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  • Is God's nature good because God declares it to be so, or does God declare it good because it adhere

    @RickeyHoltsclaw

    This is a debate site; not a church. There are places for us offline if we wish to seek religious or spirtual guidance. We don't need it from you! As you have arrogantly taken it upon yourself as the religious authority for what you follow then perhaps create a church of your own and preach there. 
    There is a great quote from the Bible itself on this: "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain". Some followers of these ideologies become prideful of the level of their dedication to it and start considering themselves an authority, which is precisely against what the book teaches.

    Buddhists know this very well so that is at the cornerstone of the idea of "enlightenment". The process goes as follows: initially the ignorant monk believes that "enlightenment" is that incredible state achieving which is all the life is about and tells everyone about how great he is that he strives towards achieving it. Then he realizes that it is not something you ever achieve, but something you constantly move towards. And finally he gets it: the very journey he has taken is what life truly is about, and learning this lesson humbles him and makes him realize that he is no better or wiser than anyone else - and nor should he be. We all have our own paths full of obstacles and deviations.

    Not endorsing any of these ideas, but, of all these religions have to offer, these are not the worst ones to take seriously for their followers.




    ZeusAres42 said:
    Exactly. I also wonder at times if some people confuse moral absolutism with moral objectivism. Perhaps a deity is needed for absolute morality? By 'objective,' I mean a basis for what follows, albeit morality is still subjective in its experience and application. Regardless of all these philosophical distinctions and the varied subjective experiences of morality, it seems that, ultimately, we are all striving toward the same moral destination.  @MayCaesar
    This is a great point. I think it can be compared to the relationship between physics and the real world. The real world is absolute, it is just there, it is observable and interactable. Our models of this world, however, are not absolute, and one can model the same world in an infinite number of different ways - however, they are objective in that they capture the properties of reality that are measurable and testable independently of the particular observer. Our search for those models, in turn, is subjective: we build them based on our intuition, experience and knowledge, and two different scientists can look at the same data and model it differently.

    Subjectivity comes from the fact that each of us searches for morals individually, and objectivity comes from the fact that moral choices have real consequences, and adopting a particular system of models has serious implications on one's life independent of their opinion of the morals. There can, I suppose, be "absolute morals" in the sense that, if this world is designed by another sentient being, that being may have had a particular behavior of its inhabitants in mind - and deviations from this behavior are a consequence of errors in the design. It would be strange to blame the inhabitants themselves for it though, given how they were not the ones who made those errors. It would be like writing a computer program, making a mistake, and blaming the computer for not producing the result one wants.

    In any case, your last sentence is spot on: while we all use different tools and approaches to develop and polish our moral systems, the ideal is the same. Everyone wants to be happy, fulfilled, have great relationship with other humans and solid grounding in their own values. What actions get us there is something we all try our best to figure out.
    ZeusAres42
  • God is far more evil than the Devil?

    @RickeyHoltsclaw

    And yet your futile rebuttal trying to isolate the KJV as an errant translation you provide evidence that just ain't so...

    American Standard Version
    I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things.

    Aramaic Bible in Plain English
    For he formed light and he created darkness, he made peace and he created evil. I AM LORD JEHOVAH, I who have done all these things
    ZeusAres42
  • What Book Has Had The Most Impact On You?

    Most likely this one: "Mathematics can be fun" by Yakov Perelman.

    https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Can-Fun-Yakov-Perelman/dp/B000W18X5Q

    My cunning parents sneaked it into my bedroom when I was around 8. At that time I was just a silly kid who liked running around and getting into trouble, but also was crazy about all kinds of puzzles, board games and the like. I loathed math at school and thought it an exercise in the ability to tolerate the most boring stuff in the Universe.

    But, as it happens, eventually I got my hands on this book; I was 10 or so. What can I say... It shook my entire world. I found indescribable beauty in all those examples of seemingly complicated problems solved easily upon making a neat observation such as some unexpected symmetry. I remember very well the chapter describing a method of telling how much money is in a pile of coin by simply weighting it and then applying an algorithm based on the fact that all numbers in question can be "primized" (i.e. bijectively converted into primes). So many ways to approach the problem, so much complexity - and such an elegant solution based on one simple property that any child can understand.

    I have delved in quite a few STEM fields, but if I were to describe myself in as concise a way as possible, I would call myself an "applied mathematician". I love taking a complicated problem from a field I have only recently familiarized myself with, building a mathematical model of the relevant objects, noting some non-obvious properties (requiring a well developed intuition which can only come as a consequence of thousands of hours put into this kind of thinking) and simplifying the model as a consequence, then letting the model run and seeing what happens.

    Needless to say, without that book, I would never have become what I am. I would probably have chosen some money-making career in finance or something, never discovering that one's job can be one's hobby, something they would do for free, yet something others are willing to pay fortunes for. Can you think of many other hobbies like that, easily monetizable?! Few people make fortunes by playing hockey, or doing rock-climbing, or eating delicious cheesecakes. But logical puzzles encompassed in applied mathematics - why, people are spending billions of dollars just so we could have a lot of fun and write a report or two at the very end. We have the privilege of going to work as if we were going to a cinema theater or a chess club, getting paid exorbitant amounts, having a blast throughout the whole process - and then, as the last benefit, having everyone tells us how smart we are. "You are a mathematician? Wow!!! You must be very smart!" The latter is a lie: I am secretly a huge dumbass. But I happen to be somewhat decent at what I do, and I am all too happy to "upplay" it.
    John_C_87JulesKorngold
  • How Much Should We Trust Science?

    @Dee
    Either way you're still claiming your mother is not Jewish yet the state of Israel disagrees with you
    She may be Jewish by religion, but she is not Hebrew by descent or ethnicity.
    John_C_87
  • Any Chess Fans Here

    Gangsta


    DeeJohn_C_87
  • Doest Google and Facebook = the biggest privacy threats in existence?

    Doest Google and Facebook = the biggest privacy threats in existence?


    Privacy went for most many years ago. I have a government ID card every bit of relevant information is on this from taxation,  drivers license, medical record etc, etc,  the card itself to me is so convenient as it allows me instant access to any service I require which saves so much trouble

    I think far to many people get paranoid regards so called invasions of privacy,mostly it's just different companies targeting you for specific goods you showed interest in 

    Our mobile phones and I-pads are an incredible piece of technology, and , it's incredible how they have totally changed societies, many years ago I remember ringing my wife from a phone box on Inis Mór the largest of the Aran islands,  off the coast of Galway; 
    the phone operator was asking me to place anther coin in the slot and press button B to connect to the mainland as the spray from the waves smashed against the phone booth 

    In my wildest dreams did I think we would have technology like this, kids and younger adults nowadays would I think suffer depression or worse if this technology was taken away overnight , the worst aspect of this technology is that it's bred incredible impatience in people, only last week I was ordering books online and muttering at the screen "will you ever  hurry to f---k up" 

    Have we got more than we lost with this technology?
    John_C_87
  • Are races Equal?

    There is only 1 race, the human race. Sure some people have darker skin than others but we all part of 1 species, there are no subspecies. The only way to defeat racism is to acknowledge this.

    "Worse, the only explanation that this demographic could come up with to explain why certain ethnicities were always a crime and welfare problem in every western country they inhabited, was it was "all the white guys fault.""

    Well I have a better explanation: It's because these ethnicities have built up bad cultural institutions. An Example would include:

    These are not inherent. We can change the lives of blacks(and all people) by incentivizing good cultural institutions like school choice, nuclear family, etc. 
    jackJohn_C_87
  • Doest Google and Facebook = the biggest privacy threats in existence?



    You made some good point that I agree with and some others that not so much. I will get back to this. Anyway, I posting as I found it interesting that the site https://brax.me/geo/ was able to find the exact road that I live on. This is on a browser that I have not used for some years, I also used a VPN, and changed the user agent string. But that apparently didn't matter.


    Mind you that could be due to the VPN I was using being useless. It doesn't even have a kill switch for instance. Other alternatives I can think of is due to fingerprints being stored from past years although that seems unlikely considering these are AI's doing this analytical stuff.

    John_C_87
  • Should it be illegal to question the Covid vaccine?

    yes of course you can question it but it should be compulsory to have the vaccine nontheless
    Because making the vaccine mandatory will convince vaccine skeptics to get vaccinated, right? Because it seems that you think we should just forego any engaging with vaccine skeptics and just go straight to enforcement. Or do you think it may actually be possible to convince the vast majority of the population to willfully get vaccinated and we reach herd protection without any mandate? As of now, there are no plans for any federal government entities to institute a mandate on covid vaccinations, so why do you think we should have one?    
    ZeusAres42
  • Dreaming?

    So I have been sitting at my laptop debating with my self to see if Dreaming is a form of time travel. I come t believe that dreaming is a form of time travel and I wanna know if anybody is thinking or even catching my drift
    John_C_87

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