What a load of shit.

Seriously, no further rebuttal needed.

I have trouble calling the code stored in DNA "knowledge." To me "knowledge" is things like the distance between here and Vungtau or the date Einstein died. Nor is it wisdom -- I would hope that is obvious. Given the right circumstances, a piece of DNA will instruct the cellular machinery to manufacture a given protein that is needed.

However, it isn't knowledge -- it doesn't know how to do it, it just does it. It doesn't know anything.

The definition in my computer's dictionary says:
Information: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

I'm willing to drop the "by a person" part.

The information stored in DNA is not acquired through experience nor through education. Mutations occur during the replication process. They're just selected for or against (or are neutral). No sentience present (or needed; hence, no god needed).

Bert

duplicate post deleted

Cito di Pense wrote:
You may simply waiting to get your foot in the door so you can relate your fee-fees about the practice of abortion or the gender preferences of homosexuals. Cut to the fucking chase, already.

Do you have any evidence on what I think of abortion or homosexuals? You are misrepresenting to any readers who might chance to come here fresh. Surely you have caught on by now that I’m arguing that the understanding and presentation of evolution has been influenced and damaged by theist ideology. That is the chase I cut to. Part of that involves discussing what atheist ideology involves. But abortion and homosexuals? Come show me.

edit typo

Frank Merton wrote:I have trouble calling the code stored in DNA "knowledge." To me "knowledge" is things like the distance between here and Vungtau or the date Einstein died. Nor is it wisdom -- I would hope that is obvious. Given the right circumstances, a piece of DNA will instruct the cellular machinery to manufacture a given protein that is needed.

However, it isn't knowledge -- it doesn't know how to do it, it just does it. It doesn't know anything.

I didn't reply to your earlier post, my apologies. The question I answered with "DNA" was "Where is this knowledge stored?". I took that to mean, where is it archived- like, in virus DNA that can last indefinitely. I tried to distinguish between "know-how" which is expressed in a living thing: e.g. the know-how in a lesser collared sunbird, to build its marvelous nest out of lichen and cobweb- and "knowledge" as text information written by people about that know-how. The person still can't make such a nest himself, he doesn't have the know-how. But he has a weak appreciation of it.

Jayjay4547 wrote: But he has a weak appreciation of it.

Appreciation? Sounds like another version of special sauce. Two shits plus the throes of aesthetic experience will leave you with two shits and some endorphins running around your brain.

If you could use all that emotional energy to bend some spoons, the engineers would soon be trying to weaponise you. If you're addicted to the endorphins you induce by contemplating the divine, well, that's your drug of choice. It no more means that there is anything divine out there besides your endorphins than it means you can bend a spoon with endorphins.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m arguing that the understanding and presentation of evolution has been influenced and damaged by theist ideology. That is the chase I cut to. Part of that involves discussing what atheist ideology involves.

So all you're interested in is waxing poetic about a bird's nest? Aesthetic fervour about the beauty of nature is not a sure-fire path to faith. Especially not with a skeptical audience. That's your main problem with 'atheist ideology', which can wax poetic about the beauty of nature without going down your primrose path to God.

The main problem with your namby-pamby deity, the one that doesn't care about homosexuality and abortion, is that it's utterly and pathetically superfluous to requirements. Special (divine) creation is your conclusion, but you're using it as your premise, as well, which is another mental mistake that never gets off the ground when it confronts 'atheist ideology'.

bert wrote:

You did some background research into this topic. Since 1942 legal in Switzerland. So, has not slippery sloped for 70 years.

True. But then after 1945 the notions that had floated around in neighbouring Germany around 1942 had been bombed into unpopularity and everyone had become sickened by what had been done in the concentration camps.

bert wrote:

The Wikipedia article on Euthanasia in Switzerland tells us that assisted suicide has been legal there since 1942 –i.e. since around the date of Acton T4 in neighbouring Germany.

I'm sure you want to imply something with that. Hmm, what could it be? Perhaps euthanasia in Switzerland was (and maybe is still) done with Cyclon B. Must be it. Nothing else comes to mind.

It should have come to mind that the notion of state-sanctioned killing in Switzerland had been influenced by the brutal notions then current in their great neighbouring nation- that many Swiss share a language with. So far as I know, Switzerland is the only nation that allows assisted suicide on demand – i.e. not just for those suffering physical pain for an incurable disease. The reason for that unique practice is likely because the Swiss got the idea from Nazi Germany but they weren’t themselves soon defeated in war. They made the practice their own.

According to Wikipedia, the Nazis used Cyclon B for economy, when they came to euthanase large numbers of sanatoria inmates. In Switzerland they might use a poison drink as in other assisted suicide – incidentally, that is explicitly forbidden in the Hippocratic oath.

bert wrote:
Leaving aside the question whether he [Jesus, miss-spelt as jezus] ever existed, in any case he is not a member. Also, you're reading too much into this. In my native language his name is spelled with a z (and yes, it would be capitalized), so that was just a mix-up.

[EDIT: Remember that I think sports fans are nicer people? I haven't ever met one who insisted that I write football or whatever with a capital.]

It doesn’t matter here whether God or Allah or Jesus does or doesn’t exist. What constitutes tolerance as learned in Western societies until atheism came to flout it, is not to mock another person’s belief. You can say it’s wrong but not mock it. Beliefs that are dearly held should be respected, in doing so one respects the person. For example I won’t intentionally miss-spell “atheist” or “Bert”.

bert wrote:
It is easier to deal with sensibilities if the consequences of those sensiblities are not shoved through other people's throats. I explained that as far as I'm concerned religious people can live their own life (including the end) in the way they want to, but that they wreck other people's lives with that as well, which I find intolerable. Before you know it, they even want to prescribe how I write a name and that I should capitalize it. Well, I'd be happy to do that, if for more important issues they didn't force the way they want to live their lives not on others.

To vote or argue against giving the government the right to facilitate euthanasia of depressed old (over 70 years) people, which is the Netherlands “Out of free Will” initiative, isn’t shoving anything down anyone’s throat. I’m not showing anything down your throat by pointing out that to miss-spell a name can be rationally considered inflammatory.

bert wrote:
Want a reason why there needs to be a counterforce agains such sensibilities?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3107676/posts
http://www.theantdaily.com/news/2014/01 ... -allah-row

(There are no atheists mosques, churches etc to get their books. But we're the intolerant ones, according to you).

Your example of bad things that religious people do, was earlier that of opposing assisted suicide for depressed old people- which seems to be controversial in the Netherlands. There the agitators are apparently the highly respectable Catholic and established Calvinist churches. Now you claim you are creating a necessary counter force to radical Islamists in Indonesia. As I see it, you are promoting quite dangerous social views which are also technically interesting as revealing an atheist privileging of the expressive aspect of the individual above other aspects of the individual and other people. Radical Islamists are just a post-hoc justification for your intolerance of reasonable views expressed in your own country.

bert wrote:

If Nazi persecution of the Jews had been founded on religious grounds, then one would have expected the Gestapo to have entered Netherlands with burning symbols of Lutheran wrath, to root out all who denied that Christ was the Messiah. That was the opposite of what happened. The Wikipedia entry:

I explained it to you: Jews were given a bad name by christians because they (the jews) were blamed for killing the son of god. Instead of making a straw man try to face the fact: that didn't help the jews when other nutcases tried to impose their (new) ideology onto others.

I appreciate your point about the difference nazi's made between race and religion, but it doesn't take away the point that such general hatred could have an earlier root in the responsibility of the jews and/or that with this thinking still present wouldn't help to bring christians to oppose this.

Problem for your position: the Nazis also euthanased large numbers of their nationals who were physically or mentally crippled. They also killed Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and communists.

bert wrote:

In this article (use google translate)

http://www.ibstudiehuis.nl/k/n631/news/ ... eel-2.html
it says: Only in 1963 during the second Vatican council the pope decided that the jews were not the murders of christ.

(1963 is after WWII).

i didn’t find that quote in your link, maybe I missed it. But I did find this:

“Hitler and many high-ranking Nazi leaders with him saw the Christian faith as one of the biggest opponents of Nazism.”
I suppose you did pick up that that link was about Jews who had converted to Christianity but were none the less killed, because they were of “Jewish “Blood”.
Maybe you picked up this passage:

“But within the churches in Germany was a large group of people (the Deutsche Christen , literally "German Christians") that the rise of Nazism and cheered herein saw new opportunities for the church”

The Wiki entry on Deutsche Christen makes it clear that this group was Hitler’s tame dog, existing at his pleasure and schismatic from the Confessing Church that opposed that interference. Perhaps you know of Dietrich Bonhoeffer the Lutheran theologian executed just before the end of the war for his involvement with the assassination attempt on Hitler. The elephant in this room is that the interwar years were the most difficult time Christianity faced since the early church under pagan Roman rule. In Spain the communists massacred thousands of Roman Catholic clergy. In Bolshevik Russia Christianity was suppressed in favour of state-approved atheism. And in Nazi Germany, ostensibly the defender of the West against Bolshevism the Lutheran churches were undermined and the Catholic church structures were destroyed.

A most forthright condemnation of Nazism written before the war was the 1937 papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_ ... ge_en.html

Perhaps you can find a more forthright and perceptive atheist condemnation of Nazism dated around that time. I’d be curious to see it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

The Wikipedia article on Euthanasia in Switzerland tells us that assisted suicide has been legal there since 1942 –i.e. since around the date of Acton T4 in neighbouring Germany.

I'm sure you want to imply something with that. Hmm, what could it be? Perhaps euthanasia in Switzerland was (and maybe is still) done with Cyclon B. Must be it. Nothing else comes to mind.

It should have come to mind that the notion of state-sanctioned killing in Switzerland had been influenced by the brutal notions then current in their great neighbouring nation- that many Swiss share a language with. So far as I know, Switzerland is the only nation that allows assisted suicide on demand – i.e. not just for those suffering physical pain for an incurable disease. The reason for that unique practice is likely because the Swiss got the idea from Nazi Germany but they weren’t themselves soon defeated in war. They made the practice their own.

Of course I was facetious and it did come to mind. However, my obvious point is that if something is a good thing then it doesn't matter where it came from or how it came about. We can look at it now, see whether it needs fixing/change and if so do that.

According to Wikipedia, the Nazis used Cyclon B for economy, when they came to euthanase large numbers of sanatoria inmates.

The proper word is murdering.

In Switzerland they might use a poison drink as in other assisted suicide – incidentally, that is explicitly forbidden in the Hippocratic oath.

I somehow fail to see how some ancient text is necessarily be held on to. It is impossible for an old text to be wrong or partially wrong? It is impossible that it can't be improved? What could make it universal for an individual's needs and desires? (Btw, the Hippocratic oath has undergone changes since its origin too, so I fail to see any problem with it if it is supposed to be in the best interest of the person involved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath).

It doesn’t matter here whether God or Allah or Jesus does or doesn’t exist. What constitutes tolerance as learned in Western societies until atheism came to flout it, is not to mock another person’s belief. You can say it’s wrong but not mock it. Beliefs that are dearly held should be respected, in doing so one respects the person.

I don't mock or fight unless it affects other's or me other than the person who is to be respected. That is the point, as far as I'm concerned. You want to have your cake and eat it.

For example I won’t intentionally miss-spell “atheist” or “Bert”.

Great, so I have a (Jayjay4547 approved) right that I don't care about in return for which I don't get something I do care about.

bert wrote:
It is easier to deal with sensibilities if the consequences of those sensiblities are not shoved through other people's throats. I explained that as far as I'm concerned religious people can live their own life (including the end) in the way they want to, but that they wreck other people's lives with that as well, which I find intolerable. Before you know it, they even want to prescribe how I write a name and that I should capitalize it. Well, I'd be happy to do that, if for more important issues they didn't force the way they want to live their lives not on others.

To vote or argue against giving the government the right to facilitate euthanasia of depressed old (over 70 years) people, which is the Netherlands “Out of free Will” initiative, isn’t shoving anything down anyone’s throat.

Anyone is free to argue against it or not. It is great if that results in precautions to avoid things we both don't want. But no-matter-what-voting against it is a direct attempt to deprive a person of an option.

Your example of bad things that religious people do, was earlier that of opposing assisted suicide for depressed old people- which seems to be controversial in the Netherlands.
There the agitators are apparently the highly respectable Catholic and established Calvinist churches. Now you claim you are creating a necessary counter force to radical Islamists in Indonesia.

Try one level higher: My point is: Everyone should be free to think and do with his/her life what he/she wants, but is not allowed to adversely affect another person's life. I wasn't specifically going after radical islamists. I'm going after anyone (communist, religious person, nazi etc. that interferes with the life of individuals). I promote the teaching of this tolerance, and the teaching of critical thinking and the importance of observing facts. For religion, the matters could be easier as comparison of individual creation stories with facts about evolution and the universe could help to foster some relativization which I think is necessary to allow for tolerance (and avoid the slippery slopes that have been demonstrated for religion in the past, any time a religious book is taken too seriously/literally. Any religious person who believes in an omnipotent power, should have the trust that his favorite deity is capable of dealing with the sinner after the sinner dies. Without a videomessage or other evidence that his favorite deity told him differently, the religious person is not allowed to take action agains the sinner. So, if misspelling is a problem, I'll accept the consequences.).

As I see it, you are promoting quite dangerous social views which are also technically interesting as revealing an atheist privileging of the expressive aspect of the individual above other aspects of the individual and other people.

I fail to see an atheist privilege. We share the same universe, so facts about the cosmos and evolution are the same for you and me. As you can read and has been explained to you, this would not result in an atheist privilege. Everyone is allowed to do, think and live as they see suited. But restriction of that by others based on religious (and communist etc.) ideologies should stop. Your religion is *your* religion. You don't have to mary someone of the same sex. You don't have to die by euthanasia, etc. You just don't have the right to stop someone from making that choice.

Radical Islamists are just a post-hoc justification for your intolerance of reasonable views expressed in your own country.

Utter utter bollocks based on a refusal to accept what I've explained several times. My position is just too reasonable and tolerant for you to accept, because I want to deprive ideologies status quo intolerance. Unless it is a prerequisite for a muslim, christian etc. to be intolerant, his/her rights are not affected. So, what is the problem?

Why do you think I don't run around arguing against soccer? Because soccer fans/players don't deprive other's from playing their sport or, more general, living their life.

Problem for your position: the Nazis also euthanased large numbers of their nationals who were physically or mentally crippled. They also killed Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and communists.

I don't see how that is a problem. Is there some law of nature that says that an ideology can have only one terrible idea? And then, if there was a fertile ground for getting rid of jews helped by christianity, why not getting rid of other things considered nuisances and abominations? Such as homosexuals, also not considered upon in the bible.

bert wrote:

In this article (use google translate)

http://www.ibstudiehuis.nl/k/n631/news/ ... eel-2.html
it says: Only in 1963 during the second Vatican council the pope decided that the jews were not the murders of christ.

(1963 is after WWII).

i didn’t find that quote in your link, maybe I missed it.

Sorry about that, it was the wrong link. But I found it back:
http://mens-en-samenleving.infonu.nl/sociaal/35259-jodenhaatantisemitisme-joden-als-godsmoordenaar.html

Of course, the important thing was that it supported my point that there was a fertile ground provided by religion (in this case the christian religion) that some common sense picked up by learning how to think logically and critically might have mitigated.

A most forthright condemnation of Nazism written before the war was the 1937 papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_ ... ge_en.html

Perhaps you can find a more forthright and perceptive atheist condemnation of Nazism dated around that time. I’d be curious to see it.

I take it Einstein may have said something about it. I don't think that criticism of Nazism was that unique. Given your arguments about churches being under pressure, the pope's worries may have been instilled by that and not by worries about the effect of centuries of brain washing the masses done by the church itself.

And both for the nazi's and the pope: ideologies don't like competing ideologies. That takes away power and thus is a risk.

Bert

Cito di Pense wrote:
You may simply waiting to get your foot in the door so you can relate your fee-fees about the practice of abortion or the gender preferences of homosexuals. Cut to the fucking chase, already..

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Do you have any evidence on what I think of abortion or homosexuals?

Cito di Pense wrote:
The main problem with your namby-pamby deity, the one that doesn't care about homosexuality and abortion, is that it's utterly and pathetically superfluous to requirements

Having failed to misrepresent me as just wanting to talk about abortion and homosexuals, you now declare that “my” deity then is namby pamby and doesn’t care about those issues. There’s no logic in your point.

To get the record straight, AGAIN I understand “God” to be the English word for the pole or generalisation of what we can’t experiment with. One glance at the creation should tell you that pole isn’t namby pamby. It might be an empty pole, I’d grant you that.

Jayjay4547 wrote:[to Frank Merton]
The question I answered with "DNA" was "Where is this knowledge stored?". I took that to mean, where is it archived- like, in virus DNA that can last indefinitely. I tried to distinguish between "know-how" which is expressed in a living thing: e.g. the know-how in a lesser collared sunbird, to build its marvellous nest out of lichen and cobweb- and "knowledge" as text information written by people about that know-how. The person still can't make such a nest himself, he doesn't have the know-how. But he has a weak appreciation of it.

Cito di Pense wrote: So all you're interested in is waxing poetic about a bird's nest?

Wrong again, I’m interested in arguing that the understanding and presentation of evolution has been influenced and damaged by atheist ideology. By calling attention to the marvellous nature of a sunbirds nest, I’m showing what I mean by the “know-how” stored in DNA and realised in the nest building.

Here’s a pic of a sunbird nest, compared with a stone that could be an Oldowan hand axe though its small, my geologist friend who is familiar with Oldowan artefacts says cautiously it is “certainly worked”. It’s also certainly less marvellous than the nest. The nest is certainly made with know-how. And that know-how is certainly stored, well partly, in sunbird DNA.

Cito di Pense wrote:
The main problem with your namby-pamby deity, the one that doesn't care about homosexuality and abortion, is that it's utterly and pathetically superfluous to requirements. Special (divine) creation is your conclusion, but you're using it as your premise, as well, which is another mental mistake that never gets off the ground when it confronts 'atheist ideology'.

I understand “Special creation” to mean living things being poofed into this world inexplicably. You won’t find anything in my posts to support that as my conclusion or my premise. I understand natural selection to be how living things have felt out creative structures in the world. It has been a knowledge-building system.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Beliefs that are dearly held should be respected, in doing so one respects the person.

Catastrophically wrong. I respect people far too much to show contemptible beliefs anything other than contempt. If I showed your idiotic, fuckwitted beliefs the respect you think they deserve, I'd be failing to show you the respect you do deserve.

Respect beliefs?

What's the sound of the colour purple?

Jayjay4547 wrote: I understand “God” to be the English word for the pole or generalisation of what we can’t experiment with. One glance at the creation should tell you that pole isn’t namby pamby. It might be an empty pole, I’d grant you that.

That's still just a belief system, JJ. And a namby-pamby one, at that, which explains why you don't really get pissed off about comments that make fun of your namby-pamby belief system. Experimentation isn't the be all and end all for me, either, but I don't find myself waxing maudlin about what I can't get into my experiment. If you could do something else with it besides wax maudlin, like bending a spoon, I might pay more attention to what you actually are trying to say, but not quite succeeding. Why are you afraid to say it? This is the cost of trying not to get laughed at.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I understand “Special creation” to mean living things being poofed into this world inexplicably. You won’t find anything in my posts to support that as my conclusion or my premise. I understand natural selection to be how living things have felt out creative structures in the world. It has been a knowledge-building system.

This is what I mean by 'waxing maudlin',JJ. You're stringing words together, but aren't saying anything. Qu'est-ce que c'est?

hackenslash wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Beliefs that are dearly held should be respected, in doing so one respects the person.

Catastrophically wrong. I respect people far too much to show contemptible beliefs anything other than contempt. If I showed your idiotic, fuckwitted beliefs the respect you think they deserve, I'd be failing to show you the respect you do deserve.

Showing contempt for beliefs you think are wrong is one good way to be sure you never learn much. It is also rude, although I can see you don't care much about that since you are anonymous here. It is finally counterproductive; it just makes people dislike you and therefore ignore anything good you might have to say. Of course one doesn't want to be a hypocrite, and I suppose common respect is hypocritical.

Frank Merton wrote:Showing contempt for beliefs you think are wrong is one good way to be sure you never learn much.

That assertion is flatly refuted by what I have learned.

It is also rude, although I can see you don't care much about that since you are anonymous here.

Nothing to do with being anonymous, and indeed there's little anonymous about my presence here. Certainly, I use a pseudonym, but my real identity can be ascertained therefrom, not least because I use the same pseudonym everywhere, often attached to my real identity. Not to mention there are several members whom I know personally away from the forum. Your assertion is flatly refuted by reality.

I also disagree with your assessment that it is, in fact, rude. Rudeness, like respect, is something applied to people, not to ideas. More on that in a moment.

It is finally counterproductive; it just makes people dislike you and therefore ignore anything good you might have to say.

Well, I couldn't give a flying fuck whether people like, dislike or withhold opinion entirely. As for it being counter-productive, there are several things wrong with this assertion. Firstly, it relies on your assessment of what I determine productiveness to be. Secondly, it's flatly refuted once again by all those, here and elsewhere, who've expressed their thanks for what they've learned from me, and there are many. Thirdly, it's also flatly refuted by those, here and elsewhere, who have stated categorically that their minds have been changed by not only the things I've said, but the tone in which they've been delivered.

Belief isn't something to be respected, it's to be challenged. I already addressed this in the long (largely conciliatory) post to you in another thread which will, like others, probably go ignored, in the same way that my repeated requests for you to provide evidence that I have attacked or insulted you in some manner have been ignored.

Of course one doesn't want to be a hypocrite

In your case, that horse has already fucking bolted, with an instance of you erecting an unsubstantiated accusation of my having insulted you followed by your assertion that I am of lesser intelligence, an assertion that still has me rolling in the aisles.

and I suppose common respect is hypocritical.

What is it we should respect? Should we respect ideas? I would say yes, but only those ideas that have withstood critical scrutiny (among which isn't the idea you have propounded in this post). Those ideas that have failed to withstand critical scrutiny should most certainly not be respected, they should be disposed of with extreme prejudice. Those ideas that haven't been under the eye of proper critical scrutiny as yet should be treated with that critical scrutiny with no respect until they are shown to withstand it. Indeed, even those ideas that have withstood critical scrutiny should be continually subjected thereto, in the interest of not being slaves to ANY ideas. The very first idea that should be discarded is the idea that ideas should be respected.

Ideas are disposable entities, and we owe it to ourselves and each other to dispose of ideas that don't work, and to continually expose even (I would say especially) those ideas we hold most dear. My position is that respect should be awarded to people, not ideas.

In short, you're as wrong as a wrong thing on wrong juice, and yet more unevidenced ideas have been disposed of, so thanks for the opportunity to do that.

bert wrote:

According to Wikipedia, the Nazis used Cyclon B for economy, when they came to euthanase large numbers of sanatoria inmates.

The proper word is murdering.

Murder is the unlawful killing of a person. About the only terms we have for lawful killing are “justifiable homicide”, “execution” and “euthanasia” The Nazis called their Aktion T4 campaign euthanasia and their Kinder-Euthanasie policy might not have been a million miles from today’s Belgian policy. Once you start talking about taking human life it’s difficult to draw a clear line between problematic and unproblematic. For example hopelessly mentally deformed babies may be left medically unsupported so they die, same with “brain dead” accident victims. Then it seems that in the absence of capacity to make an informed decision, a doctor can decide “for” the subject. On the opposite end, you argue that everyone has the right to decide “for themselves” whether to continue living or die. It’s exactly that capacity to make a decision “for oneself” that you take as definitive.

In Switzerland they might use a poison drink as in other assisted suicide – incidentally, that is explicitly forbidden in the Hippocratic Oath.

bert wrote:
I somehow fail to see how some ancient text is necessarily be held on to. It is impossible for an old text to be wrong or partially wrong? It is impossible that it can't be improved? What could make it universal for an individual's needs and desires? (Btw, the Hippocratic oath has undergone changes since its origin too, so I fail to see any problem with it if it is supposed to be in the best interest of the person involved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath).

It’s just interesting that so long ago (500BC) it was regarded as unprofessional for a doctor to kill a patient. Modern medicine enables bodies to be kept alive when the mind is dead and that raises an ethical issue but what you are promoting as an absolute right of an individual is to take his own life Uit Vrije Wil which is directly against the ancient and respected oath. A doctor is the very last person one should ask to perform that act.

bert wrote:
My point is: Everyone should be free to think and do with his/her life what he/she wants, but is not allowed to adversely affect another person's life. I wasn't specifically going after radical islamists. I'm going after anyone (communist, religious person, nazi etc. that interferes with the life of individuals). I promote the teaching of this tolerance, and the teaching of critical thinking and the importance of observing facts.

The point of your arguing that everyone should be free to think and do with his life what he wants, in this context, is to take his own life Uit Vrije Wil-that was what you castigated Christians as bad people, for being against. I gave the example of my friend whose mother toyed with the idea of getting herself killed in a Swiss sanatorium. Can I make the issue more practical. Consider the consequences should your own mother (supposing she is still alive) decide, out of depression, to want to kill herself. Consider whether you would have a legitimate interest in that decision. Consider what the message to you would be, good or bad. I’m not asking you to discuss such issues here, recognising how serious and personal they are. I am trying to point up the difference between theory and reality and demonstrate the integral role of relationships in life. Even within the individual, the “self” that decides on suicide is lying to its “body” when it chooses a sanatorium as place and a doctor as agent, rather than the cheaper dark alley and a druggie with a gun.

bert wrote:
For religion, the matters could be easier as comparison of individual creation stories with facts about evolution and the universe could help to foster some relativization which I think is necessary to allow for tolerance (and avoid the slippery slopes that have been demonstrated for religion in the past, any time a religious book is taken too seriously/literally. Any religious person who believes in an omnipotent power, should have the trust that his favorite deity is capable of dealing with the sinner after the sinner dies. Without a videomessage or other evidence that his favorite deity told him differently, the religious person is not allowed to take action agains the sinner. So, if misspelling is a problem, I'll accept the consequences.).

There isn’t a slippery slope for taking religion too seriously. Generally the more devout, the more God fearing a group, the less trouble. The Holocaust, the Tutsi massacre, the Singhalese attacks on the Tamils, all driven by secular and economic issues in which religion was only a minor issue, if it appeared at all.

As I see it, you are promoting quite dangerous social views which are also technically interesting as revealing an atheist privileging of the expressive aspect of the individual above other aspects of the individual and other people.

bert wrote: I fail to see an atheist privilege. We share the same universe, so facts about the cosmos and evolution are the same for you and me. As you can read and has been explained to you, this would not result in an atheist privilege.

That’s not what I mean by “atheist privileging”. I mean, the atheist ideology ranks the expressive aspect of the individual above other aspects of the individual and other people. So for example the speaking aspect of the atheist gives itself the right to decide whether the whole organism is to survive, discounting also however family or friends or wider society might be affected. Call it selfish.

bert wrote: Everyone is allowed to do, think and live as they see suited. But restriction of that by others based on religious (and communist etc.) ideologies should stop. Your religion is *your* religion. You don't have to mary someone of the same sex. You don't have to die by euthanasia, etc. You just don't have the right to stop someone from making that choice.

I agree that people should marry who they choose. But society should not allow euthanasia for depression, for reasons I outlined. Especially destructive is the notion that specifically old people should have that “right”. That would be interpreted by enough people as meaning that old people have less worth because they have stopped being productive members of society, they have had “completed” life “Voltooid Leven”. I see, that is promoted by the Netherlands Humanist Association Hey Dad, happy 70th birthday!, Now you have the right to go somewhere and get topped. Hey no pressure Dad. . And of course, old people would come to value themselves less, accordingly.

bert wrote: Why do you think I don't run around arguing against soccer? Because soccer fans/players don't deprive other's from playing their sport or, more general, living their life.

Firstly, the very moderate Dutch churches have got a legitimate interest in expressing an opinion whether people over 70 should have the right to suicide irrespective of their medical circumstances. Because recognition of such a supposed right would affect everyone, as I said. The very ideology that claims such an individual right could rightly be classified by the churches as corrosive or evil.

Secondly, religion is about the issue of where the person is located in the world, whether on top, or in some middle place. That is a profound issue, unlike soccer.

bert wrote:

Problem for your position: the Nazis also euthanased large numbers of their nationals who were physically or mentally crippled. They also killed Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and communists.

I don't see how that is a problem. Is there some law of nature that says that an ideology can have only one terrible idea? And then, if there was a fertile ground for getting rid of jews helped by christianity, why not getting rid of other things considered nuisances and abominations? Such as homosexuals, also not considered upon in the bible.

Terrible ideas tend to have a unity. The unifying Herrenvolk idea, with the notion of legitimate competition, justified wiping out whoever marched to a different drum.

bert wrote:
it says: Only in 1963 during the second Vatican council the pope decided that the jews were not the murders of christ.
http://mens-en-samenleving.infonu.nl/sociaal/35259-jodenhaatantisemitisme-joden-als-godsmoordenaar.html

Of course, the important thing was that it supported my point that there was a fertile ground provided by religion (in this case the christian religion) that some common sense picked up by learning how to think logically and critically might have mitigated.

Thinking logically and critically has brought you to the opinion that people have an inalienable right to take their own lives. or to get someone dressed like a doctor, in a place looking like a hospital, to do it for them. It’s overrated.

bert wrote:

A most forthright condemnation of Nazism written before the war was the 1937 papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_ ... ge_en.html

Perhaps you can find a more forthright and perceptive atheist condemnation of Nazism dated around that time. I’d be curious to see it.

I take it Einstein may have said something about it. I don't think that criticism of Nazism was that unique. Given your arguments about churches being under pressure, the pope's worries may have been instilled by that and not by worries about the effect of centuries of brain washing the masses done by the church itself.

I see you have no trouble capitalsing “Einstein”, unlike “christ” and “jezus” Anyway, Einstein wasn’t an atheist – see Wikipedia’s entry Religious views of Albert Einstein”

...preferring, he said, "an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

Right On!

bert wrote: And both for the nazi's and the pope: ideologies don't like competing ideologies. That takes away power and thus is a risk.

Nazis did actually compete, making the Catholic Church’s life extremely difficult. Much of the argument in Mit Brennender Sorge is more broadly against atheism than just against Nazism. These days atheism is freewheeling along but in the interwar years Christianity faced three powerful, hostile and violent dictators Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin - all seeming to presage the world of the future.

I'm sincerely sorry this post is so long.

edit: typo, grammar, 2 meanings

hackenslash wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: Beliefs that are dearly held should be respected, in doing so one respects the person.

Catastrophically wrong. I respect people far too much to show contemptible beliefs anything other than contempt. If I showed your idiotic, fuckwitted beliefs the respect you think they deserve, I'd be failing to show you the respect you do deserve.

A bit like corrective rape then. The victim is fucked and yet supposed to be grateful.

hackenslash wrote: [To Frank Merton]

Well, I couldn't give a flying fuck whether people like, dislike or withhold opinion entirely. As for it being counter-productive, there are several things wrong with this assertion. Firstly, it relies on your assessment of what I determine productiveness to be. Secondly, it's flatly refuted once again by all those, here and elsewhere, who've expressed their thanks for what they've learned from me, and there are many. Thirdly, it's also flatly refuted by those, here and elsewhere, who have stated categorically that their minds have been changed by not only the things I've said, but the tone in which they've been delivered.

So corrective rape works. Could you scout through all those who’ve expressed their thanks, for an example to bring here?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: I understand “God” to be the English word for the pole or generalisation of what we can’t experiment with. One glance at the creation should tell you that pole isn’t namby pamby. It might be an empty pole, I’d grant you that.

That's still just a belief system, JJ. And a namby-pamby one, at that, which explains why you don't really get pissed off about comments that make fun of your namby-pamby belief system.

I don’t really get pissed off because I see that’s what you want me to become. I use the technique of always sleeping over offensive posts.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I understand “Special creation” to mean living things being poofed into this world inexplicably. You won’t find anything in my posts to support that as my conclusion or my premise. I understand natural selection to be how living things have felt out creative structures in the world. It has been a knowledge-building system.

This is what I mean by 'waxing maudlin',JJ. You're stringing words together, but aren't saying anything. Qu'est-ce que c'est?

I don’t know what that French (?) means and I’m not sure you understand what “maudlin” means. Maybe you do but are just stringing words together.

hackenslash wrote:
Ideas are disposable entities, and we owe it to ourselves and each other to dispose of ideas that don't work, and to continually expose even (I would say especially) those ideas we hold most dear.

Ideas are a bit different from beliefs, which are what I claimed should be respected. Ideas apply to that part of the world we can experiment with while beliefs are about our attempts to connect to what is greater than us. The belief is a tool of access. In trying to make that connection the believer humbles himself and becomes vulnerable. If you jeer at that belief you are jeering at the attempt, which is an integral part of the personality.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The victim is fucked and yet supposed to be grateful.

'Grateful' implies that there is such a thing as a free 'gift'.

Where do you get the idea anyone expects you to be grateful? Anyway, your resentfulness is more in evidence, which is a more reasonable response to a 'gift'.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A bit like corrective rape then. The victim is fucked and yet supposed to be grateful.

What the holy fuck are you blathering about?

So corrective rape works. Could you scout through all those who’ve expressed their thanks, for an example to bring here?

If they wish to make themselves known, I'm sure they will. Far be it from me to disclose the personal info of others.

Ideas are a bit different from beliefs, which are what I claimed should be respected. Ideas apply to that part of the world we can experiment with while beliefs are about our attempts to connect to what is greater than us. The belief is a tool of access. In trying to make that connection the believer humbles himself and becomes vulnerable. If you jeer at that belief you are jeering at the attempt, which is an integral part of the personality.

Really? Where do you get this distinction, other than directly from your rectum? A belief is simply an idea held with conviction or, to quote Oxton-Bolt, a belief is not an idea the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind. Far from being an attempt to connect to what is greater, it's an attempt to avoid ever having to do so. In reality, the principle that ideas are disposable is the real attempt to connect, because it engenders enquiry. Belief stymies it.

hackenslash wrote:

So corrective rape works. Could you scout through all those who’ve expressed their thanks, for an example to bring here?

If they wish to make themselves known, I'm sure they will. Far be it from me to disclose the personal info of others.

Oh come on, you made this claim to Frank Merton about the benefits of showing contempt for beliefs:

hackenslash wrote: As for it being counter-productive, there are several things wrong with this assertion. Firstly, it relies on your assessment of what I determine productiveness to be. Secondly, it's flatly refuted once again by all those, here and elsewhere, who've expressed their thanks for what they've learned from me, and there are many.

My bolding. Once a post is placed here it’s public and anyone is free to quote from it. So please, support your claim with a quote.