power structure leads inevitably to oppression and torment. Maybe we didn't know this before, but god did. He in fact created things in such a way as to cause this to be true. As I just posted to another thread in this article, this is my really big problem with the whole religion thing. God is given credit for all of the good things, but religious people will fight tooth and nail to not allow him to take any responsibility for the bad things that he caused to be.
The free will thing is a red herring. He set everything in motion in a very precise way. He knew every consequence of his choices, yet when things fuck up as they inevitably have, it's our fault. Can you will yourself to fly? I don't mean in an airplane or anything like that. So there are limitations to free will built into the system. OK, given those types of limitations, you are free to act, but it was decided for some reason that you can't do this. Similarly everything else he chose to do was done to make things come out the way they are. So he knew full well that by making the bible be subject to such a wide range of interpretation that sickening atrocities would be commited in his name by people who thought that they were doing his will. The simple fact is that he not only knew that these things would happen, but he actively chose to create them in such a way as to ensure it. Without doublethinking, there really is no way to deny this.
The Bible is meant to be a timeless guide. However, in order to be effective it needs to be accurately interpreted in context. Not all of the stories are literally true, nor could they reasonably be expected to be. Often a fair amount of research is required to understand the point of any particular passage.
More accurately, a fair amount of research leads to you coming up with your understanding of what the point is. Similarly for anybody else to come up with *their* understanding of what the point is. Now when it is not just possible, but a fact that your interpretation of a given passage might be (not putting words in your mouth, just a hypothetical example) "Jesus said love everybody", while somebody else's interpretation is "Jesus said to oppress, torture, and kill anybody who does X", that is a very serious problem. Now perhaps neither you nor I could come up with a better way of saying things, but we're suppposedly talking about god to whom all things are possible. So the fact is that he chose to do it in such a way as to cause all of the suffering that this ambiguity has caused. This is the real problem I have with the whole religion thing. God is given credit for every wonderful thing, but religious people refuse to allow him to accept *any* responsibility whatsoever for the bad things that are totally his fault at the root of it all.
thats easy -- i include fetuses in the set of people in society. thus the rationalization.
I still don't see how this works. It isn't necessarily a good thing for that particular person to exist either for them, or for anybody else. It could well be, but not necessarily.
new people on the planet also don't make it worse for everybody else, they make it better. if we didnt have the people behind our huge economy, we would still be spending most of our time trying to get food.
Only up to a point. Will you agree to this, even if you don't think we've passed this point yet? I should think that this is pretty clear. The extreme case would be if there are so many people that everyone has to hold their arms in the air just so we can fit.
I think we passed this point some time ago. the food issue is moot with far fewer people than we have now. Technology has made it so fewer people have to farm than ever and we have more people than ever. Continual growth doesn't work forever, and we will hit the limit, so we do need to start thinking now about how to function with static or negative population growth. Also I don't think people are "designed" to live in conditions as crowded as in the major cities. Just look at how people regularly ignore rapes and murders right in front of them.
Anyhow, even if it doesn't make it worse for everybody to have even more people, it certainly doesn't make it better.
Who is to say what will come of any particular life? Does a baby have to be wanted by its biological mother to enjoy life? to contribute to society? Is a life only to be valued IAW its utilitarian return? If you view people primarily as resource consumers, and not as individuals with the capacity to love and be loved, then your perspective is rather limited and dim.
My point in this wasn't to debate the pros and cons of abortion per se. Just that I don't see how the greatest good for the greatest number argument applies to this. To answer your questions in order: Nobody,No,No,Assuming you're not trying to trick me with an unknown acronym No;-). And the last point in that paragraph. I don't.
This still doesn't in any way demonstrate that it provides the greatest good to everybody to have another unwanted child in the world. Sure they might make some world changing discovery, but they might also rob and kill you. Of course, nobody can say beforehand, but the latter is statistically much more likely.
If you are just absolutely opposed to it, then I don't think you can probably fairly address the question I raised.
Also, all of our accomplishments further the acquisition of knowledge in some fashion. And I can prove it for every single one.
Be very careful when using absolutes. The long history of burning, torturing and murdering people trying to further knowledge certainly blows away the "all" in your posting.
Besides that, to each his own I suppose.
I see more potential for myself and my species than being the pet of some deity who, if I accepted his existence, I would be honor bound to do my utmost to destroy for his hideously evil actions. But that's just me.
I simply see it as something attempting to describe a complex universe in ways understandable to the people of the time.
This seems very unlikely unless god is a total prick. He has no need to speak down to people, he could make them understand it perfectly clearly, so that it would be put down correctly in that little book of his.
Rather than do it this way, he chooses to explain it in such a way as to confuse people to the point that they will torture and murder other people who won't accept certain patently ridiculous statements (when taken literally). He will also choose to do it in such a way that the further we advance our knowledge the more and more unreasonable it looks?!?
So, it seems that he was either writing it solely for the benefit of some desert savages which indicates a total lack of interest in us the modern man even though there are a hell of a lot more of us. Or it indicates that he is just an asshole.
I am open to other interpretations of this, but those are the ones I see following from this assumption.
I also believe that our purpose is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in order to become closer to God.
Doesn't this ever strike you as a complete waste of all the potential we have? I mean, he already has all that knowledge, so our purpose is to recreate a small part of it over and over throughout the lifetime of our species? Where is the growth?
Also, wouldn't this make every accomplishment of our selves and our species other than this tiny part of it an act against god?
im an atheist whos pro-life because for me, "greater good for the greatest number" includes fetuses.
Oh wow. I really hope you follow this and respond. I have just got to know how you can rationalize this. I can't see any possible way that forcing an unwanted child to be born and raised provides any good to anybody with the possible exception of the child if he manages to have a happy life and causes no harm to others. The fact that every new body on the planet makes it just a little bit worse for everybody else (not counting any good things they might do during their life) due to scarcity of resources, overcrowding etc.
Seriously, I can see the "god told me it was bad argument". I can see the "well all human life is precious because....well just because" argument. The greatest good for the greatest number argument clearly goes directly against your stated position.
What is New Zealand's policy and how has it hurt them?
I suspect that he was referring to the Maori (prolly horribly mis spelled) people who lived there before Europeans came over to settle. I don't know much about them at all, but if they had such a philosophy, then it would make kicking their asses and taking all their stuff much easier.
I apologize. If you have a good guy and a bad guy and the bad guy is a terrorist and the good guy isn't (by definition) then the FARC are not terrorists. It's a matter of relativity. My post didn't take into account the case where there are no good guys.
You contradicted yourself. If the US is biased in favor of the FARC, why would they pay to fight them? Although this type of contradiction by governments, though. I'll give you that;)
Actually I didn't contradict myself regardless of whether I was correct or not. The terrorists I was referring to are the government and their para-military death squads.
The FARC have been eating away at this country since the 60's. My friends and family have been personally affected by these idiots, so please don't state your slanted opinions without coming down here a living it for a while.
Again, I apologize. I was being over zealous. Our newspapers only print one side of any given story. This is of course the side which is in line with the government press releases and the sole intent of printing anything is to maximize profits for their parent corporations.
The Majority of people in America are so cowardly and ignorant that they actually think "freedom of the press" implies some sort of responsibility on the part of the press to be honest and print the truth even if painful.
So it is true that the government and their thugs are terrorists, but you will never see that printed here.
Nor will you ever see them apologizing for their misleading statements as I did here when my anger trumped my better judgement.
You're still operating on the assumption that there's a meaningful difference between Column A and Column B on the Psycho Menu O' Doom that is our political system.
FARC is one of the most disgusting revolutionary groups in S. America.
They are not even in the same league as The columbian government and their state supported right wing para-military death squads.
Given who they're fighting against, they are quite clearly freedom fighters much more so than terrorists. Of course, good luck getting any decent information on them in the US since we're the ones paying for the death squads they're fighting. All so our government agencies can control (note: *not* eliminate) the drug trade.
And after the votes were finally recounted it was determined that Bush had actually won the State of Florida.
LIE! LIE! LIE!
The recount proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gore won definitively. Look it up. It is a matter of the public record.
Also look up the fact that Jeb Bush violated the most fundamental right of a citizen of a democracy in about 80,000 cases by stripping innocent American citizens of their right to vote for the crime of not being a registered republican.
Look it up. The case is verrry slowly making it through the courts right now, but it is a matter of the public record.
but that they (the officials) said it was not objective and was intended to garner sympathy for their cause. the magazines, newspapers, articles you mention for example are (presumably for the most part) "unbiased" (yeah, U.S. media blah, blah, blah) accounts.
Except that in the case of Columbia, the US government and the US media are completely biased in favor of the terrorists. The important fact that they do not want you to realise is that the FARC are *not* terrorists. They are the victims fighting against the terrorism in their country paid for by the US through the Columbian government and enacted by the State sponsered para-military groups.
All of this is done in the name of the war on drugs which anyone who isn't completely clueless knows is a terrorist war against personal freedom anyhow. If you don't believe this, and think you are not completely clueless, then please answer this question to which I have never been able to get an answer to from anybody:
Why are drugs illegal? More precisely even: What harm is done by drugs that isn't outweighed by the harm done by the illegalization of drugs.
Now please be very careful in your answer since there is a very clear distinction, which is completely ignored in public discussion of this issue, between harm done by drugs and harm done by the fact that drugs are illegal.
Except it is also very important to realize that the FARC are *not* terrorists. They are fighting the terroristic para-military death squads funded by the US government through the Columbian government.
This is the real issue and the reason that Uncle Sam doesn't want them to be able to air an alternative viewpoint to the one they've given the media to give to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it possible that the system works?
It might be possible that the system can work, but this isn't an example of it.
The fact that they even considered the possibility that this was an acceptable thing to attempt shows that something is very wrong with the way the system works.
This isn't solely an MS problem, it's endemic and frightening.
Me too. I mentioned this before. Shouldn't this be fairly simple to do?
But you did try to refute it by asserting that they would be a drain on resources in an overcrowded world. And my point was that you were making predictions about the future state of society that might or might not occur. If I want to prove that banning abortion provides the most good to the most amount of people all I have to do is show that the person is likely to make a net contribution to society.
;-) I still do it, but it's magicaly not a sin anymore.
;-) different views on what is good and bad, doesn't mean that I'm the negative one. Nor does it mean that you are.
I wasn't making predictions, I was making a statement about the present state of the world which in my opinion has already occurred.
Well, showing that someone is likely to make a net positive contribution to society is harder than what I was looking for, but if you can do either, then full speed ahead.
Even criminals can be used productively.
I hope that was just a very unfortunate choice of phrasing. If not, I think your startements about my supposed utilitarization of life pale in comparison. I don't see any people as things to be used. I just feel it is important to assess all the facts before deciding to create another one.
The ultimate judge of the value of any particular life is the person who lives it.
Certainly.
People who start life up for adoption or live in a state funded institution normally have nowhere to go but up. Even so, it does not mean that they can't enjoy life.
Sure.
People should give God a chance.
Arrggghh Must control flame fingers...
This is such a criminally evil attitude. "I can't afford a child, I'm emotionally bankrupt, addicted to crack, and have never spent more than 5 minutes around a child without wanting to strangle them. I got raped and got pregnant. I could do the responsible thing and terminate the pregnancy... no, wait... I'll just have the kid and let god figure it out."
This is the attitude of a child, not an adult. Ignore the consequences of your actions and expect daddy to clean up after you.
This is one of the reasons I continue to discuss things with you. You are at least rational enough to recognize that it is not religion itself that causes problems, but *people* who claim to be acting IAW their religion
Well, I don't 100% agree with you on this. I think it will be a great day for humanity when we finally grow out of religion. I think it's Bertrand Russel who I'm about to misquote, "Religion is the primary enemy of moral progress in the world".
Obviously, it's a quote, not a proof of anything, but I think it makes a lot of sense.
The old testament was written by a bunch of desert nomads thousands of years ago, and the new testament was written by people not much more civilized. The major religions have taken these as the absolute word of god which has put a major hurdle in any changes or improvements since.
The day religion (in any form, I'm not picking on yours particularly) dies off the face of the earth will be the day that humanity enters it's adult hood. We will have to look at our actions in the face and own up to the responsibility for them now , in this lifetime without having the ultimate copout, "well god can always make it right later".
Now, I do agree that a Christian acting in accordance with Jesus's teachings is, in general, going to be nicer to live around than someone who claims to be one but clearly isn't through their actions. Even better though in my opinion would be someone who is a good person because they feel that it is the right thing to do rather than because some old Hebrew wind demon threatens to spank them. This is the way most people seem to be initially exposed to god, so please don't take that as an attack or me stating what your motivations are.
You're right I haven't.
Come on now. The Crusades, selling keys to heaven, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, The Salem witch trials, The KKK, Aryan Nations, The enslavement, murder, and torture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the tacit support of the holocaust, godhatesfags.com, murdering doctors, hiding away relevant scriptures in the vatican vaults which are contemporary with the current text of the bible etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
These are all cases where Christianity went wrong. Sure, it's easy for you to say, well they weren't Christians because they did ( or didn't do ) 'X'.
But your missing the point. Most of those things were done by the Church, the sole source of Christian teachings for many centuries. The bible doesn't even really count since almost nobody could read it even if they could get ahold of a copy. The other things in my (very brief) list were still done by ( in the following, feel free to prepend "people who claim to be" to "Christian") Christians, in the name of god, with backup pulled right from the bible for their actions. Now just because you can pull other quotes that contradict theirs, doesn't necessarily make you right and them wrong within that context. That is what I was saying much earlier about the problems with inconsistencies in the bible.
You're assigning blame to God for things better assigned to the devil, or individuals themselves. Free will and life after death go a long way towards explaining why God allows evil to act in the world, but there are more reasons than these.
Blame the devil?!? God made him and he made him precisely what he is. Now correct me if I'm wrong ( I picked up this from watching "Dogma", so I could be completely off), but isn't it true that angels do not have free will? They were created as servants and we were given free will? That blows away your "blame the devil" argument if true. Regardless, it is irrelevant to the fact that *god created all evil.* The most free will can do is let us pick whether or not to do something. The evil action itself was still created solely by god.
First, you are focusing only on the bad.
Not really. I am pointing it out. You seem to be focusing on the good to the exclusion of the bad. In fact you claimed to not even see it (or agreed with my guess to that affect to be completely honest). Which of these is more dangerous?
However, the contributions far outweigh the harm done.
That is going to take more than an unsubstantiated statement for me to swallow. The harm done is totally irreparable. The cultures and knowledge destroyed will never be recovered. Thousands and thousands of years of records, history, stories, and knowledge from all over the world burned. Gone forever. Can you really put a value on this? Can you honestly claim that the church's contributions to society outweigh this act alone ignoring all of the others? I'm sorry, but I don't see it.
Second, all religious and all secular institutions have 'bad' in their history. But what has been the cause, and what institutions have the best records?
Probably true. Absolutes are dangerous, but I certainly can't think of any.
The Catholic Church has the worst record I would say. A lot of evidence exists to bear this out. Other branches of christianity are pretty bad too, but they don't have the membership or the age of Catholicism to be able to compare.
The best? Well, Tibetan Buddhism seems like a likely candidate. but if you're going to claim Christianity is even in the running, that will take a lot of evidence.
Third, I don't think I am unrealistic in my belief that it is people who love themselves and who love sin and not God that's the problem.
I love myself, I love to sin in some people's definition of sin although I can't engage in my favorite sin anymore since I'm recently married
I don't love god. I don't even believe he exists.
Are you claiming that I'm part of "the problem"?
I know you don't know me well enough to point out examples or anything like that, but I think this attitude is extremely misguided. Now, it might not be true in your particular case, but there are a *lot* of people out there who wouldn't give me the time of day if they knew I wasn't a Christian, yet will send scum like Jerry Falwell amd Jim Baker etc. their last dollar that they should have spent on money for their children because they claim to be and tell a good story. This is again a very serious danger of religion. Not that those fools (the particular ones mailing checks, not Christians in general) wouldn't necessarily fall for something else that came along, but it's an inherent danger of any such power structure. Ignoring that because this is the "right one" isn't a very good idea
My point is that it is your nature to see things mainly in the negative that gives you this perspective.
No, it isn't. I am a very positive person. I am not idiotically optimistic either though. I tend to take a very realistic viewpoint. I certainly don't think having a kid I'm not ready for and expecting god to take care of everything is either positive or realistic.
Realize that negativism is degenerative and self-fulfilling.
I am well aware of this. Probably much more so than you are even. At one point (more of a line segment actually), I was about the most negative hate filled person you've probably ever met. I eventually came to the conclusion that this wasn't doing shit for me and I dropped all of that baggage. Now this doesn't mean that I can no longer recognize bad things for what they are. It also doesn't mean that I have to like everything. I think it actually gives me a much better perspective to recognize evil behind a pretty mask than most people who haven't been where I have.
If you see something you don't like then do something about it,
I do whenever possible. That's part of why I'm still in this discussion. Just because we seem to have slightly
don't blame God.
That's really too funny. Again, I don't at all in any way blame god for anything. I don't give him credit for anything either. I take complete responsibility for my own life and actions. Now, if I did believe in him, I would most certainly blame him for a lot of screwed up things in the world. I wouldn't waste my time walking around blaming him though which is a very important distinction. This world is totally inconsistent with a god who is omniscient, omnipotent, and good.
Pick any two and it could work. All three, not possible not even for god.
Get out and do something you like instead of watching that crap on TV
I do, all the time. I watch very little TV and the only reason that that's "very little" rather than "one half-hour a week" (South Park) is that I'm currently on the road for my job in a hotel and I can't do half of the things I normally do out here. I've made quite a few friends, so my TV watching is tapering off.
don't get caught up in unproductive speculative gossip
This has never held any interest for me.
Go to church,
No thank you. I'd much rather watch crap on TV
find new friends,
I have lots of good friends, most of them back home, but I'm doing quite well in that respect out here as well thank you very much.
do anything to get you out of that situation.
I'm not in any such situation. Just because I don't have any love for your god doesn't make me a bad hateful person. Similarly, just because you do doesn't mean you are not. There are too many examples to even start on this.
Quite the opposite, it's making decisions about someone else's life presumptively.
OK, then you are making decisions presumptively about *two* people's lives. And you're making this decision without the perspective of the one who is directly involved.
The time for that decision is before having sex. If someone isn't ready to have children, they shouldn't have sex. If they do anyway, they can give the child up, but they should never kill it.
Hmmm... I see you ignored my comment on this already so I'll repeat it:
Please don't bother with the old tired abstinence approach to this. Sex has many benefits for mental and physical health and well being completely seperate from reproductive purposes.
Sex is a natural, beautiful thing. People have always had it and will always continue to have it.
It is healthy, and it is good for you.
Telling people, "don't do that" is stupid. I'm not saying you're stupid for thinking that it's the right thing to do. I'm saying expecting it to work when it never has throughout all of human history is very stupid. You're not actually against birth control are you? Reducing sex to a mechanical act of reproduction lowers us to the level of animals when we are supposed to have risen above that.
Waiting until marriage is not realistic either. For some very few people this might actually work, but to try and force this is not only stupid, but very evil. People are getting married much later in life than they once did and this is a very good thing. They are much better equipped for it when they have gone out and lived their lives, learned what they are all about, loved and lost and gained the strength to love again, made mistakes and learned from them than they are when they are 18.
To enter into a life long commitment when you have never experienced physical intimacy and the emotional whirlwind this creates is not, in general, a very bright idea. To expect it to last when both of you have sooo much personal growth to go through (even more than those who have been around a bit) is crazy. If it works for you, congratulations, but you are in a very very small minority.
Worse than non-religious people at walking the walk? The record proves otherwise.
You say this, but I think we must be looking at different records.
All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the immoral crap promoted and done by non religious sources.
There is moral and there is moral though, isn't there.
All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the immoral crap promoted and done by religious sources.
Let's see televangelists, People getting blown to pieces rather than loving each other. What's that you say? Those are from the non-religious? Look at it again my friend, the religious right is so concerned with censoring god's own freaking creation (the human form) that having boobs on TV is illegal, yet explosions murders, beatings, and so many other things are let through. Do you see the blatant stupidity and hypocrisy of these sickos?
Physical expression of love is *worse* than brutal murder to these people. Even the human form that god himself created according to these people is worse to look at than a human head being blown apart?!? I mean seriously, I don't like banning anything, but given the choice between the two it's pretty obvious to anybody who isn't trying to make people ashamed of their own freaking bodies.
The churches effectively counter these influences.
In the interest of promoting their own power. And they're quite selective about which immoral influences they are most concerned about. Of course there's nothing immoral about claiming god is broke and needs your cash, now is there?
You must be talking about hollywood churches and TV evangelists.
Nope I was speaking about The Catholic Church. I was under the impression that "The Church" generally referred to this one.
The major churches are strictly non-profit organizations.
Bwahahahahah LOL ROFLMAO
Dude, you're killing me.
Do you have any clue whatsoever how freaking rich the Catholic Church is? Richer than most countries. They make a very healthy profit.
Where did it come from? Some from tithing, but a lot and I mean *a lot* of it came from plundering temples and churches of other religions, the crusades, murder, torture, and enslavemant.
What you meant to say was that they have non-profit status which means they don't get taxed, so they can pick and choose which segments of society they want to contribute back to. Now, smaller local churches are a different story and I'm not talking about them. I'm sure there are good and bad ones and I'm not qualified to discuss any of them in particular.
These things blemish the church of the past, but they are not "the history of the church".
These things are what got them where they are and they were SOP for the majority of the Church's history. There are good things scattered among them, but really, look it up. Do some research. You will be surprised.
. I should point out that all governments and human institutions have these marks on their record. But considering how old, large, and resilient the church is, it is amazing how little can be said against it in comparison to other organizations.
All organizations etc., that I know of have black marks, but none of them have continued to propogate their evil ways for as long as the church.
There isn't anything other thing in the history of the world that I've ever heard of that is even in the same ballpark as the Catholic church.
Forgive me, but you must have a serious case of doublethink if you can even make a statement like that.
My perspective is different. That evil which does exist exists because people ignore God, not because of God.
If he created everything, where did the evil come from then?
The oppressors themselves design systems to keep oppressors in power.
No, I was speaking of the system where by if you're "good" in this life you are rewarded if you are "bad" you will be punished. If you are "good" you will turn your cheek to what the bad people want to do to you.
This was designed by god.
The fact that this is also the perfect system if you happen to be an evil bastard was what I was pointing out. Of course after they're dead they'll get theirs. Somehow that just doesn't give me a warm feeling.
Well, I do appreciate the time you've spent on this discussion and I understand if you don't have yet more time to spend on it, but at least say bye before you finish up if you don't mind.
Take care
Bad things to do in Linux: cd /lib/modules;find . -type f -exec insmod {} \;
I see why this is a bad thing, but how bad is it?
I mean, will everything be ok after a reboot?
I've seen a few sigs like this, and I've been curious to try a few of them just to see what would happen. I always used to try out random pokes on my C64 back in the day, to see the pretty crash screens but there's no way to damage it permenantly that way.
Is there any good rule to tell which stupid things are OK to do if you don't mind rebooting and which stupid things will totally fsck your system?
I think you view God as taking a more active role in the running of the Universe than I do.
Well, not really. I don't view him as taking any role whatsoever. This is the thing that makes discussions like this a little confusing at times. To make a point, I have to have an implied "if god existed" before every statement. So given this caveat, your statement may well hold.
Perfect knowledge of events doesn't neccesitate inevitibility.
Ahh... but it absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt does. Otherwise your knowledge is imperfect. This is a tautology and there is no getting around it. If god, being all powerful, magically makes it possible in some bizarre inconcievable way, then he has limited his knowledge and hence has imperfect knowledge.
All possible outcomes are known to God, which path we choose to traverse as reality is up to us.
I'm not denying that it's up to us. You're misssing the point that he still knows which way we will choose.
I don't give God credit for the good, or blame him for the bad. God gave us all of the tools and abilities we need. He no longer has to interfere to force miracles or retribution on us. The bad things we do are our fault, the good things we do are our accomplishments. If God did everything for us, there wouldn't be much need for us, would there?
Well, you seem to have demonstrated that there is no need for god rather than there being no need for us. I'm quite curious why you would spend one second of your life even thinking about him if that is your take on it.
You might as well be angry at the universe for our lack of ability to fly (or other such things) since whether God exists or not is irrelevant to our natural abilities the laws are in place, no matter what put them there.
It has nothing to do with being angry. It was merely an example.
I agree completely with your assesment that the laws of the universe are there (well, without getting into abstract philosophical dicussions on the nature of reality and such).
To blantantly take what else you said out of context, I also agree that god is completely irrelevant.
In truth, it sounds like this is what you are saying, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what you mean.
I would question the statistics that lead you to this conclusion.
OK, how often is there a world changing discovery?
Once every 10 years is a very generous guess.
How often is there a murder or a robbery? Or to make it even more honest, throw out multiple offenses and just look at the number of people who have committed these acts. Narrowing it even more, just look at murderers.
I think you will find that the latter number blows away the first one. Now, I'm not claiming that a decision to not have an abortion causes all of these murders. In fact, I'm not even pointing out one single case where this has been determined to be true. This is totally irrelevant to my point though. The original assertion that I was addressing was that banning abortion provides the most good to the most people. In order to prove that point, you would need to demonstrate that it is false.
What I believe likely is that you exist in an evironment that is essentially un-Christian in nature and thus your opinions have been formed
I live in America. I have seen some people who are Christians who are very nice people. I have also seen the worst scum around hiding behind a claim of Christianity which seems to blind other Christians to their atrocities.
However, I have seen Christianity work,
Have you seen the times where it doesn't? I suspect you don't really see these. Or rather, that you thank god for the good things that come about from it, yet absolutely forget to mention him when it fucks up lives, cultures, and the world. Of course, that's just free will.
such a negativistic approach to life is prejudiced in unlikely realities.
Not at all. Disliking Christianity isn't negative. It's self preservation based on the history of your religion. Your approach seems much more based in "unlikely realities". If you really can't see the dichotomy between thanking god for the good and ignoring his contributions to the bad, then that is living in unreality.
There is not much point in arging about what the effects of a life may or may not be.
That's kind of my point. The original poster argued that every potential life will have a net positive affect. My point is that this isn't true.
Even if one could make statisticly accurate predictions regarding the probable outcome, such discussion is based only upon a utilitarian approach to the value of life.
Not really. It is letting people make their own decisions about the evolution of their own life.
Essentially, we would be taking upon ourselves judgement that is better left to God. Abortion is an extremely prejudicial act.
Again, not true. It is the mature, rational decision that this is not the time and place to bring a child into the world. ("this" being the person in questions place in the world at the time). You are saying that it is universally better to pop out kids whenever it happens rather than making a mature decision about when and even if you should bring a child into the world. Please don't bother with the old tired abstinence approach to this. Sex has many benefits for mental and physical health and well being completely seperate from reproductive purposes.
I think it is better to decide when you are emotionally and financially prepared to have a child.
You seem to think it is better for an emotionally and financially unprepared person to have that kid right now rather than waitinguntil they are ready.
Christianity and the Church are given to serve humanity.
Christianity itself might have the potential of doing good for humanity, but so many who claim to be christians are so much worse than non-religious people at walking the walk. The overwhelming prevalence of this is, of course, based solely on my own observations, so feel free to discount this point.
The church though. You have got to be kidding me. The church exists for the sole purpose of expanding its own power structure. The church has nothing to do with christianity. Please point me to where Jesus said,
"Build unto me a power structure that acquires immense wealth and power. Let it torture and murder those who go against this power structure even if they are acting in accordance to my teachings. Destroy all knowledge of older times since we can't have people being exposed to any knowledge contrary to those of my words which you choose to let people see. (The bible in it's present form is just a collection of stories. Many relevant stories were edited out hundreds of years after the fact since they went against the power of the church) Let my people go out and smite the heathen...or if they can't be bothered to get all the way there let them murder and rob any major Christian cities along the way. Yeah, I say let them go forth across the world and enslave torture and murder anybody they want to for just by claiming belief in me they are holy and all others are scum."
This *is* the history of the church.
The Christian concept of justice demands that blessing be withheld from those who tolerate wickedness. Those who practice evil are destroyed. God has manifest himself troughout history in such deterministic fashion.
In fact god has manifest himself throughout history by destroying the good and the evil completely blindly. In fact, if you actually look around you today and look at history, if you believe in any sort of manifestation of god, he is quite squarely in favor of evil since evil is way ahead in the game in this world. Sure, it'll all be squared in the next. Whether this is true or not, I defy you to come up with a better system to keep oppressors in power.
NT was bloat ware, but stable.
Not at all. According to Bill Gates himself, NT has an average uptime of 4 days. This is the actual figure he gave. Now, granted it was at the time of the 2K launch party, but it amazed me that CEO's worldwide failed to recognize that by saying this he was also saying, "We have constantly lied to you and you should immediately fire anybody at your company who recommended using our products."
Oh well.
2K is Solid.
For windows.
Oh, and atrocities in pursuit of knowledge were atrocities we chose to commit, and they were all commited by people who believed they were doing what was right. Not to mention, they were accomplishments, and they did further our knowledge.
OK, it did in fact further knowledge. It showed us absolutely that having such an unbalanced power structure leads inevitably to oppression and torment.
Maybe we didn't know this before, but god did. He in fact created things in such a way as to cause this to be true. As I just posted to another thread in this article, this is my really big problem with the whole religion thing.
God is given credit for all of the good things, but religious people will fight tooth and nail to not allow him to take any responsibility for the bad things that he caused to be.
The free will thing is a red herring. He set everything in motion in a very precise way. He knew every consequence of his choices, yet when things fuck up as they inevitably have, it's our fault.
Can you will yourself to fly? I don't mean in an airplane or anything like that. So there are limitations to free will built into the system. OK, given those types of limitations, you are free to act, but it was decided for some reason that you can't do this. Similarly everything else he chose to do was done to make things come out the way they are. So he knew full well that by making the bible be subject to such a wide range of interpretation that sickening atrocities would be commited in his name by people who thought that they were doing his will. The simple fact is that he not only knew that these things would happen, but he actively chose to create them in such a way as to ensure it.
Without doublethinking, there really is no way to deny this.
The Bible is meant to be a timeless guide. However, in order to be effective it needs to be accurately interpreted in context. Not all of the stories are literally true, nor could they reasonably be expected to be. Often a fair amount of research is required to understand the point of any particular passage.
More accurately, a fair amount of research leads to you coming up with your understanding of what the point is. Similarly for anybody else to come up with *their* understanding of what the point is. Now when it is not just possible, but a fact that your interpretation of a given passage might be (not putting words in your mouth, just a hypothetical example) "Jesus said love everybody", while somebody else's interpretation is "Jesus said to oppress, torture, and kill anybody who does X", that is a very serious problem. Now perhaps neither you nor I could come up with a better way of saying things, but we're suppposedly talking about god to whom all things are possible.
So the fact is that he chose to do it in such a way as to cause all of the suffering that this ambiguity has caused.
This is the real problem I have with the whole religion thing. God is given credit for every wonderful thing, but religious people refuse to allow him to accept *any* responsibility whatsoever for the bad things that are totally his fault at the root of it all.
thats easy -- i include fetuses in the set of people in society. thus the rationalization.
I still don't see how this works. It isn't necessarily a good thing for that particular person to exist either for them, or for anybody else.
It could well be, but not necessarily.
new people on the planet also don't make it worse for everybody else, they make it better. if we didnt have the people behind our huge economy, we would still be spending most of our time trying to get food.
Only up to a point. Will you agree to this, even if you don't think we've passed this point yet?
I should think that this is pretty clear. The extreme case would be if there are so many people that everyone has to hold their arms in the air just so we can fit.
I think we passed this point some time ago. the food issue is moot with far fewer people than we have now. Technology has made it so fewer people have to farm than ever and we have more people than ever.
Continual growth doesn't work forever, and we will hit the limit, so we do need to start thinking now about how to function with static or negative population growth.
Also I don't think people are "designed" to live in conditions as crowded as in the major cities. Just look at how people regularly ignore rapes and murders right in front of them.
Anyhow, even if it doesn't make it worse for everybody to have even more people, it certainly doesn't make it better.
Who is to say what will come of any particular life? Does a baby have to be wanted by its biological mother to enjoy life? to contribute to society? Is a life only to be valued IAW its utilitarian return? If you view people primarily as resource consumers, and not as individuals with the capacity to love and be loved, then your perspective is rather limited and dim.
;-). And the last point in that paragraph. I don't.
My point in this wasn't to debate the pros and cons of abortion per se. Just that I don't see how the greatest good for the greatest number argument applies to this. To answer your questions in order:
Nobody,No,No,Assuming you're not trying to trick me with an unknown acronym No
This still doesn't in any way demonstrate that it provides the greatest good to everybody to have another unwanted child in the world.
Sure they might make some world changing discovery, but they might also rob and kill you.
Of course, nobody can say beforehand, but the latter is statistically much more likely.
If you are just absolutely opposed to it, then I don't think you can probably fairly address the question I raised.
Also, all of our accomplishments further the acquisition of knowledge in some fashion. And I can prove it for every single one.
Be very careful when using absolutes.
The long history of burning, torturing and murdering people trying to further knowledge certainly blows away the "all" in your posting.
Besides that, to each his own I suppose.
I see more potential for myself and my species than being the pet of some deity who, if I accepted his existence, I would be honor bound to do my utmost to destroy for his hideously evil actions.
But that's just me.
I simply see it as something attempting to describe a complex universe in ways understandable to the people of the time.
This seems very unlikely unless god is a total prick.
He has no need to speak down to people, he could make them understand it perfectly clearly, so that it would be put down correctly in that little book of his.
Rather than do it this way, he chooses to explain it in such a way as to confuse people to the point that they will torture and murder other people who won't accept certain patently ridiculous statements (when taken literally).
He will also choose to do it in such a way that the further we advance our knowledge the more and more unreasonable it looks?!?
So, it seems that he was either writing it solely for the benefit of some desert savages which indicates a total lack of interest in us the modern man even though there are a hell of a lot more of us.
Or it indicates that he is just an asshole.
I am open to other interpretations of this, but those are the ones I see following from this assumption.
Hox gene.
Gesundheit.
I also believe that our purpose is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in order to become closer to God.
Doesn't this ever strike you as a complete waste of all the potential we have?
I mean, he already has all that knowledge, so our purpose is to recreate a small part of it over and over throughout the lifetime of our species? Where is the growth?
Also, wouldn't this make every accomplishment of our selves and our species other than this tiny part of it an act against god?
I'd imagine having the less tasty bits of your forebears would mean you'd survive longer in the wild. :)
;-)
I wasn't aware that either radishes or cabbages had tasty bits blech
im an atheist whos pro-life because for me, "greater good for the greatest number" includes fetuses.
Oh wow. I really hope you follow this and respond.
I have just got to know how you can rationalize this. I can't see any possible way that forcing an unwanted child to be born and raised provides any good to anybody with the possible exception of the child if he manages to have a happy life and causes no harm to others. The fact that every new body on the planet makes it just a little bit worse for everybody else (not counting any good things they might do during their life) due to scarcity of resources, overcrowding etc.
Seriously, I can see the "god told me it was bad argument". I can see the "well all human life is precious because....well just because" argument.
The greatest good for the greatest number argument clearly goes directly against your stated position.
Please explain how this is reasonable.
What is New Zealand's policy and how has it hurt them?
I suspect that he was referring to the Maori (prolly horribly mis spelled) people who lived there before Europeans came over to settle.
I don't know much about them at all, but if they had such a philosophy, then it would make kicking their asses and taking all their stuff much easier.
Sounds like terrorism to me.
;)
I apologize. If you have a good guy and a bad guy and the bad guy is a terrorist and the good guy isn't (by definition) then the FARC are not terrorists. It's a matter of relativity. My post didn't take into account the case where there are no good guys.
You contradicted yourself. If the US is biased in favor of the FARC, why would they pay to fight them? Although this type of contradiction by governments, though. I'll give you that
Actually I didn't contradict myself regardless of whether I was correct or not.
The terrorists I was referring to are the government and their para-military death squads.
The FARC have been eating away at this country since the 60's. My friends and family have been personally affected by these idiots, so please don't state your slanted opinions without coming down here a living it for a while.
Again, I apologize. I was being over zealous.
Our newspapers only print one side of any given story. This is of course the side which is in line with the government press releases and the sole intent of printing anything is to maximize profits for their parent corporations.
The Majority of people in America are so cowardly and ignorant that they actually think "freedom of the press" implies some sort of responsibility on the part of the press to be honest and print the truth even if painful.
So it is true that the government and their thugs are terrorists, but you will never see that printed here.
Nor will you ever see them apologizing for their misleading statements as I did here when my anger trumped my better judgement.
Good luck to you and yours.
You're still operating on the assumption that there's a meaningful difference between Column A and Column B on the Psycho Menu O' Doom that is our political system.
+1 billion: Gets it.
We'd get a lot farther with a war on aggresion and oppresion.
But then we would be even more clearly the worst offender than we are when we call it terrorism.
FARC is one of the most disgusting revolutionary groups in S. America.
They are not even in the same league as The columbian government and their state supported right wing para-military death squads.
Given who they're fighting against, they are quite clearly freedom fighters much more so than terrorists.
Of course, good luck getting any decent information on them in the US since we're the ones paying for the death squads they're fighting.
All so our government agencies can control (note: *not* eliminate) the drug trade.
And after the votes were finally recounted it was determined that Bush had actually won the State of Florida.
LIE! LIE! LIE!
The recount proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gore won definitively.
Look it up.
It is a matter of the public record.
Also look up the fact that Jeb Bush violated the most fundamental right of a citizen of a democracy in about 80,000 cases by stripping innocent American citizens of their right to vote for the crime of not being a registered republican.
Look it up. The case is verrry slowly making it through the courts right now, but it is a matter of the public record.
but that they (the officials) said it was not objective and was intended to garner sympathy for their cause. the magazines, newspapers, articles you mention for example are (presumably for the most part) "unbiased" (yeah, U.S. media blah, blah, blah) accounts.
Except that in the case of Columbia, the US government and the US media are completely biased in favor of the terrorists. The important fact that they do not want you to realise is that the FARC are *not* terrorists. They are the victims fighting against the terrorism in their country paid for by the US through the Columbian government and enacted by the State sponsered para-military groups.
All of this is done in the name of the war on drugs which anyone who isn't completely clueless knows is a terrorist war against personal freedom anyhow.
If you don't believe this, and think you are not completely clueless, then please answer this question to which I have never been able to get an answer to from anybody:
Why are drugs illegal?
More precisely even:
What harm is done by drugs that isn't outweighed by the harm done by the illegalization of drugs.
Now please be very careful in your answer since there is a very clear distinction, which is completely ignored in public discussion of this issue, between harm done by drugs and harm done by the fact that drugs are illegal.
Except it is also very important to realize that the FARC are *not* terrorists. They are fighting the terroristic para-military death squads funded by the US government through the Columbian government.
This is the real issue and the reason that Uncle Sam doesn't want them to be able to air an alternative viewpoint to the one they've given the media to give to you.