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@Mopac
I asked whether you think a business should have the right to refuse service to blacks and/or the disabled because of the business owners' religious beliefs.
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@3RU7AL
Show me the holy text.
Are you contending that only religious beliefs with scriptural backing should be protected? If so, it begs the question of what constitutes scripture. For instance, say I had a revelation and wrote the Book of Stronn. Would that count?
If you will only accept mainstream scripture, then I give you the Vedas, the holy texts of Hinduism. In them disability is said to be caused by karma and possession by evil spirits. If I don't want people with bad karma or those possessed by evil spirits in my business, should I be forced to allow them?
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@Mopac
You didn't answer the question.
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@Mopac
What if my religion believes blacks are afflicted with evil. Should I have the right to exclude blacks from my business? What if I believe the disabled are afflicted because of their sin. Should I have the right to exclude the disabled?
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@Mopac
I notice you don't mention whether you are still a know-it-all dipshit.
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@n8nrgmi
There are (at least) two ways to take this question. The first is, does Trump behave in a Christian-like manner? The second is, does Trump actually believe what he professes to believe?
I think the answer to both questions is no, although obviously no one can know with absolute certainly what another person believes. But all signs point to him feigning religiosity only to serve his own ends.
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@Mopac
What does God being the Truth have to do with how you became an atheist? That is, after all, the topic of this thread.
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@Mopac
Sounds like you are an advocate of Divine Command theory, which says actions are good because and only because God says they are good.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
there were far more reasons to not vote for Clinton than to vote for Trump
+1.
For some reason, democrats are blind to the fact that Trump won largely because they selected one of few candidates worse than him.
Most Trump votes were simply anyone-but-Hillary votes.
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@Wrick-It-Ralph
There was not any one moment where I became an atheist. Even from a young age, I always kind of knew that biblical stories such as the Ark, Moses parting the sea, and Jonah getting swallowed by a whale were just myths, in the same category as Paul Bunyan and Merlin. At least, I can't remember a time when I seriously believed that they were true stories.
It certainly didn't help the Christian cause when my brothers high school girlfriend, the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher, tried to convince me to break all my Led Zeppelin albums because they contained messages from Satan.
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@Mopac
Doing good for the sake of doing good and doing good for the love of he who commands are two wildly different things. I can see how the latter might be analogous to a child obeying a parent, but the former? Not at all.
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@mustardness
2} Maybe you dont know what you IFF means. It means that, If X is true then Y is the only rational, logical common sense conclusion...
Actually "iff" is an abbreviation commonly used in mathematics as shorthand for "if and only if". It means a logical implication goes both ways. X iff Y doesn't just mean if X is true then Y must be true. It also means that if Y is true then X must be true.
For instance, Bob is Alice's sibling iff Alice is Bob's sibling. The "iff" means that if one statement is true both statements must be true.
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@keithprosser
The short answer is that Islam has yet to adopt the core values of the Enlightenment.
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@Swagnarok
sure, it's pretty tame in terms of physical harm The real barbarity is in the psychological harm Just look at the excuse the cleric uses for an example of a good reason for beating your wife--that she left the house without permission. The entire purpose is subjugation.
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Obviously this is not true, since there are not four times as many Muslim women as men.The average Muslim has 4 wives.
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Apparently in Islam men should beat their wives out of love.
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@Alec
Yes, the poll lumps together all those who don't follow an organized religion. It has done so for 44-years Over that time, there has been a steady increase in "no religion", from 5% in 1972 to 23.1% in the latest poll. Organized religion is slowly losing its grip in the U.S.
You would probably consider me an agnostic, although I don't like the word. I consider myself an atheist, an atheist being someone who lacks belief in God.
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For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey. The survey found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion.
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@Melcharaz
Sorry, but bald assertions with no justification are not convincing.
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@Melcharaz
I'll try to summarize your argument. We don't know the future and we can't disprove a God exists, therefore we should ignore any logical contradictions and accept your particular version of Christianity..That's pretty much it.
Don't be surprised if people find this less than persuasive.
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@Melcharaz
Lack of disproof isn't any sort of proof. Lots of silly things can't be disproven. Last Thursdayism, for instance--the idea that the entire universe came into being last Thursday, but was made to look older, complete with a false history and even false memories planted in us of times before last Thursday.
Learning more about particular religions might be interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but claims that God has attributes that are logically contradictory should be rejected out of hand.
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@Melcharaz
No, because I don't believe in predestination. Or an omniscient God. I'm merely pointing out that a God who knows the future implies predestination, which implies a lack of choice.
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@Melcharaz
I already addressed that. Ignorance of our fate does not mean we have choice.Choice, by definition, requires two or more possible futures. If there is only one possible future, whether we know what it is or not, then there is no choice. Any choice is just an illusion.
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@Melcharaz
Do you realize this is self-contradictory? Fate, by definition, cannot be changed. You might as well be arguing that triangles have four sides.There is the possibility of changing your fate however, not in the sense of God, but in the sense of physical.
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@Melcharaz
You stress the fate regardless of action, i stress intention and action regardless of fate.
I stress logic. You ignore it.
Fate means there can be only one action.
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@Melcharaz
you do have a choice because you don't know. Its like tv tropes of disarming a bomb, you can chose the red wire or the blue wire. one of them will potentially disarm the bomb, the other will set it off, but if you do nothing it will go off anyways!
Being ignorant of your fate does not mean it is not your fate, or that you have a choice. It is quite simple. The following three statements cannot logically all be true.
1. God knows I will cut the red wire first.
2. God is never wrong.
3. It is possible for me to cut the blue wire first.
The fact that I am ignorant of which wire I will cut does not mean it is possible for me to cut the blue wire. Ignorance of fate is not the same thing as choice. If only one alternative is possible, then any choice is just an illusion.
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@Melcharaz
If God knows I'm going to hell, then the fact that I don't know I'm going to hell doesn't mean I have a choice. A puppet is still a puppet whether or not it is aware of the strings.
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@Melcharaz
God knowing you are going to hell and God fore ordaining you are going to hell are 2 different things. Hezekiah was decreed by God to die, yet he prayed to the Lord and he added 15 years to his life.
That's just it, they are not two different things. The future cannot unfold in a way other than the way God knows it will. If God knows I am going to hell, there is nothing I can do to avoid going to hell, unless God is wrong about the future.
If God is omniscient, then he knew that Hezekiah was going to pray to Him, and that He was going to grant Hezekiah 15 more years. So it was foreordained that Hezekiah was going to live 15 more years. The only way that story is consistent with an omniscient God is if God's decree that Hezekiah die was a bluff.
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@Melcharaz
If God knows I am going to hell, and God is never wrong, then I have no choice but to go to hell.
It is contradictory to say that I have a choice, but at the same time God knows what that choice will be. Choice implies two or more possible alternatives. If God knows which alternative I will take, and God is never wrong, then only one alternative is actually possible. Therefore no choice exists.
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@secularmerlin
Destiny and meaningful choice are mutually exclusive. Destiny implies that one will suffer the same fate regardless of one's choices.I
I would say, rather, that destiny implies that choice is an illusion.
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@Yassine
If you have an objection against these premises, establish it, or else dismissed.
One need look no further than premises 2 and 3. There are a number of problems with these premises. One problem is that things don't have a single cause. Causality is an unbroken chain of intertwined events leading back to the beginning of the universe. Another problem is that even if a contingent thing exists that has a cause, that does not mean that all contingent things have a cause. In fact, we know of contingent things that do not have any apparent cause: virtual particles. A third problem is that saying that the cause is something other than itself ignores the fact that the matter contained in something must exist prior to it being created. So the existence of that matter is part of the cause, and insofar as that matter is part of something, it is part of the cause of something. So things do cause themselves in this sense.
God is defined as a Necessary (necessarily existent) Singular (simple & unique) Absolute (with absolutely free will) & Transcendent (distinct from all creation) being, from the scriptural definition of Allah in Chapter 112 of the Quran....25. Therefore, a Necessary & Singular & Transcendent & Absolute being exists. [ follows from 7. & 15. & 18. & 24. ]C. Therefore, God exits. [ as defined in the Quran ]
You are cherry-picking only those attributes in the Quran that happen to match the argument. The Quran also says God is merciful, compassionate, and just, along with many other attributes. The argument makes no mention of those. So amending the conclusion to say that the argument specifically supports God as defined in the Quran is misleading.
- That's true indeed.
Then you should amend the conclusion to omit the part about the Quran.
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@Yassine
C. Therefore, God exits. [ as defined in the Quran ]
Several of your premises are suspect (for instance the oversimplified view of causality), but this conclusion really caught my eye. The way you toss in the underlined part almost as an afterthought is striking, when nothing in the argument implies anything whatsoever about any particular theistic God. Even if someone finds this argument convincing, it in no way implies the truth of any particular religion.
For example, God might exist, but be named Bob, not Allah. Or God might exist, but Mohammad was not his prophet. Or God might exist, but find our worship distasteful. Or God might exist, but there is no afterlife.
In short, even if the argument is sound, it could still be the case that nearly all the Quran is untrue.
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@Titanium
Yes, the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that it takes a deeply ingrained belief system to reject it.
I understand that religious fundamentalists purpose in discussing evolution isn't to learn, but to spread their views. Still, one should respond so that a reader who may be on the fence doesn't just hear the misinformation of creationists.
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@EtrnlVw
Oops, I meant to tag EtrnlVw with my previous post.
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@Titanium
If we are going with the assumption we don't know either way what makes your version more likely than the other according to Occam's R? it takes more assumptions to make up a scenario how DNA developed without intelligence seeing that many aspects of creation act as just that...intelligent.
Occam's razor fits because, contrary to what you say, an intelligent creator is the far more complex assumption. If you postulate God, you now are left with the problem of explaining why such a being exists. If you say God has no external reason for existing, then Occam's razor dictates that you save a step and say that the universe has no external reason for existing.
From an information theory view, complexity is measured by the length of the shortest computer program that can fully describe or simulate a process. DNA is very complex, but in principle one could write a computer program to simulate all its biochemical processes, with results that match what takes place in reality. But how long would a program have to be to fully and accurately describe and simulate an omniscient, all-powerful being capable of creating the universe? I don't know it it is even possible with a finite program. God appears to be more complex than any process in the universe.
As for god of the gaps, it's a way to point out that "God did it" is an explanation with no real explanatory value, because you can't use it make predictions. Explaining the weather by saying "God did it" does nothing to tell us whether it will rain tomorrow. Explaining the weather with pressure gradients, wind patterns and heat transfer does.
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@Stephen
The definition reads:“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
Yes, that is a horrible definition. For one thing, any definition of a phobia that does not begin with "an irrational fear of..." is inaccurate. For another, Muslims are not a race.
The word has been overused so much that anyone who is critical of or parodies Islam or its adherents in any way is labeled with it.
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@Outplayz
Maybe you've just run into some of the more hardcore skeptics. They do tend to be more vocal than most.
Also, it is possible you are overgeneralizing skeptical views about particular claims. For instance, I am 99.99% sure that claims about the nature of the afterlife made by major religions are not true. That is not the same as being 99.99% sure no afterlife exists at all.
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@Outplayz
Could be. One thing is for certain: there is a lot we don't yet know about reality and the universe.
Most skeptics would agree that there are lots of wild ideas that could be true. They just think that one ought to assume most of them are not true without solid evidence.
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@IlDiavolo
A mindless process suffices to explain DNA, therefore Occam's Razor dictates that we do not need to postulate a higher mind.
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@IlDiavolo
It's not a matter of what I want. It's a matter of evidence. There is no evidence that a higher mind is behind DNA.
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@IlDiavolo
In this sense, tree rings and wrinkles are just data, figures that are there to be used freely. Information is when a higher mind take this "raw information" and process it to use it for particular purposes. So seemingly, you need a conscious mind to create information..
You still haven't provided a definition of information. If you include a higher mind as a necessary part of the definition, however, then one can simply argue that, using your definition, DNA is not information.
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@Outplayz
Sure, I made the implicit assumption that there are things that do not require a conscious mind to create. If it turns out that the universe requires a conscious mind to create, then my assumption would be wrong. If I had spoken more precisely, I would have said there are things that appear not to require a conscious mind.
You have actually touched on a source of irony in creationist arguments. In their view, everything is created, and requires a conscious mind. But at the same time they argue that information is somehow special because it has characteristics that are only produced by a conscious mind. But if everything is created, then there is nothing special about information.
The same goes for their design argument against evolution. If everything in the universe is designed, then when they argue that life appears designed because it has certain characteristics, there is no non-designed thing they can point to in contrast.
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@Alec
Hate speech is any speech the left does not like.
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@IlDiavolo
My point was that there are plenty of examples of information that do not require a conscious mind to create.
Bear in mind that what the tree rings express can only be deciphered by us, concious and intelligent beings.
Yes, but just because it requires a conscious mind to interpret abstract meaning from information does not mean that it takes a conscious mind to create information.
Arguments that DNA requires a mind because there is a mechanism by which it replicates, or because there is a mechanism by which it is coded into protein, and that DNA is thus like language, fail to make a key distinction. Namely, with DNA abstract ideas are not being interpreted. Even if you accept the overly simplistic notion that DNA carries the information for arms and legs and eyes, those are all physical things, not abstract ideas. Just because DNA contains a blueprint for arms and legs and eyes does not mean that it conveys the idea of arms and legs and ideas.
But really, it would be best if you defined what you mean by "information" before proceeding any further.
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@crossed
Etymological fallacy: The assumption that the present-day meaning of a word should be/is similar to the historical meaning. This fallacy ignores the evolution of language and heart of linguistics. This fallacy is usually committed when one finds the historical meaning of a word more palatable or conducive to his or her argument.
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@bsh1
Are you voting against the standards or the proposed wording of the standards?
Both. Making a long list of things that must be included in a review makes voting seem like a homework assignment.
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The joke is at 0:21, "If you support the Catholic Church, isn't that the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don't really see the difference. Only, like, one's music is significantly better." It's not particularly funny, and the audience groans more than laughs.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Yes, "kind" is a good example. I once spent 3 or 4 pages of a forum thread attempting to pin down Ethang on a definition. The closest thing to a definition he provides was "things like family or genus", which are of course two different taxonomic levels.
I suspect many creationists intentionally leave "kind" vague because they know that a rigorous definition would expose their claims to numerous counterexamples, for instance the claim that "a kind only produces the same kind."
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