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questions, comments, words of wisdom?
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Politics
the beast is awakening...
destruction is at hand...
let the bodies hit the floor
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Religion
Which would you rather have? Im mostly curious how many would say a comfortable lie
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Philosophy
i know i'm condemned cause i have eaten carrots. but i still have converted to Carrot God. let Carrot God be true, though every man a liar. if Carrot God condemns me, i deserve to be condemned.
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the problem is that the republicans would attack any tax increases and eventually get it lowered. which would result effectively with lowered spending. since democrats dont want that, i can see why they dont like negotiating on it.
yes, spending needs lowered, but it's more of a structural problem than bad programs, for the most part. we have a meager welfare state. so cuts to that would be hurting regular people. our defense is bigger than the next ten countries combined, and our medicare/medicaid is the same size as other countries even though they cover everyone while we only cover half our population with government healthcare. point, the healthcare is bloated. and they've been borrowing against social security for decades and now it's time to start paying it back. these are the real drivers of the debt, not welfare, yet these are imp;ossibile to cut politically.
if someone could be a dictator, they could increase taxes and decrease spending, with a scalpel approach, trim the fat. i remember john mccain and obama had that debate... should we take an ax to spending or a scalpel? back then, i thought ax... but after seeing the budget quiz with committee for a responsible budget, i see that we can get our debt to a managemable level with just scalpel level spending cuts.
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trump has been winning in the polls for a long time. it looks like he's going to win the election. biden has refused to make ukraine negotiate with russia, but trump will probably force a negotiation. that's what russia wanted not long after the war began, but ukraine and biden wasn't having it. since ukraine is dependent on the usa, the usa has the power to end the war within a week, or thereabouts, as long as russia is willing to talk, which i bet they still would. trump wants to look like the cause of the war end, and russia wants trump to look good... so ukraine will probably be forced to give up some of their eastern territory that speaks and is ethnically russian. then, both countries will acknowledge their concession and both sides will declare victory. that's how diplomacy works in the real world.
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Trump was convicted of falsifying business records, which normally is a misdemeanor. No worse than and actually less serious than shop lifting. It only becomes felonious when fraud was also committed. The jury I think didn't agree what fraud was committed, just that there was fraud.
So it looks like the reasoning is circular... it's fraud, just because it's fraud. It's a felony, just because it's a felony.
It's all a joke anyways. Who cares if he trying to hide hush money? It's like Bill Clinton lying about a blow job. Who really cares? At most its just a technicality, cause dems r weak politically.
I don't even support trump. But I can call a witch hunt a witch hunt when I see it
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Instead of just listing the last 5 most recent topics on forum page, list the last 20, or more is better. They draw a lot of traffic, but usually end up getting lost in the maze of forum sections cause they don't stay on the list long enough
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DebateArt.com
is our default conclusion that there's no evidence, thus we can't know if we're just elaborate flesh robots?
here is my response to someone who tried debating this with me... what say ya'll?
"Complete and total BS. The most you've ever presented are anecdotal stories of NDE's which is not science."i presented evidence that out of body experiences are almost always accurate or consistent with reality. there's more than one scientific experiment that shows that this is true. either there are people who can verify what happened outside the dead person's body when they were dead, or the description is at least consistent with reality. the AWARE study had someone describe the operating room with specific details that no one who was being operated on could have known, and they also had auditory ability in a dead person when they were dead. this is a good example of 'accurate or consistent with reality'. then there's lots of stories like pam rynolds and other common stories that the dead person coudln't have known the details. this is more than just one or two anecdotes, this is a trend that is almost always accurate.then there's the blind people coming to grips with seeing for the first time while dead.these things are objectively evidence of the afterlife. it's good evidence. the most i see anyone here do with this stuff, is ignore it. the few times they respond to it, it's irrational ramblings. incoherent.so yes, i maintain that there's ample evidence and other common sense things that point to humans being more than elaborate flesh robots. yet, you irrationally ignore or respond to it... then have the complete lack of awareness to say we can't even know if humans are more than elaborate flesh robots.
plus there's the arguments for God's existence. while it's objectively possible to say it' not actually evidence, it is completely lacking in common sense to argue that.
evidence: God, christianity, miracles, NDEs, the afterlife
it is irrational to argue that there's no evidence for the afterlife
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We reached a milestone this year... in 1974, the minimum wage was 2 bucks per hour. The average inflation per year has been 4.13 percent since then. That means, if the wage kept up with inflation, it'd be 15.13 today. So considering that I've always said our minimum wage should be the same as the 1970s, after all these years my position is officially that the minimum wage should be 15 bucks.
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i posted this in the wrong forum, so i'm reposting. i need to try harder to be careful where i post, this is like the third or fourth time ive made that mistake in the years ive been here.
I think that instead of us having a legal relationship with God to appease God's wrath, we have a parent child relationship to magnify God's love. The relationship is like the prodigal son.
The bible does say that Jesus dying prevented God's wrath, but the distinction is that that don't imply appeasing God's wrath.
The bible said Jesus nailed any legal requirements to the cross. Literally, instead of saying we have a legal relationship with God then like is said in western Christianity, we no longer have a legal relationship with him.
There r verses that say Jesus became sin for us, and by his wounds we r healed. But these just mean that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice. Love wouldn't let Jesus die, Jesus conquered sin and death with his sacrifice. He could have engaged in the Christian doctrine of self defense, but he chose to offer himself instead. The Bible says the spirit that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us and will raise us from the dead. We are adopted children of God and brothers of Jesus when we believe in Jesus and try to do his will.
This is basically, christus Victor atonement instead of penal substitution. Christie Victor was the predominate view in the early church, the other was minority view. Penal substitution is also based in paganism, a blood sacrifice on a technicality, instead of a sacrifice of first fruit, an offering of ones gifts in sacrifice. The bible says god takes no pleasure in burnt offerings but prefers gifts of the heart. Of course, they usually talked in terms of ransom, I think, so me saying love conquers death as central might be heretical or not pure doctrine. My love conquers death ideas are present in all forms of atoenment historically, just not the critical part of the theories. it should be the critical part.
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Religion
I think that instead of us having a legal relationship with God to appease God's wrath, we have a parent child relationship to magnify God's love. The relationship is like the prodigal son.
The bible said Jesus nailed any legal requirements to the cross. Literally, instead of saying we have a legal relationship with God then like is said in western Christianity, we no longer have a legal relationship with him.
There r verses that say Jesus became sin for us, and by his wounds we r healed. But these just mean that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice. Love wouldn't let Jesus die, Jesus conquered sin and death with his sacrifice. He could have engaged in the Christian doctrine of self defense, but he chose to offer himself instead. The Bible days the spirit that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us and will raise us from the dead. We are adopted children of God and brothers of Jesus when we believe in Jesus and try to do his will.
This is basically, christus Victor atonement instead of penal substitution. Christie Victor was the predominate view in the early church, the other was minority view. Penal substitution is also based in paganism, a blood sacrifice on a technicality, instead of a sacrifice of first fruit, an offering of ones gifts in sacrifice. The bible says god takes no pleasure in burnt offerings but prefers gifts of the heart. Of course, they usually talked in terms of ransom, I think, so me saying love conquers death as central might be heretical or not pure doctrine. My ideas are present in all forms of atonment historically, just not formally.
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i use two unconventional proofs for god. one is healing miracles, i dont see the kinds of miracles that happen to theists happen to atheists, or even non christians honestly, despite looking for that evidence and asking around. i realize that just because we dont see it, doesn't mean it's not there, but this is still significant.
the other one is that the large majority of atheists come back believing in God after NDEs. it's irrational to say there's no evidence for the afterlife, when you get into the science of NDEs, and the credibility of NDEs lend credbility to all the atheists that convert. it's also been objectively studied that christian NDEs happen at a much greater rate than non christian themed NDEs... such that jesus is a common component of these experiences. nonchristian themes are very rare, and hard to quantify or qualify, and open to interpretation, and might be unreliable.
there's all the philosophical arguments for God, such as the design argument and the causality argument. these are best kept at the level of philosophy but dont get much beyond just corroborating the God theory.
in fact, all these points could be said to be just consistent with God, and if you wanted to split hairs, not evidence. a skeptic on this site made that point once, is this more about evidence or just 'consistent with the God theory but not evidence'. but with the miracle and NDE point, it's majorly lacking in common sense to stay atheist.
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some other points. there are credible medical doctors who are exorcists who say they have seen supernatural phenomenon. there are credible doctors who study young children who remember past lives, and say that the children couldn't know the details they explain. i think there are professors out of the university of virginia for example who study this.
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it has to do with more than the fact that 'they were indoctrinated' at school. it has to do with more than the fact that they probably have student loans and want a hand out.
what are your theories?
isn't it fair to just think that trump voters are just not as educated and are lower information? that's what it looks like. i can't see any objective person who looks at the quality of thought in the real world, or even on here, of the different voters and reaching a different conclusion.
if you are a highly educated high information trump voter, do you admit that you are an outlier? if not, how do you weasel out of reaching my conclusion?
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If God punishes sinners, they say God is bad. If God doesn't punish sinners, they say God is bad.
I see these impossible standards all over the place when it comes to religion.
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A common standard among progressives is that everyone should get a free income of 1k per month. I think that's excessive. Instead, I think everyone with below average income should get 100 bucks in cash stipend and a hundred in food stamps. It's too much of a struggle to survive for lower income folks, and a small amount is helpful without being excessive. The philosophy behind it, is social contract, where the rich shouldn't be allowed to hoard excessive wealth while the poor languish. It's something like the top 1 percent own more than the bottom half of the country, and that's unacceptable. A simple wealth tax can help with this redistribution. Yes a work requirement can be fitting for the stipend.... welfare already has work requirements elsewhere so it's a functional established practice
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there's a lot of ignorance here and in general so i thought id set the record straight, again.
every developed country but the usa delivers universal healthcare to everyone, at half our cost per capita. the difference is enough to get our deficit under control. their wait times aren't generally worse there... there're generally better. the usa does have better specialized doctor wait times, due to how much money we got floating around in that sector. but again generally wait time are worse here, and the reason is because we have a doctor shortage. doctor supply determines wait times. we artificially limit the supply of doctors, unfortunately. it's hard for us to get our system like everyone else, given we have a status quo of hundreds of millios of people and many states. it's hard to change a status quo, whereas otehr countries developed organically. also, on the insurance point, insurance is mostly a pointless middle man... tho to be fair, most countries have insurance, it's just considered non profit. the main way they keep costs under control is by regulating medical prices. again i understand that's hard to regulate when we have a status quo, but it is posisble. we need more doctors, and we need to allow doctor owned hosptials to compete with other hospitals.... unforteunatly doctor owned hosptials isn't allowed much.
there are also free market based healthcare where government role is minimized but is indeed present and strong, but the healthcare lobby would never allow that.
these are just some highlights off the top of my head, to educate most ya'll's ignorant asses.
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1. we are slaves to society. i know ive debated this before, and it's plausible to not think that way, but it's what drives our country, and thereby the world. almost everyone has to work forty hours a week just to survive, and then take whatever the economy gives them back in return, which often ain't much. the money mostly goes to the rich and powerful, landlords, corporations, professional class. i understand that this is what drives the economy, and yes the usa drives the world... but it's a grueling way to survive. i guess no one said life was easy.
2. we spend twice as much as other countries on healthcare if you count the private sector, and ten times as much on defense as the next biggest militaries combined. if these were run better, we could at least not deficit spend, or choose other priorities like other countries. we have much less social nets than other countries, our welfare is actually pretty meager. we do spend less on taxes in general than others, but not if you count private sector healthcare, and these bloated things are what our default priorities are.
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this presidential election will be biden v trump. pick your favorite, list him. then list five reasons to vote against your favorite choice and five reasons to vote for the other guy.
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especially if we are branching out into space. just let the best and brightest reproduce, say on mars. then remove problematic humans and genes and put them back on earth. even if there is speciation, it's still a decendent of humans and part of our lineage, so it has value. we have the knowledge and technology to do this... so it should be done.
even if this wasn't done on mars... we can still breed super humans on earth.
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Society
as a science, nuclear makes sense as an energy source. there are states who want to do it more, but they find it too costly and time consuming. i assume that's a regulatory problem, but i could be wrong, otherwise i dont now why it's so burdensome to do nuclear. it's been decades and we're barely making progress in getting more nuclear, cause of all the negative stererotypes and mostly the costs. we need an alternative to fossil fuels cause those are dirty and unsustainable.
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Science and Nature
electric ones require too many minerals. it requires tons and tons of rare minerals, which which we have limited amounts of, and that damage the environment when they mine for them. hydrogen as far as i know just requires energy to separate the atoms before they're reunited in combustion. car manufactruers are already getting on the fuel cell band wagon, so it looks like i might be right on this.
i could be wrong about this, but that's the way it looks to me.
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Science and Nature
electric ones require too many minerals. it requires tons and tons of rare minerals, which which we have limited amounts of, and that damage the environment when they mine for them. hydrogen as far as i know just requires energy to separate the atoms before they're reunited in combustion. car manufactruers are already getting on the fuel cell band wagon, so it looks like i might be right on this.
i could be wrong about all this, but that's the way it's lookin to me.
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Religion
here is a poem that is extracted from a movie about a priest getting the third degree.
Frank Vs. God
I asked God for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to learn to solve.
I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for love
and God gave me troubled people to help.
My prayers were answered.
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do you think NDEs are a product of evolution? they'd have to be, considering how common they are if they are products of the brain only. how does an end of life hallucination improve one's ability to reproduce?
some thoughts on nde's as a product of evolution
what are your thoughts?
it looks like the people posting their theories are grasping at straws.
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Religion
some folks say like the double slit experiment, that the particles are affected by measuring them.
others say often on the topic of quantum mechanics, that simply observing particles at the quantum state affects them.
the bigger implication, is that there's those who say our consciousness can affect reality. which is true to the extent that we can measure quanta, with our devices and tools. but if all that is requirement is observation, then that's a bigger fish to fry for consciousness affecting reality
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Science and Nature
They say if aliens are going to exist, they should exist already and maybe have contacted us.
But the universe is young... why should we assume aliens would already exist let alone have contacted us? I don't see why they call it a paradox.
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Science and Nature
He cut taxes permanently, only for the rich. Then attacked welfare which in our country Is meager. But trumpazees and magats only care about his culture of personality. and don't care about substance
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it happened a lot in many states. in order to get a mail in vote thing, by law the citizen was suppose to request it. but, due to covid, many governors sent out those mail in vote things, to everyone or a lot of people. they technically broke the law by doing this. if that hadn't been done, given the election was already so close anyway in a lotta states, i'd surmise that the election would have changed for trump. another part of that logic, was it was mostly liberals who voted by mail.
the most i've seen as far as a fair counter to this, was the republicans should have challenged this in court, and that that was their legal recourse whether they did or didn't. that's true... but the fact remains that many enough govenors probably broke the law enough, to change the outcome of the election. in short, the election was rigged.
i ain't a trumpanzee either, and most of trumpanzee ideas are baseless conspiracy theories... but these facts are accurate, and they are what they are.
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I know some folks say good faith, or honesty in lay men's terms, is what the legal standard already is for him. But some people debate it.
But just in terms of justice, would it be fair to find him guilty if he was lying about his reasons to overturn the election, and let him go if his reasons for trying were honest?
I think there's a certain justice there, tho it looks like he knew he was lying, sometimes, while other times he had no grasp of reality and probably believed his own bullshit
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it's too difficult to freeze and unthaw humans after thousands of years. it's too difficult to maintain a civiliization on a spaceship. but it's feesible to liter the galaxy with embryos, who will use quantum communication with earth, and use artificial intelligent robots to raise the embryos that have human connections through communication. if quantum communication doesn't pan out, at least use robots to raise kids. it's more likely artificial intelligence will work out, than cryo or spaceshipcivilitions will work out.
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Religion
According to a 2011 paper, early humans began to shift towards monogamy around 3.5 million years ago. However, the species never evolved to be 100% monogamous.Fossil evidence suggests that monogamy predates even Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4-million-year-old partial female skeleton.Recent anthropological data suggests that the modern concept of life-long monogamy has only been in place for the last 1,000 years.In Israel, the Second Temple period, from 515 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., brought about widespread monogamy. Men began to pledge their fidelity to their first wife and polygyny in the area was reduced.Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
i've read that most males, historially, didn't reproduce. a minority of men, were responsible for multiple women having babies. the current trend with dating, in the usa, is that women only are atracted to the top fifth of men, and get passed around by them when they are younger. i think what's happening, is that many women refuse to settle or lower their standards, in expectation of our still mostly monogamous society, and so we see stats that show half of adults will soon be unmarried and childless, women included.
but is this trend to fuck around when younger, and the breaking of social norms regarding sex and marriage and attractions, leading to a time when only 'chads' and above average men will impregnante the majority of women? if life long monogamy is only recent, and being serial monogamous before that for a short while... are humans evolving back to the old polyamorous set up? are we in the process of switching? it kinda looks like that, and it's at the root of humans as a biological species.
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Science and Nature
on one of the most fundamental levels, the old testament teaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. the new testament teaches turn the other cheek. how can such a fundamental difference be something that a christian must accept both as infallible truth? does truth change? how?
but it's more than that core theological difference. the old testament has God killing people over and over again, or commanding them to die. see the story of noah where he killed the whole earth, or the time he turned a woman to stone for questioning where she was headed and looking back to her old lifei understand that it's plausible that the consequences of sin is death, which even the bible says and is as true a statement as they come. but it seems to again be in stark contrast to the God of the new testament. what's with this bipolar God of the new testament and the hippie God of the new testament? i realize even Jesus pointed out that the commandment and consequence of disrespecting ones parents is death, but how can such a difference be fundamentally compatible with each other? (i often wonder if jesus was being literal that that's the way the world is, or if he was saying 'even by this standard, the pharisees weren't being consistent with mercy')
but it's more than these broader frictions. the old testament says unclean food is ungodly, yet the new testament says nothing God has made clean is unclean. how should we accept that Jesus' death change something unclean to something clean? or the old testament says men with deformed penis' can't enter into the assembly of the lord, which sounds like they can't enter heaven. how did jesus' death make deformed penis' acceptable? and the context doesn't indicate this old testament verse was against self mutilation, but that any deformed penis was too much, even from a disability or injury. the best i can surmise, if these old testament verses are true... is that these are ceremonial laws, and ceremonial laws can change with a covenant change, assuming the covenant change was legit to begin with. it's kinda like how often cultural differences are legit changes in the bible, (why it says women can't lead or wear hats in church, even in the new testament, but everyone now accept as just cultural norms being changed) and not infallible differences being changed arbitrarily. ceremony and culture are both legit and reasonable ways of differentiating, but the theology for why the rules were the way they were to begin with, or how they can change, can still seem arbitrary and capricious, to use legal jargon.
we also have things that dont make sense theologically.
-the bible looks literal of the story of noah in the old testament, and the new testament treats the story literal too. i dont have time to list all the scientific discrepancies of that story, such as how there's a constant lineage of cultures everywhere and constant archeological evidence of no flood everywhere, yet supposedly God destroyed it all... and hid or changed the evidence? to me, when God performs a miracle like he does with phsyical healings even in this day and age, he supports the miracle with evidence and truth. (such as the congregation of the causes of the saints with the catholic church) the story of noah isn't supported by evidence, but contradicts it. maybe it wasn't meant to be taken literally or was a local event?
-i'll add more examples in the future.
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I think if you remove the objective standard of God, a case could be made for a lot different morals.
If your enemy is ruining your life, is the only thing stopping you from murdering them that it's against the law? If you feel there is a deeper truth involved stopping you, what is that basis?
And why don't you pay for prostitutes if you are horny? I often tell people, if it wasn't for my Christian faith, I'd frequent sex workers a whole lot more. Is the idea that you feel you're exploiting them so don't do it? I think a basis could be made sometimes that it's not exploitation, but even if it was... why would you care?
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i fear drought from climate change. some say overall it's better for agriculture for it to get warmer.
the real fear is the uncertainty. and it's a fact that there will be winners and losers with climate change. what if there's a net positive?
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Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth.At first, I thought this was just their usual bluster. But then I realised that they are genuinely unaware. Good news is no news, which is why the mainstream media largely ignores all studies showing net benefits of climate change. And academics have not exactly been keen to push such analysis forward. So here follows, for possibly the first time in history, an entire article in the national press on the net benefits of climate change.There are many likely effects of climate change: positive and negative, economic and ecological, humanitarian and financial. And if you aggregate them all, the overall effect is positive today — and likely to stay positive until around 2080. That was the conclusion of Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University after he reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends.To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This means approximately 3˚C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8˚C of warming has happened in the last 150 years. The latest estimates of climate sensitivity suggest that such temperatures may not be reached till the end of the century — if at all. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports define the consensis, is sticking to older assumptions, however, which would mean net benefits till about 2080. Either way, it’s a long way off.Now Prof Tol has a new paper, published as a chapter in a new book, called How Much have Global Problems Cost the World?, which is edited by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, and was reviewed by a group of leading economists. In this paper he casts his gaze backwards to the last century. He concludes that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century.You can choose not to believe the studies Prof Tol has collated. Or you can say the net benefit is small (which it is), you can argue that the benefits have accrued more to rich countries than poor countries (which is true) or you can emphasise that after 2080 climate change would probably do net harm to the world (which may also be true). You can even say you do not trust the models involved (though they have proved more reliable than the temperature models). But what you cannot do is deny that this is the current consensus. If you wish to accept the consensus on temperature models, then you should accept the consensus on economic benefit.Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this means the difference between survival and starvation.It will still be 1.2 per cent around 2050 and will not turn negative until around 2080. In short, my children will be very old before global warming stops benefiting the world. Note that if the world continues to grow at 3 per cent a year, then the average person will be about nine times as rich in 2080 as she is today. So low-lying Bangladesh will be able to afford the same kind of flood defences that the Dutch have today.The chief benefits of global warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths — not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece. Both Britain and Greece see mortality rates rise by 18 per cent each winter. Especially cold winters cause a rise in heart failures far greater than the rise in deaths during heatwaves.Cold, not the heat, is the biggest killer. For the last decade, Brits have been dying from the cold at the average rate of 29,000 excess deaths each winter. Compare this to the heatwave ten years ago, which claimed 15,000 lives in France and just 2,000 in Britain. In the ten years since, there has been no summer death spike at all. Excess winter deaths hit the poor harder than the rich for the obvious reason: they cannot afford heating. And it is not just those at risk who benefit from moderate warming. Global warming has so far cut heating bills more than it has raised cooling bills. If it resumes after its current 17-year hiatus, and if the energy efficiency of our homes improves, then at some point the cost of cooling probably will exceed the cost of heating — probably from about 2035, Prof Tol estimates.The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants make carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats. As it is an extremely rare trace gas in the air — less than 0.04 per cent of the air on average — plants struggle to absorb enough of it. On a windless, sunny day, a field of corn can suck half the carbon dioxide out of the air. Commercial greenhouse operators therefore pump carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to raise plant growth rates.The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent of the air, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. It is responsible for a startling change in the amount of greenery on the planet. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31 per cent of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener and just 3 per cent has become less green. This translates into a 14 per cent increase in productivity of ecosystems and has been observed in all vegetation types.Dr Randall Donohue and colleagues of the CSIRO Land and Water department in Australia also analysed satellite data and found greening to be clearly attributable in part to the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect. Greening is especially pronounced in dry areas like the Sahel region of Africa, where satellites show a big increase in green vegetation since the 1970s.It is often argued that global warming will hurt the world’s poorest hardest. What is seldom heard is that the decline of famines in the Sahel in recent years is partly due to more rainfall caused by moderate warming and partly due to more carbon dioxide itself: more greenery for goats to eat means more greenery left over for gazelles, so entire ecosystems have benefited.Even polar bears are thriving so far, though this is mainly because of the cessation of hunting. None the less, it’s worth noting that the three years with the lowest polar bear cub survival in the western Hudson Bay (1974, 1984 and 1992) were the years when the sea ice was too thick for ringed seals to appear in good numbers in spring. Bears need broken ice.Well yes, you may argue, but what about all the weather disasters caused by climate change? Entirely mythical — so far. The latest IPCC report is admirably frank about this, reporting ‘no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency offloads on a global scale … low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms’.In fact, the death rate from droughts, floods and storms has dropped by 98 per cent since the 1920s, according to a careful study by the independent scholar Indur Goklany. Not because weather has become less dangerous but because people have gained better protection as they got richer: witness the remarkable success of cyclone warnings in India last week. That’s the thing about climate change — we will probably pocket the benefits and mitigate at least some of the harm by adapting. For example, experts now agree that malaria will continue its rapid worldwide decline whatever the climate does.Yet cherry-picking the bad news remains rife. A remarkable example of this was the IPCC’s last report in 2007, which said that global warming would cause ‘hundreds of millions of people [to be] exposed to increased water stress’ under four different scenarios of future warming. It cited a study, which had also counted numbers of people at reduced risk of water stress — and in each case that number was higher. The IPCC simply omitted the positive numbers.Why does this matter? Even if climate change does produce slightly more welfare for the next 70 years, why take the risk that it will do great harm thereafter? There is one obvious reason: climate policy is already doing harm. Building wind turbines, growing biofuels and substituting wood for coal in power stations — all policies designed explicitly to fight climate change — have had negligible effects on carbon dioxide emissions. But they have driven people into fuel poverty, made industries uncompetitive, driven up food prices, accelerated the destruction of forests, killed rare birds of prey, and divided communities. To name just some of the effects. Mr Goklany estimates that globally nearly 200,000 people are dying every year, because we are turning 5 per cent of the world’s grain crop into motor fuel instead of food: that pushes people into malnutrition and death. In this country, 65 people a day are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly, according to Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster, yet the government is planning to double the cost of electricity to consumers by 2030.As Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out, the European Union will pay £165 billion for its current climate policies each and every year for the next 87 years. Britain’s climate policies — subsidising windmills, wood-burners, anaerobic digesters, electric vehicles and all the rest — is due to cost us £1.8 trillion over the course of this century. In exchange for that Brobdingnagian sum, we hope to lower the air temperature by about 0.005˚C — which will be undetectable by normal thermometers. The accepted consensus among economists is that every £100 spent fighting climate change brings £3 of benefit.So we are doing real harm now to impede a change that will produce net benefits for 70 years. That’s like having radiotherapy because you are feeling too well. I just don’t share the certainty of so many in the green establishment that it’s worth it. It may be, but it may not.Disclosure: by virtue of owning shares and land, I have some degree of interests in all almost all forms of energy generation: coal, wood, oil and gas, wind (reluctantly), nuclear, even biofuels, demand for which drives up wheat prices. I could probably make more money out of enthusiastically endorsing green energy than opposing it. So the argument presented here is not special pleading, just honest curiosity.
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20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[a] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
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the main reason they are stupid, is that the persons who are most similar will get a split vote. if the green party runs, it spits the vote with dems. if a libertarians runs, it splits with republicans. often, the most popular segment could lose, simply because of a split vote. this split vote thing, is called a 'spoiler effect'. the founding fathers weren't thinking straight when they made our electoral system.
on a related note, our system sucks, cause it's 'plurality voting', even if a politician is unpopular, they can take the primary or general election by getting a plurality that's less than a majority. trump v clinton... both were unpopular, yet they were foisted on the stage by plurality voting
i can relate to wanting options in our elections by third, fourth parties are not the way to do it. research rank choice voting, or approval method voting. those systems fix the problems we have with our system.
plus we do have primaries where there is often lots of choice. it's fair and sensible to only have two candidates if others were fairly evaluated and processed in the election.
all those 'we need third party' advocates dont know what they're arguing. i liked that idea when i was younger, only cause i was stupid and ignorant. these third party advocates seem so low brow and low intelligence
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im super theist... but i love carlin's bit on anti god and religion
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When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!But I want you to know something, this is sincere, I want you to know, when it comes to believing in God, I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you’d expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would’ve been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say “this guy”, because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man.No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he’s at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn’t give a shit. Doesn’t give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.So rather than be just another mindless religious robot, mindlessly and aimlessly and blindly believing that all of this is in the hands of some spooky incompetent father figure who doesn’t give a shit, I decided to look around for something else to worship. Something I could really count on.And immediately, I thought of the sun. Happened like that. Overnight I became a sun-worshipper. Well, not overnight, you can’t see the sun at night. But first thing the next morning, I became a sun-worshipper. Several reasons. First of all, I can see the sun, okay? Unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the sun. I’m big on that. If I can see something, I don’t know, it kind of helps the credibility along, you know? So everyday I can see the sun, as it gives me everything I need; heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on the lake, an occasional skin cancer, but hey. At least there are no crucifixions, and we’re not setting people on fire simply because they don’t agree with us.Sun worship is fairly simple. There’s no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don’t have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And the best thing about the sun, it never tells me I’m unworthy. Doesn’t tell me I’m a bad person who needs to be saved. Hasn’t said an unkind word. Treats me fine. So, I worship the sun. But, I don’t pray to the sun. Know why? I wouldn’t presume on our friendship. It’s not polite.I’ve often thought people treat God rather rudely, don’t you? Asking trillions and trillions of prayers every day. Asking and pleading and begging for favors. Do this, gimme that, I need a new car, I want a better job. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday His day off. It’s not nice. And it’s no way to treat a friend.But people do pray, and they pray for a lot of different things, you know, your sister needs an operation on her crotch, your brother was arrested for defecating in a mall. But most of all, you’d really like to fuck that hot little redhead down at the convenience store. You know, the one with the eyepatch and the clubfoot? Can you pray for that? I think you’d have to. And I say, fine. Pray for anything you want. Pray for anything, but what about the Divine Plan?Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn’t in God’s Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn’t it seem a little arrogant? It’s a Divine Plan. What’s the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayerbook can come along and fuck up Your Plan?And here’s something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your prayers aren’t answered. What do you say? “Well, it’s God’s will.” “Thy Will Be Done.” Fine, but if it’s God’s will, and He’s going to do what He wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn’t you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will? It’s all very confusing.So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don’t pray to the sun. You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he’s a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn’t fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog, Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat.So I’ve been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don’t. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit’s foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat’s testicles, it’s all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.And for those of you who look to The Bible for moral lessons and literary qualities, I might suggest a couple of other stories for you. You might want to look at the Three Little Pigs, that’s a good one. Has a nice happy ending, I’m sure you’ll like that. Then there’s Little Red Riding Hood, although it does have that X-rated part where the Big Bad Wolf actually eats the grandmother. Which I didn’t care for, by the way. And finally, I’ve always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best? “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” That’s because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and there is no God. None, not one, no God, never was.In fact, I’m gonna put it this way. If there is a God, may he strike this audience dead! See? Nothing happened. Nothing happened? Everybody’s okay? All right, tell you what, I’ll raise the stakes a little bit. If there is a God, may he strike me dead. See? Nothing happened, oh, wait, I’ve got a little cramp in my leg. And my balls hurt. Plus, I’m blind. I’m blind, oh, now I’m okay again, must have been Joe Pesci, huh? God Bless Joe Pesci. Thank you all very much. Joe Bless You!
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i mean, compared to most politicians, he's good. and, i had approved of his performance because he accomplished a lot of stuff.
but, his main critique is true... things are too expensive, and he's not doing enough to change that. there's all kinds of ways to make life cheaper for americans, that he doesn't explicitly advocate for. literally, all kinds of ideas. at best, like all politicians, he does things that would make the establishment happy and his party. he does move the ball, but only if it's okay with the establishment/party.
of course, i can't think of literally any politicians who have very many good ideas to make life more affordable. and the little they do have for ideas, are either not good ideas to begin with, or again are only such that they appease the establishment/party.
at the rate we're goin... i'll probably never truly approve of any politician's performance, ever again.
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this is a land dispute. land disputes go back as long as life came to earth. it's not clear who should have the right to what. but it's generally good to negotiate with each other and live in peace. that's why palestine and israel should live in peace, and a two state solution is ideal.... except to say, israel shouldn't have to deal with terrorists killing them. why are liberals defending hamas? or is it just palestine that they are defending? dems like to call out conservatives for antisemite behavior from conservatives... but it's actually mostly coming from the dem base. even if those libs aren't pro hamas and are only pro palestine... what's up with that? no one is right in a land dispute like this, except it's always fair to defend ourselves like israel is doing.
i dont know much about this dispute... and am open to new persepctives/info, but this is the way i see it from my limited perspective.
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the consensus of historicans is that jesus existed. his apostles are recorded to have spread the faith and to have died for their faith. historicans have record of when jesus' brother was martyred, the local communities were aghast. st paul one of the leading writers of the bible, is a historical fact that he existed and spread the faith, and to have then died for it. he said he had a vision of jesus at his conversion.
so what do skeptics think happened? if you dont think jesus existed, why do you deny scholar consensus? why do you think the apostles died for their faith? i know it doesn't prove the things they said were true, but why do you think they died for it? do you think st paul was a schizophrenic who happened to otherwise be sane, and to become of the leading figures of christainity? were the apostles and st paul deluded, was it a conspiracy of group delusion? why would they lie if they weren't deluded? does trying to rationalize and minimize the historical nature of all this stuff seem prudent, when there's the possibility that they weren't just deluded?
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jesus said getting remarried after divorce is adultery, except in cases involving sexual immorality. st paul has some other exceptions such as believers being married to unbelievers.
so what if a wife is victim of domestic physical abuse? she can't get divorced and remarried if there's no sexual immorality in the marriage. literalists would say the most she can do is separate from her husband and never remarry.
i think this is a case of maybe the bible isn't inerrant afterall, or being too literal about what it says. maybe jesus meant 'generally' only sexual immorality is the only exception? this is running loose with interpretation. i'd take that stance, but i'm not a bible is inerrant kinda guy.
i know there aren't many fundamentalist christians left on this site, but, what say ya'll? can a victim of domestic abuse with no sexual immorality involved get divorced and remarried?
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there's objectively pros and cons to both biden and trump. i can see preferring one or the other, and maybe even being somewhat passionate about it. but if you think half the nation is nuts for preferring the candidate that you oppose, that says a lot more about you than it does about them.
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the majority of swipes with online dating from women, go to the top ten percent of men. the average woman thinks 80 percent of men are below average looking, while the average man thinks only 50 percent of women are below average. women are known to engage in hypergamy, where the man must have similar or better education and income. men generally dont care about that much, and sometimes being better in that regard than the man is a red flag to the man. the conventional women is that 80 percent of women are chasing the top 20 percent of men. if you are an average man, you dont get very many mutual 'likes' on dating apps, but the average women gets swamped with matches. they say the average woman lacks quality matches, but the average man lacks quality and quantity of matches. it's common for women to go for years with no relationship, not because she can't find a date, but because she's too picky. the average woman gets swamped with men pursuing them. i realize not every option is decent, but it's the case that there's gotta be something decent if they tried even just a little. the stats, are that for men under 30, 60 percent are single, while only 30 percent of those women are single.in general, in the next ten years, it's predicted that getting close to half of people will be single. it's a cultural phenomenon regarding our rugged indivuduality... but the main reason is that women are just too picky.
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an atheist here made a good point... sometimes things look more like they are 'consistent' with God theory, rather than 'evidence for' God theory. any time you see evdience for God, ask if it would be better or at least possible to not call it evidence but merely consistent with God theory.
there's lots of philosophic arguements for God. id group those with things like casuality arguments and design arguments. the thing about these is that there's at least plausible arguments that can be made that are counter those. so it's easy to just call these consistent with God and not evidence.
then you get into more science type arguments. the most straight forward way of looking at these, is that they are in fact evdience for God. things that look like supernatural healing. atheists usually become theists during NDEs. something impossible happening with healing it looks like, and we dont see that as far as we know coming from atheists, we dont see impossible looking healhings from atheists. and it's almost never the case that theists become atheists during NDEs and NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, so it's at least realistic to say it's also evidence for God.
with that said, if you have a dark heart and mind, an atheist could say there's no evidence for God with these scientifc things. you could say we only have confirmation bias that healings that look supernatural happen, or that theists only assume those things only happen to theists and not atheists. they make a big assumpion that impossible looking things happen to atheists, but we'd have to admit it's possible and just not reported. and, as far as NDEs, the conventional wisdom is that NDEs are subjective and influenced by the mind... so even if NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, it's also possible to say visions and thoughts of God are merely produced by our psychology and not signs of an objective reality
with all this said, even if they could plausibly say there's no evidence for the God, atheism still lacks common sense.
-i think there's too much emphasis in NDE research on saying their experiences are based on psychology... it looks more like objective things happen, and any deviations are misinterprataions. for example, christian NDEs are common, but hindu NDEs are just the experiencers interpretation... at least there's not enough deviant types of NDEs to say it's all psychology based.
-when healings that look supernatural happen, it still looks like impossible things are occurring. you can try to rationalize it, but that's what it looks like.
-to say humans are merely flesh robots is riduculous. it's obvious we are more than robots.
-there's no explanation that we know of that can explain how life started on earth, or how something as complicated as human consciousness occurrs. there's theories, yes, but they are weak from atheists on the common sense level.
-even if there are counter arguents for the philosophic arguments for God, they are at least formidable and strong, and help explain the God theory, at least if the God theory is in fact true. eg, causality or the argument from design
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an atheist here made a good point... sometimes things look more like they are 'consistent' with God theory, rather than 'evidence for' God theory. any time you see evdience for God, ask if it would be better or at least possible to not call it evidence but merely consistent with God theory.
there's lots of philosophic arguements for God. id group those with things like casuality arguments and design arguments. the thing about these is that there's at least plausible arguments that can be made that are counter those. so it's easy to just call these consistent with God and not evidence.
then you get into more science type arguments. the most straight forward way of looking at these, is that they are in fact evdience for God. things that look like supernatural healing. atheists usually become theists during NDEs. something impossible happening with healing it looks like, and we dont see that as far as we know coming from atheists, we dont see impossible looking healhings from atheists. and it's almost never the case that theists become atheists during NDEs and NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, so it's at least realistic to say it's also evidence for God.
with that said, if you have a dark heart and mind, an atheist could say there's no evidence for God with these scientifc things. you could say we only have confirmation bias that healings that look supernatural happen, or that theists only assume those things only happen to theists and not atheists. they make a big assumpion that impossible looking things happen to atheists, but we'd have to admit it's possible and just not reported. and, as far as NDEs, the conventional wisdom is that NDEs are subjective and influenced by the mind... so even if NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, it's also possible to say visions and thoughts of God are merely produced by our psychology and not signs of an objective reality
with all this said, even if they could plausibly say there's no evidence for the God, atheism still lacks common sense.
-i think there's too much emphasis in NDE research on saying their experiences are based on psychology... it looks more like objective things happen, and any deviations are misinterprataions. for example, christian NDEs are common, but hindu NDEs are just the experiencers interpretation... at least there's not enough deviant types of NDEs to say it's all psychology based.
-when healings that look supernatural happen, it still looks like impossible things are occurring. you can try to rationalize it, but that's what it looks like.
-to say humans are merely flesh robots is riduculous. it's obvious we are more than robots.
-there's no explanation that we know of that can explain how life started on earth, or how something as complicated as human consciousness occurrs. there's theories, yes, but they are weak from atheists on the common sense level.
-even if there are counter arguents for the philosophic arguments for God, they are at least formidable and strong, and help explain the God theory, at least if the God theory is in fact true. eg, causality or the argument from design
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can evidence exist for something that doesn't exist?
what if you saw foot prints in the woods, and claimed that was evidence of big foot? and, we'll assume big foot doesn't exist. is it fair to call that evidence to begin with, then, if big foot doesn't exist?
or we have more speculative things. we have lots of credible people like pilots who say they see flying objects doing things in the skies that aren't possible to our understanding of physics. is that evidence of UFOs? would it be evidence if UFOs didn't in fact exist?
an atheist at this forum made a good point once... he said, we shouldn't be so quick to call things 'evidence' if all it is is 'consistent' with a certain theory.
i know, to get more religious, a lot of philosophic arguments for God exist, but they could just as easily be called 'merely consistent' with the the God theory than 'evidence for' the God theory. when it comes to these philospohic arguments, for everyone you can make, there is a at least plausible alternative non God argument that could be made.
then there's more scientific arguments, less philosohical. i do think when we get into things that look like supernatural healings, and atheists becoming theists during NDEs, that those are more in the realm of evidence and less about merely consistent with the God theory. but, it would be possible to spin even those things, if you have a darkened heart and mind, into things that are merely 'consistent' with the God theory and not look at them as evidence.
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the average worker is a slave to society.... essentially a slave to the powerful. it's not outright slavery, but it basically is. there is an element of violence imposed on the average worker, cause he has no means of changing the system other than the electoral process
i said that to someone i respect a lot, and they said it's a juvenile world view. i view it as just calling a spade a spade. what do ya'll think?
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It's been awhile since we've looked at this stupid idea that atheists have
Free will don't exist. Everything is cause and effect. There is no afterlife or God. Whence we r forced to conclude that humans r nothing else than elaborate flesh robots
It's worth noting, we r nothing but flesh robots, and it's common for these elaborate flesh robots to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when they die.
Makes perfect sense.
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