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@ILikePie5
I agree. Some people do care about Constitutional Due Process.
Constitutional due process isn't a thing. It's an excuse for someone to ignore their purported core values by pretending that taking away someone's political power which was entirely based on trust is equal to taking away someone's right to personal freedom and liberty.
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@Greyparrot
So 30 Democrats don't? Good to know.
As usual, you didn't absorb a word I said.
I wasn't making a point about any individual, it was a macro analysis of which side of the political spectrum actually cares about the things we all pretend to value.
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@ILikePie5
30 Dems didnt back expulsion 🤷♂️
That's means almost 90% of democrats did, meanwhile 90%+ of republicans did not. Not exactly a great point.
Unlike most votes on policy, this isn't going to affect the lives of a single voter in any of their districts, so they have even less incentive than usual to care about doing what's right. The vote is all about what works best for them politically so it is a clear statement of the values of the people who elected them. So given the very clear partisan split, it's clear which set of voters care about basic things like integrity, honesty, and the rule of law.
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@Best.Korea
The converting to atheism is a process.First you have to overcome fear of God.Then you have to overcome indoctrination from youth spent in religion.Then you have to care enough to take steps and think about if God exists.It doesnt happen at once. It takes time, and plenty of doubt and self-talk involved.
When did you become an atheist?
Aren't you the one who started an entire thread saying logic didn't matter and we should believe based on faith alone, or am I confusing you with someone else?
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@YouFound_Lxam
Basic common sense would say that someone designed this, but no human designed it. Like we said:
Math doesn't "exist" in any sense of the word, nor is it a product of anything. Math is an extension of logic, so when you argue that math comes from God you are arguing that logic also comes from God, which is incoherent.
Let's start at the beginning. Do you believe God is subject to the laws of logic?
If you say he's not, then your belief in him is irrational by definition. The rest of your post as well as any argument you make for him is now worthless because it's all based on the idea that you're making a rational case for God.
If you say he is subject to the laws of logic then he cannot be their author, and certainly not their arbiter.
At that point, the rest of your argument falls apart.
There are 2 possibilities:
- Math is something that humans invented to explain what we observe in the natural world.
- We discovered math because it controls the universe.
The first option would define math a natural thing, and the second would define math as a supernatural thing.
Neither option makes sense. Humans didn't invent math, we discovered it. Just as any other intelligent form of life, from earth or not, would have done.
Math doesn't "control" the universe in any coherent sense of the word. It's not acting, is not making decisions, it just is.
Nothing about either option denotes a choice between natural vs supernatural. I would even go further to argue that the distinction between the two is ultimately meaningless, but that's an argument for a different thread.
Math, like logic, are best thought of as necessary qualities of existence itself. This is why God is subject to them, because the argument is that he exists.
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@Mharman
That’s why he has never been banned from running a charity.Banned by people who have a political agenda against him lol.
Have you even looked at the evidence against his charity?
It's not debatable that the charity was a fraud, the evidence is overwhelming. He consistently used those funds to fight lawsuits against his businesses, and he also used them to buy a huge portrait of himself that he later placed in one of his restaurants. There's plenty more, that's just off the top of my head.
I single out this one point because it demonstrates what people like myself are talking about. Without any effort or critical thought, you feel perfectly comfortable absolving Trump of wrongdoing while accusing anyone who holds him accountable of being in on some conspiracy against him. Facts and logic be damned. This makes it very clear to me how someone like yourself could possibly support him.
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@Greyparrot
Do you think Zelensky is similarly heavily invested in Biden then?
Zelensky is far more invested in Biden because the fate of his country may very well rest on his reelection.
This is a complete false equivalence.
Putin does not want Trump because he thinks Trump will help him with foreign aid. He wanted Trump because he saw Trump as a destabalzing president who will weaken the United States by destroying us from within and crippling our democracy resulting in a weakening of democracy world wide. He's the literal embodiment of what the founding fathers were talking about when they talked about domestic enemies.
Yet you would actually consider voting for the same person our foreign enemies want to see reelected because they want to see this country burn. So what does that make you?
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@Greyparrot
Who are you going to blame in 2024?
It's not about blame. The fact that Putin and his government were heavily invested in Trump's candidacy should really make anyone who would consider voting for him think. Sadly, it won't.
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@Mharman
You are correct: It doesn't compare. Biden is far worse. As for the WWII remark, that's another Sioux Falls/City-type moment. Excusable. He knows the WWII is over, he meant to say WWIII.
Everytime Biden gaffes it becomes part of a collection to be talked about literally for years as a demonstration of Biden's dementia. Yet everytime Trump gaffes it gets excused as just a misspeak or an obvious thing he didn't really mean.
So when he told his supporters they didn't need to worry about voting, he meant what exactly? Or when he said Victor Orban was the leader of Turkey he obviously knew that was wrong as well? Or when he told the crowd he beat Obama in the last election... I mean how many of these would you like to decode cause there's plenty more.
And this is before we get to the 4 indictments and civil fraud trials, as well as that time he tried to end American democracy.
The two definitely do not compare.
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@Greyparrot
Trump has been gone for 3 years, and yet you still think he has any relevance to how the current administration sets policy. That is why I said your reasoning would lead a normal person to conclude all current policies are directly derived from a visceral hatred of Trump
Perfect encapsulation of the problem here. You continue to not read anything I write other than to skim through it looking for something to attack and in the process miss the entire point while making up your own.
I never in any way shape or form argued that Trump was relevant to current US policy.
Stop, reflect on the last sentence. Read it again, as many times as you need in order to absorb it, then you can continue.
This conversation began because you declared Biden was worse than Trump or at the very least, just as bad. I responded to your post to demonstrate the absurdity of that statement. That is what we have been arguing ever since
To make that point I have done mostly two things; first is that I explained how Biden's decisions are no where as near as bad as you pretend. I did that by explaining how you entirely ignore the benefits of his decisions as well as ignore the fact that the political right used to care deeply about the benefits they are all ignoring to attack Biden. The point: the decisions you are attacking are far more nuanced than you claim and right or wrong here is no where near as clear as you pretend.
I also threw in a few jabs at Trump to show the distance between him and Biden, since this after all, a comparison between the two.
Your take away? That I fully endorse and defend all of Biden's positions and think Trump is relevant to them.
So once again; the things you attack Biden for are full of BS as they are either straight up lies or at the least very misleading. Meanwhile you ignore Trump's obvious pitfalls while doing so.
And lastly... Telling me Trump has been gone for three years is ridiculous. He is easily still the most influential voice on the political right and is far and away the leading frontrunner for the republican nomination. He is absolutely front and center in our current state of politics. He hasn't gone anywhere.
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@Mharman
Sioux City and Sioux Falls sound very similar, so it’s excusable to get the two confused momentarily.
If Biden did this you know republicans would be talking about it all the way to election day.
But looking dazed after trying to shake hands with an invisible man, now that’s something to be concerned about.
Never happened. But when you have a narrative to sell...
And that’s not even the lone example we have of Biden’s declining mental ability.
He is declining mentally, that's normal for a man in his 80's and concerning for a presidential candidate. But if we're comparing him to the man he's likely running against, it doesn't compare. At least Biden knows WW2 is over.
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@Greyparrot
What does anything I said about trading an Arms dealer for a pot smoker have to do with supporting Trump?
With regards to that specific statement, nothing. That's why I started with "on top of being a closeted Trump supporter..."
As far as the reasons why I don't buy your claim that you're anything but;
- I've never seen you provide a substantive critique of Trump and the only time I've ever seen you say anything negative about him at all is when prodded
- You constantly and consistently accuse anyone here who bashes him of TDS (an odd thing to attack people for as someone who also doesn't like him)
- You constantly and consistently attack Biden for every little thing he does seemingly unaware of your brazen double standards
And as far as my bigot comment, that's because rather than just acknowledge Griner as an American you saw fit to thrown in that she smokes pot and is a lesbian, two things that only a bigot would find worthy of pointing out in a discission over whether her life was worthy of saving.
With your statement, you seem to be claiming that you have to hate Trump in order to approve of such terrible trades with other nations.
I've argued nothing close to this. I've pointed out that trades such as this are nuanced and thus Biden would be criticized no matter what he did so it's a political cheap shot. But when you have nothing real to complain about this is where we end up.
What I find remarkable about this is the fact that nearly all the same people criticizing Biden for this were fully on board with the years and years of investigations over Benghazi and blaming of that administration such that it was considered to them a legitimate reason to deny the then secretary of state the presidency, because you know, 4 dead Americans. But suddenly the lives of Americans doesn't seem to be worth that much anymore, I wonder what changed.
No Trump involvement was necessary or requested to excuse or authorize that decision. The fact that you are so eager to blame Trump for this...
I haven't blamed Trump for any of this. Please do yourself a favor; slow down, read what I actually wrote, and reply to me instead of the figment of your imagination you seem to be arguing with.
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@Greyparrot
So lifting sanctions on a terrorist state is good but lifting sanctions on other countries is bad? Weird take but OK.
Arguing with yourself again I see. No one here said anything like that.
Again, it wasn't a give away. It was their money. That's a fact. Deal with it accordingly instead of just making shit up.
Also, Trump hasn't been president for a long time, so you can shelve the TDS here.
Again, they attained the $6 billion in the first place under the Trump administration. That's not TDS, that's a fact. Deal with it accordingly.
More Americans were taken hostage and killed as a result of the Hamas attacks.
What does this have to do with the $6 billion "cash give away"?
Plus we swapped 5 Iranian prisoners as a bonus to Iran. We hadn't seen such a lopsided swap since we swapped a Russian arms dealer for a pot smoking lesbian....
So on top of being a closeted Trump supporter you're also a bigot. The fact that she smokes pot and prefers women is a really strange thing to think makes your point sound better.
Again, Biden brought Americans home. I remember a time when right wingers pretended to care about Americans overseas, apparently it's no longer politically advantageous now that there's a democrat in the WH.
This totally did not need to happen. Sending bad signals to foreign nations is how chaos happens.
What totally did not need to happen? Again, the attacks were not carried out by Iran nor had they accessed a single cent of the $6 billion prior to it. So what is your argument again apart from this vague meaningless and unfalsifiable charge of "sending bad signals"?
You know who is sending bad signals? The guy who keeps egging on his supporters to commit violence on his behalf against anyone involved with enforcing the laws he brazenly violated. I think that's a much bigger concern when considering the prospects of who serves the next term in the oval office. But apparently that's all because of this TDS I seem to have caught.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
I like how you have adopted my “genius” moniker.
I've been using it for years, just more commonly on Twitter where a far greater percentage of comments don't warrant a serious response. I actively try not to be insulting though, so about 9 out of 10 times I type it I end up deleting it before I hit send. Every once in a while however, it's warranted.
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@Greyparrot
Sure, pick any of one of those. We can discuss any one you want to debunk.
Ok, let's go with the simplest...
plus the 6 billion cash giveaway to Iran is directly responsible for the whole Israel mess
First of all, the $6 billion isn't a cash give away, it's their money that the Biden administration had frozen. All they agreed to do was unfreeze it.
The only reason they were able to attain it in the first place is because of the Trump administration.
The reason they unfroze it was so that American prisoners being held in Iran would be released. If they hadn't done that people like you would probably be criticizing Biden for not caring about the lives of Americans.
And most importantly...
Not a single dollar of that money had yet to be released, so blaming the Israel mess on that is patently absurd.
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@Greyparrot
None of those statements has caused any actual distress to the American public or the current global instability
That's because he's a private citizen genius.
When he was in office this kind of thing was not only normal but numbing. Like when he threatened nuclear war over Twitter or threatened to pull the US out of NATO (hey, did you know the U.S. is spelled "us"? Wow I just realized that).
Bidenomics (repackaged Reaganomics) with trickle-down top level corporate giveaway spending to top lobbyists (Big Pharma, Big Energy, Big Military Industry) is an objective flop. Biden's alienating of Saudi Arabia with his verbal Kashoggi diarrhea plus the 6 billion cash giveaway to Iran is directly responsible for the whole Israel mess. 3 years of his toady Mayorkas claiming the border is secure while even Democrat D.C., New York, And Chicago mayors call bullshit. Now Biden wants to strip another 100 Billion from working class Americans to fund his scams overseas while flipping off Maui.
You haven't shown a willingness to engage honestly through complex issues so I'll just say this reads like a Hannity monologue. All of it is BS, with no context or support apparently hoping we won't notice while you move on to the next nonsense claim.
Select one of the above items to discuss in depth, explain what you're claiming, why we should care and I'll provide my thoughts on it while also comparing it to similar things Trump has done (which is not a whataboutism because the conversation here is about how the two compare).
If you are not willing, consider this entire list ignored.
At this point, I am much more pissed at the TDS assholes that mindlessly continue to shill for Biden than shitbird Trump.I would now consider voting for him just to teach those TDS assholes to stop burning the country down over hurt fee fees.If TDS wakes up and primaries Biden, I would definitely reconsider though.
More evidence that you're really a closeted Trump supporter. It's very well demonstrated that Trump supporters support him not because of any real interest in government policy but because they simply like that he hates the same people they do. The idea of voting for someone out of such considerations is childish to say the least, but central to trumpism.
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@Greyparrot
I'd rather have someone uncontrollably shitting out of his ass than the diarrhea that comes out of Biden's mouth which has put us on the brink of WW3 and global economic collapse. So much for an upgrade to Trump... but what can you expect from the radical left.
Over the past month or so Trump has
- Warned that America was on the verge of WW2
- Claimed he beat Obama in 2016 and is leading him in the polls
- Praised Victor Orban for doing a good job leading Turkey
- Told his supporters they didn't need to go out and vote
- And last night as I write this, thought he was in Sioux Falls instead of Sioux City
If Biden had done any one of these things you would be screaming 25th amendment and you know it.
Just admit you're a Trump supporter. It's already obvious to the rest of us.
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@n8nrgim
... but the main reason is that women are just too picky.
There are many reasons for this, some of which have already been brought up but just to add to it... I've never met a man in real life who's ever been physically or sexually assaulted by a woman. Most women are physically defenseless in a confrontation with most men, so if I were one of them I imagine I'd be a lot pickier as well.
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@Greyparrot
So... what do you suggest US does?Nothing. America can't be fixed at this point, only recolonized.
Right wing politics in a nutshell. Solutions to real problems? Nah, just elect the guy who hates the same people I do.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Yeah America! You were so wise to vote Republican and lift the ban on new assault weapons.You were so wise to allow ordinary citizens to have weapons of war so when they go crazy they can kill a bunch of people real fast
Well, a price has to be paid so that I can maintain my hobby.
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@Best.Korea
It never ceases to amaze me how so many religious folks just don't understand how a person could figure out right from wrong without a supreme being telling us which is which.
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@n8nrgim
i realize it's healthy to be skeptic, but i choose to just go with it and accept orthodox teachings like the virgin birth, unless i have a good reason to doubt it.
Do you consider adherence to valid principals of logic to be a good reason?
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@n8nrgim
it looks like there must be something to this Jesus story, and the following events with his followers. but you assume the christian version is far fetched, so you choose not to worry about the fact that it looks like there's something to it. that's rationalizing.
Rationalizing is when you work backwards to justify the conclusion you find preferable. That's not what's happening here.
Again, we have a set of events described in a book. The question we're asking is what is the best explanation for this? Using basic principles of logic (Occam's razor) we compare possible explanations by asking ourselves which ones require the most assumptions (worst option) vs which ones require the least amount of assumptions (best option).
To illustrate let's go with delusion vs god. The idea that the individuals who died for their cause were merely delusional isn't remarkable at all. People die for delusional beliefs all the time, if you need a reminder come to NYC and visit ground zero.
Meanwhile an alternative explanation is that they were following a man who rose from the dead. Can you show me evidence that this has ever happened anywhere? No, of course not, because there isn't any. So accepting this explanation is a major assumption.
They don't compare. But this is the problem with indoctrination, the absurdity of this comparison doesn't seem to register because you accept the god explanation as the default. It's not the default, you need to justify that explanation as much as you would any other, and when treating each with the same standards of reason and evidence it becomes blatantly obvious which is more out there.
And like I pointed in the beginning, we don't have to have an explanation. Something I notice with Christians is that they seem to think they're on superior footing merely because they hold a belief, whatever it is. Skepticism recognizes that merely holding a belief is not a thing of value. What's valuable is ensuring that the beliefs you hold are warranted. There's nothing wrong with stopping at "I don't know". In fact if you don't have sufficient evidence, to not stop there is dishonest.
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@n8nrgim
so what do skeptics think happened?
The entire point of skepticism is to withhold belief in any particular conclusion until such time as the evidence for it warrants belief.
do you think st paul was a schizophrenic who happened to otherwise be sane, and to become of the leading figures of christainity? were the apostles and st paul deluded, was it a conspiracy of group delusion? why would they lie if they weren't deluded? does trying to rationalize and minimize the historical nature of all this stuff seem prudent, when there's the possibility that they weren't just deluded?
It's not a matter of rationalizing. The fact is that any one of the reasons listed above is far more plausible than the notion that they died because they were following a man who rose from the dead as a messanger of an omnicient, omnipotent, omnipresent being.
As a skeptic myself I'm not pretending to have the answers, none of us have access to these individuals beyond words in a 2,000 year old book. What I do have is Occam's razor, and that points us in a very clear direction.
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@Greyparrot
It is no act of ethical courage to trade your moral beliefs for security. Rarely does might (the winning or "right" side) accurately equate to what is right.
You aren't hearing a word I'm saying.
I'm not talking about the "winning side". I'm talking about being in the right side - as in what is right, not as in whatever side is winning, not as in whatever side will be looked back upon as having won, not as in whatever works best for self preservation.
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@Greyparrot
So did Hitler's supporters. The "wrong side" usually meant immediate death or worse.
Hitler's supporters are perhaps the most cliche example in history of what being on the wrong side of an issue looks like. Self preservation had nothing to do with this.
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@TheUnderdog
So then encouraging them to leave California and turn other states blue.
The idea of being a governor is to serve the needs of your residents, not to encourage them to leave.
I like being an ideological minority in my state; it makes me feel edgy as hell.
I prefer to just be on the right side of an issue.
To each his own.
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@ponikshiy
This is it just you focusing on an individuals vote. Rural Americans would have their needs completely ignored in your system. A politician could just let the 10 biggest cities completely decide an election and literally ignore the people who are not in those specific 10 cities. It's not about an individuals voting power. You already know this if you read my argument. People come from different areas and have different daily struggles and needs as a result of that.
People are always going to have different struggles and needs, that's the entire point of a representative system of government.
Here's a question for you... It's estimated that about 1% of the population is autistic. Given that these individuals have different needs, and given that they make up such a small chunk of the population politicians have little to no incentive to pay any attention to them, do you support a system which singles these individuals out in order to give their votes more power thereby forcing politicians to pay closer attention to them? Cause otherwise they'd be ignored right? What about amputees? What about diabetics? What about the homeless? How exactly do you go about deciding which group of people deserve to be prioritized by our political system if not the simple concept of one person one vote?
Second question; you say that the problem with a popular vote system is that the needs of certain voters would be ignored. Ok, so when was the last time a presidential candidate visited rural New York? Or urban Missouri? Who on a national level has ever paid attention to their needs? Why is it that the same 6 or seven states every election get 90% of the attention while the other 40+ states just have to sit back and wait to see what happens? How exactly is that fair in your view?
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@Best.Korea
So let me see if I'm following your position...
Logic exists therefore it was created
God is the only being powerful enough to have created it, therefore God created logic
If God created logic then God can defy logic
If logic can be defied, then it is not always necessary
If it is not always necessary, then it should not always be relied upon.
If it should not always be relied upon, then faith is a reasonable alternative to fill that void
If faith is a reasonable alternative, then one who relies on faith is being reasonable.
Does that about sum it up?
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@Best.Korea
basic laws of logic always require to be accepted without question, for those laws to be applied.
Correct, because accepting them is a necessary precondition of intelligible thought.
Logic isn't something that's created, established, or defended, it's the starting point from which all intelligible thought follows. Any attempt to validate logic requires the use of it as well as any attempt to invalidate it, which is exactly what you're trying to do and what makes it so ironic.
When you argue that logic had to be created, you're using logic to make that case. When you argue that logic doesn't always need to apply, you are using logic to make that case. You are using the very thing you are arguing against, that's like demonstrating the uselessness of the tree branch you are sitting on by cutting it off.
So no, I don't love logic. I just recognize the absurdity of pretending there is some other way to form a coherent worldview.
The reasoning itself always leads to absurd infinity, since every reason requiers a reason, which is absurd since there cannot be infinite reasons.
Correct, there cannot be infinite reasons, which is where we get into topics like properly basic beliefs and epistemology more broadly. Let me know when you want to have a real conversation about this and I'll be happy to explain further.
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@Best.Korea
Its called being all powerful.
Even theologians and other religious leaders recognize that "all powerful" does not include the power to defy logic. Again, such an assertion makes your claim irrational by definition.
You don't have to care about that, you can choose to believe in something that makes absolutely no sense if that's what makes you feel good. What you don't get to do is pretend that anyone else should feel compelled to listen to a word you have to say because at that point you've ceded any and all ground to stand on while you criticize another person's position... on anything.
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@TheUnderdog
Then he/she didn't send them, they left.
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@Best.Korea
Unlike universe, God can actually create himself due to being above the laws of logic.
To believe in a being that can defy the laws of logic is to disregard logic as a limitation of what you believe. There's a word in the dictionary to describe this, it's called irrational.
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@Best.Korea
So you cant answer this simple question?
The question isn't actually that simple.
Here's another "simple" way of putting it: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Any answer you could possibly give to this question would have to fall into one of two categories: something, or nothing.
If the answer is a nothing, that's logically contradictory because nothing only refers to an absence, which cannot possibly explain existence.
If your answer is a something then that's logical contradictory because something cannot be the answer to why there's a something. That's entirely circular. BTW god is a "something".
So whichever you choose, it's a logical contradiction. This is what in physics is referred to as a singularity, it's a point where all the laws of math and science break down. It's why we can't go back any further than the big bang.
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@Greyparrot
I'm not a Democrat, so I have no Idea why 67% of Democrats don't want Biden to run again.
Well here's a crazy idea... Read your own source. It's right there as I already explained.
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@Greyparrot
3 years ago, 67 percent of Democrats did not dislike Biden.
That's not what the poll said. It 67% of Democratic voters wanted another candidate, which is a very different thing.
To that point, no other candidate got more than 3% of the "other" vote, which tells us what any pollster already knows; it's nearly impossible to run against people's imaginations. Up against a generic candidate the polling will always be lower than the reality of another human being with actual human flaws.
Moreover, looking at the issues driving this by far the number one reason democrats want someone else is because of his age, which goes to show how pointless and intellectually vapid this criticism of yours is. The respondents you are pointing to to make your argument are not basing their answers on anything he has done or even has any control over. It's entirely about age discrimination. His mental competency and fitness for office are listed as separate issues, none of which account for more than 7% of people's top concerns.
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@Greyparrot
67 percent of Democrats don't like Biden.
And yet they still voted for him.
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@Greyparrot
Not one person voted for any lobbyist nor did anyone vote for any head of any Alphabet agency
Correct, which is why lobbyists have no official control of anything and why every head of an alphabet agency ultimately reports to someone who was chosen by the voters.
All of those currently have all the power in the USA.
Every ounce of power they have came from the voters and can be taken away just as easily.
We saw what happened to Trump. That was a warning for all future presidents to watch themselves.
What are you talking about?
What happened to Trump is that he was held to account by the voters for being an incompetent moron, so the lesson for future presidents is not to be an incompetent moron.
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@n8nrgim
You r playing word games.
It's not word games, it's English. The problem with many of these arguments is not that they're worded wrong, it's that they're worded in such a way that makes them sound good because the words used to make them are being improperly used. When striped of their incorrect usage, it becomes clear what was wrong with the logic behind them.
Unless of course it truly is a matter of one misspeaking, in which case correcting the verbage only helps to clarify so we can focus on the actual ideas.
Would it be fair for you to say the healings r inexplicable but that it looks like the body healed itself?
If I cut myself, over time the wound will heal. Here's a question for you... How do we know that this is a natural occurrence whereas, say, myself growing back an amputated arm isn't?
Answer: Because we have observed how the body heals, and through observation we know that cuts heal while lost limbs do not.
So if someone did grow back a lost limb does this logically lead us to the conclusion that we are witnessing something supernatural? No, it means we are observing a body healing itself in ways we previously hadn't observed. Logically, we must now add this to our list of observations and work to explain what caused this result that didn't cause the same result in other cases.
According to you thats a contradiction.
The contradiction isn't concluding the body healed itself, the contradiction is claiming that previous observations count towards our understanding of the natural while current observations do not. The other contradiction is claiming that we can explain something (by asserting the supernatural) while also saying we can't explain it (by calling it inexplicable).
Apparently all we can do is say things r inexplicable and offer no theories.
No, we can investigate. What we can't do is appeal to that which lies outside of the boundaries of that which we have access to. This is why science is based on methodological naturalism. The idea isn't that there is no such thing as the supernatural, it's that if there is we have no access to it so we're stuck limiting our investigations of reality to the physical.
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@Greyparrot
Us as the voters? It hasn't been up to us for a very long time. Trump's failed presidency proved that the lobbyist class are collectively far more powerful than ANY one man, and they have plenty of tools to eliminate the competition.
What Trump's failed presidency proved is that when someone demonstrates their lack of qualifications and fitness to serve, we should believe it.
I mean seriously, are we surprised that a man who showed us over and over that he is a clinical narcist dealt with a pandemic by thinking about nothing other than what would look good for his reelection? Are we really surprised that a man who showed us just how much contempt he holds for democracy turned around and tried to steal an election? Are we really surprised that a man who thought Ted Cruz's dad killed JFK because he saw it in a tabloid turned out to be the most prolific purveyor of conspiracy theories we ever saw?
He failed because he had no business being within a mile of the oval office.
But to the lobbyist point, it's just nonsense. The reason lobbyists hold so much power is because we the people keep rewarding politicians for following them. Until you can show me actual examples where the politician who gets swarn in is not the politician who received the most votes from the people in their constituency, the problems begin and end with us.
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@n8nrgim
Christians can show evidence of things that look supernatural and r inexplicable
This is a contradiction. To claim something is the result of the supernatural you are offering an explanation. To then claim it is inexplicable you are by definition claiming it has no explanation.
Like I pointed out to you in the last thread, you have to have a confirmed supernatural occurrence to compare to in order to claim something "looks" supernatural. "X looks just like Y" does not work without a Y.
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@n8nrgim
Well, the title of this thread does suggest a heavy focus on individual qualities, so there's that.
Issues certainly would be considered a third category. But even then I didn't include it because it's mostly irrelevant in this specific case. If it does turn out to be Biden vs Trump then for the first time in history we will have two candidates who have both been in the oval office, so there's no reason to guess what each will do. Trump can say he will lower the deficit, but he already blew it up at a time when the economy was roaring so believing what he says over what he did is just silly. Same for Biden, if he said he would protect the "sanctity of life" we would have every reason to at the very least ignore that stated position.
It's true that any individual can hate Trump's personality/qualities as an individual while recognizing the realities of how he benefitted from inheriting a prosperous economy and still, based only on issues, prefer him over Biden. I would consider that position far more reasonable but still wrongheaded. Like I pointed out, Trump has no respect for the constitution or the concept of democracy itself and he has proven capable of taking half the country with him over this cliff. If we don't have a democracy, our differences over abortion or tax cuts will become irrelevant because it won't be up to us anymore. To turn one's back on that fact is absurd to me.
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@Greyparrot
They had hope Biden would get us on the right path far faster than Trump which I would argue he did.
Trump deserves much credit for getting the vaccines out, the administration did really good work pushing for it quickly and betting on the right companies to develop them. But they notoriously had no plan to get them distributed to the public and even argued it wasn't their responsibility to worry about. It's not hard to figure out why, when COVID first hit the entire country wanted a vaccine so it was politically advantageous to Trump to be able to tout the vaccine as an accomplishment, but thanks to his remarkable narcissism by the time he was able to get them out the political climate changed. It was no longer in his personal favor so he no longer gave a shit.
Biden was able to take the baton Trump dropped and take it across the finish line. Had he not done that we would have seen a lot more economic stalling and a lot more deaths than we did.
Anyone who thought Biden was going to magically fix everything is just ignorant of how the world works, it's pretty silly to hold him to that standard.
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@Greyparrot
People blamed Trump for not delivering on his border wall promise and removed him in 2020
They removed him for many reasons, his failure to finish the border wall being somewhere at the bottom of the list. The main catalyst was the fact that he politicized a pandemic that killed over a million Americans putting on full display just how incompetent he is and how little he cares about anything other than himself.
but they had no idea just how much worse things would get both around the world and at home.
They got worse because of the aftermath of COVID, which would have been the case regardless of who won the election.
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@n8nrgim
but if you think half the nation is nuts for preferring the candidate that you oppose, that says a lot more about you than it does about them.
No, it speaks to the incredibly sad state of our country that so many idiots out there cannot tell what is real anymore.
There are two general areas in which politicians are criticized; crudentials, and qualities.
When Trump defenders speak of his crudentials vs Biden's, all they're doing is ignoring the circumstances each faced and the fact that president's do not have god like powers. I have yet to hear any, whether praising Trump or criticizing Biden explain how anything would have been noticably different if the other were on office at that time period.
Bit when it comes to qualities, comparing the two is absurd. The worst thing you can say about Biden is that he is not all there, which is cartoonishly exaggerated by right wing propaganda.
Trump meanwhile, is a vile, childish, petulant, buffoonish, ignorant, pathological lying narcissist and conspiracy theorist who tried to end American democracy, crosses off every box of the wannabe dictator's checklist, and is facing 91 felony charges for crimes he committed mostly out in the open.
The two are not remotely the same. Anyone who thinks otherwise it's either deeply conflicted or just cannot tell reality apart from fantasy.
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@n8nrgim
any time you see evdience for God, ask if it would be better or at least possible to not call it evidence but merely consistent with God theory.
You're putting the cart before the horse. You cannot argue something is consistent with a god until you have an example of a god to compare it to.
when healings that look supernatural happen, it still looks like impossible things are occurring. you can try to rationalize it, but that's what it looks like.
Again, you don't have any examples of a supernatural healing to be able to say what one would look like. If you did there would be nothing left to prove.
The reason you don't have an example is because the concept of the supernatural itself is deeply flawed. We have the natural world. We have limitations we know the natural world is confined to. If we observe something breaking those limitations you'd call them supernatural. But in order to conclude that, we have to presume that the limitations we started with are valid, which we only affirmed through observation in the first place.
This is the problem, you cannot argue something is supernatural without breaking the consistency of your own logic. In other words, it's necessarily self defeating.
there's no explanation that we know of that can explain how life started on earth, or how something as complicated as human consciousness occurrs.
Not having an explanation does not mean you get to make one up. "I can't explain something therefore I can explain it" Is a logical contradiction.
im more curious if you think being an atheist makes sense from a common sense perspective. i've finally concluded after decades of thinking about this sort of stuff, that it's plausible to say there's no evidence for God. but, from a common sense perspective, i'm still as strong a theist as ever.
Common sense used in this context is just an excuse to hold onto an irrational belief because it feels right. The idea of debating these things is to dig inside yourself to see where those feelings are coming from and whether they are valid.
I fully embrace the notion that nothing should be believed until there is sufficient evidence to justify it. Don't know if I consider that common sense because it doesn't appear to be as common as it should.
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@n8nrgim
It's like these things in some ways, it's unlike them in others. I don't see why then we need to bring extreme terms into the conversation. Just focus on expressing the issue you have, I think that would make your point clearer and less objectionable.
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@John_C_87
It doesn't make any sence to seek proof as evidence in writing if you are not writing about a crime.
Proof, evidence, etc. are not terms exclusive to criminal activity, they're terms of logic from which the criminal justice system bases itself upon.
If I believe my wife is cheating on me and want to evaluate whether my belief is rational, I need to consider what evidence I have; text messages, receipts, etc. and determine whether my belief is justified or if I'm just being paranoid. Same exact process, nothing to do with criminal statues.
No insualt meant but this is straight forward in that the people and all courts of established justice all in thier many forms are indeed part of this process, as United State.
Still has nothing to do with "practicing law".
The United States of America consists of three branches of govrement and four states of law.
Still have no idea what this has to do with anything I've said.
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@n8nrgim
are you so sure that a person can choose not to participate? you guys keep saying things like 'go live off the land if you want to'. but the laws of man have made it such that we can't.
I understand the gripe here, and you are correct in that there are almost no opportunities for an individual to live the alternative way I'm describing because almost every chunk of land on earth has been claimed by some large group of people, but even acknowledging that reality makes this argument weak at best. Essentially you're arguing that you are a slave because current human civilization won't allow you the luxury of being able to live entirely as a caveman or hunter/gatherer and instead forces you to work for things like running water and clothes. Again, nothing about that fits with the baggage carried by the word slave.
but i still think it's fair to say there's an element of slavery since we have no real choice but to participate
An element of slavery perhaps, but it's not the element from which the term derives it's real meaning. This is like when someone says taxation is theft. You can argue it on a technical basis but just like slavery, the word has an emotional connotation that comes from a very different idea. When we think of theft we think of the guy breaking into your house or robbing a liquor store. It's dishonest to use the emotional baggage generated by that idea against taxation because taxation is a very different thing. Likewise, it's dishonest to call yourself a slave because you don't like the system our society has set up. Being unhappy with it is perfectly fine, but if you're arguing your position honestly you would need to use different verbage to articulate it.
if you want to live an average life.. you have no choice but to join the machine and slave away for forty hours a week for forty years.
But what is an "average life"? I think a major part of the issue here is that you take the simple things I mentioned for granted. Until about 2 centuries ago no one had ever even heard of electricity. Ketchup was invented not to make fries taste better, but to mask the taste of rotting meat because there was no such thing as refrigerators. You say you don't want to be a part of the machine, but without the machine none of these things would be possible, so unless you truly don't want running water and electricity, unless you truly don't care about eating meat that isn't turning brown and rotting as a means of survival, it seems you do want to enjoy these things but just don't want to contribute to them.
If all you want is to survive, you really don't need to work 40 hours. You can find a city where there is public transportation, rent a room, and have just barely enough leftover to eat and clothe yourself. If you want more, like TV, a phone, a comfortable bed... Then this isn't slavery. It's a choice to work harder to do better and to have luxuries that people who were born centuries ago had no opportunity to attain or even experience.
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@n8nrgim
what does it matter what it's called? is it possible to go to someone and say "i will be your slave if you take care of me"?
I find it kind of odd that you're asking what we think about calling our roles in society slavery while also asking why it matters what we call it.
To answer your OP, I wouldn't call it juvenile but I do think it's wrong. As some have pointed out, the question you ask does depend entirely on what you are calling a slave, but language is ultimately about communication and the word slave carries with it a lot of emotional baggage because of its historical usage. The bulk of that emotional baggage comes from the idea associated with it - having all choice removed from an individual and essentially being regarded as property, which is why I think it's wrong to use that word for what is being highlighted here.
I get your point and not feeling like we have a choice, but the comparison still doesn't hold. For centuries human beings didn't have electricity, running water, clothes, etc. That doesn't make them slaves in any sense of the word, yet what you're really talking about is the work necessary to maintain in the things we have today. If you want to hunt your own food, clean your own drinking water, etc., you can always live like that. If you want more, someone else will have to provide these amenities to you and you are not entitled to the fruits of their labor.
Having these things is a luxury of our time, calling yourself a slave because you have to earn them doesn't work.
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