If onl;y sarcastic, then you do not live by the Golden Rule and do not care that your friends are being led astray by immoral ideologies.

You might want to get more moral. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You advocated a rule that the state should dictate right and wrong. I've asked to chair the committee so that I can pack it full of those who follow my lead. That you don't like my sense of morality sucks for you. You're not on the committee. And that was my point about sarcastically suggesting that the state should be in charge of dictating morality. It's the very reason we don't have a state run religion. It seems hardly relevant whether we call our religion Christianity or Secularism. The objection is in trying to enforce morality on the public. Your personal belief that the Golden Rule is the sole correct moral ideology seems awful Christian of you.

A good beginning that. Let's be led by the best while showing why we reject the worst — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I was being sarcastic. But, should it have been for real, I get to be the decider of right and wrong.

Should secular law do something against the religions that preach and teach poor morals and laws that are the opposite of the better secular law we live by? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I think the state should lay out in a book what is right and what is wrong and make it required reading regardless of the views of the student and his family. That sounds like a great idea.

Not to overly simplify, but it seems obvious that conflicts arise over disputed beliefs about something, not necessarily religion, but something. It might be a belief over who has the right to land, to resources, to slaves, to citizenship, to civil rights, or to whatever, including who one ought worship. We can no more silence religious beliefs than any secular ideology. But I do agree, should we all calm our passions and mute our beliefs, we will end conflict. The potted plant has yet to wage war.

We needn't do our own micro-study because this has all been previously done for us. E.g. http://www.unz.com/anepigone/correlation-between-iq-and-educationa/

My take on the whole thing is: (1) society has elevated irrelevance to the point that the irrelevant have become objects of worship (all he does is catch footballs for God's sake), (2) he recognizes his worth and would rather use it to stroke his ego than to just earn a paycheck, (3) his coach would rather lose the player who will win him games than to humble himself to keep the player.

Unless it's my own kid on the field, I'm not interested in watching, and think it's weird to go watch stranger's kids play games.

Animal suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_suicide

So there's all kinds of grammatical errors which are not corrected when I post, yet for some odd reason a double space after a period is corrected. Why? Is the double space such an evil thing that it is singled out as the one thing which needs to be corrected — Metaphysician Undercover

Computers, unlike typewriters, auto format, with some fonts having letters of differing sizes, and some fully justify the words on both margins. This causes the computer to reformat the spacing. It's not correcting grammar or punctuation. It's just formatting.

You might be able to find a manual typewriter on eBay to resolve your problem.

It's an interesting question because it points out this isn't exclusively a US thing. In the UK, Scotland was given certain home rule powers, for example. I'd suspect we could find many examples of central governments yielding power to localities. I think we'd all like to see the local revolt prevail in Hong Kong.

The war between one spacers and double spacers: https://lifehacker.com/no-you-still-shouldnt-put-two-spaces-after-a-period-1825662114

You show your age it seems.

I don't read the article as dependent on a synchronistic between the history of Rome and of the USA.

What is being compared is the development of local autonomy in both as they decline. This seems to me a valid comparison, despite other differences in their history. — Banno

My reading of the article was not as suggested by many of the posters, that the US is in a tail spin. I read it as emphasizing the incompetence of the federal government and the increased reliance on local government. This insight is consistent with conservative ideology, which never believed in a large federal presence and would welcome a return to a weakened fed and stronger local rule.

States' rights advocates have a valid point in terms of creating better solutions to problems through local rule, but most unfortunately too many states rights' folks are screaming racists.

The point being that reliance on local rule is a good thing, not a sign of the apocalypse, unless, of course, you're a European style socialist who can't imagine not having government involved in every aspect of your life.

Your hero :wink:

There's nothing inherently good about joy. — StreetlightX

Even joy is miserable in the pessimist's view of the universe.

People are too easily impressed. Then they get ideas. Like God. Which only adds to the misery of the universe. It's awful — StreetlightX

Under any scenario there will be no satisfactory explanation for the origin of it all, meaning explaining the first cause is likely impossible and not a fully coherent question. That would be the case whether the universe were complex or not.

God hasn't added to the misery of the universe though, as it seems the theists are preaching a more joyful existence than their opposites, certainly in this thread at least.

And here lies perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the universe, which is your conscious experience of it and your ethical evaluation of it. From the primordial mass came that, which, even if it arose through billions of years of trial and error, is an amazing feat.

But what is your motivation in assuring us that the universe isn't so amazing, but is instead a veritable junk pile of odds and ends strewn about over the millennia? It seems you wish to be the counterbalance to the wide eyed child who gazes in awe at the starlit sky.

Can we come to an agreed description of God, or is that just a pipe dream? — Pattern-chaser

I'm reading a book about the curious religion of Mormonism, where they describe a corporeal anthropomorphic God, fully endowed with all human attributes, including not just eyes and ears, but emotions. The trinity to them is that there are three separate gods, making it polytheistic. God is not actually the creator to them, as they believe matter has existed for eternity, with God simply organizing what there has always been.

So what is God universally? I don't think there is such a thing. Even within religions, you have disagreements, especially as religions evolve over time. There was a time when Judaism was not monotheistic, although today it rests upon that as its defining characteristic.

I think it would be difficult to disprove evolution with ID arguments when the inherent premise is that evolution is an intelligent process (because it serves necessity and has utility). — BrianW

Right, and the inverse is true, which is that clear evidence of evolution does not disprove ID.

Also, intelligence doesn't necessarily imply a supreme being, it could be an interactive operation which is what nature is. — BrianW

ID isn't a specifically defined ideology, and many theists have used it to try to support Creationism and the like. But, if we take ID simply as a restatement of Paley's teleological argument for the existence of God, then we're not required to conclude that evidence of intelligence design requires a supreme being, but only that it requires an intelligence designer. I would agree that simpler systems can yield more complex systems as well, meaning the designed being could be more intelligent than its designer. For example, it is not hypothetically impossible that humans may one day create robots superior in every way to humans, which would mean that we could create our own God worthy of worship.

Sorry, but this is long, although on topic, as poetry after Dawkins: — PoeticUniverse

I read Dawkins' book (The Blind Watchmaker), which purportedly disproved Paley's teleological argument. I found it unpersuasive as to the philosophical claim because I don't think he proved an unintelligent system. What I think he did do was offer a detailed primer on evolution for those interested, but I don't think evolution precludes a purpose driven designer. The question of ultimate origin is unanswerable, so saying that the basic building blocks of the universe have existed eternally and today's reality is the end result of the interaction of those building blocks is no more or less satisfactory than positing some heavenly creator that dropped those building blocks into reality and then let nature take its course.

It's true that none of this preludes the idea that God really is a bumbling idiot, and if anything, is a quite a nice thought. — StreetlightX

If you arrived at a method for transforming a most basic primordial substance into the world we currently have, I'd think you pretty clever. Not infinitly wise, but crazy smart, and certainly not a bumbling idiot.

Which is easier to accept, that there is no intelligence in the design or that it is wrong to conclude that everything was made solely for humans? — BrianW

The latter dispute (whether the ultimate purpose of the intelligent designer were to design humans) seems largely a straw man. I say largely because I guess there might actually be some intelligent design believers who hold it, but it seems an aside to the general proposition that the complexity of the world (from the spinning of the planets to the human eyeball) arose from purpose rather than trial and error. I take ID to be an attempt to disprove evolution generally, not a developed theological position that attempts to establish a basis for why humans ought have dominion over the earth.

At its base, intelligent design is a failed argument for sure, but I don't think pointing out that there are more efficient designs does anything other than removing the omnipotence of the intelligent designer. That is, we can still allow for an intelligent designer even with your criticism, but we'd just have to admit he's pretty intelligent, but not infinitely intelligent.

These are like Readers Digest/dad jokes.

I have no idea how to unmerge. — Baden

Unmerging is always messy. Always.

I think we should name it The Philosophy Forum. It's not a big difference, but I think the extra space after the word Philosophy adds a certain class.

Edit: The software automatically edits out the extra space, so you'll have to use your imagination, or I can come over to your house and show you with a pen and paper.

Right. The typical anti-natalist stuff always involves people explaining why they think that people are entitled to have children, whereas his discussion involves people explaining why they think that people are entitled to have children. — S

I think that's an overly literal interpretation of the OP. Where you say "have children," I'd substitute it with X, where the question is why anyone is entitled to anything.

I'm confused that the thread got merged, especially when the other thread specified that he didn't want to get into the typical antinatalist stuff. — Terrapin Station

I agree that this discussion merger didn't pay close attention to what the OP was asking. I took this more recent discussion as asking what the bases of rights were, with the question of whether one should have the right to have children just an example of what might be a fundamental right.

It definitely isn't, because those whose arguable justification depends on the existence of a Creator have the infinitely harder task of first establishing the existence of a Creator.

Atheists can easily appeal to the moral sentiment common to us all. — S

There isn't a universal cross-cultural moral sentiment. The Saudi Arabian government, for example, does not acknowledge their immorality, but it instead believes it to be enforcing what is just.

Regardless, if you leave to the democracy what rights one should have, then you're not talking about rights in the inalienable sense, but you're just talking only about current public sentiment. The idea behind rights (as I see it at least) is that there are certain things every person should have regardless of the opinions of others. If I have the right to free speech, that means that no government can take it from me. I own it, even if all the population thinks I'm undeserving. It's the distinction between relative and absolute, and you can't have an absolute if it rests in something that is dependent upon the culture, the time, or the idiosyncrasies of the current population pool.

On the other hand, if the right is rooted in something immutable, then the universe must revolve around it, and not vice versa. But to your point, there is no proving God's existence, so if one cannot hold to such a belief, one cannot hold to a belief in rights.

Let's look more closely at this particular claim that we have a right to reproduce, and at the whole concept of entitlements or rights, the belief in which I think might be worth examining. — petrichor

If we are to begin with the assumption that there are certain rights that every person has just by virtue of their existence, then I would argue that the right to reproduce is one of them within certain limits, of course, as we can always concoct a scenario where the exercise of any right would lead to societal destruction.

When we talk about rights, at least in the American context, there is the claim that they are endowed by our Creator, which is a religious reference. Atheists also believe we have all sorts of rights, but I think it's harder for them to establish a basis for them.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that but there really is no neutral choice in natural-unnatural or normal-abnormal distinction. I needed the LGBT rainbow to emphasize the qualitative aspect of the issue. Sorry to all homosexuals. — TheMadFool

The neutral words would be "less common." It's less common to be gay, black, a philosopher, or an Indian chief. Because most people aren't black doesn't make being black abnormal or unnatural in the way those terms are typically used. To say there were 2 normal people in the room along with a couple of blacks would be racist even should you offer the same heartfelt apology to them as you did to the homosexuals in this thread.

If all you mean to say is that homosexuality is a statistically less likely sexual preference than heterosexuality, then just say that and avoid the judgment laden terms. Of course, just stating the obvious wouldn't give you much to talk about.

For the last time, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was your mother.

I'm not a homophobic and would like readers to simply concentrate on the natural-unnatural distinction. — TheMadFool

You've presented a homophobic argument, so the personal disclaimer appears inconsistent. The term "unnatural" carries a negative connotation, so your definition, which only references objective statistical claims, cannot attach to that word. It's like saying "fucked up" means those behaviors that fall outside the statistical norm, so therefore gays are fucked up (as are Jews, pianists, and philosophers, to name just a few).

A cat with no arms or legs isn't a snake. It's a doorstop.

A cat with no arms and legs is a snake. — S

A cat with arms is a fucked up cat.

I couldn't listen to that box of toys.

It should really be restricted to expressing surprise, interest, or emphasis. It doesn't really make much difference in a sentence otherwise. — Baden

It can also be used to try to clarify if something really is true. If I said "'Really' means duck in French," you might say, "really"?, and I'd say, "no, not really."

Ya think? Ya'lls wrong on that — Sir2u

Oh, the irony in telling us you can speak in all tongues. Y'all (not ya'll) is a contraction of you all. It is the Southern American informal plural of "you." It would therefore be "y'all're (y'all are) wrong, not y'alls. Yous is the plural of you in northern England (where it sounds like you're from), so perhaps you combined y'all and yous into single mismatched slang. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yous

I had a friend (you'd call him a "mate" because you guys mate your friends) who spoke this rhyming Cockney talk that seemed sort of cool, but it was a little stupid too. If you could talk that way, I'd appreciate it.

That makes three of us, you and me too. Unless Manchester managed to gain its independence from England without me knowing. — Sir2u

You speak British, an antiquated English, the form spoken prior to the American corrections and perfection.

Without trying to be mean or anything, but does anyone really care what you say. :wink: — Sir2u

Hopefully, as I'm a native English speaker.

According to the Book, Adam and Eve were punished with mortality and other ugly stuff after they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. — TheMadFool

There is good argument that the "good and evil" reference is a literary device intended to mean knowledge of everything, not just of morality (the juxtaposition of opposites to make that point). See also Genesis 3:22. Compare 2 Sam 14:17 to 2 Sam 14:20.