I didn't think anyone could be worse than Trump as a candidate. But DeSantis may actually be worse. He seems like a meaner, dumber, younger and less charismatic version of Trump. Of all the things DeSantis could attack Trump on, he chooses to go after Trump being too friendly with LBTQ+. That's running an ad with a slogan like "He's not close-minded enough."

Well, I think this shows that there is a complicated dynamic going on. It's not just about Trump, it is about the movement he created it or I would say tapped into. The conservative Tea Party was probably one of the main movements that he tapped into and won over. Another time Trump got booed on stage was when he talked about being vaccinated and taking credit for how fast the vaccine rolled out. It just goes to show you that even though the MAGA base is fiercely loyal to Trump if he diverges too far from their core values or beliefs they will boo him and voice their disapproval.

Lindsey Graham getting booed off stage at a recent Trump rally in SC was very interesting to me because it showed us a few things. Even though Graham has been a Trump sycophant, he has wavered enough to be seen as disloyal. In an authoritarian regime, nothing is worse than disloyalty and if you fail that test, the faithful will cast you out. Even Trump, who tried to defend Lindsey afterwards, got booed! That was amazing because it shows that even though Trump is the revered leader in this movement, he has tapped into something that is almost religious in nature, with the "faithful" not able to tolerate certain "sins."

People seem to get themselves worked up in knots over these discussions. "In my day, men were men and women were women, by gawd!" seems to be a driving sentiment from conservatives. But in every generation, there has been some blurring of the lines. There were transvestites when I was young, men grew long hair in the 1960's and when you go back even further men had long hair bound with ribbons -- sometimes powdered wigs -- and wore hose, high heel shoes, and make-up. If you could go back in time, you'd think the American founding fathers were effeminate drag queens based on their appearance.

The strictly biological answer could be about how a man is an adult human with XY chromosomes, and that is easy enough. But the more one thinks about it 'being a man' is an abstraction... it's a personal identity, a social identity, and the biological answer is only the starting point, not the end point. So, there is no definitive or all encompassing answer for what masculinity is. If I tried to take a stab at it, I'd say masculinity is a set of behaviors biological males tend to exhibit and society expects men to have, both good and bad. Since men often exhibit these behaviors and also are expected to, it forms a closed circle of selective reinforcement.

I am old enough to remember when Reagan got elected and people made a big deal out of the fact that he'd been an actor -- in a negative way, as if that somehow disqualified him. "He's an actor who plays cowboys, he's not really a cowboy! And now he's an actor playing a President, he's not really a President!" That sort of thing. But to be fair, Ronald Reagan had been involved in politics for sometime and was Governor of California and had become educated by the time he ran for President. I am no Reagan fan, but he was much more qualified for the job than Trump. The idea that Reagan wasn't 'serious' when compared to Republicans of today like Trump, MTG, Boebert, Jordan... well, that just makes me long for the old days. Even Nixon, when he knew he was caught and the evidence was all against him, had the sense to resign. Now we're living in Bizarro-land with conservatives and liberals not able to refer to the same set of facts when having conversations.

Most Republicans I know are good people. They go to work, pay their bills on time, are decent to their friends and neighbors, good parents, etc. If any of them had a kid who acted like Trump they would say, "Stop being a sore loser. Stop accusing the game of being rigged every time you lose. Stop fighting with the referees." That's why it amazes me that so many of them support Trump, seemingly unconditionally. Trump is the quintessential sore loser, a spoiled brat... it's only okay when he wins -- when someone else wins, it's because they cheated. We all knew someone like that when we were young, didn't we? No one wants to play with that kid, and every decent parent knows it. So they usually put a stop to that behavior. But with Donald Trump, they support it...

Hi Fred. Yes, I am the same GRWelsh. It's good to see you here! I saw wonderer here as well... It looks like we're migrating.

Mostly, what I hear from Republicans is the "what about Hillary?" defense which really isn't a defense. If Hillary, Biden, and Pence all mishandled classified documents each of those cases should be investigated on its own merits. How those are handled -- whether you think it is correct or incorrect -- has no bearing on the Trump case. None of that exonerates Trump. Also, there is the issue of cooperation vs. obstruction. It really hurts Trump's case if it comes out that he willfully obstructed this investigation. The phrase "self-inflicted wound" seems most appropriate. All Trump had to do was cooperate and return the documents when they were originally requested. Trump could have easily avoided this if he wasn't so sloppy, arrogant and uncooperative.

This topic reminds me of the skeptical theism response to the evidential problem of evil: "We're just not in a position to be able to say that what appears to be gratuitous suffering in fact is..." But that is all we ever do in medicine: to try to eliminate suffering without truly knowing that if in the long run we'll do more harm than good. What's the alternative? Not try to eliminate diseases?

We can either sit back and do nothing citing our lack of omniscience, or do things that we intend to have good consequences but can possibly have bad consequences, and learn as we go. I prefer the latter option.

Can the persons of the Trinity disagree with each other?

Now you're the one making a claim. Has it been established to be impossible? If not, what's left? — noAxioms

I'm not saying it has been established to be impossible, but that it hasn't been established to be possible. It hasn't to my knowledge. But, I'll just stick to asking a question: has this been established as possible? What is the argument and evidence to back up that claim?

Why should we value facts, in other words? You could argue that without a baseline religion we don't have any justification to value anything -- including facts. The answer may devolve into subjectivity, and you may value, for example, comfort over facts. If so, you may not be that interested learning facts that conflict with your worldview. That might even be the default state for many humans. They have what they believe and dislike anything that conflicts with it -- including new facts. So they reject them. Learning new facts is often uncomfortable or even quite costly. My argument for why we should all want to know the facts is that in the long run it is almost always makes you more survivable and better able to compete against others. Also, if you do value comfort, knowing the facts of reality improves your chances of being able to maintain that comfort more effectively for a longer period of time. Finally, I would say that we should value fact simply because we all have a model of the world in our heads and the default assumption for all of us -- whether we articulate this or not -- is that we want to it match reality as closely as possible. No one models the world so they can be wrong about it.

Pretend not to notice that religious texts, although they do not clearly make the fact/value distinction, are primarily concerned with 'first philosophy' – how one should live, what virtues to cultivate and what vices to resist, and what values to hold to one's heart and live by. — unenlightened

I disagree with the OP. I think the writers of the Bible would have been able to make the distinction between fact and value. The question of whether these things "really happened" came up and was important to ancient people, and there was skepticism among them. That was around long before Hume. Religion wasn't only about the 'first philosophy' of how to live a good life, it was also making claims about reality and what happened. Ancient people were able to distinguish between parables, myths, or lies versus reality. Otherwise, you wouldn't have passages about the doubting Thomas or reassurances that Noah was a real person and the Flood really happened.

As modern atheists we are not being dogmatic in asking if the claims in the Bible are supported by facts and evidence. Modern theists should have the same attitude. We should all want to know the facts, whether or not they agree with a particular religious tradition.

Not a matter of proof. It's a function of the model behind which one chooses to stand. If the model (not reality) predicts a greater likelihood of being a BB, then the model cannot be justified. It is simply a method of discarding not wrong models, but the unjustifiable ones. If reality happens to actually correspond to something like that, then the nature of reality literally cannot be known.

The claim is "in an infinite duration we are more likely to be a disembodied brain." I am questioning why we should accept that claim of probability? And especially why should we accept it when it hasn't even been established that a disembodied brain -- simply appearing in space and time with false memories and lacking any sense organs -- is possible. If no support is offered to support this claim, why should I accept it? In other words, I don't see why, given an infinite duration, we should accept that we are more likely to be Boltzmann Brains than what we think we are (embodied brains living on earth). Shouldn't it first have to be established that Boltzmann Brains are possible? Where is the argument and evidence for that?

Inflation seems like nothing more than the power to pass along misfortune to the least fortunate groups.

Now we’re left to wonder why we must submit to a group of men which has no naturally or supernaturally-derived authority. — NOS4A2

Probably because politics is the only game in town. The alternative is anarchy, which doesn't work for large groups. There is a reason anarchy has a negative connotation. A consequence of not having a political authority is not having any laws. You can't have laws without an authority to enact and enforce them. Try to live in a lawless society where everyone does what they want since no one else has any authority to stop them or punish them. A lawless and anarchic society won't be able to organize as effectively against outside threats, either. It will be vulnerable to threats from both within and without. It is simply not feasible or sustainable. As social creatures, we can't get away from political authority developing -- all we can do is try to develop the least offensive version.

Property qualification is a good example for the discussion. Still, it is worth making a distinction between a plutocracy meaning "rule by the rich" and property qualification meaning a prerequisite of a certain amount or kind of wealth in order to be eligible to participate in the political system. Another example that might be feudalism where only royalty and nobility can own land and the serfs can only work the land. The oddity in feudalism is how it can develop over time so that some nobles can retain their titles and yet lose their wealth, and commoners like a rising middle class of merchants or guildsmen can acquire wealth, so even that isn't a perfect match for plutocracy.

We should abolish the debt ceiling. It does nothing but to create an artificial crisis every few years. The debt ceiling has not accomplished anything. A credit limit is not what makes me a responsible borrower, and the same applies to the nation as a whole. You don't want to waste all of your money paying interest? Well, then pay on the principal and start reducing the debt. I've been living completely debt free for the past five years and my credit limit is completely irrelevant at this point because I keep paying my bills as I go. Any time I do make a large credit purchase I pay it off in a timely manner -- I don't keep floating my debt along for years or decades since that would just be an insane waste of my resources.

How can you even prove that disembodied brains are possible? The only examples of brains that we have are as parts of bodies. I can't see how anyone could argue that they are more likely without first establishing that they are possible, and so far I don't think anyone has done that.

It seems we could have two responses to this. First, we could say euphemistically that "every form of a government is a plutocracy" since the wealthy almost always have a disproportionate amount of influence in government regardless of the system. The other response would adhere to the technical definitions and say an actual plutocracy is only a political system in which the wealthy rule by the way the system is formally defined (i.e. you have to be wealthy as a pre-requisite to be eligible to serve in government as outlined in the law, constitution, etc.). And I don't know if there are or ever have been any political systems like that.

Good to see you, too, wonderer! I was not enjoying the new Reasonable Faith forum format at KnowWhyYouBelieve and was looking for a new place online to have philosophical discussions and someone suggested The Philosophy Forum, so here I am! Recently, I was thinking of how when I first started to post online it was the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, and that was 25 years ago!

The nuclear proliferation we're experiencing is currently unsustainable. So is the way we're addressing climate change. The idea that some governments can participate in reducing emissions while others opt out isn't going to work in the long run. And the proliferation of nuclear weapons under the control of multiple sovereign nations can only end one way since eventually someone will use them. A one world government is inevitable but it probably won't happen until we have a nuclear war and/or when global warming is out of control. When those things are obviously destroying us there will be finally enough impetus to form a one world government. It will be a unite or die situation. The fear is that the one world government will be authoritarian and not have any checks and balances in place. Look at Russia or North Korea, for example. There is no legal route to remove a dictator from power. You can't vote him out, impeach him, override his power constitutionally, etc. That's terrifying, and with good reason. But a government similar to that of the USA with a balance of power and a constitution would probably be the best case scenario. It isn't perfect but does allow for criticism with free speech and legal methods to enact change when people are unhappy with the way it is going.

Belief in political authority is not a superstition which by definition is belief in supernatural entities or causes. Political authority is an abstract concept but isn't a superstition except with rare exceptions of divine right or theocracies. Most political authority arises from secular reasons like security and efficiency. You can have social experiments of anarchy, libertarianism, communism, democracy, etc. where all are equal and no one has power over anyone else. But the experiments always break down for larger groups in the face of real world problems. Hierarchies organically emerge such as to defend against military threats from outside the group, or to deal with trouble makers within the group. No particular political system is inevitable but in large groups some political system is inevitable.

I would argue instead that monotheism is the most dangerous superstition because it fosters the belief in absolutes which can justify even the worst atrocities. One could argue that this applies to any sort of dogma or ideology, if fervently believed in enough, but those things are man-made and it is only when it believed to be from a higher power that it becomes absolute and unquestionable. Just think of the horrors of the inquisition, with all of the ingenious torture devices that were invented, all for the purpose of saving the souls of the heretics.

I have a theory that very few people are involuntarily celibate, and that most who identify as incel or femcel are in fact voluntarily celibate. They may not want to admit this, but if they have given up in frustration and then spend their time on the internet complaining, that is itself a choice. Also, the availability of male and female escorts (i.e. prostitutes) mean very few people have to be involuntarily celibate. That may not be the ideal way to avoid celibacy, but there is no denying it is an option. People choose to spend their time online amongst like-minded people complaining about how unfair society is because they don't have the best or broadest choices of mates. But most of them could probably get mates if they applied themselves. You have to put yourself out there and be willing to risk more rejection, though. I remember when I was young and went through a bad break up and I was working as a meat cutter at a restaurant. A guy I worked with went through a similar experience, and we commiserated about how we were wronged by women. We did the usual toxic male complaining about all women being selfish, gold-diggers, etc. We joked about creating the "He-Man Woman-Haters Club" which was a reference to the old TV show THE LITTLE RASCALS. Neither of us actually hated women, or would swear them off for long, but it was a way of coping psychologically with a very difficult phase of life. Dealing with rejection is not easy. It takes a while to work through that psychologically. It's very tempting to want to give up and avoid that pain and disappointment altogether, sometimes. The online incel movement occurs because the internet allows this phase to be prolonged, expanded and justified more than before. But this is not a new phenomenon at all, and it's fairly normal and temporary phase in most cases... Just ask Spanky and Alfalfa...