Religion can be defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
This belief is irrational as it isn't backed up by evidence.
All religions debunked in one single step.
This is your argument?
Religion is the belief in a personal God.
There is no evidence for this belief.
Religion is false.
Okay.
This is an empirical, not rational, argument. This means, ultimately, it doesn't give you a guarantee. It can only give you an uncertain level of certainty. The certainty you have is not based in reason, and so, it's based on faith or belief. The more certain you are, the more faith or belief you have, and so, the more dogmatic you are.
You've admitted this already.
I am intolerant! I have one goal before me, to fanatically and ruthlessly shove all this religious **** into the grave, whatever are the means that will be used.
Here is the difference between our methods and goals:
- You argue against theism because you see theism as false.
- I argue against dogmatism because I see dogmatism as harmful.
So, to me, you're the same as a Seventh Day Adventist complaining about Catholics going to church on Sunday. Okay, sure, the Sabbath is technically on Saturday. You win, SDA! *yawn*
3
What's your point?
You fail to see what's really going on, don't you? Congress is needed for those things because if they disagree with the president then they can flag down his "powers" before he does anything. We simply don't give anyone that much power, that's why we have Congress in the first place.
And yes he gives talks about doing those things BECAUSE HE WANTS PPL TO GET IT INTO THEIR HEADS, and yet people all over the country remain ignorant about pretty much everything he talks about, as if it isn't their responsibility to vote for the right people, to tell their reps what they want, and etc. Oh and worst of all are the people who don't really want those things, because they are truly ignorant of what they really are.
And Democrats don't "buckle to the Republicans", have you ever understood Congress? Majority rules. Democrats are not really democrats and Republicans are not really republicans. They are all wealthy (mostly white) older men who want to spend your tax dollars to make themselves a bit richer. They don't give a crap about you, so stop voting for them.
He tries to be bipartisan, and so he appears that way because he tries. He's neither a weak progressive, nor a strong conservative. Your characterization of him is quite funny. Like the others, he's a wealthy older man who wants your tax money, but still, he's better than most of the people we get.... However, no matter how strong the figurehead is, he's still a figurehead. You can't simply bypass Congress on ANYTHING. You can't just pass Medicare/Medicaid laws as president. You can't just pull troops from war that you're already deeply involved in. You can't just give half the people what they want when at least half dont even know what they want.
People like Obama are actually quite good for this country. What is bad are the greedy idiots in Congress who pass the laws, and to be quite honest the self-labeled 'Republicans' are usually the worst (although not always, sometimes theres a few good republicans, and sometimes there are some horrible 'Democrats').
And worst of all, when people are TRYING TO HELP the country, they are the ones who are often seen as the worst.... Because Americans want the NOW because the majority are extremely short-sighted, egotistical, and impatient. They don't, as a majority, simply do not understand the concept of building frameworks or patient development. They want what they can have NOW, and the Law-makers and presidents who give them the short-sightedness they want will spend the most money. It's the investments that are worth the wait and truly pay off, while the NOW screws everything up except for the stuff that happened yesterday when you had the NOW. And the majority just simply does not understand any of this.
This is simply how America works, and has worked since it's inception. It is a cyclical redundancy of ignorance begetting ignorance.
That's pretty much why I'm a Communist. I hate both Democrats and Republicans, but at least I can recognize a 'decent man' when I see one. And Obama is a decent man. There is no reason to call him a parasite except for true ignorance on the subject of the United States government.
And no, we don't need the protests in America. They won't do anything to fix anything, unless you think they will overthrow the government itself (they won't, the government spends plenty of tax payer money every year to ensure that will never happen).
People just need to stop voting for idiots into office because they are so ignorant of what those people actually stand for and don't even bother considering the third parties who might actually MIGHT MAKE CHANGES.
C'est la vie, I guess...
2
Do you even know what you're referring to?
What makes him a bad president? What makes him a parasite? What makes him need to be out of office?
Do you know what he's done for this country? Do you understand all that the last president did?
You're simply behaving foolishly or just trolling... Nothing you've said makes any sense. You're simply stating very ignorantly stated opinions.
I mean, it doesn't take a genius to see how much debt and how many problems the Bush administration incurred on the country. Obama has actually inspired many laws that have suppressed that debt and corrected many other problems in the nation.
By the way, you put all your blame on a figurehead? The people who make the laws and changes in this country are in the Senate and the House of Reps. Presidents are nothing but figureheads for people like you to love or hate and therefore inspire Nationalism.
If you can't see these things, you might as well build a bomb shelter and start stocking up for the next Y2K or nuclear war, because that's an extremely short-sighted view you have.
1
You're right to feel that way.
A lot of older people don't know what they're talking about and will ridicule people younger then them because they simply just don't have any more clue about life and things than you do, despite being older than you. They are jealous.
Enjoy your youth and remember it so you don't turn out like they did. Make no regrets!
1
Both of you are incorrect. Although, Mod.X was much more wrong about it. :tongue.gif:
Time is a dimension. It is the 4th dimension by our definitions of dimensions. We move through it every day, every moment. Everything you acknowledge as part of existence is a piece of time and your travels through it.
Spacetime is a very real, existing property of the universe. It consists of 4 dimensions in which we define things. Every piece of existence is composed of matter in space-time.
This is all meaningless beyond human terms, yes... but is a human not still a human even if we do not call him a 'human'? These are just labels we give things that we perceive.
They are no more man-made constructs than table or a chair. Surely we craft these and give them properties which we define, but are they not still made from wood or metals in which we had no part in creating? To simply just give them shape and form does not mean to say we created them. Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say we molded them... but more correctly, we 'defined' them.
In this way, we define all things, including time. Perhaps it's not just a 1D on a 4D graphical chart, but does that mean to say it isn't created from something that really exists? To peg a square block into a round hole within an orbit or revolution, does that not mean the stars still move alone and without our aid?
Just as so, time is no more man-made than anything else in reality.
We simply define the world we live in, we did not create it. It is just our clay, and we are its artists.
5
You kids today are so whiny and spoiled. When I was a kid [Insert arbitrary depiction of a 'hard childhood' experience].
Beat THAT. Now next time you think your life sucks, just remember that it's nothing compared to this!
... Now seriously though, so many people threaten to kill themselves because 'their life sucks'. It's such a mediocre, middle class, suburban, teenage view of life.
Do you ever think about anyone but yourself? Look at the world around you. Every day people suffer intensely. And what is your biggest worry? Who gets a new laptop. Oh wow, look at you and your suffering.
You have 3 friends, as you said. Seriously... Some people have none at all.
Some people don't have a laptop. Some people have no electricity. Some people have no home. Some people have no food or drinking water.
And they all get by. They live, Somehow. Can you possibly imagine these things? Can you imagine being these people?
Stop worrying about what you're going through now. Life is very precious. What you have is very valuable. Stop worrying about what you "don't have". Look at the good things in your life. Look at what you have. You've got much that a lot of people don't have.
Just live life. What are you doing wasting it away crying over stupid, pointless, unnecessary things? Enjoy your life, and your youth, while you still have it. It will be all gone before you realize it...
Most people want the things you have. They want homes, moms, laptops, electricity. They want their youth again. They want another moment with life, because theirs is slipping away. Stop trying to just throw these things away just because you have them.
Cherish these things while you have them, because all things disappear in the end.
Are you really ready for the end? Don't kid yourself, you're just beginning.
1
No. Obviously God measured those things first, so that's why they all exist.
Apparently he forgot to measure time though... so it's made up.
Logic, FTW!
1
In their views, they can believe that and still be Christian... perhaps not in your definition, but who gave you the power to determine that definition?
And BTW, Unitarians do believe Jesus was chosen by God to be humanity's messiah... They simply just believe he was human at first and not typically part of God... which is much more consistent with Mark's gospel, which is typically considered to be the first gospel that was written.
You really don't know anything about Unitarianism, do you?
I like people who mention "biblical canon". I think it's pretty funny. Because that means you both acknowledge and understand that a bunch of guys sat around in a room deciding which gospels and books were "REALLY inspired by God" and which ones weren't.
Do you understand the irony of that, by any chance? I doubt you do, from reading your posts... but seriously, think about it.
A cult is a religion. It's the same thing. That's the proper definition. However, cult comes with negative connotations relating to things like being 'held captive' by brain-washing, and kool-aid suicides... However, that's personal implication.
'Cult of Jesus' simply means that it is a Religion inspired by and of Jesus.
I think RiverC made these points quite clear... you're just ignoring them because it's not what you want to hear.
1
Uh... here's a thought. Just a thought...
But maybe.... MAYBE...
You figured that pokemon was a popular series, and eventually they'd run out of basic colors and then do white and black?
... Maybe. Just maybe... Oh but no... you simply had to be seeing the future. It's so obvious. You must be a prophet.
... A pokemon prophet. Wow, what an AMAZING ability.
Oh
And stop
Talking like
This. It's pretty
annoying.
1
lol wut?
Apparently you don't understand what a "law" of thermodynamics is... the laws of the universe can not be broken.
And why do you think Earth's entropy is decreasing or is decreased (and from what aspect)? That's silly nonsense.
Or perhaps it's more likely that all life on Earth is tuned towards having this balance of things that it has, and therefore implies absolutely nothing?
Not to mention that the universe is infinite-enough (or completely infinite) to make such an 'incredibly unlikely' circumstance to be incredibly, or infinitely, likely...
I think your beliefs are unjustified based on the presented information. You apparently just didn't do the science or math and ignored both. :tongue.gif:
1
What do you mean "Religion" is inherently Christian and philosophy is specifically Western thought?
From what I understand of these terms in modern language, neither of those is true... and I'm honestly not entirely aware of their origins, but I'd doubt they were ever intentionally that specific on those things.
Could you clarify this? Maybe there is some history about these terms I don't know about?
I totally agree here. People like to classify everything, not just religion but literally everything. These classifications, I feel, are the root of ignorance. They allow people to make assumptions and generalizations that are entirely untrue and spread that misinformation. These things harm society greatly. In order to ever overcome this issue, people must understand the individuality of all things, and respect them for what they are, rather than trying to classify them.
But I think this is by far the strongest of humanity's negative traits, because it is also greatly tied into how society works, as a whole.
Perhaps the 'god of the gaps' that you mention will not survive transhumanism... but I think philosophy about "God" in general will be greatly expanded by it.
What do you mean by this? Why would you hope that there's not a God with a plan? Wouldn't that be a good thing?
Definitely! This is something I try very hard to get people to understand whenever I speak of philosophy or religion. Like I pointed out before, people like to categorize things and this turns out badly. Our use of language only assists in these categorizations, and people tend to use terminology to classify with absolutely no thoughts as to why they do this, nor what the intended or actual meanings are.
People just seem to lump things together in whatever ways fit best for them. They don't seem to judge everything reasonably, they just ignore certain aspects of life because those things don't suit their way.
It's a cycle of endless neurotics and most people seem to simply just not care at all about this. Yet they wonder why they are inept at so-and-so subject. Well, DUH! You suck at it because you failed to grasp the concept entirely! You stuck to your assumptions about the subject and you failed because you had no clue what you were doing. You just thought it would compare to so-and-so other thing and lumped them both together and you were completely wrong. The end.
There are definitely relationships between things but it seems that the 'art of coherency', of actually relating things together, seems to be lost for a majority of humanity. It greatly saddens me to see it, too. And I'm helpless when trying to explain it to others, because they simply just never get it, and I'm horrible at explaining things.
I agree that transhumanism is a bit of a fad... it's just a silly little concept that is popular with literature and such. It's been around for quite a while, and of course it's fun to think about... but it's not entirely realistic.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I think it is possible to do, if humanity were willing to give up it's stubbornness (contradiction intended)... but sadly humanity is a bit too shallow at this point to determine where they are really headed.
But I do think that writings can be 'prophetic' in the sense of 'viewing the future' of technology and the world and such. Although they can be quite far off sometimes, look at things like Jules Verne's writings... he remarkably described many inventions that had yet to be created.
... Like they say, give a million monkeys a typewriter and they'll write Shakespeare... lol
But needlessly said, we currently have no way of determining now what might be the 'true' future-esque literature and what might be the fictional stuff. Hindsight really is 20-20.
It'd be interesting to see how many people believed that Jules Verne's creations would someday come to life, compared to people who believed another writer of the time who created many far-fetched ideas that never made it into existence. Perhaps maybe people CAN determine what are more likely futures... but as of now, I have no such evidence to suggest that.
Exactly!!!
This is actually part of my beliefs as a whole. I am a great admirer of all religions, as well as science and philosophies and many other things, because of this.
I find truths in all things, unequivocally. I find that the culmination of all humanity's truths lead to many higher truths, and to an overall truth unseen without the perspectives of all humanity.
It is like a very intricate and elaborate puzzle. I find that humanity contains all the pieces to this puzzle, and that the puzzle can be solved with the knowledge of this and the correct pieces.
But simply, I've explained this incredibly badly... I do no justice to my beliefs by explaining it this way, but I definitely have to agree here.
All religions and cultures contain many truths. There is not one true religion, but many.
The problem is in the details. The details are what always get the people stuck on the micro, when they are trying to look at the macro. The micro will never show the whole picture... I don't know why people look there.