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@Reece101
I did not, I didn't know about it at the time - though - its kinda funny how the letter J wouldn't have even existed then and yet people claim that people named Jesus lived there - I did know about the Yeshua though. If I were to rewrite it I probably would include that though - I did get to a part where three different Jesus's were mentioned though - and yet none of them had a father called or translated to "Joseph" pretty funny that.
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@Intelligence_06
Okay, A problem is guns, but it is not the only problem - that would be ignoring all of the other representations of sexism and racism that the police forces uphold.... are you saying we should just tell the police force to use their budgets better?.... how would that solve anything, do you think they would actually listen? Even if you were somehow to get that incredibly vague law passed as policy, the police department has been one of the most corruptable departments in America for centuries.
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@Intelligence_06
To be clear - you want to strip the police department of all control of its funds?
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First of all - I personally feel gratitude to the mods - Debate.org used to be a prime example of everything a website about debating should be, but a lack of moderation has made the once great site nothing but a shell of its former self. It is the moderation that keeps DebateArt.com from joining Debate.org in its fate. It has also come to my attention that many people either find the mod team incompetent with their job or inherently biased.
First things first - obviously.
Every single person is biased, this isn't something people don't know, it isn't something new. No judges in the court of law aren't biased; however, as long as you recognize those biases you can mitigate them.
For example: Ragnar voted on a debate of mine recently; On average, a bear would beat a gorilla in a fight. Despite perferring my argument with my sources he did not award me any points to me for my sources. Why? Because even if he didn't buy Intelligence's argument, he recognized that his sources did provide impact for his arguments! That's a prime example of: recognizing bias in yourself, acknowledging it, and making a decision despite it. Judges do it all the time.
That is what the mods mean by objective. The fact that this has to be explained to a bunch of people this intelligent is sad.
Maybe I'm completely wrong though! Maybe other people think they could do better? Make your arguments - btw - this isn't trying to call the mods out, more thank them, and acknowledge the controversey happening and trying to open a more topical discussion forum for better orginization.
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@Intelligence_06
To take away funds from the police is to defund the police. Furthermore we need to solve the fundamental problems that a police force causes
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@Trent0405
Well, to me it sounds like a confusion of correlation and causation; however, all you would have to do is find something else to fix the problem. The greeks had no problem with this, despite not having anything like a heavy military presence in the city-state or a "police". Therefore it is more than possible to maintain this - but simply put - having highly trained people who aren't so quick to shoot deal with violent crimes would be included here. The difference? They wouldn't be taught what police officers are.....which... what they learn is very concerning.
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@Trent0405
Better idea, we have something that prevents the economic stagnation that isn't also highly corruptable.
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@Sum1hugme
Still researching that, though super specialized task forces similar to how a hospital staff work - of course - that's why I asked for solutions.
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@Sum1hugme
Well A) to get rid of civilian's access to military level equipment that has historically perpuated and started riots from peaceful protest, B) replace a fundamentally broken system with something which actually works to prevent crime, and doesn't have one of the highest kill rates in the world, and C) stop a very large part of systemic racism from the justice system.
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@SirAnonymous
Mmm, thanks, typically though frontal lobe injury doesn't have much to do with cognitive or deductive development.
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@FLRW
Funnily enough, I actually do have damage, well severe underdevelopment to my frontal lobe, I almost died as a child, and I had to stay in the hospital and then lots of therapy in my formative years.
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@fauxlaw
Um... I had doubt, because I did all of those things (and more, I was a youth leader), but yet I never heard him once. I also felt doubt for a couple other reasons; one the bigger ones was the treatment of homosexuals by the bible and Christians, not to mention how a rapist who simply repented before they died would go to heaven yet a geniunely good person who didn't believe went to hell. Those aren't why I don't believe in god, but they caused me to doubt the dogma, and its never to late to question the dogma of religion.
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@fauxlaw
I believed sincerely for 14 years, and I never heard god once.
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@fauxlaw
So you have a book passage... verify that, please. Also, what of the people who will be in hell? They do not make themselves perfect.
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@fauxlaw
Do you have any evidence to support that claim? Regardless - IF something is perfect THEN everything they do is the best it could possibly be
Would you like to demonstrate that all of creation is the best it could possibly be?
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@fauxlaw
thats not how a god which is perfect behaves. Else that god isn't perfect.
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@ebuc
Even if we disagree on some subjects we seem to agree here.
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So... this is an old paper of mine, about 3 or 4 years old. This came up whenever Benjamin, yes him, decided to use a specific web page to prove that Jesus was "historically true" funny stuff, so now I'm transferring this old piece of work here.
The Jesus Claim.
Jesus is a popular figure in today’s world, from a symbol of the church to his infancy representing Christmas for the popular Christian family. Overall Evangelical Christianity has seen a rise in recent years in America directly leading to the increase of Jesus as a historical figure.’ This is my attempt to explore that claim. Did Jesus actually exist back during Nero’s time, or was he a myth brought up to start a new sect of Christianity?
How do historians actually evaluate someone’s existence? They primarily gather first-hand testimonies, primary sources, documents that validate and confirm each other, and several different sources mentioning the person. Note that I myself am NOT a historian and am simply an aspiring philosopher who is sifting through the evidence, researching, and making an argument for the truth. Let’s go over each source, or at least the main sources, that claim Jesus’s existence and see if there are any flaws, or if each account is true.
Before we can investigate separate claims we must prosecute the main source of evidence for Jesus’s existence. The bible. According to Atheist and former Christian studying to be a priest Matt Dillahunty, the bible has over 80 books in total with several Jewish and Roman Catholic sources confirming this fact. However the popular protestant bible has 66 books, the Roman Catholic have 73, and the Jews have 23 books. Why such a big disparity? Well, it's speculation that a majority of books were cut from the bible due to an unpopular view of the books by the society of the time.
Based on how most priests and religious scholars treat the Bible as a perfect book, the fact that other sources of the bible were found suggest that the books were cut by religious sources. Based on this fact we can deduce that whenever the protestant or catholic church doesn’t like a book they can simply discard it leading us to mistrust the rest of the book. You see, if the book is god's word then there are two reasons for people cutting books, A) They didn’t like what the books say, or B) they didn’t feel like they were inspired by God. However, 3 different churches claim three different book amounts. So even if it were true that the church didn’t believe the books were inspired by God, which church is right? I mean they all operate on the same book with differences of translation and which books are in it.
Now let’s talk about the disparity of time. Basically, most sources conflate and confuse when the bible was written. Some say even 4000 years before the roman empire for the old testament while others claim it's as new as 100 years after Nero. Not to mention some sources claim as few as 5 authors collected and wrote the bible while others cite 40. Almost no one can seem to agree WHEN the bible was written, who it was written by, how many books are in it, or how many people actually wrote the thing. All of these by themselves would throw heavy doubt on the historic veracity of the Bible, but all of them has to lead me to throw it out as a source of historical claims altogether.
Based on these facts we can conclude the bible to be an unreliable source at the very least. As history has shown this collection of texts has been heavily edited and changed, entire books shaved away or added in order to fit the religion. So only relying on the bible as a source to prove Jesus’s existence won’t work. We’ll need extraocular sources to conclude Jesus's existence. Some popularly cited work that has been used to prove Jesus’s existence is Jewish Antiquities by Flavius Josephus. In XX, Chapter 11 there are a handful of mentions to a character named Jesus.
Both of them mention Jesus as someone with a different father. There is Jesus, the son of Damneus, and Jesus, the son of Josadek. As opposed to the bible in which he is referred to as the son of Joseph. He is also referred to as a high priest of the Jewish religion even though the Bible specifically refers to how most of the Jews were opposed to Jesus. This would lead to me to again suppose one of two things. One, there were at least three different Jesus’s gallivanting around, though the Jewish Antiquities do mark out how he is ‘christ’, or the source of Flavius’s information on Jesus was unreliable or a myth. Along with Flavius's accounts, there are several other historians who are cited as mentioning Jesus.
Tacitus is one of these historians. He records and writes on the times around when Jesus would have been alive and kicking; however, much of his work was lost including around the time when Jesus would have been supposedly tried. However, his later works mention him once as ‘Christos’. These works are dated to about 1000 years after Jesus would have been born indicating none of these of a direct account and therefore debunking these as primary sources. Also barely any of his ‘works’ are referenced just as in Flavius’s writing indicating a lack of information that the bible supposedly drew from. Not to mention a large group of historians bring into contention the translation ‘Christos’ as it is often mistranslated and confused with ‘Chrestos.’ Leading me to believe that the record of ‘Christos’ is nothing speculative rumor.
Another popular one is Suetonius; however, he is the source of the ‘Christos’ ‘Chrestos’ conflation. Not only that, but his works do not indicate any of Chrestos’s actual life instead of seemingly describing a god on earth as most generally broad myths would describe. Again no mentioning of his works would not only not connect the source with the bible but at this point actively discredit the bible as most of these are historically valid sources for the most part. Beyond the translations issue, several Historians and philosophers debate about the timing of this too dated to about 150 years after his supposed death more than enough time for rumors to start and myths to conflate.
The last historian I would like to talk about would be Thallus who addressed several of Christians's prominent arguments. For example, he contested the claim of the world’s supposed darkening during Jesus’s execution. He never confirmed his existence nor did he ever even actually claim he had valid sources for thinking Jesus was real. Instead, he simply confuted popular protestant and even catholic opinions of what happened. The thallus is typically misrepresented in most Theological talks about Jesus as a historical figure.
None of these historians have linked a solid or coherent valid proof for Jesus’s existence. Not only are none of this good evidence, but some of them decently imply that Jesus was nothing but a myth. For example Flavius’s ponderings and listing of different Fathers of Jesus in his own work not to mention against the bible. Thallus, Suetonius, and Tacitus's failure to mention Jesus as anything more than a vague idea with barely any reference to what he did. To claim someone is anything more than a rumor you have to have accredited sources agreeing he existed with at least some first-hand testimony backing up said sources.
For these reasons, I see no reason to treat Jesus as a historical figure instead he was most likely a mythical figure made up to inspire Jews to rise up out of systemic Roman and Jewish oppression of the time. The myth taking inspiration from other beings like Buhda or Muhamad. Using Secular and Theistical Historical and philosophical sources I’ve deduced this much. This paper also further destroys the bible as a historical document even without scientific claims the book likes to violate. As Jesus is a central idea to the new testament and if I was indeed correct in concluding he was false then the entire book would be discredited. Upon this evidence I have concluded that Jesus is a myth please join me in questioning the seemingly unquestionable.
Sources
https://davidmiano.net/blog/2018/06/10/how-historians-determine-the-historicity-of-people-and-events/ June 10, 2018 by David Miano
https://www.everystudent.com/forum/historical.html - Author Not Listed
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848 -h.htm Author: Flavius Josephus/Translator: William Whiston/Release Date: January 4, 2009/Last Updated: August 9, 2017
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Flavius-Josephus November 12th, 2019 by Gary William Poole
https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/jesus-in-the-talmud/ 2000 by Gil Student
http://www.josephus.org/testimonium.htm Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63 (Based on the translation of Louis H. Feldman, The Loeb Classical Library.)
http://www.truthbeknown.com/suetoniuschresto.html by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S
http://bib.irr.org/tacitus-suetonius-and-historical-jesus Febuary 20th, 2017 by Robert M. Bowman Jr.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html Archive (Author: Not Listed)
https://freethoughtnation.com/does-suetonius-refer-to-Arjesus/ October 16, 2012 by Acharya S/D.M. Murdock
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P70/thallus-on-the-darkness-at-noon May 10, 2010 Transcript of a question from emailer ‘Steve’ response by ‘Dr.Craig’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/texts/bible.shtml John Drane Last updated 2011-07-12
https://www.biblestudy.org/beginner/when-was-old-testament-written.html Author Not Listed
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/when-was-the-bible-written.html Dr. Michael A. Milton
https://www.everystudent.com/features/bible.html Author Not listed
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@Conway
The local police departments of the US, though the state police would also be defunded.
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@Sum1hugme
What? The all term drop in homicides were dropping from the 1400s! The 1600s and 1700s were the very ends of that drop, did you actually read your evidence? Because you don't seem to know what you're talking about
Furthermore, the evidence does not support your view, as police officers per 1000 citizens decrease crime also decreases - as has been the record since the early 2000s. I have an entire google doc of sources. Do you want to have a debate on the subject?
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@fauxlaw
IF god is perfect than anything he does is the best it could be with no room for improvement THEN humans should be the best they could be with no room for improvement
It is not the claim that he is omnipotent which causes this problem it is the Judeo Christian god's "perfectness" which causes this.
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@Sum1hugme
Do you think they effectively police crime, or that they enforce "order"... do you mean substantiate racism and sexism? Do you mean that they propagate outdated court systems or justice system? Do you think that the US's police killing rate (higher than any other civilized or heavily policed country by faaar) is worth this so called "order"? Are you aware that it wasn't until the 1700s that there was anything like a "police force" and it wasn't very effective. In theory that's what the police does, thats not what they actually cause.
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@Sum1hugme
Defunding and "getting rid of" are two different things, second off - there is a fundamental problem with the police system. And that's that the police department and the entire system was literally founded on slave patrols. The central concept of police is fundamentally flawed.
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@3RU7AL
Wait, okay then I thought you were saying it as if I didn't believe it - seeing as we have been opposed on this thread, sorry then.
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@3RU7AL
Dude I have an entire forum called, "Moral Subjectivist AMA", right?
Do you actually think I subscribe to objective morality? Because that would say a lot more about you not knowing anything about me than anything else.
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@3RU7AL
You realize I think morality is entirely subjective correct?
I think that objective facts - such as the fact that the earth exists - are separate from any sort of morality. Do you know my actual positions?
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@3RU7AL
This has literally nothing to do with that.
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@fauxlaw
I asked you about nonracial criticisms, that is, of the products of the police. I don't care about a systemic observation of the police in this regard, I care about the actual outcomes directly correlated and caused by the police department. You have not answered the question: furthermore, you have made a fallacy - it is also possible that a lack of regulation could cause problems. Such as an appropriate system for punishing police officers who are found guilty, the inherent level of lobbying and corruption, and the lack of regulations restricting violence used by Police officers. You are only looking at one side of the issue, a more comprehensive search would be fruitful for you.
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@FLRW
If the programming is insufficient or the same systemic training exercises are used as a basis for the robots, that would solve none of the criticisms of the police, at least in America.
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@fauxlaw
What of the criticisms of the police department that aren't racial in category; such as the overwhelming brutality across all races by police, the ineffectiveness of police (crime lowers as the policer officer per 1000 citizens decrease), etc, etc. The assumption here is that the only criticism of police officers is racial charging, but that is incorrect, what do you think of those criticisms?
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I've compiled a lot of research for a potential debate, but now I want to see what people think in general, and this isn't just "should we defund the police" but also potential solutions that would replace defunding it? What would we do if we did defund the police, etc, etc.
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@Tarik
You were the one who said, "You keep on dodging questions, so your syllogisms must be false."..... you quite literally brought it up.
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@Tarik
Um... thats not how syllogisms work. Lets say you're right and I'm dodging a question (totally didn't just answer it or anything and explain in full terms why you had a stupid question but anyways), even if I dodged every one of your questions that would tell you nothing about the actual syllogism. Attack a specific part of the syylogism for either being a non-sequitur, or for it being untrue, then you could totally claim its flawed. You being bad at questioning has nothing to do with its validity. Thing is, you already did that, and you entire point... wasn't even the best objection to the syllogism, nor even the point that is the most shifty... but it was a non-point in the first place, entirely pedantic.
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@Soluminsanis
You are right, objectively speaking nothing is wrong or right - because morals don't exist on a objective level. Yes. There is an ethical standard which could justify torturing infants for fun, would that be a very good or convincing ethical standard? Most likely not.
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@Soluminsanis
The standard which is logically sound, that doesn't take much work to get to - my point was that there are no objective moral values.. .I mean feel free to try to prove them, but again, morals are definitionally subjective, thats just how morals are, propositional. One person's moral standards could just be dumbed and unfounded, doesn't mean it doesn't exist - which was my point, but it does mean one can be preferred over another. This is like saying: art is subjective - any art could be considered the same - this clearly isn't true. Obviously a professional comic book artist has art and drawings which are using the elements of art and is surperior in every way to say, a five year old's crayon picture. That doesn't mean that crayon picture isn't art, just means its not very good art.
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@ethang5
Okay, which question? Because the only thing here, in this thread, is your inability to provide evidence for a claim.
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@Benjamin
Wrong, you completely forgot long term suffering versus pleasure, you also completely ignored my rebuttal.
And I said, somebody who is capable of suffering. You can still suffer while sleeping or in a coma. And that is only cogent if there is a situation which stops pleasure but continues suffering, my base life does not meet that criteria
You even quoted it, but you never actually addressed it.
Suffering is the ability to feel pain.... at the very least, pain and feeling pain are distinct - just as the taste of something and tasting something are different, subtly but still different. Fetuses cannot feel pain before 27 weeks, they cannot even comprehend pain, and that is why they cannot suffer. But not just phyiscal pain, emotional pain, which birthed babies can.
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@Tarik
What you don't seem to comprehend is that morality is intrinsically a proposition - you can claim it is moral truth.... well then prove the truth.... but then its still a proposition. Morality, especially standards of it are propositions - until they can be proven objective then it is not objective, and seeing as the principles which make up morality are propositional... morality is definitionally propositional.
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@Tarik
No, its not - are you talking about the adjective? Because if I wanted to I could just define the adjective and the word; however, I've done both so many times with YOU specifically that I don't feel the need to so anymore, so I use a shorthand. Were you not paying attention the first 20 times I defined both?
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@Soluminsanis
Wrong, again - It could be true that torturing infants is wrong, but you ought to do it, it could be the case that torturing infants is right but you ought to not do it. It depends on your ethical standards.
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@Tarik
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@Benjamin
Pain and suffering do not equate. And I said, somebody who is capable of suffering. You can still suffer while sleeping or in a coma. And that is only cogent if there is a situation which stops pleasure but continues suffering, my base life does not meet that criteria - it is also my preference but my preference does not matter in regards to an ethical question.
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@Tarik
Yes. Because I was comparing a word and that same word with an adjective added on. Do you understand what an adjective is?
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@Soluminsanis
actually i did - you have a perponderance of evidence for the axiom of the universe - in contrast you have none for a "objective morality" furthermore morality is characteristically of the mind... that is how morlity works as a thing. And I already answered this; you simply want me to answer your false dichotomy - I don't answer fallacies.
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@Benjamin
Your framing is a strawman, correctly asked: Would you rather be tortured for 50 years or die right now; the answer, to me anyways - is clearly the former; but "would you rathers" do not matter in ethics. What matters is what is logically obligated; dying prevents individuals from having more pleasure, yes, but it also ends all suffering, that is why it is sometimes referred to as a mercy, whereas in lots of circumstances - pleasure is muted and you continue suffering.
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@ethang5
I don't think you understand basic logic, this isn't about "grilling theist" its about basic argumentative rules, its about how claims actually work; you are being unreasonable by definition. You have no supported your claim, you can keep on with your self-righteous rant. It just reveals, like you hadn't already done that, further how illogical you are. Have fun with your bullshit in "heaven"... oh, wait, no that's just post Trump America.
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@Tarik
already did that. I had an entire syllogism about it in fact.
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@Soluminsanis
Because it isn't the same thing. Morality is definitionally of the mind, reality is definitionally... real.
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@Greyparrot
well those are the extremes of the test, the all the way upper right corner, and so on and so forth, most people aren't any of those things, though I am in the "anarchy quadrant" -5, -6.5 or so. Well on the y axis, on the x axis I rule towards the left obviously.
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@ILikePie5
Why are you so obsessed with HistoryBuff's political test? Can you not at least gauge where he is by what he writes? It's not like he's reserved in his opinion.
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