-Don't loan him money: risk him being (unjustly?) angry with me. — Stanley

Do you have reason to fear his affection will be withheld if you say no? If you do, you're being manipulated.

He likes to give me advice (ironic), but he's not so big on the listening — Stanley

Not ironic. Controlling.

In fact there is a big rift in my family now due to "who got what" when my grandfather passed away. I don't want that to spread to me and my brother too. — Stanley

Was all well among the siblings prior to this inheritance, or have there been issues of distrust prior to this? This sounds more complex than you're presenting. If your brother were a stand up guy, the sort who'd help you out through thick and thin, and who now is in need, why wouldn't your other siblings help him now in his time of need? Probably because he's not all these things? Am I right or wrong here?

Fair enough. I don't have sufficient evidence on hand to convince you otherwise. — Echarmion

Why do you hold a position that there's insufficient evidence of?

While this is true, the specific problem that affects many minorities is that they, on average, lack inherited wealth. They had much less time, relative to the majority, to accumulate assets. This is difficult to equalise. — Echarmion

This also presumes that the success of most non-minorities (white people) is tied to inherited wealth. I just think that's false, especially among the middle and working class.

The argument that whites have inherited a system built to their advantage is a better one, only because it's more difficult to respond to because the claim is more nebulous. The real question isn't whether American society has a sordid history of racism (as it surely does), but it's to what extent is that history the real impediment to success today. I'd submit that race is not the critical limitation in today's society and that opportunity and success can and does fall to minorities without heroic efforts, although perhaps with some special effort. I don't discount the special efforts needed as irrelevant and not something that ought be eliminated, but they also shouldn't be exaggerated and suggested that all struggles or failures are owed to it.

I assume you've heard the statement

When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression

or, at least, that you understand the sentiment. — 180 Proof

Perhaps, but programs intended to equalize might actually be unfair and do nothing but exchange the people being oppressed, irrespective of whether some unfairly privileged people object to their being treated equally.

I won't commit to the belief that the privileged are incapable of knowing what is fair or not due to their fear of losing their privilege, which means I must accept their complaints of oppression as I would any other. To ignore those complaints would assume the privileged are intellectually or morally inferior and that they cannot judge actual oppression versus true equality.

Pointing out that you were the dictator over and over again is not that helpful. — Banno

Your equating democracy as dictatorial is the problem. I understand you use the term dictator here as being any authority decreeing and enforcing rules, but I see a democracy in particular as a community expressing its will and therefore just, as best as it can be expressed. So I'm not the dictator, but a servant of the people, therefore protecting the commons as the common folk have said they wanted it protected.

As to what I think you wish to say, which is that ideally we'd live in a benevolent anarchy, where we'd need no laws and no enforcement because each person would internally know how many trout he could catch and would never violate his conscience, I roll my eyes. Sure, I want that too. Let's want that together and lament the sad state of humanity. In the meantime, let's send out the game wardens to search the buckets for extra fish.

Let's also consider that having more cows than you ought is unethical. — Banno

A truism. Doing anything more than you "ought" is immoral by definition. But this isn't a moral question. It's a political/legal one, so we impose laws to advance the state's interest. Whatever you're getting at, get at, which seems to be that you want our consciences to tell us that 3 trout per season is sustainable, but not 4. 10 trout is not gluttony, immoral, and a sin. It's just more than the population can sustain, so we regulate it. Maybe in other seasons 10 makes sense. Letting the democacy decide is how we decide, but you seem to think we must rework our moral compass to be truly just.

You charged a fee so that those with no money could not go fishing, and said that was fair. Then you shot those who were found with too many fish. The dishonest ones had Fish Pie. — Banno

The state charged a nominal license fee to fish. The fine was for catching more than your limit. If you couldn't pay your fine, you could pick up cans off the side of the road.

The dishonest ones were the ones I dealt with who got caught by the fish and game wardens.

Ah - so you want to be the Big Fat Dictator.

Doesn't help. — Banno

I was a county worker. We weren't a dictatorship, but a democracy. It was the community that decreed how the commons were divvied up.

You tell me. — Banno

It's not different, and it works. There are plenty of fish to be caught and deer to hunt to this day. There are also open grazing states out west, and there are still plenty of cattle and meat at the butcher.

Way back when I prosecuted folks who had too many trout in the boat. $150 for each extra trout kept plenty in the river

SO you folk might be able to help me out here. — Banno

Pass a law limiting the number of cows you can have and charge a fee for usage so that the land can be maintained?

How would that be different from selling hunting licenses and placing limits on how many deer you can kill like they do now?

Given episodes of more recent mass hysteria about pedophilia, his story and his denial of its veracity are not going to fly in some quarters. — Bitter Crank

Is it hysteria or just a realization that there was previously inadequate protection of children?

I would not expect the kindergarten children of Frankfurt to be fondling adults unless that was something taught them by adults.

I do know that Frankfurt (at least today) has a thriving red light district right down the street from the train station where all the friendly visitors can visit.

No it isn't, otherwise they'd be a competency test to entitle one to vote. There is an estimation of competency made in some case, but not in the case of adolescents. 16 year olds are allowed to vote in Scotland but not in England. Are Scottish teenagers more competent than the English? No. Is Scotland collapsing under the strain of so much incompetent voting behaviour? No. So why are English 16 year olds not allowed to vote. Its not competency is it? — Isaac

Because the voting age is arbitrary, set by a decision of the democracy. It makes no more sense to make it 16 or 18 or 21, but there is an advantage to having a clear rule. Laws are as much based upon pragmatism as they are on precision. Whatever problems might exist in Britain or in the US are doubtfully the result of their respective voting ages, meaning 18 works in the US and 16 in Britain. Might 15 work in Timbuktu, sure.

It really is not that complicated. There already exist countries in which the age of consent is 14. Are those countries collapsing under the burden of psychologically damaged teenagers? No. So when a country chooses 18 its not doing so on the basis of the child's welfare is it. It is evident from entire countries like Germany, Italy, Portugal etc that no endemic problems result from this, so states in America where it is set at 18 can't claim to be 'erring' on any side, its not guesswork, we have whole sections of Western Europe proving it's fine. — Isaac

And there are states where 14 is legal. As I've noted, there's a difference in quibbling over the arbitrary age we choose and arguing that minors have some inherent right to have sex with adults regardless of age. The age a society chooses for anything is based upon democratic and political reasons. No where does it say that a properly running democracy must base its decisions upon some scientific reason. If Montana wants to set the speed limit to 100, it can, maybe because it doesn't care about highway deaths, maybe it doesn't care about saving fuel, or whatever. You act like some study should be the controlling factor in what priorities a society wants to create.

So the whole of Germany, Italy and Portugal are overrun with damaged teenagers, I'm surprised no thing's turned up in the literature. — Isaac

You really need to clarify your position. Are you simply asking that the age of consent be lowered from the fairly standard 16 in most US states to 14 (which does exist in some US states)? It seems you're asking for something more.

A specific question: Should a 6 year old be permitted to consent to sex with an adult?

This is just more of the same patronising stuff. Of course the laws regulate children. There are two partners in a sexual relationship and few people are so callous as to just take whatever they want so long as the consequences fall on someone else, particularly if that someone else is their sexual partner. — Isaac

A child who has sex with an adult does not face any societal condemnation or prosecution. The adults are regulated. Before I feel sorry for the poor children who are left wanting because the adults were deterred from having sex with them, I think it's fairly clear that the real societal consequences will befall the adults. Why then can't an adult simply choose someone else to have sex with if society is telling them not to?

Is it really the child who is being victimized here in your opinion, or do you really believe there are adults being victimized because they are limited in who they can have sex with?

Adolescents are the only group left who still suffer taxation without representation... you know, the right revolutions have been fought over. — Isaac

Anyone who lacks the capacity to vote will be taxed without representation, which would include children, the intellectually disabled, certain emotionally disabled people, and then there are those who have lost their right to vote, as in felons. It's not just an attack on children, but it's based upon the principle that those lacking the competence to make decisions be restrained from making decisions.,

What we should be doing is empowering young people to make their own decisions. We should be encouraging their latent abilities to make rational, informed choices, supportively creating an environment where "no" means no, not telling them they're too stupid to decidewhat they do with their own bodies, too gullible to be trusted with anyone other than their own peers. — Isaac

All you're saying here is that you believe that those minors who are capable of making rational decisions be empowered to make them, which is simply to argue that you believe the current standards limiting sexual consent are too restrictive. This is not a departure from the status quo, except that you're asking for a reduction in the age of consent, or perhaps allowing decisions on a more case by case basis. I say that because I'm assuming you're not suggesting 3 year olds be empowered to consent to sexual activity with their parents. One hopes there is a boundary to your position, even if you do maintain some concerns that the 3 year olds will begin dumping tea in the harbor in protest.

As a society we must create rules to protect our vulnerable citizens, and how we do that will necessarily be arbitrary and imprecise to some degree. If we're going to prohibit sexual activity between minors and adults, what is a legislature to do? Does it make a law that errs on the side of caution and make the age of consent high, or does it err on the side of freedom of expression and make the age of consent low? It seems different states see things differently, but there is a rationality either way. If you want to allow judges to decide on a case by case basis, do you truly believe we have enough Solomon like judges to make consistently good decisions?

Assuming we agree upon the laudable goal of protecting children, which I hope we do, I'd suggest an approach better than offering children advice on how to best decide whether to have sex with adults, is that we advise adults of the risks they are likely imposing on children by becoming sexually involved with them and we further advise them of the consequences of exposing these children to those risks. The risks of such sexual involvement to the children are well documented, as survivors of such abuse are left with a myriad of relationship and sexual issues. The risks to the adults, of course, involve significant prison time, which one would hope would be an adequate deterrent. As a society, we no doubt imprison too many people generally, but to the extent we need to build more prisons, it should be for those who abuse children. For those folks I fear we have not enough beds.

Much of this is to say that the laws do not regulate children; they regulate adults. I ask you as an adult not why children should be permitted to have sex with adults, but why you wish for there to be a greater right for adults to have sex with children? What is it that you, not the children, are suffering from?

In America, one at least needs to get parental consent before marrying and raping 12 year olds :grimace: — ZhouBoTong

This is false. No state allows 12 year olds to marry. Massachusetts has no specific minimum age law for marriage, but a judge must decide. Since the limitation on judicial discretion isn't set by statute, prior precedent set by ancient common law would control, so one could argue that 12 would be the youngest a girl could marry. There are no cases of 12 year old marriages though, and one would expect one wouldn't be upheld as valid if a wackadoodle judge allowed it.

I just call Yahweh a genocidal and infanticidal prick. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Sure, but that doesn't make your point, which is that the Bible ought be interpreted in an allegorical way, but it instead inflames and derails the conversation, pitting the insulted believers against the smug non-believers. It's just a waste of time when it phrased this way.

Christianity is still one of the mainstream religions that idol worship a genocidal prick of a god. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

But see:

The whole of the bible is allegory. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

This means that God is not a prick, nor is he genocidal because we can't take the claims of what he did literally. It is the story you must read, at least according to you, without regard to the literal translation. For that reason, if the Bible claims he killed all sorts of people, he literally did not, so you must decipher the meaning of the allegory.

What the video suggests is, like I have stated earlier, that the teachings of Jesus were Cynic, thus Hellenistic, in essence, and that much of what is practiced by Christians today in based on what has been added at much later dates and has little to do with Jesus's original teachings. Furthermore, it opens up the possibility of the New Testament being of an allegorical nature, rather than a literal one. — Tzeentch

This is an interesting approach that pervades much of Christian thought (and I suspect many other religions). Because the truth of Christianity is based upon past events, any current attempt to alter the way it is practiced must be justified upon a reinterpretation of past events. . You see these restorative attempts with Protestantism moving from Catholicism and, even in dramatic reinterpretations like Mormonism, they again claim themselves restoring the purer faith, not that they've arrived at a new belief system..

These efforts permit an ever changing interpretation and reinterpretation based upon current ethical standards, but ironically justified upon claims of conservation of the prior true practice.

Just an observation.

The Christian God did not condemn us, we humans condemned him. — 3017amen

I thought the point of acceptance of Jesus as your savior was to avoid eternal condemnation and gain salvation for your sins. It would seem then that you stand condemned but have a path for salvation, such being the whole glory of God giving his son to redeem the sinners.

Of course, being a Christian, you might feel no longer condemned because you've taken the path that you believe leads to all sorts of wonderful outcomes. Me, not as a Christian, and being I suppose condemned to the discomforts of hell, take the view that the Christian god isn't so benevolent.

EVERYONE!!! YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!!!

This thread has been going on for 3 years and it began with a poll. If you haven't answered it yet, please go back and look at it and answer it. I need that information for my database of information that I keep and that I use to make every important decision in my life. If you can't respond to the poll, please send me a message with the header "SURVEY PROBELM" and then tell me why you can't respond to the poll. You will (1) need to misspell "problem" and (2) YOU MUST USE BULLET POINTS; otherwise I will not be able to process your response and you will get daily reminders.

Thank you.

. Political lesbianism is a viable option for feminism. — Bridget Eagles

The generosity of the posters in this thread to your solution that women should eat pussy in order to alleviate societal male dominance is either (1) heartingly progressive, or (2) evidence of lack of critical thinking. I choose (2), not at all because I'm challenging your thesis that men have certain societal advantages, but because sexual activity is simply not Rosa Parkesque civil rights activity.

You should known that "mankind" and "man" when it is a general reference, is a gendered Anglo-Saxon term that applies to all humans, male and female. — Bitter Crank

Beat me to it.

Better evidence of his maleness is that he's referred to as the Father. If He were a She, He couldn't have banged Mary and given us Jesus I suppose. But, as noted, there's plenty of room within most religions to treat God as genderless and even without any human form at all.

At any rate, if one is looking for sexism within religion, one needn't look far, so I think the the OP's point might be conceded that women might feel unwelcome in certain churches (but not others).

Source? — Banno

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

"Conclusions
Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."

https://www.transgendertrend.com/children-change-minds/

"Ten studies have been conducted looking at whether gender dysphoria persists throughout childhood. On average 80% of children change their minds and do not continue into adulthood as transgender. Some of these studies are very old, the first being published in 1968 and others in the 1980s. This was during a time when being transgender was not accepted as widely in society as it is now so it can be argued that this may have influenced many to change their minds. An analysis of all published studies can be seen here.

However, the most recent study published in 2013 confirms once again that gender dysphoria does not persist in most children past puberty. "

The first article is the NIH study itself. The second provides links to all studies.

If you are committed to the idea that this treatment should be judged by its medical efficacy, then you have to be opposed to it. If this is a right to expression and liberty issue, you might not care what the studies say. I'd think though, even if it's the latter, you might wish to withhold such choices from children.

You don't see a contradiction here? — Banno

I don't see a contradiction unless you equate denial of the right to live out one's delusions as punishment.

I don't care so much about cross dressing because there are no long term consequences from wearing ill fitted clothing. I do object to hormonal therapies and genital surgeries for the young because the statistics do show many change their minds as they age. Even among the adults who choose hrt and surgery, unless the statistics show a decrease in depression and suicide (which they don't), I'd be as opposed to it as I would any useless medical procedure.

Let us assume the OP is precisely true, that all GM folks are wacka-doodle. What is the antidote you suggest that will be less harmful than the disease? The shaming approach and conversion therapies haven't been exactly helpful. Perhaps you should offer them the same sympathies you do of heart disease and cancer patients, as they too suffer from the effects of an ill environment.

If only moral condemnation would snap people upright, you'd be well on your way to a cure, right?

This thread already exists here

I also saw a thread I started (about the disappearance of my ignore-list) deleted. I can sort of understand it, because it was turning into a pointless shouting match. But it lead me to wonder what, if any, sympathy, support or understanding there is here on TPF for autistic contributors, and others who are similarly affected? I'm not asking for anything in particular, except perhaps knowledge of how the forum - in the form of its moderators? :chin: - thinks about those of us who aren't quite neurotypical? Is there an 'official' attitude, policy or view?

I tried hard in my thread - which wasn't about autism, nor was it intended to be - to explain courteously why I was asking what I was asking, and I got sneering condescension, from the 'usual suspects'. :sad:

I'm asking for a bit of moderator guidance here. Do I belong here, or must I move away to some lesser forum, where perhaps tolerance is more easily found? [ I wouldn't move from here by choice; I quite like TPF. ] — Pattern-chaser

Interesting post. I don't care what your motivations are for telling us about your autism (whether you seek sympathy or whatever) and I'm not suggesting you might actually not be as you say you are. What I find interesting (again, candidly and truly) is that you suggest an inability to temper your behavior to the point where you recognize you may come across as belligerent or socially inappropriate, but you then ask others to exercise their empathy toward you and excuse that conduct as it's beyond your control. If you can recognize what empathy is and can recognize when it's appropriate and should be expressed toward you, why can't you do the same for others? It would seem if you can say essentially "that hurts my feelings, don't act that way," then you could similarly realize when you should do that for others. I understand it might not come as instinctively to you as it might to others not so affected by autism, but you do show an ability to recognize it, so why can't you do as other do, even if takes greater reflection on your part?

Maybe this is a post better suited for another thread, but I really do wonder this because I have known other autistic people who could clearly express their limitations and discomforts in situations and even demand that they be treated in a particularly sensitive way, and I never understood why logically (even assuming limited emotional ability) it could not be understood that others would expect similar sympathies and not be treated callously. .

The blue pill, right? — S

I think the blue pill gives you relentless erections. I'd look at the bottle first because if you were hoping for some sort of trippy alternate reality experience but instead are left alone in painful arousal, it'll be a bummer.

Quite the opposite.
It's not deep enough.
I'm gonna need a bigger grave. — Shamshir

I heard this song once that I can't locate now, but it was this trailer park looking guy singing (think Kid Rock, just less sophisticated) and the hook of the song was that he wanted to be buried face down so the world could kiss his ass. I thought of that when I saw the word "grave," so I thought I'd share.

Just like the Matrix.. Have you ever regretted taking the red pill and realised things are just too overwhelming to cope with especially when you've already got so much on your plate?
People who are ignorantly bliss annoy me, but sometimes I envy them, yet I don't think I've regretted it until the last few weeks. Just a hiccup though. — Jimmy

I actually took what I thought was the red pill, but I was in a false reality and was tricked into taking the blue pill instead, so that's what happened to me, but I could be wrong because I took the blue pill unless maybe I took the red pill. It's hard to know. Maybe I didn't even take a pill come to think of it.

Anyway, I totally see where you're coming from. I hate the hiccups. Holding my breath never really works, but I found that if you drink orange juice real fast, it'll get rid of them. There's also the possibility that I mentioned orange juice only because it has a color and we've been talking about blue and red already.

Having been born with Benjamin Button's disease and having outlived my life expectancy, I'm now negative 6 months, being in the first trimester and reattached to the placenta. As to the question of when life begins, I can now affirmatively state that there is life in the first trimester and I will be reporting when my consciousness ceases to exist. We will all then know when it's still appropriate to abort, and that can be reported to the Supreme Court for its future decisions.

What I can say is that I find music very comforting, so to those expectant mothers who have wondered whether playing music near your expanded belly has any fetal benefit, I can respond with a resounding YES!

I think that religious beliefs are a combo of absurd, ignorant, and incoherent.

And I think that racist beliefs are a combo of absurd, ignorant and incoherent.

Would you have a problem with someone being treated with disrespect, treated in a condescending way, etc. if they were to post in support of racist views on a philosophy board? — Terrapin Station

I suspect that this might be what @T Clark might be referencing in his annoyance about the anti-religious comments. Racist beliefs might be absurd, they are very likely ignorant, but they're rarely incoherent. Whether they share these same attributes with religion (and I think they don't), what they don't have in common is that the former are patently offensive and degrading, whereas the latter are not (most certainly not in the same manner under typical conditions).

That is to say that this analogy is not at all logical, but seems to just be a way to offer insult, by claiming that the religious and the racist share much in common. In short, it's a comment that will do nothing but derail anyone supportive of religion down the rabbit hole of defending against nonsense objections instead of responding to whatever the OP might have been about.

The only reason that religious beliefs might deserve special respect is because they're so personal. Telling someone their religion is stupid is like telling someone their mother is stupid. Their mom may be stupid. You're just not supposed to tell them that. They're supposed to think their mom is worth a shit. She's not.

@S, your mother is stupid.

Broccoli isn't a fruit. It's a fungus.

Carrots.

That is why the foundational protections for religious belief in the US Constitution are so important. The first amendment, the first and most important of the rights in the Bill of Rights, protects religious belief and freedom of speech. In truth, they are the same thing. — T Clark

Freedom of speech would include the right to call religious people motherfuckers though. Free speech is a shit throwing contest when it is being practiced most freely.

The Constitution only speaks to government interference in the free exercise of religion, not in prohibiting the Baptists from calling the Mormons heathens (or whoever might have a beef with one another).

We don't have God but we do have a most effective substitute - the CCTV camera. — TheMadFool

I'll take your reference to ubiquitous video surveillance to really be just one representative example of how technology is now overseeing our every move. It's not just CCTV. It's tracking of our cell phones, registering our every credit and debit card purchase, reviewing our emails, storing data on our car computers, registering our arrival at work when the fob is scanned, and on and on and on. Despite the increasing difficulty to get away with much o f anything, it hasn't had the effect you've suggested, which is to result in greater ethical adherence. Things are just as immoral now as they were before. It doesn't seem like our criminals or liars have gotten much smarter, still mostly relying on the hope that no one will spend the time to catch them.

This thread is not complaining about people expressing and arguing for their views. It's about those who troll such threads, with the intention of preventing the discussion of (what they see as) 'nonsense'. — Pattern-chaser

Actually, the only time the word "troll" appeared in this thread was when you used the term, meaning your position does not really appear to be the complaint of the OP. Your claim (which I don't see evidence of) is that the anti-religious posters are disingenuous and seek not to present their contrary views, but they are intentionally just trying to aggravate and annoy. What I believe is that the anti-religious crew truly believes that religion is antiquated nonsense that has wrought mostly ignorance and suffering onto the world and they wish to point that out when others try to offer support for religion. The problem is that many of the religious posts assume (even perhaps hypothetically) that the religious basis for the belief is valid and the discussion is far above those fundamental concerns, making repeated objections that religion sucks or is bullshit irrelevant.

If, though, you have identified a troll, flag the post, and it will get looked at. I don't know what else can be done.

I didn't say it was offensive. I said it was annoying and it pisses me off. So, why pick on religious intolerance 1) The main culprits in the anti-religionist brigade are hypocrites. They cause the problem and then vent their spleens about how terrible it all is. 2) Those bozos are so fucking self-righteous 3) Anti-religious arguments tend to be the nastiest on the forum. 4) Most of the anti-religion threads are poorly thought through. Bad philosophy. 5) It's not the only thing that annoys me, it's just the one I'm talking about now. — T Clark

I'm not unsympathetic to your position here because I have seen pointless injections of generally "religion sucks, religious people are stupid" sorts of non-sequiturs within otherwise interesting threads about religion. I have in mind those posters who do that, and my general response has been to cease responding to them. They offer very little to the debate. They strike me more as agenda driven, thinking they have arrived enlightened upon a village of idiots, delighting they can proclaim the emperor wears no clothes, as if anything they have to say isn't something already considered.

If I have understood correctly, this topic is an appeal for the atheists to stop trolling religious threads. I.e. not preventing atheists from posting in these threads, but preventing atheists from trolling these threads, with the express intention of derailing the thread, preventing serious discussion. — Pattern-chaser

I don't interpret this thread as you, which is to proclaim many of the anti-religious on this board as trolls. If there are instances of trolling, the remedy is to flag the post and alert the mods to remove the post and warn the troller. It's not to create a thread and discuss the problem generally. In the discussions with the other mods that we have, I really don't recall there being any instances of moderation of the anti-religious posts that are being referenced in this thread.

What I do think is that religious views are deeply personal to people, and in general civil society we are very careful not to insult or even criticize the religious views of others. In fact, I would suspect that very few of the deeply anti-religious people here would offer their opinions in a face to face setting.

But, IMO, this setting is unique in that it is not a face to face setting and it is specifically designed to offer questions and debate about all sorts of otherwise off limits topics. So I am completely in favor of the anti-religious crowd offering their thoughts, even if occasionally they are poorly formed and not terribly logical. If they are trolling, though, that is another matter.

But, just as I think it's perfectly fine for the anti-religious to offer their views in an aggressive manner, I see this thread as equally reasonable, calling them out for their unreasonable views.

But, still, it’s annoying and I think it has negative consequences. 1) It makes the forum less pleasant and collegial 2) It cuts off the possibility of serious religious discussions. 3) It lowers the overall quality of the forum and 4) It pisses me off. — T Clark

Why do you find religious intolerance more offensive than say free will intolerance or capitalism intolerance or the various other intolerances pervasive throughout this forum? Why demand special respect for the religious (a group I tend to often actually align with)? If I need special protection for my views, then that could mean my views can't stand on their own merit.

I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I do not understand why people claim that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. — elucid

Location is an element of identity. If two objects occupy the same place at the same time, they are the same object. It's definitional.

I don't see how your variation changes the odds. The issue isn't the foreknowledge of the host, but of the knowledge of the contestant as revealed by the host. The way you've set this up, if I'm understanding correctly, is that you have a contestant who chose door #1, then another door is revealed to him that does not contain the car, and then you ask whether he should change doors. Just as in the initial case, the answer is yes. My understanding is that you disregard those instances where the computer chooses and shows the car or the goat, so they really aren't being included in your decision making.