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OT: American Politics

Is there some kind of sarcasm quote marks that go in there or are you serious?

I'm serious, I don't believe in an all knowing or all powerful god, but if I did I think that would seem to make sense... other than the fact that that I think believing in an all knowing and all powerful god doesn't make sense.
 
You mean the president of the United States of America... with over 3 years of experience.

I mean if you had at one point been a bus but I don't think it would be fair to call you "the bus boy." You'd expect to be thought of as whatever your current position is, no?


No, I mean the idiot, POS, empty suit that thinks that he is the one that he is waiting for. And the world is laughing. It's your problem if you have blinders.

Take a close look at the graph I posted in post 8445. 43% of Americans also think he sucks and 22% think he is doing a good job. Notwithstanding a few more ball hangers in a Toronto hockey board.
 
I'm serious, I don't believe in an all knowing or all powerful god, but if I did I think that would seem to make sense... other than the fact that that I think believing in an all knowing and all powerful god doesn't make sense.

I'm an atheist and I find your original post kind of hard to read or believe.

On the other hand. I will not argue with your religious beliefs.
 
I'm an atheist and I find your original post kind of hard to read or believe.

On the other hand. I will not argue with your religious beliefs.

Seeing as you're an atheist I'm not accusing you of believing anything. But assuming there is a god that controls everything why would it hard to believe that he actually made people gay in order to curb the population problem?
 
so you're a "genius" now? and moral/ethical codes that have been evolving for 2000 years are now "silly"?

and still with the fixation on the 2000 year old book stuff and the "religious people are stupid and can't think for themselves" stuff.

Those moral and ethical codes have been evolving because thinkers like Locke and Paine and Mill went outside the scope of the Church, not because of religious support.

The Church has been fervently against any evolution of the Social Contract because it threatens their power base. It has only been with the last few centuries that the humanist movement has advocated for the rights of all, with heavy religious condemnation.
 
we're going to continue to agree to disagree on how human morality evolved. only difference is, i'm not gonna be the one so smug and arrogant as to assume i know better than billions of people over thousands of years did.
 
Appeal to popularity is a well-known fallacy.

Slavery was popularly embraced for thousands of years, but that entrenchment in cultures the world over did not make it right.

Similarly, it took a few brilliant thinkers that could outline their thoughts coherently and express that conviction with the passion and brilliance that they did to change minds and open the eyes of the masses to the hypocrisy of the Church's stance on many issues concerning morality.

As you are fond of saying "I would submit to you" that you would have been one of the most fervent opponents of the printing press when Gutenberg first introduced it to his fellow Germans back in the mid-fifteenth century, only as the Church forbade its use due to the power vacuum that would follow mass literacy in the populace.
 
you refuse to get it. knee-jerk anti-religious feeling has you railing against "a 2000 year old book" no matter what i try to tell you. i have argued that morality and ethics have evolved slowly, incrementally, and in some cases with great difficulty, shaped by HUMAN institutions like the church. we have made many mistakes along the way- both humans and institutions like the church. humans and the church have an ability to learn and grow from those mistakes and get better as a result. but without strong institutions, signposts and parameters to help guide that growth, i submit that humanity would be much worse off.

you would throw out all of that in favour of your own PERSONAL codes of ethics and morality, defined entirely by yourself, naively confident in your own ability to see what's true and what's right without any interference from social institutions. that arrogance and selfishness is proven every time you and your friends on this forum sneer and snicker at those institutions. you think you know better. that is narcissism. that is arrogance. that is moral relativism run wild. it is deeply corrosive.

when will you figure out that this has nothing to do with MY personal code of ethics? i am not arguing to impose my set of ethics on you. allowing gays to marry imposes NOTHING on you. it doesn't affect YOUR personal ethics (whether they are guided by technology, religion, homeless people or whatever). it simply recognizes the inherently contradictory nature of preventing gays from marrying.

it denies them fundamental rights and freedoms. it stratifies. it creates inequality. it is guided by religion principle when our state is apparently founded on separating the two. it is founded on principles from a single religion in a democracy that is supposed to recognize and accommodate all religions.
 
I think when he says your own personal morals/ethics..what he means is that god came up with the real/true morals in the bible and religious people have worked within that framework...so when he says "your own", i think he thinks the enlightenment age, all the things we have learned through time through science, through research and testing, means nothing.
 
... are you actually an atheist who is against gay marriage? You'd be the first I've ever come across.

If he is, it's only because it's something to argue about.

You guys have a massive, massive problem with presumptions. To a comical degree.

I'm "mostly" libertarian and "mostly" social agnostic.

On the other hand, all I see is group think attacks on anyone who doesn't follow the...well...group think.
 
I think when he says your own personal morals/ethics..what he means is that god came up with the real/true morals in the bible and religious people have worked within that framework...so when he says "your own", i think he thinks the enlightenment age, all the things we have learned through time through science, through research and testing, means nothing.

Everybody has a right to their opinion. As a gay person, why are you so ready to attack anyone else and yet, you want tolerance for yourself?
 
it denies them fundamental rights and freedoms. it stratifies. it creates inequality. it is guided by religion principle when our state is apparently founded on separating the two. it is founded on principles from a single religion in a democracy that is supposed to recognize and accommodate all religions.

Single religion? You missed the Islam memo.
 
18-30somethings in 2012 are being arrogant to an epic degree if they think they know better and that they can, on their own individual whims and choices, overturn thousands of years of human development just like that.

Have you perhaps, seen our history? It's nothing to trumpet as a great achievement overall. By far it's greatest time period has been a period in which the influence of religion has waned tremendously. Previous to that, the vast majority of it's great achievements were secular in nature.

You "submit" to me that things would have been worse without religion? You really think if many of history's great minds had studied math instead of theology, we'd really be behind where we are now? You believe that if the great minds like Newton, who were hung up on their faith, didn't attribute anything they didn't understand to the "creator", they wouldn't have achieved greater heights individually? (See NDT's "god of the gaps").

Rich.Creamery.Butter

When this period of time is viewed through a historical lens in the future, the achievements of the era will be seen as occuring due to the waning of religions grasp on western civilization.
 
A little education for some of you.....

On two different right wing forums, I posed the "abortion" question with four level of choices.

About 40% support abortion on demand, 40% support abortion with time limits. 20% either want no abortion of highly restricted.

I don't know what the US national average of those who identify themselves with right wing is, but it sure as hell shoves one of the right wing narratives the left holds down the drain.


P.S. 99.99% on those forums hate obama. *shrug*
 
Have you perhaps, seen our history? It's nothing to trumpet as a great achievement overall. By far it's greatest time period has been a period in which the influence of religion has waned tremendously. Previous to that, the vast majority of it's great achievements were secular in nature.

You "submit" to me that things would have been worse without religion? You really think if many of history's great minds had studied math instead of theology, we'd really be behind where we are now? You believe that if the great minds like Newton, who were hung up on their faith, didn't attribute anything they didn't understand to the "creator", they wouldn't have achieved greater heights individually? (See NDT's "god of the gaps").

Rich.Creamery.Butter

When this period of time is viewed through a historical lens in the future, the achievements of the era will be seen as occuring due to the waning of religions grasp on western civilization.

what you don't seem to understand is that many great thinkers over the centuries were driven to explore and learn because they wanted to better understand GOD, and man's relationship to GOD, and the nature of his creation.
 
what you don't seem to understand is that many great thinkers over the centuries were driven to explore and learn because they wanted to better understand GOD, and man's relationship to GOD, and the nature of his creation.

and all of them shut down as soon as they reached the extent of their understanding, and attributed everything beyond that to God. Take Newton as a prime example. His scientific career came to a grinding halt around the age of 50, despite living into his 80's. He spend the back end of his life writing about God instead of the universe. He had free will to do with what he chooses of course, but to argue that we as a civilization, with what he achieved in 30 years of adulthood, wouldn't have been significantly enriched by the last 30 had he stuck to science instead of theology is silly.

That's one example. There are many, many more through out history.

You attribute "God" for bringing them about to enquire into creation.....you think they simply wouldn't have if we were a civilization of atheists from the onset?
 
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