561 Forum Posts by "Gario"
At 11/13/10 02:40 PM, chairmankem wrote:At 11/13/10 02:01 AM, Gario wrote: Now that's something I agree with 100% in here. The smart guy is being a pretentious idiot by shunning school and such because it treated him bad earlier in his life. Instead of bitching about it he should really just do something about it, instead.You're being presumptuous for assuming he's being pretentious. He did go to college. He hated that too for different reasons. Either way, does it seem like he's pouring his heart out over it and whining about it? No.
He hated it because of a bad experience. Instead of getting over that experience, though, he decided to forget all about it and go into bouncing, then he continues to get angry over how bouncing isn't the greatest job for him. It's not the focus of the video, of course, but he does keep referring back to the fact that he'd a bouncer like it's a bad thing, which implies that he doesn't like it, and yet he is unwilling to do something about it. I don't think I'm presuming very much - I'm getting this entirely from what's on the video, there.
Just a quick interjection about the OP (I sort of just read the whole 'Gold' thing and went on that tangent). I believe that money is ultimately a representation of work. The question is, who's work is it representing? Certainly not the CEO's, in proportion to what his underlings probably do (he does a bit more work. sure, but not 6000% more work). Certainly not the people living of of inherited money. It represents work, but it doesn't accurately represent the work of the person who currently holds the money.
I love Intelligence threads, where people toss around all sorts of misguided information and claiming that 'something just can't be possible', when it's actually been scientifically proven to be true.
At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:
:I mean, Eugenics is proven to be a flawed, insane theory.
Sure is, unless your goal was to isolate the smart people so that dumb people didn't exist anymore, thus shifting the bell curve in favor of the smart people (which was his goal, in that part of the discussion) - then it's perfect. That's not most people's goal, though.
:Brain size has all but been dismissed as correlative to intelligence right? Yeah...this sounds more to me like maybe "the smartest man in the world of the 1800s" or some such to me :)
Brain size is actually shown to be correlated with intelligence. Perhaps that particular article isn't perfectly satisfying, but there have been other studies and tests to show that it's true. How he came to the conclusion was very stupid, though - to break his process in two, look at the brain of a blue whale and tell me that it's smarter than a human. Yeah, it doesn't work, people.
At 11/12/10 02:44 PM, QuantumPenguin wrote: IQ tests simply don't work, no form of standardised testing is capable of accurately ordering people by their intelligence.
Isn't this a cyclic statement? What is 'intelligence' to you?
Let me do everyone a favor and define it, as it's normally attributed in the field of Intelligence theory. 'Intelligence' is synonymous to 'Liquid intelligence' - it's entirely dependent on how fast someone learns something. An intelligent person can learn something much quicker than an average person, given all other things remain constant. IQ tests actually maps that quite accurately.
The problem still remains that while people are still basing "intelligence" on standardised testing then the idea is more open to corruption than even our existing political systems. The IQ test was supposed to be the ultimate pinnacle of standardised testing, and it's an abysmal failure to this date. Fix this problem and maybe you could debate the idea a bit more, believe me nobody would love to see this implemented more than me, but as of right now it's completely ridiculous.
I personally attribute 'Intelligence' to the G-factor, which a standardized IQ test can get fairly accurately. You should check out what a 'g-factor' is - it's pretty interesting.
At 11/12/10 03:40 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.
Well spoken from someone who doesn't understand the field (don't feel bad - not many people do). The IQ of a person is actually correlated with nearly everything about the person, from the symmetry of his/her body (which is a strong factor in attractiveness) to how well that person can learn a second language to how quickly the person can learn to repair a car. The IQ determines a whole lot about the person, whether you believe it or not.
:He also never tried to fight the system to capitalize on his intelligence. Tough titty to anyone who claims to be smart and not be able to get on. Once you understand a problem completely (and he seems to think he does) solving it becomes easy.
Now that's something I agree with 100% in here. The smart guy is being a pretentious idiot by shunning school and such because it treated him bad earlier in his life. Instead of bitching about it he should really just do something about it, instead.
A quick note on something he said that no one seems to have caught, yet. Has anyone thought about the bell curve that he's talking about? If you want to know what it is, exactly, the mean is 100 IQ, the standard deviation is 15 and it's a natural curve. In short, this means that democracy is mostly run by people who are under 115 IQ (which isn't that great, people), and by most I mean over 80%. Wuite frankly, I've already come to the same conclusion that democracy is doomed to fail, for this very reason. But whatever - it's not a view I share that often. It's just relevant to the thread, so why not throw that in?
At 11/11/10 11:39 PM, Korriken wrote: Gold holds value, money does not and cannot since it has no real worth.
When did you get the idea that gold is worth anything more than an incredibly conductive metal (which can't be used as such because of it's incredibly low melting point)? It's exactly as worthwhile as monetary notes based on trust, since both have a value that's attributed to it by the people that spend it.
this worthless paper money is a boon only to the government as the government can print money and devalue it. some call this the "shadow tax" on everyone that no one sees. if the value of the currency you hold drops by half, your wealth has effectively been cut in half.
The governments of the world know it and use it to their advantage. every time the government prints currency to spend, you get screwed over. EVERYONE gets screwed over.
Including the government in question, which is why they try not to do that, if they can help it.
Have you noticed all the "gold buyer" stores opening up, and all the commercials for gold buyers who want YOUR gold and are willing to give you "top dollar" (yeah right) for it? thats because gold holds its value. paper money does not. Anyone who sells their gold for worthless scraps of paper is a fool.
Have you ever tried to buy a hamburger with gold before?
The removal of currency from the gold standard was a tax. a phantom tax that can't be regulated, can't be repealed and doesn't require collection from the people. The government simply prints the money and as the value of your dollar drops, its the same as having the money taken directly from your wallet without you even noticing. you just notice the price of everything constantly rising. everything, except, well, your pay check.
On the gold standard, a government couldn't just print money out of nowhere because they didn't have the gold to back it up.
Now, now, don't jump to conclusions - of course they could print money, much like the banks could give out more loans than they could afford before the Great Depression. The problem only arises once the population demands their gold simultaneously.
Here's a question about the Gold Standard - what happens to the 'Dollar' when gold is traded internationally for whatever reason? Doesn't this devalue the dollar, as well? That 'Phantom Tax' would seem to occur even in this sort of system, so I don't see why 'gold' is any better than what we have now (monetary notes).
At 11/10/10 05:24 PM, Decky wrote: I have never really understood the whole "Freedom of Speech" thing. I know that it basically means that a person is free to voice there opinions on whatever they what, but people get arrested, prosecuted or in this case fired because of there opinions everyday, so really it doesn't exist.
Don't get me wrong I think its a good idea, but it simply doesn't exist and I don't think it ever truly will.
A person is free to speak however they will without the government restricting the person or forcing the person to say something against his/her will. That does not mean private sectors can't restrict the speech of anybody.
At 11/6/10 08:38 PM, The-General-Public wrote:
It's a larger assumption to say there is some mysterious force giving anything rights at all.
Agreed, to a point. There's no restriction to your statement, though - why are we even talking about human rights? The right to life isn't really existent, so we should be trying to justify the restriction of murder. May as well, because there isn't any force that gives us rights at all.
I'm agreeing that it isn't a mystery where rights come from - people decide those rights.
Still would be her choice to make. self-mutilation, and even suicide are not against the law.
Agreed, hence why I said it was 'her choice'. I'd hope you'd agree with my humble opinion that self-mutilation is pretty stupid, though.
seeing as fetuses don't have preferences, it's a faulty question.
Certainly why I admit that I was 'beggin the question' (meaning it's faulty, by it's nature). If we were to assume that the fetus can be counted as a 'person' (hence I'm beggin', here), who would the abortion benefit, the person that would have been born but isn't or the woman? It's more rhetorical than anything, so don't burst your head over it.
At 11/7/10 10:07 AM, dirtshake wrote: I didn't mean to rule out babies and toddlers. I don't support leaving children to die. That's just absurd, though you have showed how complicating the issue of personhood is. What I was trying to say, and unsuccessfully I suppose, was that a fetus doesn't have the characteristics of personhood up until a certain point, or even until it is born. Perhaps using the "survive on its own" argument wasn't the best choice because you make a valid and great point about babies, since they would most certainly die if left alone (something I don't want just to be clear). I was trying to make the point that the fetus can't survive without a biological connection to the mother whereas babies can't survive without the physical care of another human being.
I understand your point. Reducto ad absurdum is a pretty neat technique, eh? :)
Perhaps another characteristic of personhood can be the ability to learn. Babies have this capability, but do fetus'? I say no.
So does any animal in the animal kingdom (even worms can 'learn'). This pretty much restricts the killing of any animal on the planet, since they are 'people', by this definition. While more a more peaceful approach than earlier I don't think you agree with that, either.
I can't say the exact timeframe, but it'seven proven that fetus' can learn to react to the voice of the father, if the father spends the time to talk to it. This doesn't do me too much good (because it can't be shown when a fetus can learn to respond to stimuli), but at some point the fetus indeed can learn, so it's not quite accurate to say it can't.
At 11/7/10 12:31 PM, SohlTofang wrote: This is all so rediculous using any religious arguments.
Thank you, captain obvious. Why are you posting?
At 11/7/10 05:23 PM, Lithium-I wrote: You were implying that the potential to become a person is the only thing necessary to have rights, I was commenting on how jizz, even though it needs an egg to fertilize, has the potetional to become a person when it fertilizes.
I think I commented on this position not two pages ago, but here's a recap - pro-lifers are stupid to continue the 'Potential' argument, because pro-choice people rightly negate this by including 'sperm' and 'ovaries' as potential people.
Pro-lifers should realize that they are using the wrong word, and instead use the correct word, which is 'a fetus is INEVITABLY going to be a child if no abortion took place'. There, that clears it up a bit (although that opens up the question of if the baby is sick or something, but I'll let that come when it comes).
Okay, I'll concede. I got inconsistent on the scientific aspects of personhood. But it doesn't matter because a fetus hasn't been born yet, thus doesn't not gain inalienable rights.
Yeah, that's a little cyclic. Read that again and you'll see the problem with that.
It's not my choice. Opponents of abortion may have a strong moral case and belief against abortion. Yet, their beliefs are not shared by all. They must tolerate a woman's right to have an abortion, even if they believe the act to be morally wrong.
No, there is no belief that is universally 'shared by all', but there are still laws that attempt to restrict those people from practicing. People rob stores and banks every day, and they believe that it's right because it helps them live or whatever, but that doesn't affect the fact that they still need to adhere to the law.
:The best that opponents can hope for is to convince women that it is immoral, but to ask for the illegalization of abortion would be to wrongly deny that abortion is a right...
Before I move on, I really need to ask - why do women need this right? I mean, I know of at least one case where I'd sympathize (rape), and another case where I wouldn't dare infringe their right to live (take the life of the mother/baby if baby is born), but other than that, what is the goal woman are trying to achieve? Maybe that would help, because tossing around the terms 'Choice' and 'Right' is a meaningless way to proceed if both sides don't really know the purpose of it all.
Does this answer even matter? In what context is this even relevant to abortion? I could say yes, but then you'd be all 'dudewtfmoron' You should probably stop with all the straw man shit and ask relevant questions that aren't misinterpretations of what I say. But I'll go ahead and answer this question. Yes. It's more of a person, because, even when dead, you're rights, given at birth still cannot be taken away. Happy?
According to you: Is a dead individual with no living cells considered more of a person than a LIVING fetus?
dudewtfmoron.
Actually, I'm lost, here - what does that have anything to do with abortion (other than it's talking about a fetus)?
Search it out on Google, Youtube or whatever - tuts on this sort of thing aren't that difficult to find. You could look in the OCR tutorial section for some detailed tuts on FL, too, if you'd like.
At 11/6/10 05:32 PM, Lithium-I wrote: A fetus is no more a person than an acorn is a tree.
Great, a statement that feels it needs nothing more to justify itself than a faulty comparison. Very nice argument, indeed.
:That being said, a fetus cannot have "rights" protecting it from abortion.
From this point, let's just assume the previous premise is correct and draw a conclusion that has nothing to do with it - I guess there is some mysterious force restricting anything other than 'people' from having rights, eh? That's also a fairly large assumption, wouldn't you say?
:At that point in time, the fetus is no more than, say, an organ, in the woman's body, so it belongs to the woman, thus she should be able to decide what she wants to do with it.
Because the fetus has no rights, or isn't a person, or whatever, at some undefined point in time, it is now an organ that is a part of a woman's body (you know, because all things that are in a woman's body are organs). Because of this the woman should have the right to keep it or get rid of it.
Y'know, it's a funny argument, all flaws aside - people think they're in the clear when they define the fetus as an organ. While I guess a woman has the right to get rid of her own organs, if the choice was made for reasons outside of saving her own life (kidney infection, for example) it would be considered self-mutilation. Not that this even applies to this argument (because the fetus actually, by definition, is not an organ), but it's just what comes to mind.
:Also, it's better to have an abortion and regret it than giving birth and regretting having a kid.
Better for whom? Begging the question a little bit, admittedly, but is it better for the mother or the fetus?
At 11/6/10 02:05 PM, Camarohusky wrote:At 11/6/10 01:25 PM, Gario wrote: Alright, and who's going to interpret the law?Yes, I do. Lawyers and judges. Business peopel will not make the decisions. Their corporate cousel will. Google has kicking things off youtube only when the original owners requests it. other than that it stays. trust me, there is a ton of pirated material on youtube that has not been removed, and a neglible amount of OK material that was removed.
Judges are really only mediators when it comes to federal court - it's actually the jury that interprets the law (which is made up of regular people). The only time the judge interprets the law is in civil court, which I can assure you none of these copyright cases will fall under. Lawyers are only interpretors of the law as far as the client wants them to be, so they're ultimately an extension of their clients. Now we're back to where we started - the internet providers are being given the responsibility to take action against these web domains.
As for Youtube's poor handling of pirated material and fair-use material, isn't that actually further proof that these companies really shouldn't have the responsibility to handle these things?
Trust me, this will NOT hurt any legitimate business. The Fulps have probably got some well paid attorney (no doubt wearing a limey powdered wig) somewhere who has the defense to any claim of copyright infrongement all set and ready to go the throw right at any government that tries to sanction them. The other companies that you value (and that truly value you, this does not include Google) will have the same sort ready to go.
Perhaps Fulp does have the attorneys to counter this, since this is a fairly large site. I know of quite a few other legitimate sites that deal with fair-use material that couldn't afford an attorney to defend their rights - what happens to them if someone calls them on it? They disappear. As much as I'd love to keep this discussion Newgrounds oriented (or 'nwegrounds', whatever you want to talk about) it's actually much too big of an issue to restrict to how it'll affect Newgrounds.
At 11/6/10 11:21 AM, Camarohusky wrote:
First: If this were some homeless guy selling pirated movies, music, and other stolen goods by a closed dry cleaning on Olive Way in Seattle (yes, homeless chop shop can be found here on weekends) no one would give two shits if the guy was shut up and thrown in jail. Then again, if this were a reputable company that was selling pirated copies and other stolen goods no one would care. Both cases are exactly like the sites targetted under this law. They're all thieves.
Alright, and who's going to interpret the law? Have you seen how, say, Youtube handles this sort of thing? Many videos that they take down are actually protected by exemptions of the copyright law, but the videos are taken down anyway, and the user is punished because Youtube and it's users have no clue how the law really works. You know why this is the case? Because Youtube as a body of executives don't understand the finer points of the law, and yet they've become responsible for it.
Now this responsibility is being passed on to internet providers (whom haven't shown any experience handling the law properly, themselves), and they're going to be responsible for removing entire domains for what they see as infringements. Due to the severity of the punishment, this is going to make Youtube's less than graceful handling of the situation look like child's play.
On paper, it isn't too bad (less piracy is a good thing, for me), but in reality the fact that those that are going to enforce these things haven't done a very good job sifting through what is legal and what isn't in the past.
I find it funny that people think Newgrounds is safe because we're technically protected by the 'Fair-Use' clause of copyright exemption (which we are). That hasn't stopped people from removing similar material from the internet before and ignoring 'fair-use'.
At 11/6/10 02:57 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:
Here's one.
There we go. I'm just looking through it real quick... Didn't know some of the stuff, actually (Chimeras were pretty neat). I'll look at each of the arguments really quick and see if I agree with them or not (and why, if I don't).
'Conception is a process, not a distinct point in time'
True, to a point, but the entire argument assumes that the process can't be considered the point in time it's 'considered human' simply because... it's a process. That's a cut-and-dry example of the 'Continuum fallacy', which has been shown to be a poor way to form an argument. Using the same argument, I could actually show that the baby in the 2nd and 3rd trimester is still a part of that same process that began oh so long ago and deny that s/he is 'human' (and I have in fact heard that argument before, although not here).
The article does admit that this doesn't really prove anything, though, so I guess they're off the hook.
'Twins, chimeras and clones'
Hmm... interesting, but that seems like a series of poor arguments, to me. Twins - if one life becomes two, yay for them. There was never anything wrong with a different point in time to call whether or not something was a 'life', and to assume that was the case is to create a false dichotomy. Chimeras - I'm going to be honest, this was just an attempt to make the pro-lifers look rather stupid by creating a straw-man out of their position and burning it. Does the mother have any control over what embryo consumes what? Probably not, so why is there a focus on that, as if it creates a moral problem? The two 'humans' become a single 'human', I'd guess, and that'd be the end of it. Clones - like article said, it isn't even an issue yet, so of course there isn't really a position on it, yet. Ask me about that when it becomes an issue in twenty or so years, but in the meantime I obviously shouldn't be expected to have an answer to that (although I'd suspect the answer would be something along the lines of 'point of fusion' or something, but I can't say). I have no answer, but frankly the issue is non-existent so I don't need one, either.
'Potentiality'
I find the argument on the article to actually be an equivocation of the term 'potential', and it's actually pro-lifer's fault, not the pro-choice position. The term they really should use is that from conception it is inevitable for the embryo to become a human being as long as the mother doesn't make the choice to end the process. That gets rid of the 'sperm/egg protection' problem (it creates the problem of whether or not the person will be born, but I hope you see the inevitable problem of that argument). Because we're not even talking about 'potential' anymore, his second point doesn't apply.
'Member of the human species'
Isn't that the argument in the first place? I think arguing the conclusion is called 'begging the question', isn't it? I thought the whole question was 'is it human at the point of conception'? He moves onto the real question (Should the fact that it's human allow it to have moral rights?), so I'll focus on that instead. He claims that psychological abilities are what allow the person to have rights, and for as far as that goes he may be right. However, he is assuming that if one fact is true then the other must be false, and continues to use this as 'proof', when in fact both points could be true. That last point that 'it seems a lot like bigotry or prejudice' is actually 100% subjective information where he doesn't actually provide anything more than a comparison. I find taking away rights because of someone's stance is very different than giving something rights based on their species, so frankly I think the comparison was terrible, to boot. As long as we don't commit the 'exclusive disjunct' problem like the argument above, it's not bad to consider race as a qualifier of rights.
'Unique genetic combination'
I've never heard that argument before, and I can see why it'd be weak. I give that one to him.
'Failure of an embryo to implant'
I'm seeing a pattern in his argument style, actually - it's a very large attempt at 'Reductio ad absurdum', except it's forgotten that you must deduce the conclusion without any induction at all for it to work, or else you create a slippery slope. Perfect example - Zygotes are considered 'life'. True. Zygotes don't always become embryos. True. People should care that this life has ended. Probably not - an inference on his part. People should hold funerals during menstration. Um, no, they shouldn't. People should feel bad that they existed. No, wait, why? Etc. ad nausum. That whole section is just a bunch of assumptions that are in reality quite baseless.
'Conclusion'
Because he used a bunch of stuff that didn't really lead to his conclusion, my conclusion is that this guy needs to really work on his argument skills. It was very superficial with no substance behind it. Looking at the blog page, though, I'm going to assume that there is a heavy, heavy bias toward his position on that page and that he's just writing that to preach to his choir.
Thank you for the article though, Aviewaskewed, I appreciate the effort.
Same thing goes for being 'flat out wrong'.Now who's talking in redundancies? :p
*rimshot*
As for the whole 'living' vs 'existing' question, I can say something is living because... well, I can - there's no reason for me not to. I never had to think about it since it never really made a difference to me before, nor would it influence my behavior in any way. The question that I have is why do you care about this? Give me a reason to make the distinction.I wonder about it because in a case like this, there is a tremendous amount of time, money, and resource on the part of many people to care for this person for the entirety of their life. If people don't wish to take on such a burden, I'm not sure it's really right for the rest of us to tell them they have to because of what our morality may tell us.
That's the ticket. So if the person can't take care of themselves then we should be left with the option to let them die, correct? Y'know, in some cases I might be inclined to agree with you on this. I don't see why we need to make the distinction between 'living' and 'existing', though - I can make this decision without creating euphemisms for it. In fact, the only reason people create these sort of euphemisms is if they are not comfortable using the word in question. So why does it make you uncomfortable to consider the person 'living' (rather than 'existing') when making these decisions? That's the point I'm trying to make, here - all these terms ('are they human/people', 'living vs existing', 'having an abortion vs making a choice', etc.) are nothing more than analgesics designed to make the person feel better about their decisions. The question behind this should be obvious - why do people feel bad enough to need to create euphemisms that mask what they mean?
At 11/5/10 12:37 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:At 11/4/10 10:44 PM, Gario wrote: Well, ironically I completely agree, but not for the same reasons. You see, 'personhood' wasn't really an issue until pro-choice people wanted to justify abortion with the idea that the unborn weren't really human until some variable point in time. Pro-lifers have always had the same idea of 'personhood' - they are a 'person' at conception. The reasons are varied, but that's how we define it.Even though it's scientifically incorrect and flat out wrong to say life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg?
Ooo, both scientifically incorrect and flat out wrong? I'd be alright if it were simply scientifically incorrect, but being flat out wrong, at the same time... I guess I'm in trouble when someone uses redundancies, eh?
Give me the article/link that scientifically proves that it's incorrect (or hell, even an explanation would be great) and I'll comment properly on that. Once you say something is 'scientifically wrong' you need to provide objective evidence to support your argument - otherwise it means as much to me as 'Jesus is the Lord! Believe it!!' does to Poxpower.
Same thing goes for being 'flat out wrong'.
As for your point of view, Aviewaskewed, consider you were in that girl's position. Would you really care that you didn't experience the world around you like everyone else? I sure wouldn't - hell, if I were feed decently enough I'd think it was awesome, since I never knew the concepts of sight, sound and control of the world around me, to begin with, so why would I even care?But my point is without this external stimuli and with very clearly diminished mental function, how can you even "think" of anything? How are you doing anything more then the most basic functions the brain executes for carrying out life and if that is so, how can you really be said to be "living" and not merely "existing"? That's what I'd like the actual answer to.
Chemicals in the brain. Electrodes sending messages that translate whatever stimuli input you have into familiar sensation we call 'the senses'. The same way everyone else does, I'd guess - if a person doesn't do that then this whole 'person' argument is a moot point, because the subject in question is actually dead (brain death = death, or at least most if not all ethical philosophers think so)...
I don't think you're talking about how people literally think - you're wondering (without actually stating it) what counts as thought, and I already answered that, in a sense. If you never had some sensation, other sensations become more significant. The girl couldn't see or hear or take care of herself, but you know what? That actually doesn't make her upset in the least, in fact; if care was taken to maintain the other senses (taste, smell and touch) that person could have a very fulfilling life... in her own mind. In my humble opinion, the ability to experience these other things and enjoy them count as 'thought', but the question you're asking is a bit ambiguous and subjective so there's no avoiding the fact that we'll probably agree to disagree with this one.
As for the whole 'living' vs 'existing' question, I can say something is living because... well, I can - there's no reason for me not to. I never had to think about it since it never really made a difference to me before, nor would it influence my behavior in any way. The question that I have is why do you care about this? Give me a reason to make the distinction.
At 11/2/10 02:33 PM, poxpower wrote: Is this news to anyone?
Really?
There's billions of people who still believe in God, miracles, aliens and so on.
Statistically speaking, it's more than likely that the person who wrote the article does, too. The irony is astounding, isn't it?
It's one of those articles that isn't really 'news', but it does bring the fact to light. I'm interested in exactly what samples they used to get their conclusion and what their hypothesis is to explain it.
At 11/2/10 09:16 AM, Kid wrote:
One thing I always wonder is how Pro-lifers feel about miscarriages?
I don't know about most Pro-Lifers, but I personally feel like people should create and burn down straw men against all those that have differing opinions. YEAH!
At 11/2/10 03:04 PM, The-General-Public wrote:At 11/2/10 02:52 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:I'd also like to ask pro-lifers about the concept of "personhood". For example, I remember in high school there was a girl there that was blind, deaf, retarded, and confined to a wheelchair. She had no concept of the world around her and no ability to react with it. Is this girl still a person with a life, or merely a human being who exists? I'd like some other people to chime in too actually as this was always a difficult question for me to come to grips with.The answer is that we need to ditch the idea that there is such a thing as some platonic ideal as personhood.
Well, ironically I completely agree, but not for the same reasons. You see, 'personhood' wasn't really an issue until pro-choice people wanted to justify abortion with the idea that the unborn weren't really human until some variable point in time. Pro-lifers have always had the same idea of 'personhood' - they are a 'person' at conception. The reasons are varied, but that's how we define it.
As for your point of view, Aviewaskewed, consider you were in that girl's position. Would you really care that you didn't experience the world around you like everyone else? I sure wouldn't - hell, if I were feed decently enough I'd think it was awesome, since I never knew the concepts of sight, sound and control of the world around me, to begin with, so why would I even care?
At 11/2/10 07:49 PM, dirtshake wrote:
Perhaps answering this question first can help the abortion debate and determining, socially that is, when a fetus is a life. Or we'll use the abortion debate to solve this question. Personally...since the fetus can't survive without the mother's help until a certain point, I don't consider that a life. If it can't sustain itself without support from another orgasm or technology, it is not a life.
Oh really? So you've just unintentionally ruled out... well, anyone from the age of two and under, using that definition of personhood (people can't survive on their own without any sense of object permanence, unless the things they need are immediately in front of them when they need them). Awesome, so it's alright to leave children alone to die (or outright end their lives, in the case of an abortion) if they can't take care of themselves outside the care of their parents.
If you're alright with that, it's cool and all, but I suspect you should rethink your position on 'personhood', a little bit. That one is a bit... disturbing.
I love it when Pro-Choice peeps get all excited over the concepts of 'Personhood' - that's when their position really starts to shine!
Good lord, anyone who posts a topic about 'Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice' is either looking for a fight or trying to preach to a choir. I suspect it's actually a bit of both in this thread, but whatever.
Since there seems to be virtually no pro-lifers in here (what, are we scared of the pro-choicers in here?), I'll come in and say I'm pro-life.
About a month ago I watched his 'Geek' series and was wondering when he'd write the conclusion to it. Little did I know... Damn, I'm not involved in the community enough - he'll be missed, for sure.
Alright... Well, they're at 16, now, but they're going to give it a few days to see if there are more people interested in it and see if a 32 bracket competition is possible.
It'd be great to see new faces on there, so again get on there and try your luck!
This is a compo currently going on with another site, but we want to see a bit of variety with the musicians (we don't mind our usual folk, but it's nice to see new faces around there, too). With the talent that's around here, I figure at least a few of you guys might be interested.
In a nutshell, you pick a MMX Maverick theme to remix, and everyone else does the same. From there, you will be paired off with another competitor tournament style (there will be two brackets with either 8 or 16 players each, pending on how many show interest - please let that be a lot of you!) and you both need to do a remix that incorporates both your maverick music and your opponents music. A stage of public voting follows, and whomever wins moves onto the next round. It's single elimination, so if you're out, you're out!
The compo is hosted on this site, and I am not the person coordinating it, so if you have any questions (or you are interested in participating) please post here. The details and rules of this compo are on the first page. The more people that are participating, the more amazing the compo will be, so let's all come together on this one and have some fun!
I hope to see you all there :))
At 9/20/10 01:53 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:
:This is what I've always loved about Catholic apologists, you pick and choose the aspects you like, and ignore the big one that the Poper is BY DOCTRINE the INFALLIBLE VICAR OF GOD!! He speaks FOR God on earth, or he's at least God's mortal collaborator. That's why they used to burn anybody who talked smack on the Pope. That's why they still toss people out who break Catholic law.
Actually, just to get the details correct on it (since you don't know what 'Infallible' means, in that context) the Pope is just as subject to mistake as any other human, according to Catholic doctrine, UNLESS he is making a statement on dogma under very specific circumstances (I forget exactly what the circumstances are - I need to refresh on it). To give you an idea of how often he is 'infallible', the circumstance has only occurred twelve times in the history of the Catholic Church. In other words, not that often. He is supposed to be pretty wise, though, so most people should take what he says as true.
The church also admit fault to the anti-sematism, the inquisition, the excommunication of scientists of the past and the abuses of power that have happened (and, to my knowledge, have made it a point not to make those mistakes again). For all it's mistakes, it IS trying to rectify them as much as they possibly can.
Vicar of Christ, yeah, but not always infallible. If you want a passage from the Bible (many people do - it's the way they are) read up the story in Acts where Paul corrects Peter (who was the Pope at the time), and Peter acknowledges his mistake, instantly proving that, even as Popes, they are still human and make mistakes. Just making that clear.
On to the subject, the article is a satire. Some of you understand this (and correctly say that they use Hitler as an atheist incorrectly). The point shouldn't be ignored, though - if it wasn't his fault specifically, or there wasn't any possibly way that he could've had a hand in the action then why is he supposed to beg for forgiveness, especially when popes of the past have acknowledged that the Church was wrong? The pedophile issues aside (to my understanding, he may or may not be involved in that - personally I don't think so, but needless to say I'm biased on the subject, here), there are still people bringing up old issues such as... well, the Inquisition, the Crusades and the anti-sematism that used to be rampant in the Catholic Church and putting the blame on the current Church when, in fact, these things have already been denounced and rejected by the Church (and that's just in this thread alone). The current Pope can't fix the problems of the past, here, any more than any Russian can correct the wrongs of Stalin, so continuing to gripe about those ancient issues only proves that the satire still holds some truth behind it (as much as people would like to think it's all pointless garbage).
The Church made mistakes. They acknowledged their mistakes. They're working not to make the mistakes again. Time to move on with life - the only issue people may investigate and ask forgiveness for is the pedo issue, which the Pope has tried to take steps in correcting and has asked forgiveness from the world for already (for the sake of the Church). If he doesn't feel like he's personally responsible, then sorry fellas, he probably won't ask personal forgiveness, much like any accused that believe they're innocent won't incriminate themselves. It's just the way it is.
Finally, a discussion worth talking about in here. Getting many responses and I have little time, so let's see if I can systematically address them.
At 9/15/10 11:28 AM, Drakim wrote: That is called Divine Command Theory and tons of Christians reject it. There is no clear consensus for what good and evil is within Christianity because Christians disagree.
I understand what Divine Command Theory is and it's implications. It's all very fine that people reject it or whatnot. However, the largest church in the world accepts it (e.g. Roman Catholic - no denying they are the largest) and decided to formalize their decision to boot, so I'll go with them.
Read paragraph 385 - 421 for the full description, but essentially they accept it, despite it's flaws. I'd love to discuss this in detail some other time, but right now I'm focused on the riddle, so I don't really want to split my attention, yet.
Before we get into the whole 'Christians don't agree on it's definition' realize that Christians don't agree on any single topic, so frankly you'll find Christian arguments against any and every belief that you can find, from creation to the definition of evil to even the divinity of Jesus.
Short answer: Flawed, perhaps, but that's how it's defined by the largest of them so I'm sticking to it, for the sake of this discussion.
When God decided to flood the earth and save only Noah and his family, that was good. Why? Because God did it. If God does it, then it's good, because he's God.
You got it. Hey, it's not my definition, here - I'm using the most accepted one.
Great to know that to be a Christian I would need to start thinking that some specific types of genocide is morally good.
Again, I'm using the most common definition. It has it's difficulties, and again I'll be more than happy to discuss that whole thing later. Not right now, though.
What if I believed in God, but didn't accept that his word was the definition of morally good? What if I believed in God but rejected him as evil? How would that fit into your definitions, or do you claim it's impossible?
Then you don't believe in the Christian God, by definition. Nothing wrong with that... unless, of course, you're trying to discuss something in terms of the Christian God, in which case you'd be creating a red herring, wouldn't you? Logically speaking, that's considered a bad thing.
And he is going to kill and torture those who don't willingly love him! It's like a criminal saying "your life or your money". It's not a real choice. What he really means is "give me your money or I will take your life". He isn't actually walking up to you and presenting you with two choices for you to consider and choose from.
You're talking about 'Hell', I presume? Again, another topic that's very interesting, but it has little to do with the riddle, itself. I'll give you my short answer now and expand on it later, if you'd like.
Short answer: Hell is not a punishment - it is a place without God. Thus, if you say you don't want God then logically speaking you will send yourself to 'Hell'. Christians say it's a very bad place to be because there is no God there. It's not a 'punishment' in the same sense that you are tortured for eternity, but because the Christian God is so good that you beat yourself up for not choosing Him for all eternity.
Again, that's as much detail as I'll go, since it has little to do with the topic I want to talk about.
Aw, poor God. No wonder we all have to suffer and die, otherwise God would be forgotten and left behind.
Indeed.
But why exactly wouldn't this problem apply in heaven too? Or is heaven full of suffering and problems too?
No. Heaven is simply a place that people chose to be. You really don't make any more decisions in Heaven, so there's no reason for any suffering to be there. Don't get the wrong idea, you don't make any decisions anymore in Hell, either - after you die, essentially you are not in control anymore.
I don't have the details on it, though. It's something I should look into later.
God sounds like a dick.
Thus, there would be no point for God to ever intercede, so no one would spend the time to worship Him, which ultimately unravels the entire reason He (supposedly) created everything in the first place.
If you wanted to make a machine that functioned in such a way where 'A' happened, and saw that it wouldn't happen unless there was something 'B' that was included, would you include it or not? If you didn't and saw that nothing worked, then you would be a moron for not implementing 'B' in the first place when you knew it needed to be there.
So, in one case God is a 'dick', and in the other case He is a 'moron'. Sounds like He didn't have much choice, there, eh?
How about say, God coming down here to live among us? Or wait, how about God communicating to us when we sleep instead of though dreams? There are a ton of ways for God to stay relevant without purposeful setting us in danger so he can come in like a hero and save us.
Who would worship Him, even if He did that? There is no reason to - life would move on in the exact same manner whether or not you worshiped Him, so why would people bother? He would be removed no matter what.
Supposedly, He wants people to come to Him for their needs. If there's no reason to do that, then they won't.
But the problem is that the type of God you are talking about is also the one who defines what it means to "hurt" his creation. He could just as well have said that free will is evil and that by intervening he is doing good.
He could have, but He didn't. That's a red herring argument.
You are limiting God's authority by subjecting him to these standards that are above him without even realizing it yourself. Either things like "accepting God by your own free will" is a good thing because God said it is a good thing (incase he could have said that there existing absolutely nothing but him is a good thing) or it's a good thing independent of God, making God not a supreme being but merely a powerful being, since there are things higher than him.
Here's a question for you. If it was a 'good thing' (DCT-wise) for people to love and worship God freely, why would God force people to do so (or reveal Himself so it's impossible to refuse)? By definition, if God wanted people to freely worship Him then he can't make them do so in any way, shape or form, or else He's not allowing them to do so freely (which is what He wants).
He could, I guess, but then He wouldn't get what He wanted. Why would something perform an action that completely defeats what it ultimately wants, even if it could? That's the distinction I'm making, here, and you seem to not understand.
:God sets what is good and evil.
God sets the limits.
God obeys the limits.
We ask why God doesn't break the limit.
You say that it's because God needs to stay within the limits to do what's good.
You miss the point that God could just have everything ever be good, including breaking limits
Supposedly, if we're still going with the DCT thing, then God never 'set' good and evil. He supposedly is good, right? It's all a retroactive application from there - from Christian's observation, God never broke a covenant, so honesty is seen as 'good'. God claimed that He is love, so that's 'good', and since He has proven to be honest, He won't lie about it. There's more, here, but I don't have the space to type.
In DCT, if God is, then it's good, and if He isn't, then it's considered bad. If God is perfect (that's an assumption we're making, right?) then He won't change Himself (nor could He and remain 'perfect', by definition). Of course once that assumption is removed then DCT falls apart quickly, but hey - if you're going to argue 'Christian' then you pretty much have to play by their rules, or else you'll fall into the classic 'I gots Faith!' argument designed to close non-Christian discussion, and there's not much you can do about it.
Getting to the other posts soon...
At 9/15/10 01:23 AM, poxpower wrote:At 9/15/10 12:55 AM, Gario wrote:If it's not defined like that then the original question does nothing to attack Christianity ('Evil' is too vague and different to too many people), so it'd be pointless to discuss, wouldn't it?Epicurus lived 300 years before the birth of Jesus so he wasn't talking about Christianity.
His idea is as old as religions themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_
evil
The OP was comparing this to Christianity (and Islam, but I know little of their religion), in particular. Whether or not the riddle originally was designed to be shouldn't be a concern, unless you just want to stop the discussion in it's tracks. You can't address the problem of evil in a religiously neutral context, since the very idea of 'evil' is religious, at it's core.
Christianity has a very very vague and ill-defined concept of what's evil and what isn't.
Wait, I thought their system revolved around...
:Ultimately their system revolves around God being all-powerful, therefore always right MORALLY.
...then why'd you claim it's vague? It has it's system worked out pretty thoroughly...
:When God decided to flood the earth and save only Noah and his family, that was good. Why? Because God did it. If God does it, then it's good, because he's God.
...Oh, right. Actually, if you assumed the principles of Christianity to be true (like any Christian would) then you'd say it makes perfect logical sense. If you don't then it makes no sense at all. If you're going to argue that it makes no sense then you need to assume the mindset of a Christian - otherwise you're going to be preaching to a choir, which is a waste of text.
:It's pretty retarded.
'Nonsensical' is a more accurate term - 'retarded' implies either someone afflicted with Down Syndrome or something that is particularly slow... and those both imply that you think the thing actually exists, which I'm pretty sure you don't, right?
You could spend the time to attack the system (which simply boils down to that annoying question of God's existence, which is an ad nauseum argument) or you could, for the sake of argument, define a term in the particular context of a religion, so a discussion will continue.
At 9/15/10 01:42 AM, Bacchanalian wrote:At 9/15/10 12:55 AM, Gario wrote: Yup. There wouldn't be any point for God to be there, would there? No one would need Him...Um... so? Complete your thought please.
If you believed in the Christian God, ask yourself what He would have created life for. The reason that Christianity provides is simply because He wanted to be willingly loved. Nothing more than that.
If everything was perfect then people would not need God to be happy. I understand that many people think they don't need God to be happy, anyway, but in the world's current state many, many people still use Him as a source of refuge. If the world was already 'Heaven on Earth' then no one would need God to placate them, so He'd be forgotten and left behind.
Thus, there would be no point for God to ever intercede, so no one would spend the time to worship Him, which ultimately unravels the entire reason He (supposedly) created everything in the first place.
and certainly, we all know that even if we did know for a fact that He existed, Occam's Razor would eliminate Him from everyone's lives.If God is a known fact, then his existance is of such a nature that Occam's Razor does not dismiss it.
Ah, you miss the purpose of the razor, in this instance. People could know of something's existence, but if it does nothing to make your life any better would people include worshiping Him into their lives? Remember, they already have everything they desire without any chance of punishment. People would remove any form of worship, appreciation, etc. from their lives because they know it does nothing to increase or decrease their happiness.
The 'razor' would cut God out of everyone's lives, not cut His existence out of everyone's minds.
Almost. More accurately, without evil, there's no point for physical creation, from a Christian point of view. So to assume God is malevolent based on the fact that evil exists is, in fact, an error that shows that one doesn't understand the supposed purpose of God in creating the physical universe, in the first place.Yeah well, you're also deviating from the presumptions in the riddle by supplying a God with limited authority.
No, I'm not. Technically, if you assume that God tells the truth then He sets His own boundaries (unless he's a liar, but for the sake of discussion we can assume He's not, eh?), and those are safe to 'limit' His actions by. He won't do something that breaks His own contracts. Does that mean He can't? No. It means He sees it as hurtful to His purpose and thus He won't do it.
If you assume that God will do anything then you'll cut millenia of theological discussion from under itself that's been 'limiting' the Christian God in this very same manner. There's a difference between not wanting to perform an action (won't) and not being able to perform an action (can't) that is sometimes lost in the mix.
Wow, that was a self-defeating post. Let's examine it a bit and figure out why...
:You open up a business in a crowded area and there will be those that would prefer church over and it those that would prefer whatever it is over church.
Nice observation. Wouldn't that mean IF a church was built then there were more people that wanted the church than the alternative? Or (more likely) that the alternative wasn't even considering opening up business in the area? I doubt any rights are being stampeded unless two opposing companies were planning to build in the same area at the same time.
:Where does it say that he can't do that if there's a strip club on the next block? In either case freedom of religion doesn't grant you the right to demand everyone else be silent or respectful or whatever in another building whilst you pray.
Well then, we once again show that we don't understand how a religion works, eh? A quick rundown for you...
They believe they house God incarnate. They have very strict rules about being 'clean' in the presence of Him (you can look at all the rules in Leviticus - though dated and not exactly representative of the practice today, it does show the reverence shown to God). 'Sacrilege' technically means that God was disrespected.
I'm not trying to convert you, but you asked me why a strip club is disruptive to a Church, and I gave you an answer. Whether or not you agree with it is of no consequence to the discussion (if opinions mattered, then I could just say I don't believe exercising sexual freedom is healthy for a community as a whole and use that as an argument against strip clubs, in general).
:That IS telling people to stop what they're doing. That's telling them to stop doing what they're doing on their own property even though the church can't even see them. They have no right to demand other people show their religion respect.
Nope, the Church has no right to invade other people's property. That's the trick, though, isn't it? It's never their property to begin with, and let's face it - if there are zoning laws in place then the church indeed does have the right to tell people not to 'set up camp' within a set distance from them, don't they?
I think you mean 'they SHOULD have no right', don't you?
:Because there's no good reason for it.
Oh, good job at not arguing a point. There's no bad reason for it, either. Yay for the status quo.
:Uh no, when you build a church you don't suddenly convert everyone there into anti-porn/drinking/whatever.
Never said you did. You still ignore my point, however, when I claim that a location is chosen because the surrounding population would support the business the best (you've in fact cheerfully ignored the point). Here it comes to bit you in the ass once again - The church wouldn't pick the place if the only thing that was there were simply anti-Christian people (or just rampant drunks, sexaholics, etc.). They'd chose a place with a high demand by the Christian community.
So, if there's a church there then there would in fact be a higher concentration of Christians there (who, by their doctrine, are pretty anti-porn/drinking/whatever). They chose their places strategically, believe it or not.
:Why wouldn't they care about being forced to not build where they would like?
... I'm not answering this again. Forgive me, but repeating the same things over and over and expecting a different response is a sign for insanity, and I don't argue with neurotics.
:I don't remember a story when a strip club bar whatever provided trouble for a church...
I gave you one. I suppose if it's a religious reason then it doesn't matter, eh?
:I do remember a story about a church harassing strip club workers.
So you'd agree with me when I say it's beneficial for both parties if they are not allowed to build next to each other? I was going to mention that church people tend to cause problems for those businesses, as well, but I felt that was implied. All you're proving now is that the zoning laws are, in fact, a good idea.
Great job at displaying the benefits of zoning.
At 9/14/10 10:52 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:At 9/14/10 09:28 PM, Gario wrote: What if God did exist, was omnipotent and removed all evil from the planet? What would happen then?Wouldn't that sorta be like... heaven on earth?
Yup. There wouldn't be any point for God to be there, would there? No one would need Him... and certainly, we all know that even if we did know for a fact that He existed, Occam's Razor would eliminate Him from everyone's lives.
The argument that evil has to exist? Perhaps?
Almost. More accurately, without evil, there's no point for physical creation, from a Christian point of view. So to assume God is malevolent based on the fact that evil exists is, in fact, an error that shows that one doesn't understand the supposed purpose of God in creating the physical universe, in the first place.
At 9/14/10 11:09 PM, poxpower wrote:
So....what happens if you remove all evil? What's evil?
Is a lion evil?
Are viruses that kill people evil? Is death evil? Is pain evil?
Is being angry evil? Is laughing at someone failing evil? In which case, you'd have to remove all instances of people making mistakes... or all instance of people laughing about it...?
A world without evil isn't a world humans are designed to live in and understand. It's like if we lived in 4 dimensions or in a place without time. It doesn't make sense to humans, we can't even imagine it. If we lived in that world, we wouldn't be humans.
Mmm... good point, although since the OP of the question is indeed talking about God in the Christian sense, we should be defining 'evil' in that sense, as well, right? We'll keep things in context, that way.
'Evil' (or 'Sin', to be more accurate) is defined as something that turns people away from God, according to Christians. If it's not defined like that then the original question does nothing to attack Christianity ('Evil' is too vague and different to too many people), so it'd be pointless to discuss, wouldn't it?
It was brought up and locked, so I'll re-introduce the argument here, real quick, 'cause I want to comment :)
"The Riddle of Epicuris
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
---
I tried to play devil's advocate on this one, but I cannot crack it. It is an impenetrable logical argument. It has one slight logical flaw, but it doesnt really matter. able + not willing, doesnt necessarily imply malevolence, it can also be disinterest.
Still it crushes the whole idea of a caring loving god, like the christian and islamic god."
The thread called 'Epicurus' has the rest of the post, for those interested, but as a change in direction for this thread I welcome it.
Alrighty then, let's look at the argument. If you believe in God then obviously the first answer is not possible. The second answer isn't impossible, so that's food for thought. The third answer is sort of... well, contradictory, so I'm afraid that's ruled out. The fourth answer would be entirely correct, if you'd like to assume that God isn't omnipotent. For the sake of the argument, though, we are, so that's ruled out.
Again, for the sake of argument I'm going to assume that God exists, and He is omnipotent. Rather than attack the issue head-on, I'll take it in another direction.
What if God did exist, was omnipotent and removed all evil from the planet? What would happen then?
At 9/13/10 03:13 AM, FatherTime89 wrote:
:Because obviously when you open up a business you only hope to attract people from next door.
Yeah, obviously... why else would you chose a location except to attract the customers of the surrounding area (or the customers that tend to pass by)? Other than, of course, the location being the only one around (hello, Mosque debate, and even then it's because of the Muslims that are in the area), but that doesn't happen too often, believe it or not.
Provide some other reasons that a location would be important (rather than try to brush it off as 'ignorance' without providing any other reasoning) and I'll take you seriously.
And how exactly does having a bar or a strip club within a couple hundred feet disrupt their business? I'd really like to know.
Whether or not something is 'sacred' probably isn't really a concern for you, but the church considers what it houses to be 'sacred'. Having whorehouses/strip joints tend to disrupt the service because the priest isn't allowed to consecrate the bread near anything unclean, since that's considered sacrilege. As for the bar, drunks actually gravitate towards churches and can disrupt a priest's holy duties (since they don't lock their doors - most churches allow the public to worship whenever they want). That should be considered disruptive, religious or not.
You can take it up with the Pope, if you want, and tell him to be more relaxed with the Church practices. Good luck with that.
I know of no religion though that demands that everyone and everything within an X feet radius not upset you, and no freedom of religion isn't absolute so you can't just demand everyone live to some standards.
Hmm... read above. Churches have nothing to do with 'likes' and 'dislikes'. They can't practice their religion if it means desecrating something sacred. They are not telling people to stop what they're doing (well, they are, but only the parishioners). They're telling people to practice somewhere else, and instead of getting bent out of shape most businesses just do it.
Again, no harm, no foul - why are you so upset about it, other than the sole fact that a religious institution requested the zoning laws? It benefits the Church, and it's not going to be prime real estate for the affected parties (because of the fact that there is a church set up, there), so those institutions don't care, to my knowledge (if they do, please link the info proving my point wrong). If it doesn't affect anything else, then there really isn't any reason not to pass these laws.
Also dealing with people you don't like is part of civilization, someone opens up a business nearby you don 't like tough shit.
Why deal with it when unnecessary conflict can be avoided? Most humans learn to avoid conflict whenever they can, and for those that didn't evolve that far there are 'zoning laws' that fix that problem. Hence what I mean (and presumably what Poxpower means, as well) by 'Common Sense'.
At 8/30/10 04:57 PM, AlStOrthevilclown wrote: I have a question for Newgrounds, do you think America has freedom of religion or freedom from religion. With Santa being taken out of Christmas and having Happy holidays every where. Baby Jesus being taken out of public school plays and no Christmas songs in public areas anymore.
Freedom of religion implies freedom from it. You can practice whatever you'd like, and the government cannot say otherwise, nor can it enforce it through law (thus allowing other religions to exist).
As for Santa/Nativity being taken out of Christmas, I find it silly. It's a Christian holiday, so why bother taking 'Christian' elements out? People can just make up another celebration on the same day and move on with it (some have tried, I believe, by celebrating 'X-mas' or whatnot). It's like a country celebrating Hanukkah, then taking out every single Jewish practice because those practices are 'Jewish' - if you're going to go that far then just make up a new celebration at that time that's religiously neutral, since the very name implies a religious practice.
Before anyone mentions it, I know it's actually a Roman festival that was changed to Christianity, to allow pagans to more easily transition to Christianity (same thing with Halloween, believe it or not). Since Christians basically did the same thing as I'm suggesting many years ago (except they incorporated Christianity into their new holiday), it's in fact a purely Christian celebration, now (the tradition behind it, I mean). Even the Christmas tree - it must be an evergreen because it's a symbol representing God's undying nature.
You know what that means? That has no place in a religiously neutral country, either. May as well throw it out, too.
Speaking from a purely mathematical and psychological point of view, here's my take on it.
Intelligence has been proven to be a measurable thing that predicts the ability to comprehend another person, and it has been proven that if someone is more than two standard deviations away from the person discussing an issue will misinterpret/misunderstand the issue most of the time.
On average, the presidents of USA is roughly 136-140, which is more than three standard deviations away from the mean.
Intelligence has been shown to be a normal distribution, so the Empiric Rule states that 82% of America is below the ability to competently follow the issues discussed by the presidents (that accounts for everyone that is less than or equal to a Z-score of +1).
In other words, people are too stupid to use that ability competently, to why the hell would you want that?
Ahahaha... WBC decided to go through with it.
Ah well, at least they played it safe and decided to burn both the American flag and the Quran. You know, so no one feels left out, there.
I'm curious which places exactly are supposed to be away from the church, and what distance. The OP stated that zoning laws don't make sense, but I can't discuss it without knowing what the zoning laws are, exactly.
...or are we just discussing 'ZONING LAWS' in general, in which case the church probably made a request to the law writers claiming that some places/things disrupt their business and the law writers sympathized. The state can't enforce a religion, but if places disrupt the way things work in a church by their very nature then refusing a request for zoning laws simply because the church 'is a religious place' is effectively hampering the ability to practice one's own religion (the state shouldn't do that, either).
Telling people where to build and not to build for the sake of making things easier on everyone isn't that big of a deal - it makes things flow much smoother in a city by keeping people that don't like each other away from each other. Like Poxpower said, most of these things are pretty much common sense issues, but people are stupid so laws are written to prevent any problems. Is there any other reason anyone would be upset by zoning laws (for religious institutions) other than the fact that they're religious institutions?
No? Then what's the big deal? No harm, no foul, here. Before anyone retorts that it 'hurts businesses', think about it - what business owner in their right mind wants to put their business near a place that tells people not to accept business from them? Needless to say, it's not exactly a prime place to be 'setting up shop', is it?
At 9/8/10 12:06 PM, poxpower wrote: Yeah I'm shoving not having a religion HARD down my kid's throat.
Not until one of your kids becomes a Catholic and asks you to follow suit - that's when things will get interesting.
If you have kids - never know if something is said merely to prove a point or is an actual fact.
