I disagree with your fundamental concept of insurance. Insurance is a product for risk management. It allows you to pay directly for your risk, in the form of a premium instead of paying for actual damages from the risk. For this to work... that is for the product to be valuable to consumers, and profitable to insurers, each customer needs to pay for his risk. e.g. in home insurance, if you have a $2mil house, you have a higher risk, because you have a higher potential loss than someone with an average valued house; if you live in a flood zone, you have a higher risk because you have a higher probability of sustaining damages. It has nothing to do with fault. Maybe your house in the flood zone is a family homestead you inherited. It's not your fault you have a higher risk. But you pay for your risk. That's all.
Compare it to the auto insurance market, and you'll see how the free market would ACTUALLY respond to such available information: You'd have niche insurers with the tagline, "same low prices, even for those with a less-than-perfect genome," and other insurers who can deep discounts to customers who can document a low genetic risk profile. We already have such a system in place. One type of insurance (group plans) needs to know absolutely nothing about you. The other kind, which which can be cheap if you're very healthy, requires in extremely detailed health history. Having genetic information available might just allow some people to afford insurance who otherwise couldn't -- because they could demonstrate that they were lower risk that the norm.
All that said, Israel should stop killing recklessly. 550 Palestinian deaths to 5 Israeli deaths is so lopsided that it has to be stopped.
Isn't the whole point of war to make it as lopsided as humanly possible?
And the only reckless killing I've seen has been on the side of the Palestinians, despite their poor success rate. The reason many Palestinian civilians are dying as that the Palestinians are relentlessly pursuing the strategy of using their civilian populations and their children as human shields. It's the same thing US rangers faced in Somalia, where a sniper would lie down in the road, a woman would lie down on either side of him, and several children would lie on top of him. The only choices for the ranger are to die or to lob the grenade anyway. We did the latter, and so is Israel. The fact that the international community is rewarding the Palestinians' sickening tactics with sympathy and support only means that there will be further unnecessary loss of civilian life in future conflicts, as the Muslim world is shown that the strategy works.
First off, this WAS DISCRIMINATION and RACISM!...PERIOD
Second off, NOTHING that the airlines are doing accounts to a RATS ASS at improving ANY air security. NOT THE TSA, NOT THE FBI, NOT THE AIR MARSHALLS...NOTHING!
It's total FUD to call it racism. There isn't the slightest indication that race enter into the equation. It would be reasonable to assume that their clothing and beards entered in to level of suspiciousness that they generated, but not their race.
And responding seriously to suspicious behavior is THE MOST EFFECTIVE way of improving security. In this case the pilot possibly screwed up by not verifying for himself the suspiciousness of the behavior before involving the Air Marshals and the FBI.
It should be noted however that we know NOTHING about the level of suspiciousness of the comments that were made. That is, the only thing given is the articles is the explanation by one of the people speaking of why his comments shouldn't have been construed as suspicious... which, without the other side, tells us nothing.
I bet the xenophobic idiot who reported their 'suspicious comments' is pleased with themselves, having delayed their flight by 2 hours.
However bad those passengers may or may not have been in their judgment, you are worse, judging someone and calling them names without even hearing their account of the events.
The article at CNN explicitly stated: "The conversation did not contain the words "bomb," "explosion," "terror" or other words that might have aroused suspicion, Atif Irfan said."
Oh, the person who said the suspicious thing clarified that it shouldn't have raised suspicion. Well, I guess that settles it then.
But neither was the (rather large) family of Hasidic Jews that were aboard my flight from Atlanta to NYC the other day. They dressed different. They had a large family. If their kids were asking which section of the plane was safest, and if they were safe sitting next to the engine, would that have aroused suspicion? I'm guessing not.
What's the point? If there had recently been a number of planes blown out of the sky by groups of Hasidic Jews, then the family of Hasidic Jews would CERTAINLY have aroused more suspicion. And it would be a rational bias. Just like it's a rational bias to have higher suspicion of groups of Muslims, although the vast majority will clearly have peaceable intentions. This is all part of the pattern-recognition faculty with which the human mind is gifted. Don't knock it.
And the only report of the contents of the suspicious comments was by the people making them, explaining why they shouldn't have been construed as suspicious. We don't have the other side. The real failure here seems to be that there was apparently no intermediate level of escalation between a passenger expressing concern to the flight crew, and the pilot calling in the flight marshals to take them off the plane.
Laissez-faire types will hate me for suggesting this, but this is exactly the sort of thing that should lead to anti-discrimination lawsuits. We make a big deal out of prohibiting racial discrimination in employment and housing, so why not in transportation? It's because Muslims are all terrorists... innit?
I remember in the weeks after 9/11 listening to a radio show on NPR where they were discussing whether or not security profiling for Muslims should be done on a wide-spread basis. NPR!!! I don't specifically remember the mood on/. at the time, but I bet it was all-out in favor. 7+ years and the memory of just what the stakes are has all but evaporated.
The passengers were at fault for being racists and reporting a non-issue.
First of all, I assume you mean that they were biased against Muslims. Islam is not a race. Secondly, an increased sensitivity to Muslims as security risks on airliners is a completely rational bias. As you may be aware there are several large Islamic organizations openly calling for the killing of Westerners and other non-muslims, particularly in suicide missions, and airliners have been a historically preferred target. No one should be denied service because of their ethnicity or religion. But, as politically incorrect as it sounds, an airport security guard who doesn't divert a little more attention to Islamic-looking passengers is being negligent. It's Bayesian probability.
The airline was not at fault for handing the matter over to the FBI when the issue was reported. The FBI did the right thing by clearing the family. However, the airline WAS at fault for refusing to let the family fly on any future flight even after they had been cleared by the FBI. There's no legitimate (non-discriminatory) reason to do that given the circumstances.
I think the blame should be distributed entirely differently. The airline DID clear the family to fly once they had heard back from the FBI that they had been cleared, through the appropriate channels. There was apparently some delay in word getting back, and the situation was apparently exacerbated by one of the family members throwing a fit at the ticket counter. But once they heard they cleared him, and they also offered to fly them back home for free. There was no fault by the passengers. They are not supposed to be security experts. If something worries you as a passenger, there's no reason not to talk to the flight crew about it. The problem is that this got escalated from there directly to the flight marshals and the FBI. That is the doing of the pilot. The pilot should have walked back, and talked to the people, and seen what it was all about. And if he was still uncomfortable, then had the flight marshals remove them. In my book, he's the only one at fault.
The fact that incidents like this keep happening show that bin Laden and his cohorts succeeded beyond their wildest dreams on 9/11.
I seriously doubt that Bin Laden could care less if American Muslims are getting delayed to attend religious conferences in Florida. And if he does/did care, I think he would want them to make it on time.
It had nothing to do with race. It was the comments combined with muslim attire. I bet white people with the same beards and attire would have received the same treatment.
I think atheism is just as ridiculous as you think Christianity is. Yet I think your foolish thinking makes you no less of a human being, deserving of dignified treatment. I think you should be given respect, and given platform to fully express your beliefs. I think this because when beliefs are clearly stated in a respectful manner, it is left to the light of reason to chose which is superior and which is inferior; and the light of reason favors the truth. The truth can stand under it's own power in the presence of anyone who desires it. It needs no help from me. It needs no one to shout down, mock, or silence those who speak foolishly. It stands on its own. If you had confidence in your own beliefs, I would think you would similarly extend those same courtesies to those whose beliefs you find foolish. If nothing else, everyone will think better of you for it. Difference of opinion is nothing to fear, except for those who fear being wrong more than they love truth. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth."
Your desire to mock, and your vain confidence in the soundness of your own reasoning, only proves you to be the idiot. No one listens to such a person.
"The cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved; so that he passes a wrong judgment on what is just, good and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself in preference to truth." --Plato
Oh, they may not be right thoughts, but they are free. And so things have come full circle. While it's easy to support freedom when most people are right, do we as a society really support the freedom of people to be wrong?
What if you succeed in silencing them, and it turns out that you were wrong, and you have silenced truth? As Nietzsche said, "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies."
Rather, as Thomas Jefferson said, "We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
That people have an incredible capability of cognitive dissonance and explaining away anything the parts that lead to conflict is fairly well known though.
Personally, I have seen far more stark examples of this in so-called science than in so-called religion. It's the failure to stop and listen to the other side, and to try to think objectively, which prevents you from see where you are falling into the same trap of anti-critical thinking.
It's not just to mock, but it's to point out that it's sort of a package deal - you can't believe in half the commandments, the odd pages of the Bible or whatever. Far too many people simply cherry pick the parts they want, so that they don't have to deal with all the things that are flat out wrong and still believe that everything else is accurate. There's always a good excuse for why some parts shouldn't be taken literally or seriously which happens to fit your own opinion.
Not JUST to mock? Mocking does nothing but make the other side think that your side is antithetical to the things that they already KNOW to be true. It make it impossible for them to come closer to your side. And your extreme lack of humility is blinding you to the fact that a religious person probably studies the bible every day and knows it FAR better than you can hope to, and your criticisms of it are just as shallow and dimwitted in the light of your knowledge as their belief of a 6,000-year-old earth is in the light of scientific knowledge.
The only thing far-fetched is the theory that such technological similarities are purely coincidence. Granted, hypotheses about the WHAT's and HOW's of the connection have pretty much nothing to go on. But I think one of the biggest faulty assumptions in archeology is the discounting stone age ship building. Like many other applications of knowledge, shipbuilding had an ancient peak before it fell into decline, and was eventually resuscitated. Ships aren't made out of stone obviously, so it's pretty hard to preserve them for 10,000 years. However, some come close... in some of the very earliest Egyptian sites there are scores of buried ships used as tombs for pre-dynastic kings. The culture that became Egypt was a sea-faring culture. Even in its later, landlubbing days, they retained parts of the sea-faring culture. The great pyramids all have ships disassembled and buried in chambers surrounding them. One from Khufu's pyramid is today reassembled and on display in a building directly above where it had been buried.
Fascinating! Here's one of the images from the wiki article. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Acapulco_AGU_carolina_bay_poster.jpg I don't see why there's any argument about it. There's no way to get overlapping raised crater rims other than impact events. And the craters are filled with material containing carbon spherules! So it wasn't one single large meteorite impact; it was a whole cloud of smaller meteorites that hit all along the eastern seaboard.
Evidence for the earliest temple mounds in Tallahassee points to 10,000 years ago.
Although there's not much in the way of writing from earlier than 5,000 years or so ago, there is overwhelming cumulative evidence, IMO, that the culture of that time originated from many thousands, probably many tens of thousands of years earlier. One large part of the evidence is the knowledge of astronomy at that time, and astronomical cycles on the scale of thousands of years. (Most of that knowledge was lost, before being rediscovered in more recent times.) Another large part of the evidence lies in the various mythologies. I believe that the earliest known mythologies contain an untapped wealth of information. Just as it is possible to data-mine DNA populations to determine dates of earliest common ancestors, I believe it is possible to do the same with mythologies. All that is lacking is someone smart enough and motivated enough to figure out how to do it.
3) Your comment implies that there is no merit to demonstrating intolerance to bad ideas. That's a very popular conception, and I think that, as a liberal policy, it's been utterly disastrous. Now, clearly, it can be effective in a discussion or argument to assume that the other person is capable of meaningfully participating in that discussion or argument, but that's not the same as tolerating bad ideas. Cultural pressure is one of the great factors in meme progression and suppression, and it needs to be used.
When you don't believe in apodictic truth, it's easy to have reservations about sharing your ideas, because they aren't so much correct as "merely" good. Secularists need to sack up and realize that good is good enough to be loud. Timidity is not a good policy.
Intolerance of ideas is intolerance of reason. It foments the very thing you are trying to oppose. Truth has a power that transcends volume. Loudness is the tool of the thoughtless. I never have, and never will, listen to the ideas of those trying to shout down and silence others. Unless the idea can stand on its own against all opposition, it is useless.
I wouldn't say there's no evidence for it. The strong connections between the Gilgamesh epic and other, generally dissimilar mythologies, the best example perhaps being the connections between the flood myth in Gilgamesh and other flood myths around the world at the same time, is evidence of an earlier common connection.
How can you have "verifiable oral history"? Oral history/mythology connected with Hinduism goes back about 4.5 billion years. Not sure how you'd verify it though.
What does that even been, other than just gratuitous hyperbole? "Censorship is a form of violence"? Please.
You say it's not "appropriate" for minors to see depictions of children having sex. But they SHOULD see it anyway, even though it's inappropriate, right? Cause otherwise... CENSORSHIP! VIOLENCE!
And yes, I believe that the innocence of children is a sacred thing. If you don't believe that, then we have fundamentally divergent views on some of the basics of human reality; so I wouldn't expect us to find much common ground on what kind of society is a good one.
The same argument has been used with regards to violent movies and video games. As of today, there's still no proven link, and there have been claims that, in fact, "letting the steam out" leads to less real-world violence on the whole. I would expect that cartoon (or even realistic) child porn has the same effect on those it affects.
Then again, there's always that "free speech" thing. Unless you can convincingly demosntrate how simulated child porn has "deleterious effects on the society", it should be legal by default - as everything else is. This is the cornerstone of the liberal Western society.
The argument regarding video games is specious. It's not the same thing. The psychological effects, and the psychological origin of sexuality is entirely different. Now, if you were getting sexually aroused by killing people in video games -- then absolutely, playing video games is probably going to lead you to actual violence. But that's not what happens when you play video games, I hope.
Obscenity has NEVER been considered "speech" as protected by the 1st Amendment in the US, nor considered legal be default. Free communication of ideas, opinions, and beliefs is what is the cornerstone of a free society. To me that has absolutely in no conflict with limiting obscenity, any more than it is in conflict with limiting murder and theft. Murder, theft, and obscenity can all be forms of "expression". That doesn't make them protected.
And when the western world see's the result of legislated morality in Islamic countries it's no wonder we in turn demonize them.
You're absolutely right. A sane society would find the rational balance between the two extremes.
I agree with most of what you said though. I would love to see this crap disappear and for western civlization to grow up. I just don't trust the goverment with the keys to make that change. Real social change has to happen without their help or you will simply wind up with a dictatorship.
I agree that in a democracy, or actually any legitimate form of government, the consent of the people must be the driving force behind the laws. The consensus of the people is that they don't want to live in a society where theft and murder runs rampid. Those in society that would prefer to deal in theft and murder are out of luck. Society can reach the same consensus about child porn or any other kind of obscenity if it chooses. In a republic, it's up to the legislature (and hopefully not decided by the judiciary) whether or not that is the consensus of the people.
However, I don't think you'll ever get that kind of change without the involvement of law. There will always be elements of every society that falls as low as is permitted. History is overflowing with examples of just how low that can be. There is literally no limit.
An equals sign is not, beyond a reasonable doubt, a depiction of an adult raping a child. And no sane juror would conclude it was. And yes, our freedoms are entirely based upon having sane jurors.
You are more dangerous deluded than even the Taliban-types, because, for all their faults, they at least understand that the distribution of pictures of adults raping children is harmful to society, and you do not.
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I disagree with your fundamental concept of insurance. Insurance is a product for risk management. It allows you to pay directly for your risk, in the form of a premium instead of paying for actual damages from the risk. For this to work... that is for the product to be valuable to consumers, and profitable to insurers, each customer needs to pay for his risk. e.g. in home insurance, if you have a $2mil house, you have a higher risk, because you have a higher potential loss than someone with an average valued house; if you live in a flood zone, you have a higher risk because you have a higher probability of sustaining damages. It has nothing to do with fault. Maybe your house in the flood zone is a family homestead you inherited. It's not your fault you have a higher risk. But you pay for your risk. That's all.
Compare it to the auto insurance market, and you'll see how the free market would ACTUALLY respond to such available information: You'd have niche insurers with the tagline, "same low prices, even for those with a less-than-perfect genome," and other insurers who can deep discounts to customers who can document a low genetic risk profile. We already have such a system in place. One type of insurance (group plans) needs to know absolutely nothing about you. The other kind, which which can be cheap if you're very healthy, requires in extremely detailed health history. Having genetic information available might just allow some people to afford insurance who otherwise couldn't -- because they could demonstrate that they were lower risk that the norm.
Isn't the whole point of war to make it as lopsided as humanly possible?
And the only reckless killing I've seen has been on the side of the Palestinians, despite their poor success rate. The reason many Palestinian civilians are dying as that the Palestinians are relentlessly pursuing the strategy of using their civilian populations and their children as human shields. It's the same thing US rangers faced in Somalia, where a sniper would lie down in the road, a woman would lie down on either side of him, and several children would lie on top of him. The only choices for the ranger are to die or to lob the grenade anyway. We did the latter, and so is Israel. The fact that the international community is rewarding the Palestinians' sickening tactics with sympathy and support only means that there will be further unnecessary loss of civilian life in future conflicts, as the Muslim world is shown that the strategy works.
It's total FUD to call it racism. There isn't the slightest indication that race enter into the equation. It would be reasonable to assume that their clothing and beards entered in to level of suspiciousness that they generated, but not their race.
And responding seriously to suspicious behavior is THE MOST EFFECTIVE way of improving security. In this case the pilot possibly screwed up by not verifying for himself the suspiciousness of the behavior before involving the Air Marshals and the FBI.
It should be noted however that we know NOTHING about the level of suspiciousness of the comments that were made. That is, the only thing given is the articles is the explanation by one of the people speaking of why his comments shouldn't have been construed as suspicious... which, without the other side, tells us nothing.
However bad those passengers may or may not have been in their judgment, you are worse, judging someone and calling them names without even hearing their account of the events.
Oh, the person who said the suspicious thing clarified that it shouldn't have raised suspicion. Well, I guess that settles it then.
What's the point? If there had recently been a number of planes blown out of the sky by groups of Hasidic Jews, then the family of Hasidic Jews would CERTAINLY have aroused more suspicion. And it would be a rational bias. Just like it's a rational bias to have higher suspicion of groups of Muslims, although the vast majority will clearly have peaceable intentions. This is all part of the pattern-recognition faculty with which the human mind is gifted. Don't knock it.
And the only report of the contents of the suspicious comments was by the people making them, explaining why they shouldn't have been construed as suspicious. We don't have the other side. The real failure here seems to be that there was apparently no intermediate level of escalation between a passenger expressing concern to the flight crew, and the pilot calling in the flight marshals to take them off the plane.
I remember in the weeks after 9/11 listening to a radio show on NPR where they were discussing whether or not security profiling for Muslims should be done on a wide-spread basis. NPR!!! I don't specifically remember the mood on /. at the time, but I bet it was all-out in favor. 7+ years and the memory of just what the stakes are has all but evaporated.
1) Nobody got treated like dirt. 2) Yes, being US-born or foreign-born has a very large and legitimate impact on a person's security profile.
First of all, I assume you mean that they were biased against Muslims. Islam is not a race. Secondly, an increased sensitivity to Muslims as security risks on airliners is a completely rational bias. As you may be aware there are several large Islamic organizations openly calling for the killing of Westerners and other non-muslims, particularly in suicide missions, and airliners have been a historically preferred target. No one should be denied service because of their ethnicity or religion. But, as politically incorrect as it sounds, an airport security guard who doesn't divert a little more attention to Islamic-looking passengers is being negligent. It's Bayesian probability.
I think the blame should be distributed entirely differently. The airline DID clear the family to fly once they had heard back from the FBI that they had been cleared, through the appropriate channels. There was apparently some delay in word getting back, and the situation was apparently exacerbated by one of the family members throwing a fit at the ticket counter. But once they heard they cleared him, and they also offered to fly them back home for free. There was no fault by the passengers. They are not supposed to be security experts. If something worries you as a passenger, there's no reason not to talk to the flight crew about it. The problem is that this got escalated from there directly to the flight marshals and the FBI. That is the doing of the pilot. The pilot should have walked back, and talked to the people, and seen what it was all about. And if he was still uncomfortable, then had the flight marshals remove them. In my book, he's the only one at fault.
I seriously doubt that Bin Laden could care less if American Muslims are getting delayed to attend religious conferences in Florida. And if he does/did care, I think he would want them to make it on time.
It had nothing to do with race. It was the comments combined with muslim attire. I bet white people with the same beards and attire would have received the same treatment.
I think atheism is just as ridiculous as you think Christianity is. Yet I think your foolish thinking makes you no less of a human being, deserving of dignified treatment. I think you should be given respect, and given platform to fully express your beliefs. I think this because when beliefs are clearly stated in a respectful manner, it is left to the light of reason to chose which is superior and which is inferior; and the light of reason favors the truth. The truth can stand under it's own power in the presence of anyone who desires it. It needs no help from me. It needs no one to shout down, mock, or silence those who speak foolishly. It stands on its own. If you had confidence in your own beliefs, I would think you would similarly extend those same courtesies to those whose beliefs you find foolish. If nothing else, everyone will think better of you for it. Difference of opinion is nothing to fear, except for those who fear being wrong more than they love truth. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth."
Your desire to mock, and your vain confidence in the soundness of your own reasoning, only proves you to be the idiot. No one listens to such a person.
"The cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved; so that he passes a wrong judgment on what is just, good and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself in preference to truth." --Plato
What if you succeed in silencing them, and it turns out that you were wrong, and you have silenced truth? As Nietzsche said, "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies."
Rather, as Thomas Jefferson said, "We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
Personally, I have seen far more stark examples of this in so-called science than in so-called religion. It's the failure to stop and listen to the other side, and to try to think objectively, which prevents you from see where you are falling into the same trap of anti-critical thinking.
Not JUST to mock? Mocking does nothing but make the other side think that your side is antithetical to the things that they already KNOW to be true. It make it impossible for them to come closer to your side. And your extreme lack of humility is blinding you to the fact that a religious person probably studies the bible every day and knows it FAR better than you can hope to, and your criticisms of it are just as shallow and dimwitted in the light of your knowledge as their belief of a 6,000-year-old earth is in the light of scientific knowledge.
The only thing far-fetched is the theory that such technological similarities are purely coincidence. Granted, hypotheses about the WHAT's and HOW's of the connection have pretty much nothing to go on. But I think one of the biggest faulty assumptions in archeology is the discounting stone age ship building. Like many other applications of knowledge, shipbuilding had an ancient peak before it fell into decline, and was eventually resuscitated. Ships aren't made out of stone obviously, so it's pretty hard to preserve them for 10,000 years. However, some come close... in some of the very earliest Egyptian sites there are scores of buried ships used as tombs for pre-dynastic kings. The culture that became Egypt was a sea-faring culture. Even in its later, landlubbing days, they retained parts of the sea-faring culture. The great pyramids all have ships disassembled and buried in chambers surrounding them. One from Khufu's pyramid is today reassembled and on display in a building directly above where it had been buried.
Fascinating! Here's one of the images from the wiki article. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Acapulco_AGU_carolina_bay_poster.jpg I don't see why there's any argument about it. There's no way to get overlapping raised crater rims other than impact events. And the craters are filled with material containing carbon spherules! So it wasn't one single large meteorite impact; it was a whole cloud of smaller meteorites that hit all along the eastern seaboard.
Evidence for the earliest temple mounds in Tallahassee points to 10,000 years ago.
Although there's not much in the way of writing from earlier than 5,000 years or so ago, there is overwhelming cumulative evidence, IMO, that the culture of that time originated from many thousands, probably many tens of thousands of years earlier. One large part of the evidence is the knowledge of astronomy at that time, and astronomical cycles on the scale of thousands of years. (Most of that knowledge was lost, before being rediscovered in more recent times.) Another large part of the evidence lies in the various mythologies. I believe that the earliest known mythologies contain an untapped wealth of information. Just as it is possible to data-mine DNA populations to determine dates of earliest common ancestors, I believe it is possible to do the same with mythologies. All that is lacking is someone smart enough and motivated enough to figure out how to do it.
Intolerance of ideas is intolerance of reason. It foments the very thing you are trying to oppose. Truth has a power that transcends volume. Loudness is the tool of the thoughtless. I never have, and never will, listen to the ideas of those trying to shout down and silence others. Unless the idea can stand on its own against all opposition, it is useless.
I wouldn't say there's no evidence for it. The strong connections between the Gilgamesh epic and other, generally dissimilar mythologies, the best example perhaps being the connections between the flood myth in Gilgamesh and other flood myths around the world at the same time, is evidence of an earlier common connection.
How can you have "verifiable oral history"? Oral history/mythology connected with Hinduism goes back about 4.5 billion years. Not sure how you'd verify it though.
What does that even been, other than just gratuitous hyperbole? "Censorship is a form of violence"? Please.
You say it's not "appropriate" for minors to see depictions of children having sex. But they SHOULD see it anyway, even though it's inappropriate, right? Cause otherwise... CENSORSHIP! VIOLENCE!
And yes, I believe that the innocence of children is a sacred thing. If you don't believe that, then we have fundamentally divergent views on some of the basics of human reality; so I wouldn't expect us to find much common ground on what kind of society is a good one.
The argument regarding video games is specious. It's not the same thing. The psychological effects, and the psychological origin of sexuality is entirely different. Now, if you were getting sexually aroused by killing people in video games -- then absolutely, playing video games is probably going to lead you to actual violence. But that's not what happens when you play video games, I hope.
Obscenity has NEVER been considered "speech" as protected by the 1st Amendment in the US, nor considered legal be default. Free communication of ideas, opinions, and beliefs is what is the cornerstone of a free society. To me that has absolutely in no conflict with limiting obscenity, any more than it is in conflict with limiting murder and theft. Murder, theft, and obscenity can all be forms of "expression". That doesn't make them protected.
You're absolutely right. A sane society would find the rational balance between the two extremes.
I agree that in a democracy, or actually any legitimate form of government, the consent of the people must be the driving force behind the laws. The consensus of the people is that they don't want to live in a society where theft and murder runs rampid. Those in society that would prefer to deal in theft and murder are out of luck. Society can reach the same consensus about child porn or any other kind of obscenity if it chooses. In a republic, it's up to the legislature (and hopefully not decided by the judiciary) whether or not that is the consensus of the people.
However, I don't think you'll ever get that kind of change without the involvement of law. There will always be elements of every society that falls as low as is permitted. History is overflowing with examples of just how low that can be. There is literally no limit.
An equals sign is not, beyond a reasonable doubt, a depiction of an adult raping a child. And no sane juror would conclude it was. And yes, our freedoms are entirely based upon having sane jurors.
You are more dangerous deluded than even the Taliban-types, because, for all their faults, they at least understand that the distribution of pictures of adults raping children is harmful to society, and you do not.