While not on the topic of religion, I actually have a problem with this. I have a problem with the fact that people who have thought about their opinions, taken the time to educate themselves on issues etc. have their vote counted as the same as some dip**** who shows up at the booth to tick a box - and this is the case where I grew up and I still tangentially know the people I am talking about, so I am not making this up.

Truth be told, you and I might differ, but I have no problem with the fact that we do differ. What I have a problem with, is there are a lot of ******s out there, and you and your kind enable them by supplying them with reasonable-sounding talking points to support their unreasonable views; and before you know it, you have a right-wing populist movement that is anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-rational thinking and pro-conspiracy theory.

And you, Aaron, yes, you, personally, and your brethren in the aggregate are enablers and apologists for this movement. The vast majority of these people couldn't spell "fascism" or pick the Earth out of a line-up. *You* help them along on their merry path - why? Because you read the same book, and have the same imaginary friend.

We can sit here and engage in intellectual masturbation all day, but your side is f*cking pathetic, and unfortunately, the world is now going to suffer the consequences of your irrational beliefs.

Of course you do.

Yeah. Those people who are uneducated about the things they complain about, and aren't educated on the issues. They really do suck, don't they?

I'm sure you do have a problem with it. That much is obvious. What isn't obvious is why you have such a superiority complex when you literally engage in the identical behaviors, except on the other side of things. Oh wait, I know exactly why.

Yup. I'm just an enabler for the millions of people who don't know who I am.

Given that there's nothing intellectual in what you're doing, I guess we all know what's really going on.

Now sit down and shut up. The adults are having a conversation.

Cool. I assume you're one - who's the other?

.

LOL - You really can't string more than a couple sentences together coherently, can you? I like reading what you type with a sense that you're hyperventilating because it fits so well.

Look, I'm bored of this, and usually I don't get bored of this type of back and forth. You're spouting utter nonsense that shows your puerile understanding of the world around you.

The track record is now about 700 posts long. You have yet to make a single cogent argument towards any of your proposed statements. You have proven yourself to be inoculated against facts. You have shown disdain for true statements, and a propensity to make false claims to support your own beliefs. You have demonstrated the adjacency of head and rectum. And you can't even logic, no matter how hard you try.

So... good luck with that. I'm sure that your sense of self-satisfaction in your ignorance will take you far in life.

Just being led by example. Your elected officials, especially the bigly one, have taught me covfefe.

This, I will grant you; if nothing else, you're certainly a trooper.

Do tell. Try not to invoke the first 20 posts in the thread, because you know, by your estimation there have been 700 of them.

If you keep repeating this, it doesn't make it true.

Meh... I'm bored.

#86

I never said you had no credibility to propose X because you are known for fake false claims. I've only said that you make false claims. This is also an example of misrepresenting me.

#149

This was in response to betair, who made no such equivalence.

#150

Also a response to betair, and he did not claim that religion gives us laws.

#164

As Original Position pointed out in #165, "lots of atheists adopt ideologies, including ideologies organized around a common belief or book, that lead to loathsome opinions."

#231

This is just you pretending to know something that you don't. But it's still a false claim. If it were true, a capable atheist would have already done it.

#237

This is another false claim and misrepresentation of the other.

#256

This is the head-rectum adjacency problem. It was addressed by multiple posters to the point that you had already conceded to narrowing the claim of your OP in #226, where you said, "This undoubtedly narrows the position I took in the OP, and I have no issue whatsoever conceding that point."

#257

It actually is. This is an example of you shifting the goalposts for yourself. You made your claim about X, but as soon as it was shown that X was false, you tried to recontextualize it to be about Y instead. More importantly, it's another false claim that you've made.

#261

Read my response in #262 to these two points.

#263

In reality, none of these posters supported the points you were trying to make.

------

By my count, that's 10, none of which came from the first 20 posts of this thread (I even cut you some slack and didn't take any of the first 50 posts). And I haven't even gotten to Post #300 yet. None of these are you making a failed argument. It's literally you making a claim that does not match reality, which is the essence of making false claims. It also includes examples of misrepresenting others, which is included in what I mean by disdain of true statements. You had opportunities (such as directly quoting people) to accurately describe their positions. You did not do that.

I am unashamedly calling you a liar. You have lied and you have continued to lie. There is basically no integrity to your posting.

How any reasonable person could read those quotes and conclude that the poster is a "liar" or "inoculated to facts" (whether they agree with the merits of the posts or not) is beyond my comprehension. You are literally taking opinions or my responses to my interpretation (that you disagree with or fail to understand) of what others have said, or in some cases mistakes in reasoning and labeling them as "lies". "Unashamed" is about right.

Apparently, you think that making false statements and the willful misrepresentation of others doesn't constitute lying. It's just an "opinion" to you. This is pretty high level self-delusion.

I can literally go on and on.

Here's my response to #618, where you accused me of criticizing your "tone":

Or there's this one from #561:

And my response was to point out that I had already pointed this out several times, and I showed you the posts.

What comes across in your posting is lying at a level that appears compulsive. It's not even clear that you're able to distinguish what's true and what's false. You may not understand, but that's literally your problem and not anyone else's. You are wrong about reality at a level of wrongness that looks like a pathology when taken in full.

(Edit: It certainly doesn't help that you don't even feel the need to hold yourself accountable to making true or accurate statements.)

LOL. You're a Climate Change donkey. Why don't we deal with some facts, instead of your irrational hysteria. If every single nation in the Paris agreement abides by every single agreement up until the year 2100, do
you know what the temp difference will be? .17 degrees. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

http://www.lomborg.com/press-release...imate-promises


The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.
US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.
EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100.
China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.


What a clown.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-dumb-part-1-2

Seems apt.

For me it is one of the reasons why I do not believe in a personal God.

Maybe you're right. I just think that no outside help is forthcoming so we might as well do try to do the best we can rather than engage in wishful thinking.


I disagree with your assertion that people make more bad than good decisions. I believe that most people, flawed as they may be, try to do the best they can. The whole notion of 'collective suffering' is something I dislike about Christianity. I think the notion of original sin is nonsense and the belief that Jesus died for our sins is a fairytale. I simply do not share your belief.

I try to do the best I can and so do most of the people around me, flawed as we all may be.

Oh good, Aaron. One of your fellow believers just killed a bunch of people 5 mins from where I live. Religion is all good though, right? Nothing to see here.

Still trolling I see... I wonder how many of your posts the mods
are going to have to delete today?

Probably the same as the number of brain cells you engage when posting. I'm going to go with 0-1.

So.... you believe that you're being arbitrary in your standards, so a "personal" God doesn't exist?

What do you even mean by a "personal" God?

You also seem to think that looking for outside help is somehow inconsistent with doing the best we can. I don't see why that's the case.

I'd like to point out that the first and second sentences are not logically connected. I can believe that a student is doing his absolute best while still getting every problem wrong on the test.

That's fine. But it sure seems that notion of that we are the cause of a lot of our suffering (collectively) is a fact of reality. I do not see a way of interpreting the world in which it makes sense to claim that we are NOT the cause of a lot of our own suffering (collectively).

You didn't answer the question. Is the belief aspirational or grounded in data? (That is, do you believe this in a "I hope we can" sort of way, or do you believe that the data of human actions proves that "rational people can overcome the tendency to follow these 'bad' traits without religion"?

I'm sure you can find a quote of me saying that. If you can't, this stands as continuing evidence of the absence of integrity in your posting. Your posting is devoid of both truth and intelligence.

That's a pretty weak retort.

I believe that non-arbitrary standards are not possible due to the subjective nature of suffering. However, I strongly believe that a loving God ought not to let things like these happen to children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder...lly_Anne_Bates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_...Ali_Al-Khateeb

I'll take the wp definition of a personal God:

A loving 'Father' ought not to let this happen to 'his children'.

Billions of people have been looking for outside help over a period of thousands of years with nothing to show for it. I consider it to be a waste of time.


Agreed. I still believe rational people make more good than bad decisions.

I agree that human suffering is mostly caused by humans. However, I think that by putting everything under the umbrella of collective suffering, the distinction between self-inflicted suffering and suffering inflicted upon a person by others gets lost.

I don't feel confident in answering this for the whole data of human actions but for a subsample of friends, relatives and coworkers, most of whom are non-religious and most of whom I consider to be good people, my answer would be yes.

"I do not believe that those who believe in a literal god are capable of rational thought"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

Cliffnotes: Descartes. Catholic. The founder of Western philosophy and a chief advocate of rationalism.

Again, I want to reiterate that you're claiming that non-arbitrary measures are not possible, but you're also making a universal claim on the basis of an arbitrary measure.

I'll admit that for myself in my own perspective, I found the inconsistency of this to be part of what pushed me back towards the idea that there must be some type of moral standard beyond opinion. Otherwise, I have no basis upon which to say that such-and-such is a "truly" a bad thing.

Do you really think that there's nothing to show for ourselves as a society relative to where humanity was at several millennia ago?

On what basis? According to what measure? How "rational" do they need to be?

Okay, but how does this impact your argument?

How do you measure "good people"?

Sam Harris has attempted to remove at least some of the arbitrariness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape

I think that on the basis of one's subjective experience of suffering one can reasonably conclude that suffering is "truly" bad.

Of course there's plenty to show for it. I'm just saying I don't think outside help had anything to do with it. We did it ourselves which gives me some hope for the future.

On the basis of my personal experience and the experiences of the people I know. They need to be "rational" enough to be able to distinguish right from wrong.

I want to emphasize that I think most people's individual suffering is not brought upon them by themselves. I would argue that most suffering throughout history and to this day has been brought upon individuals by other people or as a result of the poor circumstances they were born into, through no fault of their own.

People who possess traits such as honesty, kindness, benevolence, generosity, selflessness, etc.

Sam Harris' book was not really that well-received by the thinkers of morality. I think it's widely viewed as being pretty much unsuccessful at reaching the bottom line thesis that science can actually be used as a moral foundation.

It's true that on one's subjective basis, one can reasonably conclude lots of things. But to make the jump from "I think this is 'truly' bad" to "This is 'truly' bad" is quite a significant leap.

And you base this claim on... ?

And who determines what's right and wrong?

I would generally disagree with this, but I offer you a chance to actually make this argument. It probably comes down to a different perspective of "suffering." You probably have a significantly more narrow definition of it than I do.

Two notes:

I think it's probable that your sample is biased to just the people you've chosen to associate yourself with. It's likely that you've basically put yourself in a position to not minimize your interaction with people who lack those traits.

Also, your theory of human behavior would indicate that these traits are found in general, but you don't seem confident in that theory. I think you don't feel confident because there's a part of you that recognizes that the truth is that your theory is likely wrong.

I think it's fine to be aspirational in your belief, in that you emotionally want to hope that people are capable of making changes and being good and all those things. Except that I would call it "blind faith" in the identical manner that it's used in a derogatory description of some religious adherent's beliefs. I think the data counter-indicates your conclusion, and that you're being naive in holding it.