Because that's not "fate" then, it's you choosing to gamble.

not for me to decide. — Agustino

But you would in fact be deciding, because you don't need to have a child.

What do we have that other species don't that means we should go extinct? — Ovaloid

Our consciousness.

I don't understand this position at all. — Agustino

I was gonna reply to something else, but I feared I might trigger you.

You can think of eugenics as extended care, for the future of humanity as well as for the afflicted. — Ovaloid

The only real cure for humanity's affliction is for it to die. Eugenics assumes that you can improve and in time fix the human condition, which is false.

The point I am interested in with physical differences, sub-par to optimal, is that whatever one is physically, it is part and parcel of who we are as persons. — Bitter Crank

Like how I'm tall and have a big nose? How does that matter to who I am really? Is being 6'2'' part and parcel of my character as an individual?

Survival of the fittest, but fittest for what? Perfect body for what role? In proposing that there is a a 'perfect body' out there at the end of the normal distribution, I am proposing only that that body would have optimal characteristics of the human species as we know it now (not as we might know it millennia from now). — Bitter Crank

I'm hesitant to equate survival of the fittest to survival of the perfect. In reality, survival of the fitter is what goes on in the world. Perhaps it is true that people take the transhumanist approach to Darwin's theory and really do think there is an attainable bodily perfection, but I don't buy it.

I find this topic rather amusing, because we were just joking about the Borg in another thread. There's a reason why Gene Roddenberry helped cultivate what the Borg represented, because at some point humanity will have to ask themselves why they're doing what they're doing.

I can be liberal, and I can be conservative. Reason does not belong merely to one interpretation.

You better be, I can be rather liberal at times...

Learn to write shorter sentences. — Agustino

:-}

Learn to write shorter rants.

Heister Feister the man who put my name as his favorite philosopher and has had it there for quite some time! The man who always posts in the threads I post, with some snarky comment and an unwillingness to engage in discussion. Does this guy have a crush on me? >:O There's other people in the forums Heister ;) — Agustino

You're a character, Agustino. After I realized you're not trolling, now you're just befuddling. I have no idea how you've not said the wrong thing to the wrong person and gotten shot, yet.

Your sentiments on mental health are revolting to me, so I'm not going to tickle your fancy and indulge in fruitless conversation.

Y'know, Agustino, you are the precise sort of person that keeps me from throwing my computer out the window and going to a monastery, because I fear if I meet someone like you outside my cell, and had the displeasure of having a conversation, I'd as quickly throw myself out the window in a final retreat.

We will take care of the mentally ill, by distrusting psychologists and psychiatrists, therapists and doctors - makes perfect sense to me! Weeee!

I think professional psychiatrists are a bunch of cuckoos pretty much. I think the way in which they work, having multiple and different patients, and spending relatively little with the patient in actual real life circumstances makes them completely unaware of what a patient actually goes through or how to help them. The ideal is an Aristotle walking around with a young Alexander. That's what a psychiatrist ought to be, and that's the one I trust. — Agustino

This is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever read.

Boredom is just another way of identifying depression.

So, what's below the bottom rung? — Bitter Crank

Probably this conversation about rungs and ladders, I'd wager...

This discussion is bottom of the rung.

I meant to paraphrase. Plus, mine's more alliterated, anyway 8-)

Remember that Paul went west, literally, and preached to the Roman provincials in Turkey and Greece, and not so much the Jews. The Romans of largely equestrian status that Paul mostly taught to came from a different set of marriage principles, although these were similar to Jewish ones. This is one reason why Christianity grew in membership, because people like Paul and John effectively related existing norms which people weren't of a mind to relinquish with those that Christianity held to be doctrinally important.

Why then is sex in marriage always evil? — Agustino

I must admit to getting fatigued by the religious terminology, like evil, with regard to morality. Plus, this all is getting off topic, now, so...

Back to the subject of gruesomely knifed fetus bits, yeah! (L)

I agree — adrien

Why does society get to choose my identity? — DanEssex

Because resistance is futile. Submit to assimilation.

And? Christianity isn't also Jewish? How can Christianity be against Judaism and its values? The Jews are God's Chosen people. Jesus came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it. Remember that. — Agustino

Man, you go from 0 to 100 with the religious lingo, I tell ya. I also never said Christianity is against Jewish values. I actually said the opposite, but, you know, English is hard.

I don't even entirely agree with the first premise, shit.

Why don't you tell us why you think sex is always evil then? Why don't you think spiritual and physical union through sex can be achieved? — Agustino

If sex were okay then monks wouldn't fear it like the plague. Paul wasn't a dummy, he realized that most people are sexually obsessed lunatics, so he wrought the idea of marriage chastity in with both the Jewish and Roman traditions that also stressed a similar value for family and marital vows.

I'm being silly and serious, HA!

So we can definitely agree to disagree. — Mongrel

Boring! O:)

But I already told you what sex means. It means becoming one, spiritually and physically — Agustino

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, :’(

That oneness that sex (can) bring about is only an imperfect image of the oneness that can be achieved between man and God through theosis after death. — Agustino

Tell me, Agustino, why is sexual chastity a virtue in Christianity?

Do you read your Bible literarily? :P Or is it only sex that you like to read literarily? — Agustino

You seem to be, as there's no reason for you to continually say that there is physical unity between two people during sex when there is not. Period.

You are NOT just having a physical experience when having sex, just like the words in a book aren't just ink on a page. Things have meaning - sex does too. — Agustino

Inked words on a page are only meaningful when we understand what they mean. Sex may be the same way, but you've yet to explain your way out of intentions and why sex means anything beyond its physical context.

And did I say that you have to have sex in order to be in closer communion with God? Of course not. — Agustino

You've argued that sex brings about a oneness, a kind of love. If you think that, then sex is then a means toward communing more closely with God, which would be a highly dubious claim.

Going back to my first response here, if sex does not bring someone closer to "God", then there really is no good reason for you to have sex in the first place.

That's why the Bible says the married people become ONE flesh — Agustino

This is metaphysical gibberish which does not escape the fact that a couple's bodies are NOT one when having sex.

Good, so therefore it is possible to want the beloved, there is no immorality in that, just as there is no immorality in wanting God. — Agustino

Want does not follow need.

Sure, but following that logic, I don't need to even be in a relationship. Probably all I need is air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. So the truth is that just because I don't NEED it, doesn't mean that there is no reason to do it. I don't need to read a book, and yet I do have a reason to do it - I want to know and learn more. But that's not a NEED. — Agustino

Perhaps you don't need to be in a relationship, that is true. But one does still require love, which does not depend on sex.

What you're basically saying is this: use someone as a means to your own pleasure (obviously driven by your lust), and all you have to do is know that this is your lust driving you, and you can't do anything about it, so just give in to it, but get it over quickly. That's weakness to me, not strength. — Agustino

What? Have you not read anything that I've written so far? You've said the complete opposite of what I've argued this whole time...

Instead we feel a desire to be one with the other, in body and in spirit, and that's what CAN - doesn't have to - lead to the act. — Agustino

No, sorry, this is pure mumbo-jumbo, Agustino. You are NOT one in body with the other when having sex. All that has happened is one genitalia fitting into another. That's it. That's all. Nothing more. Now, you can believe that some spiritual event has taken place because sausage meets bun, but this does not uproot what very simply, and physically, happens during sex.

As I said before, and which you have failed spectacularly to understand,

Sex ought only to be a means toward alleviating sexual appetite. — Heister Eggcart

Sex is merely a problem that requires solving, not some nuanced spiritual decadency. Indeed, if you're after a closer union with God, one must further empty all of their desires in order to more fully be filled with Love. Satisfying sexual desire flies in the face of this, however you cut the mustard. Simply look to Jesus for the kind of life one ought to live if by love's grace. I'll wait while you find me the time when Jesus had sex in order to more closely commune with his Father.

Okay so if I need Him, I can then either want Him, or not - that is still open to me. — Agustino

Yep.

Of course we agree that you don't NEED to have sex to be in a relationship or love someone. However this has nothing to do with whether you will have it or should have it or not. — Agustino

If you don't need to have sex, there is, therefore, no reason for you to have it.

I didn't say it is. — Agustino

Then explain what you mean by "natural desire."

Well I am fighting against that desire that you're speaking of. But I'm speaking of another desire, of which you don't seem to be aware of. Instead you're merely confusing one for the other. — Agustino

Sex is an ugly act that is best performed as quickly as one can and only when one must. You seem to be idealizing sex like some glorify war, and I'm not buying it.

If I love God, then don't I desire God? — Agustino

You don't want after God. You need him.

Yes it doesn't require that. — Agustino

Great, so we agree that you don't need to have sex!

Yes except that "fucking somebody" wouldn't satisfy the natural desire for unity with the beloved in this case - in fact it would frustrate it. You deny there is any such natural desire. I don't - that's the difference between us two. — Agustino

Why is it morally necessary to satisfy our sexual instincts? And no, I don't deny that there is natural desire, only that one should fight against it and not be in bed with it, ;)

Not all people do it out of lust in other words. — Agustino

The vast majority of people have sex because of their lust, are you kidding?

The couple I was talking about for example does not attempt to satisfy their sexual desire as end in itself. Rather they attempt to satisfy their desire for oneness as end in itself - otherwise known as love. — Agustino

Uh, no. Your couple's already failed in their intentions if they're fumbling after desire. And sorry, love does not require me sliding my penis into a woman's vagina. Sex can only ever be a necessary evil, and if one does not need to partake in it, then they ought not to.

It seems to me that your vague appeal to some kind of transcendent "oneness" is a pretty bad excuse for you to fuck somebody. If you can only love someone through having sex with them, then I hate to break it to you, but you're doing it wrong.

Sex ought only to be a means toward alleviating sexual appetite. If a couple's intent is to diminish their lust through the means of sex, then so be it. But if that couple intends only to satisfy each other's sexual desire as the end in itself, then they've not intended to do what is compassionate, which is the repairing of the other's sexual weakness that they themselves cannot solve alone.

As for the abortion topic, I mostly agree with Thorongil. But I'll add that abortion is a pretty fair example of the principle, "two wrongs don't make a right."

Because the woman would have other people with emotional attachments in her life and the fetus has not developed many if any such attachments. — MonfortS26

This sounds a little sentimental, no? Attachments in themselves aren't moral or immoral, so I'm not seeing how they can be justification for a moral hierarchy.

The fetus has no current place in society. The fetus is dependent on the woman for survival. The fetus has no sense of self awareness before 18 months.

Society dictates the nature of a fetus's being?

Indeed. But I'm still waiting for Monfort to clarify on both accounts.

Obviously a fetus would be lower on that than the woman carrying it. — MonfortS26

Why?

Perhaps, haha. Economics can be a dreadful business, so I can't blame anyone for not going balls deep into it in order to have a more informed opinion.

You should have prolly written it out instead of using an acronym, :D

When're you going to move more toward rightly responding to my qualms with you in the Shoutbox, ay?

What do you suppose are the reasons income has stagnated for the middle class, since 1980? — Question

Not every middle class job economy can grow net income at a constant or consistent rate. It used to be that the middle class had very little income disparity within its spectrum, which made income data read more positively. This, however, has deteriorated as a direct result of the more globalized economy, which has seen the rise of lower middle class and upper middle class identifications, based on income, become more prevalent and more divisive in the understanding of income numbers.

Just to tie in the past US election cycle, one of the big platforms for both major parties, as it always is, centered around the idea of strengthening and growing the middle class. This campaign lingo is a little misleading, because while the middle middle class is smaller than it used to be, the other ends of the middle class income spectrum, at least in the US, have become more prone to fluctuating - and usually in downward tendencies. The real dilemma with the middle class is not that wages are stagnant in some kind of average across the board, but that the lower middle class is much bigger than the middle middle and upper middle class income earners. This is one reason why the issue of poverty is so worrisome, especially in the 21st century, because the lower middle class has had the double tendency of both rapidly growing while also losing households to resting below the poverty line.

It must also be said that the upper middle class has seen healthy income growth the last decades overall, which is one reason why the middle class income spectrum comes out looking flat, because the lower middle class incomes get carried by those in the upper end.

It's a little too far reaching in my opinion to blame only a few people and their respective governments for certain failings in the modern capitalist global economy. While I'd agree that many of the policies and budgeting practices seen under both Reagan and Thatcher were dubious, if not frankly bad, there was and is still a whole lot more going on in the economy that help craft the current state of middle class wage stagnation, just as one example.

I suppose blaming Reagan and Thatcher for everything wrong with x, y, or z in the economy is like only blaming Germany and Japan for WWI and WWII. The sooner you realize that essentially everyone has their shit sploshing into the shared, global toilet that is the world economy, the faster you'll see that cherry-picking is harder to reasonably do. So again, while indeed Reagan and Thatcher are in part to blame for x, y, or z failure in the global economy, don't be so quick to find fault in only them.

Edit: holy too many charts and graphs batman! Calm yourself, Question >:O

You are impossible to do philosophy with. — intrapersona

Oh, so you're "doing" philosophy and not me, eh? Given your appeal to science here earlier, and the quote from Marx on your bio, I'm actually more inclined to think that you are not "doing" philosophy. This cop out of yours is rather uninspired, frankly. C'mon.

Not only are you subject to bigotry (not being able to see the other person's point of view because of your own desire to be right/close mindedness) — intrapersona

Your viewpoint is an impenetrable and irrational drivel. If this makes me a bigot in your eyes, then I'm okay with that.

By proof of this, I — intrapersona

Herein lies your problem, sweetie pie. You're trying to necessarily prove that your experience is the same for everyone else. If you think you've rationally thought through something, well then that's great! Doing so, however, doesn't mean your rationale is the truth, or is reflective of others' experiences.

It is in accordance with what I said in my OP about how animals have no purpose in life other than to survive and not die because they are afraid to die. — intrapersona

Aaaaaand you're still fumbling over this, >:O

It does not logically follow in any way that because animals strive for survival most of the time, that such is directly a result of their fearing death.