I wonder why people keep associating Marxism with atheism, when Marxism is a supernatural belief system, start to finish. The fact Marxism bans other religions, doesn't mean it itself is not a religion. Islam bans Hinduism, for example, but who would argue Islam is thus not a religion?

Marx claimed that capitalism, socialism, and communism, all had pre-ordained historical roles to fulfill. How is that not a supernatural belief? Marx claimed that there was such a thing as a commodity's "value," which differed from its price and could not be empirically verified and measured. How is that not a supernatural belief?

Marxism is a religion, and an entirely supernatural one at that.

It is impossible to study any specific person and figure out how much of their intelligence is due to genes versus the environment. The human population overall, can be studied, and from what I have seen, the evidence is roughly 50% of intelligence is inherited, which means 50% is not, and that is huge. I'm referring to Adam Rutherford's latest book on the History of Everyone, I'm not sure the exact title, but he is a geneticist and basically gave an overview of human evolution and what modern genetics tells us about how we evolved. He specifically denied any races among humans, and explained in detail why this was true. Every other book I have read by a geneticist takes this position. I have a beginning biology textbook used in colleges, it is about ten years old, and it specifically states no races exist, as well. The American Anthropological Association takes the position that no races exist.

The only people I am aware of who make the claim that races exist and there are differences among them regarding intelligence are non-scientists, like the journalist who authored the book, The Troubling Inheritance. His book was so full of errors that Scientific American thrashed it on its website, and Massimo Pigliucci, a man with two Ph.Ds in biology and one in philosophy also wrote a blog post shredding it. Basically, the racists have no hard-core science backing them up, but rely upon ignorance and prejudices people hold.

BlueBanana: When you state that knowledge doesn't have to be true, then how can it be knowledge? If I "know" the capital of the USA is Portland, Oregon, then how could I really know the capital of the USA when I am wrong? If I think 2 + 2 = 5 in a base-ten system, then how could I have actual knowledge of what 2 + 2 equals in base-ten, since I would be so clearly wrong? Once you claim that knowledge need not be true, aren't you then claiming that all claims are the equivalent of one another?

Inalienable rights do come from Locke, who simply based his claim on magic --- or, excuse me, a belief in God. Inalienable rights are typically misunderstood. They literally mean you are stuck with them. So, Locke would have been against someone being relieved from their misery facing a terminal illness by assisted suicide, because he felt the right to life was inalienable, meaning, something a person could not reject.

Well, negative Eugenics was based on a pseudoscience, not actual science, which is one of the reasons it failed so miserably. To the extent genetics is a cause for some trait, there are usually hundreds of genes, each providing a little impact, and how the genes work is also determined largely by the environment. So, unless you can have all people being raised in the same environment, you cannot select for genotypes based on phenotypes. Imagine if Einstein had been raised by drug addicts in a gang ridden neighborhood? His genes would have likely been weeded out of the gene pool, by a eugenics movement, despite the fact he may have been the greatest scientific mind of all time.

The thing is there are no races, so Murray could not have possibly known how to arbitrarily divide people into some so-called racial groups for classification. And IQ tests have varied widely over time with respect to the same group of people taking them. Look at how well newly arriving Jews from southern Europe did on IQ tests, compared to how well they do today? There is no way genetics could account for the difference in test scores.

Imagine what FOX NEWS would have said had Obama stated while president, "Take the guns first; go through due process second"? Isn't it amazing how a Republican president can support gun control in a way no Democratic president could? Sort of like Clinton being able to get people cut off from welfare without Democrats complaining. That's the problem with worshipping a person over principles. You always get conned in the end.

ArguingWAristotleTiff: Thanks. I'm not really sure how to maneuver around here yet.

Tim Wood: Pretty much everyone. Trump. The NRA. Bill Maher. Name anyone who is a pundit on gun control, someone who is a well-known public figure, who has ever referenced game-theory as part of the debate? Maybe there is someone who has, and if so, then I'll stand corrected, but, racking my brain on this, I can't come up with a single name.

Charles Murray is a racist though. And his work was so over-the-top unscientific, it's only still known because racists love it. Murray is a political scientist. That means he is completely unqualified to issue any statements regarding race, or on whether IQ scores reflect actual innate intelligence, and the relationship between the two. The facts are most geneticists believe races do not exist among humans, and for excellent reasons. There is also no evidence that IQ testing reveals any innate intelligence, because no one has yet to devise any question for an IQ test that does not depend on prior learning.

Murray is one of the fake libertarians, like Ron Paul, and Stephen Molyneaux, who just want to reduce the protection of civil rights, so small enclaves of racists can get together and persecute non-whites in their little utopian paradise. So, it's not a coincidence that they all love racist ideals, while claiming to belong to an ideology that considers racism unjustified "collectivism." It's a scam.

If the Muslims happened to be right, and you worshipped pagan Gods along side Allah, you'd still go to hell. You can't side-step the criticism that Pascal's Wager doesn't take into account the problem of worshipping the wrong God, by assuming any such God would not object to being worshipped as one of many merely to get beyond the wager's difficulties. After all, any God childish and immoral enough to send someone to hell cannot be assumed to accept such an offer based on universal worship in order to hedge one's bets. Keep in mind, Pascal's Wager assumes God is immoral.

I agree with a lot of the people who have responded, who stated that yes, the USA does have a problem with anti-intellectualism, but so do many other countries as well. In the USA, we have some nutters, who have gained some political power, since our current president is both a science-denier and an advocate for conspiracy theories. Yet, I see nuts like David Icke, who is British; Ken Ham is a nut in America, but he came from Australia, Jim Carey is a nutty anti-vaxxer, but he was raised and educated in Canada. I can go on, but anyone who thinks this is solely an American problem is not paying attention. Every one of us who believes in liberty, science, reason, needs to join together in this fight against those who seem all too willing to burn civilization to the ground based on purely idiotic ideas.

I agree with you that Gettier was not successful in what he wanted to achieve, but I disagree with the claim that JTB is not what we need for knowledge, because one can make a lucky guess and be right. This is typically addressed by reference to a person buying a lottery ticket, that he just "knows" is the winning ticket, and he turns out to be right. Absent some insider information, the person most definitely did not know he had the winning ticket, he just got lucky. What you are claiming is that the "knowledge" of a lottery ticket winner in "knowing" he held the winning ticket I equivalent to the knowledge a physicist ha regarding why a bridge will stay in place. I strongly disagree with that position.

The vast majority of social media these days consists of groups that quickly ban anyone with different viewpoints. I'm not sure whether that applies to this group, but I would hope not, if it is an actual philosophy forum. Outside of philosophy forums, however, from what I have observed, read, and heard from others, social-media is a breeding group for people to see their narrow-minded views validated by others who share their same mind-set. You believe climate change is all a hoax and the leading scientific bodies are all in on it, then you can find echo-chambers where that view is considered to be the only one worth holding. Same for the anti-vaxxer crowd, Holocaust-deniers, 9/11 truthers, conspiracy-theories, gold-advocates, etc., etc. Each and everyone of these views are absurd, not supported by the facts, but are all alive and well and spreading across the globe through social-media. Political correctness is merely the tip of the iceberg on what is happening.

One cannot even do social science these days without knowing game-theory, not if one wants to be taken seriously. I also never claimed that game-theory would provide the ultimate answer, all by itself, which anyone can verify by reading my initial comment that listed game-theory as one aspect of the debate to consider. However, I can most definitely state that those who completely ignore game-theory from the gun-control debate are overlooking crucial aspects that should be considered as part of the debate. Especially from those who think that some simple slogan provides the answer.

Actually, game-theory is commonly used to make accurate social predictions, and even when it fails to do so, it does give us an insight into what rational behavior should be. Yet, I have never heard any politician, or political pundit, who has addressed the issue of gun control even discuss the use of game-theory and mathematics in addressing the issue. Why not? Mathematics is an excellent way of weeding out the BS.

That's true, and there is also political correctness on the right, as well. If one does not support a war, then one is labeled a "traitor," and how tolerant is the right of having any right-winger called a racist, even when it couldn't be clearer that they are? So, I see political correctness BS from both sides of the aisle, and all this means is that people prefer to live in echo chambers as opposed to having to debate substantive ideas that do not always align with their views. I much prefer freedom of speech, and a rational recognition of basic facts, as opposed to silencing people one finds offensive for daring to question someone's supposedly sacred beliefs, i.e., bullshit.

The USA does have the greatest speech protections in the world. As an American, I won't even go to Europe, because I could easily be prosecuted for saying something that in the USA would be no problem at all. Just compare the actual substance of the laws, and avoid all polling data, which can easily be manipulated.

Well, just take a look at game-theory? Game-theory tells us that we are less safe the more guns we have as a community. Just imagine if you were the only person who was armed with a knife, and everyone else was unarmed? You would have an advantage if a fight breaks out and you needed to defend yourself. Now, imagine everyone else goes out and buys a knife? Are you now any safer? No. Now, if a fight breaks out, instead of just being punched, you may end up stabbed. The same thing is true if you have a gun, and no one else does, versus everyone has a gun. So, the math tells us that as we approach a situation where everyone is armed, we are less safe as a direct result of gun ownership. This literally means gun advocates, people who are armed to protect themselves, and who are responsible, should be arguing for restrictions against universal gun ownership. Now, if you think the optimum level of gun ownership is an easy problem to solve, then you would probably find some high-paying job as an applied mathematician, because I see the problem as very difficult to solve.

In reviewing the initial post and the comments following it, it looks like most people have raised good points here. The statement first off was poorly written, because when we say one thing is equal to another, we typically indicate in what way the two objects are equal. Equally tall, equal mass. Equally salty. Yet, Jefferson never stated how all men are equal. Presumably he meant political equality, but that was hard to swallow when blacks were enslaved, and only wealthy white men could vote, and even the rich white men could not vote directly for president, but only for the electoral college, who would then go on and elect the president. Bloody rubbish for sure, but, I like those words, because they have been used by every minority group in the USA as the basis to be treated equally.

I know the number of permutations for a deck of 52 cards is straightforward enough. It is 52!, or 52 factorial. There are 52 possibilities for the first card, since there are 52 cards to select from. For each of these initial 52 choices, there are another 51 possibilities for the second spot, so the number of combinations for the first two cards is 52 x 51, and then for each of these possibilities we have 50 for the third spot, thus, it should be easy to see the pattern here, 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x ... x 1, which is the same as 52!. However, I have no idea about the number of grains of sand we have.

The USA is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy, but it has incorporated representational democracy as part of its structure. Currently, there are a lot of problems maintaining our present civil rights, but at least I can say that in the USA, we probably have the greatest protections regarding freedom of speech that one can find among any nation.

Everyone already believes in gun control, and it is a myth to claim otherwise; after all, who believes pre-school kids have the right to bring AR-15s to school to defend themselves? Only the crazy among us would think so.

The issue is actually extremely complicated, involving issues of Constitutional law, cost-benefits, game-theory, and many other topics, so I do actually find it amusing whenever someone claims to have all the answers and their specific answer is childishly simple.

You cannot prove an "I" exist merely by thinking for a wide variety of reasons, but one would come from modern neuroscience. Because the brain is modular there is simply no "I" involved.