flimsy moral standards? Lets see here.
If I were to shoot your wife, would you have a problem with that?
-michael martin
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An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
Jack Sparrow,
How did the male and female types within each species evolve? How can you explain their existence naturalistically? We need both of them, true, but what in natural selection would have caused the differences to exist? That is the question I asked, not what the roles of the ancients were.
I blame the Hermaphrodites meself, arrrr Jim lad and shiver me timbers.
Ramen.
Swabbies Bucket,
I know you asked me not to reply to you, but I just wanted to apologize. Obviously, I misinterpreted the nature of this website. Forgive me. I will go. I meant no disrespect to your church.
If any one would like to continue conversation with me they can email me at healthydebatedialogue@yahoo.com
Peace
@Nic
Oh dear nic, now you are going to have to climb a really really big tree (with lots and lots of branches) and you are going to have to get out an evolutionary ladder to do it.
If I have the energy later, I’m going to have to start talking to you about all sorts of things, incliding microbes, plants and early organisms that gradually migrated out of the sea onto land.
Oh dear!
OK, I don’t know wheather or not you’ll find these guys on goole or not but I personaly have a hunch that they had a lot to do with Hitler’s, and most of germany’s attitude towards Jews and started the whole purity thing too pre WW2: The Flagellants, I’ve been thinking about these guys almost from the first day I came on the site and somebody(fundie of course) was saying that Hitler and his followers were non-belivers.(I just couldn’t remember their names.) It’s total rubbish of course. He thought he was doing God’s work by punishing the Jews,(and also that god told him to but I’m still looking for that info) and talked the rest of Germany into going along with it by appealing to their faith. Look these Flagellants up, if you find nothing, try Russia’s version: The Skoptzy ……Crazy-ass fundies I tell ya. Gotta go , busy day;>
And sperm and eggs and male/female reproductive sructures and….and….. why sex become the prominant method of perpetuationg the species in animals, but asexual reproduction is still the mechanism used by some other organisms ect ect ect.
@Tagliatellius Dec 3rd, 2006 at 3:18 pm
“I blame the Hermaphrodites meself, arrrr Jim lad and shiver me timbers.
Ramen.”
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I like your answer better. I just started thinking about all the fish that change their sex.
Nic is definitely not Dr. Martin. To whomever asked: Dr. Martin works for the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, MD. Nic never mentioned Yale once and his thrust is slightly different than the good doc’s. I actually enjoy Nic because he elicits such good reactions in my fellow pirates, especially Gill, whom I enjoy immensely.
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Thanks everyone! Well done!
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Oh, and to whoever asked: God doesn’t hate homosexuals, he hates homosexuality. Hahahahahahahahahaha! What does God care what I do in bed? Now telling me not to eat pork and shellfish is one thing, but telling me who I can fall in love with? That is NUTS.
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One third of the American population is evangelical. The majority of people in the Republican party are evangelical (the rest are fat white men looking to protect their ill-gotten wealth). If the Republicans lose their evangelical base they are dead meat. One third of the country is ruling the other two thirds. The Republicans must bow to their evangelical masters and legislate the perpetuation of their religion. This is why the politics of religion is important. But Nic the Fundy will never take this on.
Nic. You can blame HIV on peoples sexual immorality. What about the children born of HIV +ve mothers? That is what I meant by the sins of the fathers (original sin).
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You say that the one hundred and forty four thousand is a symbolic number. Yet you continue by saying that the bible, in its original form, is absolute. I’m not that bright but, to me, that is a contradiction. Unless, of course, we can interpret the bible.
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Nic - I was (am???) a Christian. I was baptised (full swimming pool job) and am still a member of the Methodist Church. I don’t attend. The idea that, when people are sick, 1. God is testing them,2. they have sinned 3. they are blessed. Sorry, can’t do that.
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RAmen (or as the Masons say - so mote it be - PS NOT a mason)
nic, the reason these differences occur is because of random generation of chromosomes.
Every human has 2 chromosomes. There are 2 types of chromosomes, x, and y. females have 2 x chromosomes.
males have 1 x and 1 y.
The first chromosome is always and x and the second has a 50 percent chance of being x, and a 50 percent chance of being y.
When the child is in the mothers uterus, the babys body develops in a way that the chromosome directs.
Don’t ask anything more than that. I’m a friggin 12 year old, not a genetic biologist.
BTW Nic - I’ve seen someone die of AIDS.
@Nic Dec 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
“How did the male and female types within each species evolve? How can you explain their existence naturalistically? We need both of them, true, but what in natural selection would have caused the differences to exist? That is the question I asked, not what the roles of the ancients were.”
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Better still nic, if you have came back to read these posts, have a look at the bascis given on the wikki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sex
“Sex allows reconstruction of mutation-free individuals”
Main article: Muller’s ratchet
In a finite asexual population under the pressure of deleterious mutations, the random loss of individuals without such mutations is inevitable. This is known as Muller’s ratchet. In a sexual population, however, mutation-free genotypes can be restored by recombination of genotypes containing deleterious mutations.
This comparison will only work for a small population - in a large population, random loss of the most fit genotype becomes unlikely even in an asexual population……..”
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Then maybe you should read “The Selfish Gene”
by Richard Dawkins.
Hope this helps!
RAmen
Nic:
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(Assuming you haven’t really abandoned this discussion…)
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“You wrote, ‘”God did it” is, in my opinion, intellectual abdication. It answers nothing and shuts down further inquiry.’ – No it doesn’t. It just helps you see where and how to look. It is a presuppostional lens, just like atheism.”
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I’d answer, but Capt. Sparrow did a better job than I would have.
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“You wrote that there may ‘possibly be no answer at all’ for the existence of an absolute moral standard. – How? There is either an absolute moral standard or there is not.”
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Sigh. Do check out Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem. It proves mathematically that no mathematical system can be both complete and consistent. Since we’re discussing this in a logical (a branch of mathematics) system, there most certainly can be unaddressed elements.
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“There has to be a reason for the existence or the non-existence of that standard. You are getting a little mystically absurd at this point.”
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Why must there be a reason? If you examine that statement, I think you’ll find that your justification is that it would make you uneasy to have to simply accept the (possibly temporary, possibly not) ambiguity of the situation. It’s not mysticism, it’s mathematics as it applies to ontology. _Ibid_ Goedel.
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“I wrote. ‘If there is a moral absolute it does not necessitate the existence of God; however, it does negate the atheistic presuppositions.’ You wrote, ‘Nope. Just your own straw man statement of atheistic presuppositions.’ – So explain to me how an absolute moral standard could be inherent in a system of matter & energy + time & chance? ”
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Deeper sigh. (a), you have yet to establish that such an absolute moral standard exists. Not doing so or failing to find an explanation for it does not disprove its existence. (b) Invoking a deity as an explanation does not satisfy me. Perhaps “It Just Is”. Ascribing it to a deity adds nothing to the discussion because that deity cannot be probed concerning it. To claim to know something about such a deity reduces that deity to a “card sharp of physics” and all the followers to mindless drones. As Kirkegaard pointed out, the truly faithful abhors the miracle. To attempt to pin down a deity is blasphemous toward that deity. In terms you might better understand (and it bothers me to do this, but so be it), Thou Shalt Not Take Thy Lord’s Name In Vain. In yet other words, quit claiming knowledgte of God’s nature to support your position. I don’t believe you.
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You might want to check out the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic.
Uber-long post, beware.
Nic—Obviously if someone goes and kills my family I’d be a tad ticked off and want them punished. It’s not that I’m ‘comfortable’ with relative morality; it’s that it EXISTS, whether I personally like it or not. The standards of society decide what is right and what is wrong, and standards change over time. Whether the standards in question are good or not isn’t the point.
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“People choose to go to hell, because they choose to remain separated from God.†This is a little off-topic, but I just feel the need to point something out: in the simplest terms, using that phrase, god does not allow people who don’t love him into heaven. Maybe that seems fair to you. After all, why hang out with people who don’t like you? But just because they don’t like you doesn’t mean they’re horrible people. Not allowing otherwise-good individuals to heaven because they don’t ‘like youâ€â€”or have doubts as to your existence—is a prideful maneuver, whether it’s a CORRECT maneuver or not. This makes god prideful, which is supposedly the deadliest of all deadly sins.
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““Why must people suffer for your beliefs - those with multiple sclerosis and other illness that could be cured through stem-cell research?†– I should probably let gill, jingles or One Eyed Jack answer this question for you since they are all so skilled in illustrating why the majority has the right to determine what is moral.â€â€”I believe you are missing the point. Slavery: it was thought to be good once, now it’s bad. Right? There. An example of changing morals. You can feel a certain way on an issue all you want; I think slavery is inhumane and wrong. If such a situation somehow arose I’d try to stop it. I personally think I’m correct in thinking slavery’s wrong. But a slave owner would disagree with me. This has nothing to do with which one of us is right—the very fact that we disagree at all is what makes morals non-absolute.
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“Imagine you are in pre 9/11 Afghanistan. A group of men kidnap you and kill you. Why? 1.) You are unwilling to bow to Allah. 2.) You let some one see your pretty little nose. 3.) You are a Jew. 4.) It is the moral thing for these men, who are faithful Muslims, living in a society of faithful Muslims to do.
/
Is wrong for them to murder you? Or to please One Eyed Jack let me rephrase the question: Is it wrong for them to “kill†you?†–Yes. According to my morals and the mostly-universal idea that human life is sacred, it is wrong for them to kill me. I think I’m right on that fact, and I don’t think you’d disagree with me. But does that mean the moral is absolute? No. As mentioned above, the right/wrong person here has nothing to do with it. The fact that the killer in the above scenario would see it otherwise means the moral cannot be absolute. To give another example, whether Christianity is right or wrong, the fact that not everyone believes in its teachings means that it is not the ‘absolute’ religion. (I know you never said it was, just illustrating.)
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“You are getting a little mystically absurd at this point.†Are you kidding? We ALL got a little ‘mystically absurd’ a long time ago! :)
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Y’know, through all of this the thought comes to mind that if people could just take a step back and realize how silly it is to argue god/no god back and forth, the world’d be a lot happier. I mean, I may think there is one, but do I care if other people agree/disagree with me? Not a whole lot. It’s a personal choice and it’s not something that can be forced on to someone, after all. ‘Don’t pester me about your religion and I won’t pester you about mine’ should really be a law. Last time I checked, no matter what the bible or the Ten Commandments or my second cousin twice removed says, what you believe in religion-wise boils down to faith. You can’t prove god is there, and if you can’t prove god is there then you can’t go around acting as if it’s *been* proven and the ‘poor hell-bound atheists’ are just being stubborn. And you REALLY can’t prove which religion is right out of all of them!
That was entirely off-topic, I just had to get it out.
—-
-Jingles—Hah, I’m younger then that! (This time next Thursday I’ll be 18, and the idea’s freaking the crap outta me.)
I have also seen someone with AIDS die. It is horrible. The bible was used in my great grandfather’s time to justify slavery. In both the old and new testaments slavery is sanctioned. It is also used to this very day for the subjugation of women. Evil, evil instrument of the devil, that book…
@ Jingles and Gill. You poor old dears ;)
gill - 18 - you sod. The problem with getting older is that your mind refuses to believe it. I still want to walk around with long black crimped hair (with interesting red bits). People would laugh at me though (they did before).
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Happy birthday for Thursday.
Thanks! I still look like I’m about 12, though, sooo….(I can’t tell you how many times a cop has seen me driving by and thought I was underage and stole the darn car or something.)
OOM. It was the most awful thing I have seen. He was a colleagues son. He was admitted to the hospital I was working at with chest pains - his chest XR showed massive pleural effusions. He had pneumonia.
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He walked in, seemingly healthy. Two weeks later he was dead.
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Nic - explain?
Turning 18 in Australia is a big deal as it is legal drinking and voting age!