The US can live with a huge military industrial complex easily. It is not detrimental like it was to the Soviet Union: people aren't poor in the US because of the military industrial complex. Also it should be noted that at least earlier a lot of innovations came from the military-industrial complex that have benefited the peace time society. — ssu

without going into further detail which i would not like to do on a forum such as this out in the open: i would have to say with the given information you might be right. If you would like my personal take on this i can send you a private message.

"This reasoning is a bit confusing. Why wouldn't you give the best medical treatment when you are able to give it in wartime? First and foremost, one has to notice the huge leaps that military medical treatment has gone through and that the US enjoys air superiority in all it's wars (which enables quick MEDEVAC by helicopter). Just look at the statistics of soldiers wounded in the Iraq war compared to the fallen, for example. The death toll would be multiple times higher if the war had been fought in the 1940's.

And suicides? As this is about veterans, the question of more about present day society than the military. "

I had a response to this but i felt it was inappropriate to say out in the open regarding this issue. I you would like my take on this issue i can send you a private message.

"With this in mind the chances for the case Israel-Palestine case to be resolved don't look to good and the best starting point for it to happen would be an increase in economic co-dependence. "

Sounds about right.

you do understand Gnostic Christianity started out accept to some degree the divinity of Jesus, right?
Please explain to me what your particular denomination of Gnostic Christianity believes. You say you don't believe in the super natural.

"So you are willing to ignore all the inquisitions and ongoing discrimination caused by their misogyny and homophobias for a few self-serving charities. Ok."

I wouldn't phrase it like that. Would you agree that Joseph Stalin was an atheist bigot who murdered millions of people for the cause of preserving Soviet Russia?

i feel i explained my take on this in a previous post. Perhaps we can argue about the same thing some other day.

GCP, Anthony, and tmfool all feel confident christianity sucks and i feel christianity is almost as good or better than gnostisim. I posted my answers above. I'm not going to keep repeating my self.

I've met alot of non christians who have cruel ways of treating people and i do agree there are christians that treat people cruelly. Don't Gnostics believe in punishment for certain behavior? As for why people go to hell forever, i would say only wicked people go to hell forever who have not taken the easy way out and allowed Jesus to forgive them.

"Better, why did he have to be baptized by Christos?

Death will be a relief. I'm not yet wise enough to say I'm happy to know it, as its still a source of significant anxiety. Though such anxiety leads to interesting thought, so it isn't so bad in a way. "

i could explain to you why Jesus felt the need to be baptized by John but instead i'll say this: the answer deals with a particular religion and for you to think the person of religion can't come up with some loop hole for this sort of situation to make sense within the confines of the religion, i think that is obsurd.

I'm here to philosophize. I'll leave the apologetics up to people who feel called to be apologists or to preach.

"Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to observe different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it by experimental realisation of what was previously a thought-experiment called ‘Wigner’s Friend’."

in my opinion this is equavalent to in medieval times when people didn't understand something they just said it was magic. I recently watched a video and read some articles on quantum mechanics and one of the recurring things they say is that they don't completely understand the situation. There are 100s of known particles smaller than an electron. How those particles interact with each is a mystery in many ways at this point in history. One of the key things said in these videos is alot of the results can only be predicted using probability and statistics. Probability and Statitistics does not rule out a root cause for something that happens but it just means the future is much harder to predict then a statement where someone says if A occurs then B will happen following that.

"Decent people to not contribute or belong to a homophobic and misogynous church. The decent people will find a moral church.

What compels you to stay in an immoral religion?"

I don't think its immoral. There are alot of christian charities and organizations that help people. Whether Christianity is the best religion is whole other topic which i'm not going to get into right now. I don't believe i'm equiped to answer whether Christianity is the best religion because i could be wrong among other things.

I see what you are getting at. In my opinion one of the other options for the Israeli homeland should have been chosen. One of those was a place in Uganda and there were some others. There are plenty of Muslim and even pseudo Christian nations. I think there is enough land in this world that the Israelis should have their own homeland. The queen of England is the largest land owner in the world and i think she could have parted with some of her land.

Christians believe there are different possibilities for what happens after a person dies. Heaven, Hell, classrooms.

Jesus willingly died in some sense because most christans would say he was God. I'm not going to get into the whole issue of the trinity. A soldier dies for their country because they believe in what their country stands for, and i believe Jesus is the same way.

And yes the thought of death does make me happy. I have stories to back that up but i'm not sure i want to talk about that right now.

What would have been be the utility of a large ship on the Amazon? — Terrapin Station

Thats true. I will say this though a larger ship allows more cargo and technologies very often lead to "better" technology.

This is what i said earlier and yes there are alot of Christian denominations and they are in many cases all over the map.

"Some christians believe that god greatly rewards those who are innocent and suffer for their innocence. Jesus for example is the king of the universe and is worshiped by many according to christians. Not all christians believe that heaven is equal for all christians. Jesus said that there are many mansions in his "house" and some interpret that to mean that some people are more rewarded than others for their conduct here on this earth. I know many people who do to what they believe was God's discipline (US marines are disciplined) have great character. "

I believe alot of Christians fall into my category. I could be wrong. As to the genocide, i believe a baby born into a wicked family (Amorites sacrificed there own children to their gods) is better off dying and going to heaven then being raised to be wicked himself. As you can tell its been millienia since the Christian God has advocated genocide. I felt that should be added to this conversation. Abortion is a bad thing in my opinion but there are worse things than dying early and going to heaven.

Correct me if i'm wrong but don't Gnostic's believe in the supernatural?

Mr. Harrarri does mention something to that effect

"↪christian2017
That was an impressive slide, from liberal apologetics in the OP to whether Jesus was a nicer person than Mohamed...

I'm not interested in a bigoted pissing competition.

↪aporiap
I don't think we do need to ground enlightenment values in something else. Rather, those who reject them ought explain why. "

Thats fair. I'll be back on this forum in a couple of days perhaps tommorow.

"It’s for no one and no one needs it. Mere “love” of wisdom is akin to porn addiction. "

well lets not go that far. Porn addiction has been shown under extreme circumstances to lead to severe (such as rape) sexual crimes. Please do your own research on this.

yup

"Ah, so Islam is immoral as a social system, while Christianity is a moral social system that happens to have a few folk with moral flaws..."

i'm not going to argue with you too much on that statement. I believe the OP is very in line with the truth or events in history. Mohomed had some serious flaws whereas the supposed Jesus had few to none (i would argue none). As to the various churches that popped up along the way there is alot i could say to that. Christian nations give more to charity than non christian charities. As to whether all christian principles are followed by modern christians in general is another topic.

but does their attitude make them morally bankrupt or does that make them have moral flaws. Do you see the difference?

if you say i lack character because this christian did this or that christian did that then you should remember that you can only judge me by my philosophical opinions. I could say i do this or that but at the end of the day this is a philosophy forum (philosophy forums include religion just as this philosophy forum includes religion).

Please do if it is not too much trouble.

"You're presupposing enlightenment values -universal basic rights, universal freedoms- as your metric for superiority. As obvious as it seems, it still needs a grounding or justification before this sort of argument can be made. Moral theists can always appeal to divine command to legitimate their system "
and now we are essentially getting into the whole debate about whether there is objective truth.

thank you. you are a better man than me and i do believe christianity supports the fact that some people really are better than others.

"And again, if so, then I am still very much the exception to this. I have 9,000 comments here, 12,000 posts on the old forum, and I have spent a great deal of time on a philosophy forum over the last ten years. Currently, it is a daily activity.

I also, as I mentioned, happen do drugs more often than the average person."

absolutely. Its not a one size fits all as far a i'm concerned.

you can get past the rhetoric and the eloquent words of some famous philosopher but at the end of the day some what they say may be true. Even country bumpkins engage in philosophy and i would argue very often the country bumpkins have something that the elites may never have. I do recognize you touched on some of this in your response.

"That's a comforting thought, but I think God got carried away dishing out the suffering. "

i wish i could say your wrong but at this point in my life i don't have alot of evidence to try to show you otherwise.

i would agree with that.

As to how someone progresses from that dilemna i would say we can only control ourselves and i would say out in public or outside in the "real world" its best to say less rather than more when it comes to deep subjects. When i'm out in public i just try to appear to be a functioning adult. I do however believe some people are called to speak their mind on the philosophical premises that they believe.

I would argue content people have a tendency of not "stirring the pot" in their own mind but that is not a hard and fast rule that i consider to be true.

i guess i didn't phrase that quite right but the way i intended to phrase it is that people who use drugs are more likely to end their boredom with something other than things like philosophy forums. I actually use various legal drugs on occasion and depending on my circumstances during that period of my life i do drink some alcohol.

as you said if you have something better to do with your time like make the world a better place then i suggest you do something other than philosophize. I used to be a part of an organization that said all alcohol consumption was wrong and as a result i've tried to drastically reduce how much alcohol i drink. People who use less drugs are more likely to spend more time with things that deal with the mind. Right wrong or indifferent.

this would fall in line with what some call a collective consciensce which is common in alot of religions. In some ways a collective consciense through out the universe makes sense to me or at the very least i believe it is a strong possibility. As to why believe this is highly plausible is that i think consciousness is a strange enough concept to that requires much more than basic mathematics and even physics to understand that i think that it would take a single person or set of people that studied the issue thousands of years to come up with a good solution to what causes consciousness. As to the OP i think that theory comes closer to the truth than what alot of people who call themselves educated happen to put out there.

there is may about it and thats where we disagree. I'd have to read mein kampf and various works by Nietsche and i just haven't gotten around to it. That being said what i just said doesn't prove you wrong.

"No: I think the answer is that there probably are aliens.

Probability is how we judge the merit of inductive truth, how we differentiate between weak and strong inductive truth. This is a more refined approach than guessing (but if you take a guess, probably your subconscious uses statistics anyway so there is no escaping probability). "

i'm stealing this and putting it in my journal.

"I suppose now that God is dead, and we have killed him, we could aspire to become ubermensch. Do you know of Thus Spoke Zarathustra? It's a book for all and none. "

"Hitler's explicit condemnations of the slave race, his ravings about the Aryan elite, and his proposed Darwinist resolution, as well as Hitler's relationship to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Richard Wagner signal a definite connection to Nietzsche's work."

http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/133p/133p04papers/MKalishNietzNazi046.htm

I understand Hitler may have been taking Nietzsche out of context when using him for inspiration but i think the new collective fiction needs to be very well thought out.

he does however say many times in the book that we need a new fiction to believe in our modern era that we live in. If we were to take everything in the book as though it was well thought out then that is the cause of me saying that our modern era needs a new collective fiction.

thats true.

Some of those authors i am familiar with and i find their work severely lacking as to the others i'll have to research them myself and see what they say.

Yeah the fact that you would have to mix the gold or silver i didn't think about that. I need to rewatch that series on "Guns, Germs and Steel" because i think they talked about what your saying. I didn't like the book because the subject didn't interest me that much and i felt the tv series did a decent job of explaining the book.

I'm not going to discuss the "little" bit of information showing there might be a god but that being said people need to understand that when discussing a concept or perhaps working on a project or system for a business you might work for, when you miss a few critical data points or pieces of information (its easy for anybody to do) that can drastically change the outcome of the system you are designing or the conclusion you come to. This is a common theme in programming and mathematics and i would argue any field of study.

"I would just like to point out that Einstein, Sagan, Feynman and many other scientists identified as agnostics rather than atheists...and those three actually got angry when people called them atheists. "

I do agree with that in that there is an enormous difference between an atheist and an agnostic.