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Stronn

A member since

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Total posts: 511

Posted in:
The Solution To Poverty?
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@ethang5
If you simply credit each person with one million dollars, you get hyperinflation. It's basic supply and demand. Increase the supply of money, when the demand for goods and services remains the same, and prices go up. And you are talking about a 10-fold increase in the money supply. It gets even worse, because the demand for goods and services would not stay the same. Many people would spend some of the money right away, which would result in an increase in the demand for goods and services, pushing prices even higher.

Money represents the allocation of resources, and resources are finite. Increasing the amount of money does nothing to change the amount of resources. You still have limited resources to distribute among the population. Viewed this way, a dollar represents a fraction of all resources. A 10-fold increase in the money supply would amount to each dollar buying 1/10th as much.
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Perspective
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@Mopac
The idea that people are the point of everything is not biblical
Yes it is. Right from the start, the Bible puts the Earth and humanity as the focus of creation. According to Genesis, God spent nearly all His time creating and populating the Earth. Billions of stars were thrown in almost as an afterthought at the end of day 4. And their purpose? To provide light for the Earth.

If that is not egocentric, I don't know what is.
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How do you cross the street?
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@Mopac
Sorry, it's incoherent. All three of the following cannot simultaneously hold.

1. Everything that is part of the Truth is good.
2. The Truth encompasses everything.
3. Sin is not good.

Yet you have asserted all three.

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DebateArt Political Compass
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@David
Economic Left/Right: -9.25 
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.33
That's borderline anarchist.

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DebateArt Political Compass
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@David
Economic Left/Right: 0.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.41

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Perspective
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@EtrnlVw
It's not that the size and scope of the universe cause me to disbelieve in a God, it's that the size and scope of the universe makes me disbelieve in God as portrayed by most religions. Given the vastness of the universe, the idea that its creator takes special interest in our daily lives, that the entire thing was created with us in mind, strikes me as absurdly egocentric. I have no idea whether a God exists, and don't think anyone else does either.
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How do you cross the street?
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@Mopac
The Truth is the highest good.

There is no problem of evil when you understand good as being The Truth rather than what seems pleasing, beneficial, or in line with personal standards.


God's will is ultimately done, and God is sovereign over all things.
You just talk in circles, and equating God with Truth is incoherent. Here is an example: Is sin part of Truth? If so, then by your assertion sin must be good. if not, then there exists something besides Truth.
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I see we have a new spam bot
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@janesix
Ah, that must be what the line though the name on their profile means. 
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Perspective
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@keithprosser
Well said. You've touched on one of the primary reasons I don't buy most religions. They implicitly assume that we are somehow the point of the entire universe, when in fact we are an insignificant speck. Such hubris makes it glaringly obvious that they are inventions of men.
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Teaching Religion To Children
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@Willows
One per day would be more than enough to get your point across.
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Technological Predictions
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@ethang5
Designed babies: 30 years

Laws prohibiting manual driving of cars, first in large cities: 50 years


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Teaching Religion To Children
Seriously, 22 new threads mocking religion in one day?
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DeSantis monkey this up
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@Buddamoose
Its not hard at all to know, all it requires is understanding the difference between a noun and a verb. 
So if someone says that the NAACP monkeys things up, that's never racist because it's a verb? I don't buy it.

I don't, however, think DeSantis intended it to be racist, but you can't be 100% sure.

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Is it Racist to Not Date a Particular Race?
For the sake of argument, assume that someone doesn't discriminate based on race except in one area: dating. Is that racist?
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Finding DDO members
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@drafterman
Me either.
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DART, Dart, or DArt?
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@Castin
DbTRt
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DeSantis monkey this up
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Different context.

It's hard to know whether DeSantis intended the comment to imply race, but either way he should have chosen his words better. Democrats are always quick to pile on at the slightest hint of racism.
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Brown University Transgender Study
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@Buddamoose
The way gender studies is practiced at many universities is more cult than science, and the first rule of any cult is to quash dissent.     
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The best debater on the site.
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@RationalMadman
How about we debate the following proposition: RationalMadman is the best online debater there has ever been in entire online history.

You must take the con.



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On E-Prime and Existence: Can God Be Real?
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@mookestink
Sure, although you are really using the word "appear" to mean "exist" in that sentence. "Does reality contain God?" is a cleaner version.
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Is Repulsion At The Homosexual Act Bigotry?
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@ethang5
You may be conflating revulsion of the act with revulsion of the person because they engage in the act. The first is not bigotry. The second is.
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On E-Prime and Existence: Can God Be Real?
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@mookestink
It seems like one can get around the lack of "to be" and its variants, albeit somewhat awkwardly. For instance, rather than ask whether something exists, one can instead ask if reality contains it. Instead of saying "I am a person" one can instead say "I possess the property of personhood."
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Is Repulsion At The Homosexual Act Bigotry?
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@ethang5
It is not bigotry. Bigotry means you are intolerant. You can find something personally repulsive, but tolerate it. For instance, I might not like broccoli. But I am not going to tell others they should not eat it, or discriminate against them because they do, even if I don't understand how anyone could like broccoli.

Personally I find sex between two men a complete turn off.  But I don't think it is immoral if it is between consenting adults, and I am certainly not going to deny others the right. Frankly, what others do behind closed doors is none of my business, as long as no one gets hurt.
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Is Repulsion At The Homosexual Act Bigotry?
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@ethang5
2. No. Homosexual people often say they are repulsed by heterosexual acts. If that is not bigotry, then the reverse is not either.

3. The jury is still out on the degree to which repulsion of homosexual acts is learned versus biological. Just as the degree of revulsion varies between individuals, the source of that revulsion may vary too.

4. No. That is just an aspect of one's sexual orientation, which is beyond one's control. 
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No Shame at Fox
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Sure, most media outlets have a left-leaning bias. That does not excuse Fox, though. If you want, you can start a thread about bias at CNN.
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I am the King of the Centrists
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@spacetime
According to that website I'm a right-leaning moderate.

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No Shame at Fox
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@ethang5
The question wasn't entirely hypothetical. We had eight years of seeing how Fox News covered Obama. Contrast that to how they cover Trump. That is the point.

Calling the question hypothetical then adding a few ad homs is just a way to sidestep the real point.    
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No Shame at Fox
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@Swagnarok


At the gym near my college today I sat down and ate a sandwich, and right there was a TV playing Fox News. The woman on there appeared to be ripping into Trump over Cohen. And at the time of writing on the Fox News website the thing most prominently displayed presently is about Manafort. So the idea that they're flat out ignoring or trying to downplay the story is preposterous.
Yes, their top story is about Manafort.

Their second headline story? "Krumholz: Trump-hating Dems who pursue impeachment will be punished."


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No Shame at Fox
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
huh guess that's we would strongly disagree, someone's life or murder > some accusations and arrests for non violent crimes.
Yes, we disagree. Ask yourself this: which story is more likely to make it into a history book? From the standpoint of newsworthiness, there is simply no comparison between a single murder and the Manafort or Cohen stories. Last year there were around 17,000 murders in the U.S. How many made front page headlines?

did you read the article or just read the headlines? It's obviously about her murder and the confessed killer who is a criminal alien.  Your disapproval is grossly misplaced, you may have a touch of syndrome.
The content of the story is beside the point. The headline was designed to prominently point out that the suspect is an illegal alien from Mexico, and was made the top story on a day when there were two far more newsworthy stories.
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No Shame at Fox
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@ethang5
Do you think Fox pundits would spend their time hammering home that nothing has been proven in court if was Obama rather than Trump? We both know the answer to that. And that is the point.

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No Shame at Fox
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@spacetime
Maybe not, but then neither CNN nor NYT crow endlessly about how they are "fair and balanced."
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No Shame at Fox
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
No, I don't think the murder of a college student is a more important news story than the lawyer for the most powerful man in the world pleading guilty to crimes and implicating the President in those crimes.


I noticed no link or screen shot of your claim.  

Was the top story on Fox actually about the murder suspect being a criminal alien?  

Or was it that they think they found the body of the missing murdered girl and that a criminal alien lead them to the body?
I assumed people could go to Fox News and see for themselves. But here is the story. And yes, the headline is about the suspect being an alien, not about him being captured or leading them to the body. The headline is "Mollie Tibbetts murder suspect Cristhian Rivera originally from Mexico, living in US illegally."


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The best debater on the site.
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@drafterman
Congrats on your undefeated record.
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No Shame at Fox
Today was a perfect example of how Fox has become nothing more than Trump cheerleaders.

In two bombshell stories, Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty of 8 charges, and Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty in federal court to eight counts, implicating Trump in the process.

So what is the top story on the Fox News website? A story about a murder suspect being an illegal immigrant. Classic.

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Can God create a rock so big he can't lift it?
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@Outplayz
Yes, there will be a lump of rock nothing will be able to move, not even God. Which means God must have limits, which is the point.

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Can God create a rock so big he can't lift it?
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@ethang5
Whether weight is linked to God's ability to lift something isn't the issue. The issue is that God cannot be limitless without apparent contradiction.

One can easily leave weight out of it. Can God create a rock that can never be moved, even by Himself? If so, can He then later move the rock? If the answer to either question is no, then God has limits. But one cannot answer yes to both questions without a contradiction.
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Is God male?
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@ethang5
The only way to "leave the text pristine" is to avoid any translation at all. Once you translate, you can't help but introduce numerous subtle changes in nuance and meaning.

From what I understand, in Hebrew all nouns are gendered. If an object has no intrinsic gender, it is typically referred to using the male form. When translating into a language where most nouns are neuter, like English, it is therefore more true to the original text to avoid assigning a gender to God, who has no gender. Or at least that is the argument proponents of a sexless Bible make.

Another interesting point is that, while the Old Testament uses the male form when referring to God, it uses the feminine when referring to the Holy Spirit, or the presence of God.
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Democracy fails
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@Analgesic.Spectre
Nope, any summary of world history would be a laundry list of systems which have been tried and failed worse than Democracy.

Since your OP enumerated failings of Democracy, it would be more instructive for you to offer a system that you think has proven superior.
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Democracy fails
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@Analgesic.Spectre
What evidence did you use to reach this conclusion?
World history.

I should have qualified it to say that democracy fails less than any other system yet tried.
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Abortion Remains Illegal in Argentina
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@ethang5
I don't know the details of Obama's list, or how it actually caused any restrictions on travel. I don't think it was ever challenged in court.

The court struck down the first two versions of Trump's ban because they only applied to Muslim-majority countries. The latest version squeaked by because two non-Muslim countries were added: Venezuela and North Korea. And even this version was unconstitutional in the opinion of four justices. 
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College grads get bad commencement advice.
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@Greyparrot
Would you say "improve the world" is bad advice? It is, after all, a call to action, without any advice on how to go about it.
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Is God male?
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@ethang5
If simplicity of grammar is your concern, would you be ok with a translation that uses the feminine pronoun for God?
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Abortion Remains Illegal in Argentina
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@ethang5
The first two versions of the ban were struck down because they violated separation of church and state. The third version squeaked by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.
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Car Chases Are Stupid
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@ethang5
If the public stopped buying tickets for movies with car chases, Hollywood would stop making them.

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College grads get bad commencement advice.
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@Greyparrot
That is like saying that "be careful with money" is bad advice because it does not say exactly HOW to be careful.

The fact that advice is too general to be of much practical use does not necessarily make it bad.

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Abortion Remains Illegal in Argentina
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@ethang5
You don't see how a travel ban based on religion violates separation of church and state?
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Is God male?
Interestingly, there have been modern-day attempts in Christianity to make God gender neutral. For instance, in the early 1980's the National Council of Churches released a new translation of the Bible that eliminated references to God as solely male. As an example, John 3:16 was changed to read ''For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child, that whoever believes in that Child should not perish, but have eternal life.''

Is God male? If not, why should our translation of God's Word us the masculine pronoun?



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Media Bias Thread
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@Swagnarok
Do you include Fox News as part of the press?
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College grads get bad commencement advice.
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@Greyparrot
I agree that typical commencement addresses are filled with platitudes and empty slogans. I just don't agree with your contention that "make a difference" is bad advice, when what it really means is "make a positive difference."
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Abortion Remains Illegal in Argentina
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@ethang5
Could you give us one real life, recent example of when nonreligious people violated this separation?

Trump's travel ban against Muslims.
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