Life, The Universe, And Everything

[Mankey]

He did miss one, he hasn't said that atheism is equivalent to nihilism.

I think the bibles God is a nihilistic tyrant.

[Grandpa Harley]

I beleive that Buddy has invoked Mad Freddie as an atheist nihilist... which he was neither

 

 

oh, and Buddy, why is 'intellectual' a common Christian insult if they value 'education'... the 'anti-intellectual' stance is not an atheist/humanist stance, it's a Judeo-Christian one. Who said 'Be not too wise' or 'He who spreads wisdom spreads sorrow'?

[dano]

I beleive that Buddy has invoked Mad Freddie as an atheist nihilist... which he was neither

 

 

oh, and Buddy, why is 'intellectual' a common Christian insult if they value 'education'... the 'anti-intellectual' stance is not an atheist/humanist stance, it's a Judeo-Christian one. Who said 'Be not too wise' or 'He who spreads wisdom spreads sorrow'?

 

If you want to run a tight ship, in your cult, denigrating all knowledge that doesn't come from the leader of the cult is fundamental cultmanship.

[Grandpa Harley]

You may well say that... I couldn't possibly comment

[BuddyFerris]

Does the victim of your theft suffer loss? Yes. To the same degree? Here's where the trouble with hypothetical situations appears. Yes, to the same degree. If you stole a loaf of bread, your daughter gained one meal, the victim lost one. Did it save your daughter's life? No, it prolonged her to the same degree that it deprived another.

 

You have not established that the other person lost to the same degree. He/she could lose by an infinite different degrees; depending on their own situation and how much they had to begin with and how much you took from them. You have not established that the needs of both parties are zero sum.

 

 

Again, absolute is absolute. If I can show one instance that contradicts an absolute, then it disproves the idea of absolute absolutely.

Vigile,

You suggest that a theft is warranted on the basis of the victim being adequately well off so as not to suffer greatly from the loss; i.e. stealing from the rich is OK. On that premise, someone might steal your car because you have three in your family, or someone might steal money from the grocery store where they work because the store has plenty. It's a weak argument and not one easily supported. "'I had to have a car to take my hungry daughter to the food kitchen," isn't going to impress the judge or the victim of the theft.

 

Must I establish that the other person will lose to a lesser degree than I before I make a decision to steal? Depending on the situation, there are varying degrees of damage. We do our best to deal with such things in law; we have petty theft as an entry level and grand larceny, embezzlement, and fraud at the other end. The reason we labor over finite definitions and boundaries thereto isn't because some stealing is right and other stealing is wrong, it's because while they're all wrong, some are worse than others and must be dealt with differently. Again the underlying principle is that it's wrong.

 

Your hypothetical warlord in Africa notwithstanding, you don't live in such circumstances. Are you laboring at this for my benefit or your own? Do you plan some theft for which you're juggling the balance sheet so it will be justified? Of course not. If your six-year old child stole money from your wallet, would you investigate the degree of their need, their available options, and the measure of your loss against what was taken, or would you just tell them they shouldn't take something that wasn't theirs?

 

If I recall, my reference has been to an external standard, outside the individual, independent of preference or belief. From that I seem to have attracted a veritable deluge of commentary on God sending people to hell for bad thoughts and all the reasons things I haven't said aren't true. Did I touch a tender spot?

Buddy

[Grandpa Harley]

you started with absolutes, Buddy, then started squirming around them like Catholic Clergy round a blonde choir boy... The whole post above is context based ethics... you've lost, but you're too stubborn or too dumb to see it (I favour both, but I just enjoy prodding you with a stick, since TBH I 've grown very bored of the faux hail good fellow well met persona etc)

 

you've not established an external sourse for anything, in fact you're long on not establishing a damned thing. Seems to me you're just trolling.

[webmdave]

Did I touch a tender spot?

Buddy

 

 

Buddy. Your external standard was in full power for over 1,000 years in Europe. It was called the Dark Ages.

 

Just to be chatty: .

[Grandpa Harley]

Tell me you're not sick of troll boy...

[Legion]

Hey that's pretty neat. My post was removed. Cool!

 

Tell me you're not sick of troll boy...

I think Buddy presents an interesting challenge. He's clearly entrenched in his position.

[webmdave]

Tell me you're not sick of troll boy...

 

I admit it. He is annoying beyond words. Is his position annoying? No. It is his disingenuous dishonesty. Remember, he is not here to preach or evangelize. He is just here because talking to Christians is so boring.

 

Right...

[Grandpa Harley]

Hey that's pretty neat. My post was removed. Cool!

 

Tell me you're not sick of troll boy...

I think Buddy presents an interesting challenge. He's clearly entrenched in his position.

 

It would be a 'challenge' if one actually engaged him in something. It's like snake wrestling in a pool of KY Jelly...

[Grandpa Harley]

oh and webmasters are subtle and bad to anger

[BuddyFerris]

Buddy you may want to copy this and just leave it laying around where your daughter can find it, so you cant be blamed for exposing anyone to heresy.

 

MAN.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

Genus: Homo

Species: H. sapiens

Subspecies: H. s. sapiens

Trinomial name

Homo sapiens sapiens

 

On second thought maybe you should consider your roots. It may push some of the fuzzy thinking of Scripture out of your head.

 

Dang! Buddy! You're sixty years old. You should know where your ancestors came from by now!

Thanks, Dano. I can always count on you to bring clarity.

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

... Do you honestly think anyone in this situation is going to care about a moral code when the scales of justice are so out of wack?

 

I doubt tsunami victims can be held responsible for the wave that shattered their lives and took every ounce of belongings out to sea. Are people honesty suppose to sit and ponder what's "ethical' in these types of situations? Wouldn't it be considered an "act of gawd" So God can rob the people but the people can't save their own lives or the lives of their children else need forgiveness and pay back retribution? The same can be blamed with Famine. It's also considered an "act of god". Why doesn't he follow his own rule book and pay retribution to what he stole or controlled in the first place? Where are 'his' moral ethics? If the God that makes the rules isn't bound to his own laws, then I say he's no leader, hence he's not god. Do as I say not as I do is not a good leadership quality.

Japedo,

You describe the reality of such circumstances well. No one in a war zone is going to thoughtfully evaluate the morals of doing what they must to protect their family. No one in a Tsunami strike zone is going to be faulted for commandeering a floating piece of furniture to keep from drowning. On the other hand, we probably would criticize a man who pushed a woman out of the lifeboat so he could have a place himself. Discussions like these blur the boundary between law and practice with good reason. We haven't yet been able to refine the law to the extent that bad guys always go to jail and innocent people are protected. Laws are necessary and good, but inadequate. Life illustrates that problem for us every day. Each of us has said some disparaging remark about lawyers or the judicial system, not for being unneeded, but for being screwed up beyond belief. The murderer is paroled to kill again, the predator out on bond terrorizes a community. The law is absolutely necessary, and it will never be good enough. The law has yet to produce a good person; the best it has been able to do is give us a standard for bad.

 

Objections on this thread to the concept of an external standard or an absolute law are not about law being unnecessary, or about standards being too stringent. They're about the difficulty associated with living under a law you didn't approve and may want to avoid. Personal opinion, of course. Or they may be worrying about African warlords they may have to deal with.

 

And your last point; Act of God or act of nature is a legal term for events outside of human control, such as sudden floods or other natural disasters, for which no one can be held responsible. They didn't really mean that God came and performed the act.

 

So to your premise, you're right. In crisis, no one is going to worry much about ethics. We hope, when crisis comes, that we will be men and women of substance. Surprisingly, you only get a few chances in life to stand up for anything. At least where it counts, as in when your child watches you respond to difficult circumstances. They'll remember it for a lifetime. You won't be thinking about it at all; you'll just be doing your best, but they'll take your character illustration as instruction; you'll see it fleshed out in them as adults. When the crisis comes, it's too late to prep; it's over in minutes or days, but your character is out there for all to see.

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

oh and webmasters are subtle and bad to anger

I completely missed the subtle part.

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

A large part of our personal liberties to hold "such opinions" is thanks to the separation of Church and State. And that concept DOES NOT EXIST in the Bible. Prior to the Constiution, living in certain parts of the pre-united U.S. of A. were quite uncomfortable for those belonging to an unapproved version of Christianity, or worse, claiming no version of Christianity. Personal liberties are NOT supported in the BuyBull.

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

 

That's the FOUNDATION: self-evident truth, not revealed truth. The founders proclaimed that some truths are self-evident, and then they listed those things they all agreed fit the definition of self-evident truth.

 

Then, in practice, they went home to their slaves.

 

Try again, Buddy.

WM,

Were you agreeing or disagreeing with the authors of our constitution?

 

You quoted them up through the statement of self-evident truth; here's the complete sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

 

I'm sure you'll have difficulty agreeing with them, but your emphatic affirmation....?

 

OK, bad example. You're correct, personal liberties are not detailed in the Bible as we have laid them out in law. In fact, Biblical teaching doesn't require us to live in a democracy or to be treated nicely. It doesn't suggest we should overthrow rotten governments. It does support an individual's right to worship God honestly. Interestingly, as I'm sure you're aware but neglected to mention, separation of church and state finds it's purpose in protecting the church from the state, not vice versa as you imply. You'll remember that folks came to the new world to get away from the state church's oversight and control. Freedom of worship was a principle reason for many moving to the colonies. The framers of the constitution's first amendment recognized that and formalized it by stating that Congress would make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the practices of its' adherents. Free speech was afterwards.

 

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

If the day should come that we shake off the shackles of cultural norms and morality so that each might choose independently what path they will follow, we will have universally what we have fostered currently in the inner city. Teens in inner city poverty are bombarded regularly with violet encounters, affluent drug-dealer friends, successful rejection of education by popular older teens, virtually all of which is the result of choices made by us in the 70's. I know Baltimore best; it's much worse than described here.

 

Fallacy after fallacy...

 

Buddy, are there no churches in the hood? You use the inner city as an example of godless society? But wait a minute! Inner city, outer city, or farmland USA, it's all the same Christian country, right? Choices made in the 70's? OMG! The only bad choice I made in the seventies was wearing leisure suits.

 

It's poverty, ignorance and drugs that are hurting the inner city crowd, not lack of religion. There are plenty of churches in the hood -- plenty.

 

Remember, Buddy: SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH -- NOT REVEALED TRUTH.

WM, sorry I missed this one earlier. On the inner city and churches... You should inquire. There are many successful inner city churches doing their best to rescue the disenfranchised from poverty, drugs, violence and crime; they are the most effective, and in some cases the only effective institutions at work in the inner city today. Their primary task is to reverse the cultural collapse of the 70's where the young, in their disillusionment with big business and big government, abandoned virtually all standards for ethical behavior in favor of 'if it feels good, do it'. The drug culture they evolved has become the drug and crime plague of the inner city. Big government gave them welfare poverty. The church is the only viable hope many of those folks have, no thanks to the rest of America's philosophers, politicians, and pundits. Fortunately, it works pretty well. There's a little self-evident truth for you.

Buddy

Sorry about the leisure suit thing. It was a bad time for everyone.

[Vigile]

Discussions like these blur the boundary between law and practice with good reason. We haven't yet been able to refine the law to the extent that bad guys always go to jail and innocent people are protected. Laws are necessary and good, but inadequate. Life illustrates that problem for us every day. Each of us has said some disparaging remark about lawyers or the judicial system, not for being unneeded, but for being screwed up beyond belief. The murderer is paroled to kill again, the predator out on bond terrorizes a community. The law is absolutely necessary, and it will never be good enough. The law has yet to produce a good person; the best it has been able to do is give us a standard for bad.

 

That's because ethics must be weighed against the situation and cannot be described as absolute. You get it, you just don't know it or wish to acknowledge that you know it.

 

Objections on this thread to the concept of an external standard or an absolute law are not about law being unnecessary, or about standards being too stringent. They're about the difficulty associated with living under a law you didn't approve and may want to avoid.

 

Human law actually tries to account for variables and does it's best to weigh in circumstances. This is why, for instance, there are varying degrees of murder charges that can be brought. Xians, on the other hand believe there is a strict standard of "though shalt not" and that the penalty for disobedience is always the same. These are the types of standards that we argue are self-evidently immoral.

[Vigile]

You suggest that a theft is warranted on the basis of the victim being adequately well off so as not to suffer greatly from the loss

 

I'm disappointed here. I have not seen you twisting words in this manner. Either you are getting desperate in the debate or you didn't read what I wrote correctly.

 

I suggested nothing of the sort. I suggested that you were wrong to argue that one person's gain through theft creates an equal loss by another individual. That's just not true.

 

Let's put this back into the context in which it was being discussed. You argued that for a desperate man to steal, he would necessarily cause an equal amount of suffering to the person he stole from; insinuating that the desperate person was immoral for valuing his own life over that of the individual he stole from.

 

Stealing from the warlord would not cause an equal amount of suffering.

 

The rest of your response rests on on this twisted premise attributed to me. You completely ignore the fact that I have shown you an example where absolute laws can sometimes be immoral and that they don't work in the real world.

 

If I recall, my reference has been to an external standard, outside the individual, independent of preference or belief. From that I seem to have attracted a veritable deluge of commentary on God sending people to hell for bad thoughts and all the reasons things I haven't said aren't true. Did I touch a tender spot?

 

You're kidding right? Tender perhaps in the sense that I suffered greatly during my adolescence and young adult life wallowing in fear of a tyrannical system. Certainly not tender now. I can now look at the claims and laugh at how overly simplistic and naive they are.

[Vigile]

The framers of the constitution's first amendment recognized that and formalized it by stating that Congress would make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the practices of its' adherents

 

What the framers recognized here was that a bunch of religious bozos would run around trying to establish an intertwining of church and state if they didn't outline specifically that they may not indeed do so. Even back then there were those American Taliban-types who wished to force their beleifs on society through government.

[webmdave]

Interestingly, as I'm sure you're aware but neglected to mention, separation of church and state finds it's purpose in protecting the church from the state, not vice versa as you imply. You'll remember that folks came to the new world to get away from the state church's oversight and control. Freedom of worship was a principle reason for many moving to the colonies. The framers of the constitution's first amendment recognized that and formalized it by stating that Congress would make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the practices of its' adherents. Free speech was afterwards.

 

Buddy

 

Again, Buddy, your brain is chock full of Christian propaganda and fallacious thinking. The "framers" separated church and state because they didn't want a STATE RELIGION to take over everything like it had in England. The "divine right of kings" was anathema to them. It was worded that way so there would be freedom of religion and so that NO RELIGION would have dominance or power. The Republic's government was to be SECULAR.

[webmdave]

WM, sorry I missed this one earlier. On the inner city and churches... You should inquire. There are many successful inner city churches doing their best to rescue the disenfranchised from poverty, drugs, violence and crime; they are the most effective, and in some cases the only effective institutions at work in the inner city today. Their primary task is to reverse the cultural collapse of the 70's where the young, in their disillusionment with big business and big government, abandoned virtually all standards for ethical behavior in favor of 'if it feels good, do it'. The drug culture they evolved has become the drug and crime plague of the inner city. Big government gave them welfare poverty. The church is the only viable hope many of those folks have, no thanks to the rest of America's philosophers, politicians, and pundits. Fortunately, it works pretty well. There's a little self-evident truth for you.

Buddy

 

Buddy, there has been alcoholism, poverty, crime, drug abuse, rape, murder... in poor neighborhoods as long as the world has had poor neighborhoods. In just the last century or two, let's talk about the Gay 90's or the Roaring 20's or prohibition, etc... But if we want to talk about world history, then we can go anywhere at any time in any country. The worst time in European history was when Christianity ruled the world: the Dark Ages --- the 1,000 year reign of Christ over the minds of men.

 

Your worldview on history is really narrow. Regardless, the point I was making was in response to your original point that IF WE ABANDON JESUS, then the whole world will become the hood. The whole world will become the hood if everyone becomes a meth-head. Fortunately not all of us are so ignorant to throw away our lives on that. If the CHURCH is so freaking wonderful and powerful, and Jesus is so magical, and the churches on nearly every corner so amazing, then why is the hood so screwed up? Obviously it needs something more powerful than your religion. Your religion is impotent.

 

There's a little self-evident TRUTH for you, Buddy.

[webmdave]

Were you agreeing or disagreeing with the authors of our constitution?

 

Buddy, the point was self-evident truth, not to debate "creator." However, you will notice, Buddy, that "endowed by their Creator" is pretty damned vague. It does not say, endowed by Jesus H Christ, Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, The Great Spirit, Mother Nature, Evolution, or anything else. There is no direct or implied pointing toward any particular god or force. It is left to the reader to decide who the hell their creator might be. I admit I am created. I was created in my mother's womb when my father ejaculated one night. Praise be to the creators.

 

The framers weren't making a statement of faith, Buddy. CONTEXT -- CONTEXT --- CONTEXT. They are talking about rights, self-evident truth, and freedom. They aren't preaching a sermon about angelic visitors and getting a walking zombie to take up residence in your pulmonary organ so you can play a harp in a big square city in the sky. The choice of words used by the framers is intentionally non-defined so as to appeal to the widest mass of the population. It is not a proclamation of the establishment of a Christian theocracy. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

[dano]

Buddy you may want to copy this and just leave it laying around where your daughter can find it, so you cant be blamed for exposing anyone to heresy.

 

MAN.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

Genus: Homo

Species: H. sapiens

Subspecies: H. s. sapiens

Trinomial name

Homo sapiens sapiens

 

On second thought maybe you should consider your roots. It may push some of the fuzzy thinking of Scripture out of your head.

 

Dang! Buddy! You're sixty years old. You should know where your ancestors came from by now!

Thanks, Dano. I can always count on you to bring clarity.

Buddy

 

Buddy,

I'M not trying to clarify anything for you, I'm making fun of you.

 

I have been following this thread from its inception and it is obvious that there is no way I nor anyone else could clarity anything that you believe.

 

You call yourself a Christian but you don't sound like any Christian I have ever heard.

 

I think you have even said that you aren't sure about most of the dogma.

 

I am making fun of your claim that you are a Christian, and at the same time trying to make you see how Faith in general fucks up peoples thinking.

 

You can believe in as many fairy tales as you want, but you will pay for it, with good brain space!

[Deva]

Interestingly, as I'm sure you're aware but neglected to mention, separation of church and state finds it's purpose in protecting the church from the state, not vice versa as you imply. You'll remember that folks came to the new world to get away from the state church's oversight and control. Freedom of worship was a principle reason for many moving to the colonies. The framers of the constitution's first amendment recognized that and formalized it by stating that Congress would make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the practices of its' adherents. Free speech was afterwards.

 

Buddy

 

Buddy, how do you think that people in Europe were subject to the church's oversight and control at all? Answer - because it was a State Church. I find your statement that "the separation of church and state to be in protecting the church from the state" to be quite incredible just on a common sense level. I have never heard this before in my life.

 

I see that you have abandoned all attempts at trying to prove your main point, which seems to be that there is a standard (for you, Christianity) applicable to all times and cultures and are now trying to re-write U.S. history to suit yourself. Have a go at it.