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@TheMorningsStar
Except that we know from previous actual handshakes of Biden's, look up his handshake with Putin from Geneva last year, that it isn't uncommon for him to have his hand angled in that direction on some level when he first offers to shake hands with people.
If we’re going to look at previous Biden gestures look back to the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump. When the candidates came out Biden made the same exact hand gesture towards the crowd, except he did it with both hands because they were both free unlike this time where he had a book in his left hand. This is just a thing that he does, which is what makes this whole thing so ridiculous.
It’s at about 29:30, or -1:34:53 to be exact (it’s only showing me time remaining)
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@Polytheist-Witch
What are you talking about? Did you understand what I wrote? It was only 3 words
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@coal
He didn’t shake hands with thin air, it was clearly a gesture to the crowd behind him.
As soon as he turns around his hand is in plain view. If it were a hand shake his hand would have moved up and down and/or his hand would have closed around the imaginary hand he was shaking with. Neither happened. His eye line was also straight ahead, looking directly at the people behind him.
This is a basic test of Occam’s razor. Sure, it’s possible that in his mind he really was shaking hands with an imaginary person, but given that all of the things he would have done were missing and align more with a gesture which one wins out? Of course those who are already invested in the notion that Biden is senile would ignore everything I just pointed out in favor of the “gotcha”.
This is how propaganda works. Once you have successfully branded someone you can find examples of it everywhere.
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@Polytheist-Witch
If you have to question whether or not rape or child molesting may or may not be evil you have a problem with evil in your own self.
Says a subject.
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@RationalMadman
I don't get it. I can't get it. I am forced to zip my mouth in order to blend in with the left wing of this modern generation. It is so horrible because I am so proudly left-wing in basically all other ways.
On an individual level it is certainly possible to be against transgenderism without being transphobic. On a larger scale, it is hard to deny that the sudden obsession with transgenderism and its vast power as a political issue is ultimately fueled by anything other than transphobia.
I am prepared to give any individual the benefit of the doubt as they voice their opposition, but what I want to know is whether your opposition makes sense and is consistent with what you believe in any other respect, and also… why do you care about this? If those two things aren’t lining up I call bullshit.
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@coal
What Ron DeSantis is doing is exactly what he should be doing. One power center is checking another.
So to be clear, you are ok with government punishing corporations because their executives exercised their right to free speech?
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@TheMorningsStar
Disney has had a special privilege for years now that is being taken from it. It isn't a punishment to take away a special privilege.
Yes, it absolutely is.
The question of whether an adverse action is punishment has nothing to do with what the circumstances were at the outset. The question is entirely about whether the adverse action was taken as a direct result of the action it was responding to.
If I tell my teenage daughter she can go to a party that she has no business going to and then I rescind my permission because she got an F in math, I am in fact punishing her for getting an F in math. I don’t get to pretend it’s not punishment because she should not be going to the concert in the first place.
We can have a reasonable debate about whether Disney should have these special districts, but they’ve had them for decades and it was never a problem for Floridians until Disney spoke up against the new law. But because they spoke up, they lost their privileges. This is the most basic example of retaliation we could even concoct in politics.
What I find absolutely amazing is how fast the political right defends this, having lost all sense of reason and common sense. These are really basic concepts, nothing about this is complicated.
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@CoolApe
I wouldn't call Disney a private company. It's publicly traded.A company like Disney has a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. Playing woke politics with other people's money is negligent of that obligation. Woke politics doesn't make you dime on company time.Board of directors are not entitled to free-speech when their bound by the property rights of their shareholders and their duties to them.I am strong advocate for free speech but only privately owned companies and people outside of work have free speech.
Private, as in the private sector. These are not government entities, these are agents of the supposed free market.
I’m glad you agree that company executives have no business using the money of their shareholders for political purposes. Perhaps you will join the fight to eliminate corporate donations to super pacs, something people like AOC have been talking about for years.
Curious as to whether you take the same position towards all of those companies making political donations - that if government passed new laws retaliating against them for their political involvement, that this would be ok…?
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Really curious to know what all of the free speech advocates here think about Florida using the power of big government to crack down on private companies for saying what they believe.
Discuss…
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@coal
The argument is that based on nature of the violence, scale of property damage and consequential human suffering…
Except that non of the arguments for why Jan 6th was so bad have anything to do with this. It’s easy to minimize something when you disregard all of the reasons why it matters and focus only on the parts you choose to focus on because they are politically convenient.
Here's the basic premises:1. BLM was trying to disrupt/dismantle an instrumentality of the state's power, specifically the police. The BLM riots were an "insurrection," as that term is understood by American law.2. Evidence of the BLM riots constituting an insurrection is widely available, comprising among other things the level of violence, wanton property destruction and nature of their targets/objectives, as well as the intended effect of these.3. By any metric, the extent, scale, costs and losses which resulted from BLM's insurrection in 2020 exceeded anything that followed from January 6th.
All three of these premises are meaningless.
Show me where the individuals whom these rioters were taking their cues from plotted to overthrow the government and install their preferred leader in power and then we can talk about an insurrection.
The reason you can’t do that is because there was no leader they were taking their cues from. What we saw that summer was a nationwide grassroots uprising over a video captured by the public, shared by the public, and reacted to by a massive portion of the population. The rioting was a case of civil disobedience. That’s not an insurrection.
There is no indication of a coordinated attempt to disrupt/dismantle the state or any instrumentality of the state's power in connection with January 6th's events. There was no single coordinating entity behind January 6th nor any common/identifiable purpose beyond protesting what they believed was a "rigged" election. At most, a bunch of idiots from the midwest amassed in Washington DC, because of their delusion that Trump would have actually won the 2020 election if the votes were counted properly.
Nonsense. Trump was behind all of this. The rioters themselves have all made clear before, during and after the events that day that they were taking their cues from him. You not only ignore the endless trove of evidence that Trump was trying to overturn the election he lost, but you ignore the concept of stochastic terrorism and how blatantly Trump used it in this case. The idea that you would tell your supporters their country had literally been stolen from them, assemble them right outside the Capitol as the steal was in progress, rile them up with a speech about how they need to fight like hell, and then step back and nothing would happen is beyond preposterous. Everyone knew he was responsible as it was happening, why people now pretend they don’t will never cease to amaze me.
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@coal
Yet, a cohort of individuals seeks to redefine that word to make January 6th an insurrection while at the same time defining the BLM riots as being outside of it. In the best case, it's partisan hackery. In the worst case, people can't make sense of the world as it is.
While I don’t use the word insurrection to describe Jan 6th, what never ceases to amaze me is how obsessed the political right is with equating It with the BLM riots.
The reason one could reasonably think of Jan 6th as an insurrection is because the goal of those who ransacked the US Capitol was to stop the certification of a presidential election, and they did so because the POTUS signaled to them that this is what he wanted them to do. It was all part of an elaborate plot to literally take over the government by installing the loser into the Oval office.
Whatever you think of the BLM riots, nothing like that could be said about them. These are not the same.
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@Greyparrot
Lol, there's a screening process for foster parents for a reason. That's the default.
Yes, there’s a process to ensure the prospective foster parents provide a healthy stable household. What we’re actually talking about is how we go about doing that, or more specifically what role someone’s genitalia history should play in it.
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@TheMorningsStar
I did keep reading, all you did was outline why bulimia had physical health issues and then claimed that gender dysphoria isn't like that (when you have no reason to think so).
Name one thing I said about bulimia that also applies to gender dysphoria.
I asked because I want to know your standards, not so you can make a meaningless reply.
I gave you a meaningless reply because it’s a silly question, and the fact that you are asking me to explain how we determine whether something negatively impacts others should make you think about how silly this is getting.
When I used the phrase “the freedom to swing your arms ends at someone else’s nose” did you understand it? Do you understand what would happen if I swung my arms and it hit your nose, and how that would be negatively impactful to you to the point where I shouldn’t be allowed to do it?
I know it seems silly for me to ask you this, but if this is the level of common sense we are disregarding then it’s a perfectly fair question for me to expect you to have to answer.
Okay, how do you determine if someone is of sound mind?
A sound mind is when someone is connected to reality, making decisions with a full understanding of the consequences and has determined that the outcome of their actions is still preferable to the alternative.
You keep saying that not affirming is wrong and then go on to justify non-affirmation in some instances.
And I’ve explained the differences in those instances. I’m not being inconsistent, you keep pretending it’s all the same when it’s not.
If someone going through affirmation therapy is harmed by non-affirmation then this means that they will always be harmed if you don't change all of society to capitulate.
It’s people like you who are the reason these people have to go through the stigmatization that they do in society, so you don’t get to pretend you’re the one looking out for them by trying to steer them away from making decisions that will expose them to that stigmatization.
Not really, have you ever heard of a modus tollens? If X then Y, not Y therefore not X? It is proper logic. Sometimes an absence of evidence can be evidence of absence.
Yes, but your premise is absurd.
If X then Y - in other words if homosexual households were just as capable of producing a healthy environment to raise children (X), then there would be studies saying so (Y). In other words, the burden is on the scientific community to prove your unsupported claims wrong. That’s not how logic works. And as far as why it doesn’t…
The default position is that any couple is capable of raising a loving family until we have reason to believe otherwise.I'm sorry, why should that be the default? You can't just assert it to be the default and make it so.
Because the alternative is to presume no couple is capable of raising a loving family until and unless they prove themselves otherwise. That position would require every prospective parent in our society to have to pass some kind of clearance test before being allowed to have children. Is that your idea of how a society should function?
It seems more like you have your pet conclusion and are trying your hardest to interpret everything to support it. I am very doubtful that you actually are open to being wrong at this point.
First of all, if you actually paid attention to my point I said there is an alternate way to look at it. I never declared that to be the answer.
Second and more importantly, this comment demonstrates a remarkable lack of self awareness as well as projection. I am not the one who came on here declaring to have answers to what these studies show, you were . Yet you want to sit here and tell me I’m the one who’s biased because I’m drawing conclusions from studies that are inconclusive when all I’ve done here is responded to your points about them and why they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Look in the mirror before criticizing others.
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@TheMorningsStar
Because the two are nothing alike.As in one is bad for physical health and the other potentially bad for mental health?
If you wanted to know why I say they are different all you had to do is keep reading.
And what do you use to determine if it negatively impacts anyone else?
The same way we determine whether anything negatively impacts someone else.
When mental health issues are in play, how do you determine which ones you decide to affirm and which ones you don't?
When a person is making a decision of sound mind and it does not harm anyone else, that’s when I affirm.
And for the record, I am generally against anyone born a man competing in women’s sports.Then they already are not being treated the way they want to be treated, so what is the issue? How do you justify one and not the other?
Did you read anything I wrote? I already explained this.
The point is that I think that if there really was no difference when it comes to same-sex couples that there would have been very conclusive findings that did not have methodological issues by now, but that just is not the case.
You’re using the absence of evidence as evidence. That’s nonsense.
The LGBT community has no obligation to prove to you that they are capable of raising a family. The default position is that any couple is capable of raising a loving family until we have reason to believe otherwise.
That isn't just "not enough data to conclude anything", it is "enough data to conclude one thing is worse while more research is needed on the other factors".
That’s nonsense because there’s no indication of causation. If the raised anxiety and other issues were there before the surgery then of course that group would have been more likely to seek medical treatment, and if the anxiety issues were increased after the surgery that could be easily explainable by the way society (lead by folks like yourself) treat the trans community.
So in the absence of the data needed to fully understand this phenomenon we are again, just using the results to affirm our own biases.
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@TheMorningsStar
We don't treat people with bulimia the way they want to be treated, in regards to their body image, because we know that it is better for them (physically).Why, then, should we treat trans people the way they want to be treated, in regards to their body image, if we feel as if doing so is worse for them (mentally)?
Because the two are nothing alike. Bulimics aren’t just people who have a desired weight which the rest of us consider too skinny. Bulimics are always in fear of gaining weight no matter how skinny they are and are always fixated on how fat they are regardless of how disgustingly skinny they get. Even setting aside the physical objectively verifiable harm they are doing to their bodies (which is no throw away point here) these are people whose emotional disorder is clearly and objectively causing them to live outside of reality.
There is nothing like that with the general trans population, caricatures aside. So for you to pretend that the two are the same continues to make my point on why it’s so insulting and condescending to act as if we should all treat them like mental patients for their own good.
Let's say that we treat someone that is MtF the way they want to be treated. If they want to play competitive sports do we let them? Are we forced to deny the reality of sexual dimorphism in order to allow them to compete? If not, then we already aren't treating them the way they want to be treated.
The freedom to swing your arms ends at someone else’s nose. So when I or anyone else talks about treating others as they want to be treated we do so as long as it doesn’t negatively impact anyone else.
The question of what sports they should be allowed to play is an entirely different conversation. And for the record, I am generally against anyone born a man competing in women’s sports.
Then it comes to question how well the mental health of children raised by trans parents will be in the long run. I am bi myself and am fully willing to admit that there are enough studies to raise doubts on if children raised in same sex homes have the same outcome as traditional homes (nothing is yet conclusive).Now a question needs to be asked about the same in regards to trans parents
If there is nothing conclusive on same sex homes then why does the question “need to be asked” with regards to trans parents?
I am fully willing to change my mind on if affirmation is a workable treatment, are you willing to change your mind that it isn't?
Of course, but as your own source stated; there isn’t enough data to conclude the impacts of these treatments. Which means that we are both just working off of our own biases, which is why I take issue with it. My inclination is to let them live how they want and treat them as dignified human beings. Your inclination seems to be to treat them as if they are crazy and/or delusional while denying them the simple ask of respecting how they want to be addressed because you believe without any valid evidence that your approach is better for them.
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@TheMorningsStar
I think that non-affirming therapies work (did for me). They are used for every non-gender related body dysphoria because they work, and so why think they wouldn't work for gender dysphoria?
Because “I don’t like my tits, they’re too small” is not the same thing as “I don’t belong in the body I was born into”. But setting that aside, I don’t take issue with the idea of therapy here, I take issue with people arguing that the way to help these people is to deny them a dignified existence by treating them how they want to be treated. If they want therapy, then by all means. If they don’t, that’s their choice.
I don’t know much about your political leanings but it doesn’t escape me that most of the same people advocating against letting these people live their lives how they want are the same people constantly advocating for all of their political ideals under the mantle of freedom.
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@thett3
Yes that is my idea of how it works. What’s so inconceivable about it?
You’re arguing that the need one feels to change their sex is dependent on what the people around them have to say about it. I’m sure any trans person would find that preposterous.
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@thett3
Well if not affirming them leads to them not cutting off their dick and becoming comfortable in their body…
Is this really your idea of how this works?
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@Greyparrot
You want to be fat and die at 43? That's fine. You wanna be trans and roll the dice with 40% suicide rate? sure.
Has it ever occurred to you that the issues eventually leading to their suicide were there before they went trans, or do you actually believe they were just fine before deciding to completely alter their body?
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@TheMorningsStar
Greyparrot is right on this, it isn't unempathetic to tell fat people they aren't healthy, so to should it not be the case to not indulge in this gender-affirming ideology.
Whether a fat person, or any person meets the qualifications of being unhealthy is a matter of empirical verifiable fact, so this analogy is useless.
I’m glad for you that therapy worked for your dysphoria. That doesn’t mean everyone who goes through this is just like you. Again, we’re not talking about someone two burgers away from a heart attack being told they’re just fine. If someone feels so strongly that their body is not right for them that they decide to cut off their dick, your lack of affirmation is not going to help them nor anyone else one bit, but you act as if you’re doing them a favor. It’s absurd.
I think, however, that this discussion with you is a waste of time. You got so emotional so fast that it is clear already you won't be addressing this discussion rationally but instead by overly emotional in it. It isn't worth my time to argue with someone I know is too emotional about an issue to ever change their minds.
If you’re going to respond to what I have to say then do so. If you’re not then don’t. But spare me your condescension. My response wasn’t “emotional”. It was proportional to the absurdity implied within your post.
As I just implied above, the issue I have with those arguing your side of this is that you act as if you’re looking out for these people’s best interest while being the central cause of the fear and anxiety these people face at the prospect of living in this world. That’s worthy of the kind of responses I have given. You don’t need to change my mind on the issue, you could just make sense out of your position to show that you have a coherent view here.
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@n8nrgmi
Instead of finding a distraction argument that supports a partisan agenda like u r doin u should join me in concluding that it's stupid to insist men can have babies.
The point I just made was about how this is a strawman framing of the left which is what makes this conversation so ridiculous, and your response is that I’m supposed to join you in it? That’s like me starting a thread about how the political right are all ok with the Holocaust and expecting you to respond to it by joining me is saying “yeah Holocaust was bad” instead of pointing out how my premise is absurd.
No one serious is claiming men can have babies. This is again, a dumb thing to focus on.
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@Greyparrot
There are multiple studies showing people without dysphoriabeing bullied at…
Blah blah blah. This was the least important part of my post which was just added in at the end. Do you have any response to the actual substance of the discussion?
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@Greyparrot
You people love proving my point
How it it empathetic to indulge in a fat person's delusions about their health?
We’re not talking about fat people, first of all.
Second and more importantly, delusional is when a person is convinced and lives their life in accordance with something that is objectively not true. In order to determine whether something qualifies as a delusion, you need to begin with the belief they hold in order to compare it to reality.
There is no belief to assess here, because we’re not talking about a matter of biology or anything empirical verifiable. We’re talking about a feeling that has lead to a life long struggle, and what a person is supposed to do about it.
Why can’t you get the most basic fact regarding what we’re talking about right?
Is that how we should treat 40% of trans suicide attempts? If this is empathy, I want no part of it.
You are more than a part of it, you are the problem. Ask any trans individual who has contemplated suicide why they would think about such a thing; the answer is because of people like you who pretend they are inherently delusional who should be treated like bulimics and schizophrenics in order to save them from their own delusions.
If I was made to believe that this is all I was in the world until it became baked into my self image I might contemplate suicide too.
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@Tarik
I’m saying the infinite torture is the punishment for the infinite death that results from murder, so it’s fair play.
It’s not infinite. First of all, you are again confusing the act with the effect. But more to the point, death is a part of life. If I murder someone I am taking away whatever would have remained of their life. If they would have lived another, say 20 years, then my actions resulted in 20 years lost.
20 years < infinity
And BTW, since when is torture moral? I mean is this seriously your position? This is what constitutes morality to you?
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@Tarik
Effects matter, but people are held account for their actions, which is exactly how it should be.Yes, because of the EFFECT of those actions.
Are you under the impression that you are contradicting my point? Because you didn’t.
And no, ending a finite lifetime is not an infinite effect.I didn’t say it was, I said the EFFECT of ending that finite lifetime (death) is infinite.
It’s not an infinite effect, but the effect is infinite? What?
Death is infinite and death is a part of every lifetime, so I don’t even get what you’re trying to say.
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@TheMorningsStar
But is the empathetic thing to do to participate in one's self-perception in such a manner? Do we tell the schizophrenic person that there really are voices or do we show empathy by understanding the struggle and yet still not participating in it? We aren't being unempathetic to tell them that "No, you aren't a man/woman" just as we aren't being unempathetic when we say "No, you aren't fat" to someone suffering from bulimia.
Trans people are well aware of how their biology differs from that of any heterosexual cisgender, the fact that people like yourself keep pretending as if they don’t is what makes this conversation so ridiculous and the fact that your idea of an analogous example includes schizophrenia and bulimia proves my point.
The demonstration of your lack of empathy is that you can’t even get the basic facts right regarding we’re talking about.
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@n8nrgmi
I think think it's a biological fact that men can't have babies, but I respect opposition too much to say it's a sociological fact. To the generic idea that men can have babies, I think liberals twist themselves into all kinds of positions that they're forced to conclude something as silly as that
The right wing tendency to find the stupidest things to strawman and then hyper focus on never ceases to amaze me.
The actual “debate” we’re having is about the line between respecting your fellow citizens right to a dignified existence vs writing them off as crazy and demented. It’s not hard to look at a transwoman, recognize the struggle this individual has endured that made them cut off their body parts and live in a way that was entirely unnatural and say ok, I’ll refer to you as a “she”. Doing that means you’re not an asshole, it doesn’t mean you don’t know what chromosomes are or think that men can give birth.
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@Tarik
What makes a crime finite? Because if the crime is murder then the effect of that crime is infinite, unless the dead is resurrected. Is that what your claiming? Because if you are then there goes your infinite torture argument.
The act of carrying out the crime and the effect of the crime are two separate things. Effects matter, but people are held account for their actions, which is exactly how it should be.
And no, ending a finite lifetime is not an infinite effect.
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@Tarik
Hell is perhaps the most amoral concept imaginable.Not if immoral people are going there, sounds like justice to me.
Then you are a sick individual.
Hell is infinite torture for a finite crime. That necessarily makes it infinitely unjust and infinitely immoral.
And for God to create us knowing that some percentage of us would not live up to his rules resulting is some percentage of us ending up there makes him a moral monster.
Why some believers cannot understand this is beyond me and it really goes to show how religion can warp peoples minds.
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@Athias
Your argument is as follows:P1. God is omniscient and omnipotent.P2. Bad things like child rape, and malicious murders occur.P3. God is either responsible for the occurrence of child rape and malicious murders (i.e. being the cause of all events), or indirectly responsible through inaction.C. Therefore God is amoral.I've demanded you first and foremost define "amorality." I then requested that you to delineate the moral framework on which you base characterizations such as "good" and "bad." After that, I demanded that you explain the reason this moral framework was the only one worth considering. Furthermore, I requested that you demonstrate how the application of bad "voids" or "nullifies" said moral framework. And finally, I demanded that you demonstrate how God's action or inaction is consistent with your application of descriptions such as "good" and "bad." I ask these things because making such descriptions explicit ARE CRITICAL TO YOUR ARGUMENT.
Do you believe child sex trafficking rings are amoral? Yes or No?
If no, please get help. Immediately.
If yes, then we already agree on this point, so why the hell do you need me to explain my moral framework to you when we already agree on the example I am using to demonstrate god’s amorality?
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@Tradesecret
It is impossible to clarify your questions because it ignores God's character. Start there and come back to the other points. After all, God is holy and God is good. That is my starting point.
If you don’t believe these are qualities of God then my statement does not pertain to you. Why is that so difficult? Do you think you’re the only member here?
Hence, every other attribute will be subservient to this character. You want to start with power and then read God's character into it as a logical conclusion. Yet the bible starts in reverse.
This is complete nonsense. Assessing someone’s character necessarily begins by assessing their circumstances and the power they have over them. There is a reason we expect billionaires to do good things while we don’t begrudge homeless people who don’t donate to charity. There is a reason we would jail someone for making a bomb threat, but then release them if we later learned that they made the threat with a gun to their head. It’s all about the power you have over your situation, and God has total control so for him it’s as easy as it gets.
Oh and BTW, instead of complaining about me strawmanning you, how about you just make your position clear so that we can move on? Let’s try this again…
Second, here’s your opportunity to fix it. Tell me which of the following statements is true:A) God is not all powerfulB) God is not all knowingC) God is not the creator of everythingLooking forward to your clarification.
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@Tarik
You taking that to mean God is amoral, if that were true we wouldn’t have concepts like heaven or hell.
Hell is perhaps the most amoral concept imaginable. What are you talking about?
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@Athias
Your diversions won't work. You affirmed a proposition. You have yet to provide sufficient information in support of this affirmation.
Because the level of “sufficient information” you need to proceed means you are either need help or are not trying to have a good faith productive conversation.
The point I was making was about the logical impossibility of God having the qualities often prescribed to him and still being anything other than amoral given the reality we can clearly observe. There are serious ways to deal with that if you disagree; you can for example claim that God does not have all of those qualities, or you can show how those qualities logically square to the world we observe. You responded by asking me to explain what “bad” is and why I would apply that to my example of child sex trafficking rings.
What morality is and how we apply it is certainly a philosophical conversation worth having and one where there is much disagreement. But to go down that path in this conversation along with the litany of other things you asked for shows that you aren’t serious, this is more like an attempt to just wear me down by making me explain every simple concept to you while you pretend not to understand. Not worth my time.
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@Athias
Do I really need to demonstrate for you how [the allowance of child sex trafficking rings] constitutes amorality?Yes, that's what I've demanded a few times already. Start off by defining, "amorality." Then delineate the moral framework with which you apply the descriptions, "good," and "bad." After that, you can let us know the reason this moral framework is the only moral framework worth considering. Then substantiate how the application of "bad" either voids or nullifies said moral framework. And finally, substantiate how God's action or inaction is consistent with the previously delineated application of the description, "bad."
If you need it explained to you why the allowance of a child sex trafficking rings is amoral please seek help. Immediately. DART is not where you need to be.
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@Tarik
The former is an argument of what’s defensible and the latter is an argument of what’s God’s will, I’m arguing that the only will God implements in life here on earth is free will, meaning He is not responsible for every horrible act that happens, it’s the animal that did those horrible acts responsibility.
First of all, this thread is literally about God’s morality so to claim I am twisting things by talking about what’s defensible is absurd. Follow our thread in context, that’s what we have been talking about the entire time.
Second, I understand what you are arguing, that’s why I laid out the premises showing how it’s logically impossible or at the very least logically incoherent.
If God is all powerful and all knowing then there is no such thing as an act he is not ultimately responsible for because it is not possible for anything to happen which he either didn’t know about or couldn’t stop. What is so difficult about this?
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@Tradesecret
You do realize that this is your beginning and one of the most often used strawman arguments provided by atheists.
First of all, it’s not a straw man. I am not portraying anyone’s position, I am attacking a very specific concept of god that you either accept or you do not. Please learn the difference.
Second, here’s your opportunity to fix it. Tell me which of the following statements is true:
A) God is not all powerful
B) God is not all knowing
C) God is not the creator of everything
Looking forward to your clarification.
To start with the power and not with the character simply reflects the idea that God is power.
I’m not “starting” anywhere. This is a specific rebuttal to a specific idea. You either accept the idea or you don’t, if you do then you need to resolve this, if you do not then this doesn’t apply to you.
God's revealed will is that people should not worship other gods. You did not address this.
Yes, I do address it. If you begin with the premises I laid out this is logically incoherent, so you have it backwards; you need to address the premises first so that we can talk about the God concept you advocate for. To do otherwise is what an actual straw man looks like.
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@Tarik
Yes, but one of those things He created happens to be free will, you seem to be forgetting that.
No, I’m not forgetting that. That’s irrelevant.
If I allowed my 1 year old the free will to decide whether she wants to cross the street and she got run over, is that moral?
Of course not, that’s absurd. If free will was a defense against knowingly allowing horrible acts to be committed by horrible people then it would be immoral to imprison anyone for anything.
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@Athias
No. That has nothing to do with my objection. You proposed that your description of God constitutes amorality. Demonstrate how your description of God constitutes amorality.
My description of God, which you stated was not your objection, is that it is logically impossible for anything bad to happen that is not in accordance with God’s will. Therefore, the existence of all bad things, say child sex trafficking rings for example, is in accordance with God’s will.
Do I really need to demonstrate for you how this constitutes amorality?
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@Tradesecret
And yet some people do worship other gods. The fact that some people worship other gods is NOT God's will.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
God is all powerful.
God is all knowing.
God is the creator of everything.
These three qualities do not allow for anything that happens to be anything other than God’s will. Why?
Because it is logically impossible under this set up for anything to exist without God having created it.
And if God created it and is all knowing, then he created it knowing full well what the results would be as he created it.
And if God is all powerful, then there are no circumstances where anything would have forced his hand to create anything he didn’t desire.
For you to claim that anything he created was not in accordance with his will either violates that he is all knowing or that he is all powerful. This isn’t rocket science. If I bake brownies that turned out to be full of THC, and this was not my desire, then I either did not know what was in them or was somehow pushed by outside forces into creating them that way against my desire. There are no other options.
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@Athias
I understand; that is, however, not the basis of my objection. As pointed out to RationalMadman: if God is responsible for all the bad outcomes, by that very same measure, God is also responsible for all the good outcomes. How is that indicative of an "amoral God"?
Is it your position that a god could be both moral and amoral at the same time in the same sense?
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@sadolite
I am not saying they are the same thing, I'm responding to your fallacious comment that a republic is an alternative to democracy as if that supports your constant railing against the idea of a democracy itself, as well as your acting as if the idea of a republic is the answer to the terrible system of governance here in the US while ignoring he fact that the US is a republic.
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@Athias
No, it wouldn't. You would have to demonstrate how a lack of interference or inaction constitutes amorality.
If he's the all knowing, all powerful creator of everything then it is logically impossible for him to have created anything without knowing what the outcome would have been and deciding to create it that way anyway.
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@TheMorningsStar
If God is the all knowing all powerful creator of everything then everything that happens is in accordance with his will. This means every child rape, every malicious murder, everything, is in accordance with his will. That makes him amoral by any reasonable standard.
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@sadolite
What does democracy mean?
A democracy is defined as “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” A nation with this form of government is also referred to as a democracy.
A democracy is achieved by conducting free elections in which eligible people 1) vote on issues directly, known as a direct democracy, or 2) elect representatives to handle the issues for them, called a representative democracy.
The word democracy dates back in English to around 1525–1535. It comes from the Greek dēmokratía, meaning “popular government.” Ancient Greece was home to what most consider to be the oldest form of democracy, the city-state of Athens. In Athens, the people (Greek, dêmos) held the power (Greek, krátos) and made the decisions for their society—forming a dēmokratía.
But it’s essential to note the people who are able to vote in Athens only included certain non-enslaved Athenian men, making this direct democracy very different from the way we understand democracy today.
What is a direct democracy?
For example, if a town only had enough funding to repair either their sewer system or roads, it might ask the citizens to vote on which one should get the money. Its members would vote on their preference, and the town’s government would follow the will of the people and go with their choice. This is a basic example of direct democracy.
Many referendums are voted on this way, such as the Scottish independence (from the United Kingdom) referendum in 2014 and the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (popularly referred to as Brexit) in 2016.
What is a representative democracy?
In contrast to a direct democracy, the people in a representative democracy elect representatives who act then on behalf of them, known as their constituents. Many of the world’s parliaments and the US’s Congress are an example of representative democracies.
Today, it is inefficient, if not impossible, to have every eligible citizen vote on every issue—to vote on every piece of legislation that it takes to run a city, a state, a country. Instead, citizens vote for leaders to do the work of governing for them.
Let’s revisit our municipal sewer/road matter. A representative democracy would not have each and every citizen of a town directly vote on whether to fund a sewer system or road repairs. Instead, the citizens would elect a mayor and city council to handle these issues in their place. The elected officials would then vote on where city funding should go, doing their best to reflect and respect the needs of the people who voted for them.
What does republic mean?
A republic is defined as “a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.” Sound familiar? It should.
You see, many of today’s democracies are also republics, and are even referred to as democratic republics. So, the US and France are considered both democracies and republics—both terms point to the fact that the power of governance rests in the people, and the exercise of that power is done through some sort of electoral representation.
The key concept to the word republic is that the leader of this government (or state) is not a hereditary monarch but a president, whether they are elected or installed.
This core idea helps explain in part why autocratic governments like North Korea is officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Its citizens vote (or “vote”) on a single candidate. A historical example of a republic is also instructive. The Republic of Venice, a mercantile city-state of the Middle Ages, was led by a doge who was elected by wealthy merchants and served until his death. Neither of these governments would be considered a democracy.
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@sadolite
I did offer an alternative, It called a Republic. Like I said earlier, Democracies are mob rule 51% shit on the 49%. Laws mean nothing in a Democracy if 51% decide they don't. The law is what ever 51% of the people say it is at any given point in a democracy. Mob Rule by emotion.
A republic is a category of democracy, they're not opposing ideas.
And don't you live in the US? Why waste your time and energy advocating for an alternative that you already enjoy?
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@3RU7AL
you seemed to suggest that competency selection is ill served by democracy
My comments had nothing to do with competency. You’re just making stuff up.
would you be in favor of screening political (and or managerial) candidates with some sort of standardized intelligence exams ?
The exam is the campaign. It’s up to the voters to decide what their criteria is for selecting those who represent them, and it’s up to the candidates to meet that criteria. That’s how democracy works and it’s how it’s supposed to work.
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@sadolite
Do you even have a point to make?
Actually the point was to see if you do. You love to rail against democracy while offering no alternative, except the very thing people are talking about when they use the term democracy.
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@3RU7AL
the key distinction is the frequency at which they can be voted out
No, the key distinction is their entire reason for existing.
many conservatives complain that government should run more like a corporation
When it comes to managing its finances we can have a reasonable discussion about how a government should operate. Your original comment was about liberal values, which is an entirely different conversation.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Let us recall what I said and what it was in response to that stated this conversation:
The purpose of a corporation is to make a profit.That is a common misconception.
The context of this was when I was asked why liberal principals aren’t used to manage corporations I pointed out how corporations are different from governments. Can you demonstrate that corporations are formed for any other purpose often enough for it to warrant a response within this conversation?
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