And far beyond the point. Government has no right in regulating a person's personal happiness.

They do if your personal happiness effects other individuals without their consent.

Some people are only happy via substance abuse. You don't know anything about other people.

No, they aren't really happy only via it. It's just their only way to attempt to be comfortable. You think most addled drug addicts are sitting in their own filth, happily injecting heroine? No, they're miserable, and the drugs are the only thing keeping them from offing themselves.

This isn't to say I think drugs should be illegal. But in a way, it's better for a drug addict to be in prison where he gets hot meals then killing himself miserably. One is slavery to freedom, one is slavery to order, the difference is that one has more comforts in this hypothetical case.

But drugs being illegal is truly a crime, indeed. They should be legal and taxed, so that people can use them without sitting in their own filth in fear.

If only the world was as simple and easy as you make it seem. I wish I had your life.

Life is simple. I learned by suffering it. It's only complicated if people let it be.

(politicians and lobbyists)

Politicians, yes. Lobbyists, no. I can support one without supporting the other. Your logic is a fallacy.

So you just have MORE faith in the people who write the laws if you're willing to ignore the "faith" you have in people to live freely without "hurting" themselves.

I don't 'ignore' my faith in others, I'm simply not willing to risk people's well being for faith's sake alone.

However, in the end, the choice is their own.

Why should it be? Unless they are a nameless nobody who dies unheard of at every point in time other then birth, then their choice will effect others.

You are not some mighty God who can dictate who can truly recover and who can't, or what personal decisions are the best.

No, but I can regulate things so that people who CAN dictate such things with accuracy have the power to dictate such things. Like doctors, family, and close friends.

If I cannot be accurate, I can be generic in an efficient way. I will not sacrifice people's well-being for anything less.

Therapists are not police. For good reason, they don't support coercion, in general

Because they understand that you can make someone emotionally damaged and uncomfortable when you force things upon them. This is why laws should give more incentive then punishment... but how that can be done without significant suffering being caused, I'm not sure.

You're wanting to arrest people for something as so subjective as personal suffering.

Personal suffering is not subjective. Unless you are nobody, nowhere, everything that involves you or your choice also effects others.

Also, no, I don't want to arrest people for drinking... they can drink in bars and in their homes. If they walk into public or use a vehicle (depending upon the state), that's when it's a problem.

Drinking excessively isn't suffering.

So I suppose having liver disease isn't suffering either, right?

Not that pointing this out is even pertinent. There's no law against drinking excessively unless you harm/attempt to harm/risk harming others when you drink excessively, which is how it should be.

Lobbyists are people hired by special interests to write laws and push them unto politicians. Both anti-tobacco and tobacco advocates have lobbyists.

And so what?

Just because I support government doesn't mean I support bribery.

Hey, that's what I've been advocating the whole time. good thing you finally agree with me.

Tehpgy pls, y u do dis?

How we get this far and it end up being some sort of misunderstanding? ಠ_ಠ

In order to be civil, I will ignore any arguments where you try pushing this unto here.

I wasn't being joking. I was so baffled by statements where I claim you drunk that I actually wonder if you were drunk. It was not insulting or insinuating, it was literal wonder and consideration in the midst of being stupefied.

Hitler felt that Jews and their Capitalist greed was responsible for global suffering. He enacted legislation barring people from committing voluntary exchange among each other for he felt that on many it led to evils and suffering.

Hitler did not consider Jews as being equal to other people. I do. You're watering down a generic statement into it's worse possible conclusion. So what if it's statist? Statism, as I read it's definition, is the belief that government should exist in at least a minimum size. What you're thinking of is far more extreme then statism.

The only global suffering that I find preventable is the legislation enacted by a tyrant against it's people, specifically the united states legislation barring us from voluntary trade and consent.

It's not tyrannical to prevent children from making adult choices.

And if that's the only suffering you find preventable, then that's a tad depressing. You shouldn't give up on such a thing at a line. You should desire to prevent it at all costs. But alas, not everyone is me.

So really, if you REALLY want to "end suffering" by enacting legislation, you should test people for sleep deprivation. This is possible, dontchaknow.

Then that to should have traffic laws around it, like alcohol does.

What you advocate is a systematic approach to forcing others to comply to your sense of morality.

My sense of morality is obsessively thought over in the fetal position. It has far more credibility then someone who is willing to take risks on people's well-being.

An act of force against someone who is not forcing their will upon you is always immoral.

Whether you intended to hit someone in your car after you got drunk or not is irrelevant. There should be preventive measures to stop that situation from happening in the first place.

Drugs should not be illegal. I agree with this. But they should be regulated like alcohol. Because whether you intend to harm someone while under their influence or not is irrelevant, because when under their influence, you can harm people. Law should give you incentive to be smart and not harm people while under their influence. Whether that incentive is fear or not is not the fault of the law or the lawmaker. If you break it, you pay a price. If you fear the price you'd be paying, that's the incentive you form from it. It doesn't force you to fear.

And if you just behave responsibly, you have no reason to let yourself feel fear either.

...are just paranoid?

All of the things you listed here actually have reason to fear that isn't imagined.

This fear that the government is tyrannical because they don't want children making adult decisions is imagined, illogical, and thus paranoid.

Try again.

So i guess slaves who submitted to their masters were the only people who weren't "paranoid."

We are not slaves if nothing valuable is being taken away.

Your school of thought only changes with the time.

My way of thinking does not change with time because it's not what you are assume it is.

The point is that your laws based on personal morality directly prevent the voluntary, consensual acts between individuals.

If two people conspire and act that results in others getting harmed, I'm going to regulate it. Don't like it? Too bad. My morality is thought out intricately, and ultimately it's very simple. You don't get to do things that harm other people. End of story.

And if the thing you are being prevented from doing isn't quintessential to your personal happiness, then you have no reason to complain. If you complain because your 'freedom' is being threatened, then your plight is imagined for the sake of complaining. It's like when a child sits on a pet, nearly killing it, so the parent puts the pet away from the child, and so the child throws a tantrum. The only difference here from that is you're trying to argue on a basis of a principle that doesn't even relate to reality.

So, you can't drink and drive, so it's tyranny? How about, no, it's not tyranny, it's just practical so you don't hurt or kill some sod or group of sods.

On the subject of having age restrictions, it's the same thing. It's practical to not let children make adult decisions because they don't have the same judgement as adults. Period.

What benefits? you have yet to provide any evidence towards this "benefit" that you keep speaking of.

The benefit is mathematical. You're willing to risk things because you have an impractical principle with no application upon reality. I am not. What does anyone gain for their lives from having no age restrictions? Nothing. What does anyone have to loose from there being are restrictions? Nothing. What does anyone have to loose from having age restrictions? Nothing.

What does anyone have to loose from there being no age restrictions? Possibly their well being.

In your world, the one with the most influence in congress wins.

Not at all.

The middle-ground isn't the end all winner. And for good reason, as you pointed out, it's not realistic.

And does it being an unrealistic utopia mean it's not something to aspire and work towards?

Absolutely not. We should work to better ourselves at no one else's expense, and then work to better others at no expense to ourselves. Not simply stop trying and go with something set in stone. We should be trying to improve.

So what you're claiming is that your beliefs are superior to others, therefore, laws should be passed preventing others from living a personally free life just because they conflict with your beliefs on how people should live their lives.

Loosing a personal freedom not quintessential to being happy is like having never lost a freedom at all. My views are not about taking things from people I don't like. My views are about taking things from people that hurt them, whatever the relevant harm that may be (physical, psychological, emotional, etc).

Right, like laws against being gay. Thanks.

Again, not relevant to anything I believe. Never was, never has been. And yet you wonder why I call you a drunk asshole...

although, if you really pushed for laws to be passed, I'd discover what you love to do and just make it illegal

You seem to think I'd push for laws that regulate things out of spite, which is not what I have been saying. I'd only push for regulations on things that hurt people, by people.

If you'd just try and outlaw something out of spite that I do, the only care I'd have would be over the fact that you are truly spiteful and just don't care about others, which has nothing to do with my view.

How noble. I still don't trust you.

And I don't trust you, considering your entire argument is just a temper tantrum over not getting to do pointless things. Like a child smacking another child with a toy, and having that toy taken away. So you cry and cry and cry. Only right now you're trying to justify it by saying 'freedom' is important, even though what's being taken from you doesn't effect your ability to be happy; you simply are imagining a plight for yourself and making yourself unhappy, childishly.

The passing of special interest laws that may or may not restrict personal freedom

Lobbyists are unneeded to pass special interest laws.

Just because you think they're required for what I'm saying doesn't mean I like them or think they are required for what I'm saying.

So what if it's unrealistic? It's just as ridiculous as everyone in the world having a weapon. The point is that weapons help cause violence. Less weapons existing equals less violence.

1 + 1 = 2

1 + 0 = 1

Logic.

If a weapon caused more good them harm, then it would not be a weapon, because a weapon, as a prerequisite, causes harm.

Chatturgha, right and wrong is subjected to culture, morals that you have, and law of the land.

No, they are deeper then that. Morals are subject to logic, reasoning, and brain chemistry. Because of this, there is such a thing as a universal morality. Just because culture contradicts universal morality does not mean one culture thinking murder is right makes murder truly right.

Marrying is just a paper, if you're going to live together for the rest of your life or you plan to then I don't see bad thing out of it. You just have to respect what you have and live with what you promise.

Then you obviously support sexual relationships outside of marriage. If marriage is 'just paper' to you, then you've already seen and agreed with my point.

They are the best love you got. It's not like they know everything, but you should think it through quite well before moving on.

If your parents do not respect your adult ability to make choices for yourself, they aren't worth respecting. That's like saying that because your parents raised you, you have no right to elope should they not agree with your plans, which is outrageous. Nobody considers eloping lightly, nor do all people take sexual acts lightly. Those that do are doomed to suffer the consequences. 'Respecting' your parents is a fairly irrelevant incentive, considering you can become diseased, have need to bastardize children, or have the need to raise children as a consequence, all of which are pretty huge risks to just have sex with random strangers you have no connection to. If such things don't incentivize them into choosing to be responsible, they will rightfully suffer the consequences.

Dealing with things that create life should be taken just as serious as doing things that will take life away.

Agreed, but considering this debate is generic in that regard, it's obvious that applying this logic means that plenty of sexual acts outside of wedlock are okay. Not all are, but there are some, meaning you support sexual relationships outside of wedlock by applying this logic you are applying.

You're just being picky about it.

I have not contradicted myself.

This was months ago, you've lost me.

Imagine you have an 16 year old daughter and she's been sleeping with a dude in High School... but I'm sure you would not be happy with

If I didn't know the boy, I'd have to rely purely upon my daughter's word to know she's not being used, so yes, I would not be happy. If I had the ability to know she wasn't be used, then I would not mind her being intimate with someone she loves.

Sure that's illegal in this country

Actually, most states in the United States nowadays have an age of consent starting at age 16. So no, it would not be illegal. Not in my state.

I don't understand the second to last paragraph.

Those do nothing but cause troubles.

No, life is about living. It's about pleasing yourself without making others suffer and then making yourself be satisfied with the results. Pleasure without any concern for others is foolish, of course, but you're being narrow with an actually generic concept. Life was not meant to be lived with restrictions outside of your comfortability and others comfortability. When those two things are satisfied, you have harmony. If one or the other or both are not, you have conflict.

It's not pointless for the parents.

(And this is the second half)

No coercion, no fear of going to jail or having your property removed.

You should fear those things, though, so you don't hurt yourself or other people. That's why the law is there. To give you just fear where you make the mistake of having none.

Laws are only have ambiguous morality unless they restrict something that is helpful for people. Getting drunk does not help you, or anyone around you. So making it illegal to do certain things while under the influence of stone cold hard DRUNK protects people, and doesn't harm you.

And if you need to do wild and dangerous things to enjoy life, you should be psychologically treated by a doctor, because you are depressed or suffering from SOMETHING that needs to be rectified... and drinking yourself to death is not an adequate way to rectify your suffering. Because, you know, people care about you and shit.

if you have faith in your politicians and lobbyists who write the laws, I'm sure you could have faith instead in the people who these laws are meant to "protect."

I have NO faith in lobbyists. You must be drunk if you think I have a single care or good opinion about lobbyists, or the rich and greedy in general.

I don't have faith in politicians to be perfect. I trust they will make mistakes that are human mistakes, but will overall have predictable behavior, including trying to craft legislation that they think helps people... because if they craft legislation that hurts people, chaos will ensue and their power will mean nothing. Or they'll be voted out of office.

And I do have faith in people outside the government. I just am not willing to risk their lives and well-being upon the principle you describe. You can argue that I shouldn't determine what is best for them, but that's why they should just tell me what they think is best for them... then I will tell them they are wrong.

As someone empathetic, I am concerned with making certain that people are not suffering, even if it means telling people they don't know how to make themselves not suffer.

Using YOUR kind of logic, people shouldn't try and prevent others from committing suicide when there is PLENTY of hope to recover from past events. Like when a teenager in a middle class home is stricken with such huge depression that they want to choose to kill themselves... you think the parents should just let it happen?

Well... no, you probably don't. I'd be surprised if you did. But it's the same concept. Just because I haven't been in another person's shoes doesn't mean I don't generally know how to help them. This is what we have therapists and other mind-doctors for. To tell people that they are stupid and don't know how to be happy.

Just anything you and the lobbyists happen to hate at the moment.

You're sort of right.

I hate people suffering... so I refuse to let them suffer.

They can choose to, but not before I create an environment that gives them large incentive to choose to not suffer.

Also, grouping me in the lobbyists...? Are you trying to make me cease coherent thought and just be pissed off at you? Waaaaaaaaaagh ಠ_ಠ

I believe that people shall make decisions for themselves. You support laws that are forcing EVERYONE to live by the same, conforming values.

Not really. There should be a 50/50 split between freedom and law. People can be free, just not free to harm each other. People don't need to be able to harm one another to be free. I've reiterated this too many times then I can remember, and you still think I support a complete and total statehood where freedom does not exist?

Are you sure you're not drunk? Because you're debating like a presumptuous drunk... you know, like that guy in the bar who keeps calling you Johnny when he doesn't even know your name, and you try and tell him what your name really is, but he don't listen and just keeps assuming that your name is Johnny. ಠ_ಠ

since you equated me to Hitler, I will point out that your belief system is far closer to Hitler than mine... since you support telling people what to do with their own bodies. FOR THEIR PROTECTION.

I equated you to Hitler? I don't remember... but you're talking drunk, so maybe I didn't and you just think I did. I'm not sure, because even if you're drunk, I'm a vegetable.

Hitler was a totalitarian. I believe in nothing of the sort. Between Hitler, and you, I am in directly in between. And in that regard... yes, I am closer to believing in totalitarianism then you are, but only really because in this case, we are imaging a linear scale of some kind, and on it, you are opposite of Hitler because you are seemingly an anarchist, and Hitler was a totalitarian.

Far unlike Hitler, however, I see law and freedom as a tool to protect people literally, as where he wanted to just rule the world... I don't care about ruling the world. I care about eliminating global suffering. And both your and Hilter's ideals, while opposite of each other, are too extreme to eliminate global suffering.

coercion coercion coercion

violence violence violence

removal of freedom, life, and/or property

that's why.

So you want to go out drunk driving, possibly kill people, and pay no repercussions?

Why is your belief good, again? Because it has some sort of ambiguous tie between absolute freedom and being unharmed, when that makes no sense whatsoever, because too much freedom equates to being able to commit immoral and unjust acts without repercussions?

ಠ_ಠ

Also, I do not support violence. Police officers being the first to violence always upsets me. But if you did something illegal and need to come with them, you attacking them first instead of peacefully working with them is your fault, not theirs.

So that people who do wish to engage in activities that you don't approve have won't have to worry that people like you exist.

If you aren't conducting things immoral that could harm other people, nobody has anything to fear from me. If you intend to ruin peoples lives, or take them away through murder, then I hope you're positively terrified.

They can still do what they wish, and the people can freely trade among each other without the fear of the government taking away their business, their freedom, or their property.

These people and you need to get your heads out of your asses and acknowledge that the government is out to get you about as much as any other person is out to get you.

Or are you this paranoid with everyone?

Is that why you were drunk when writing this? Because you're scared of everyone preventing you from getting drunk so you can cope with being scared of everyone preventing you from getting drunk?

The government doesn't go out of it's way to create laws that blatantly contradict era-appropriate moral belief. If you're terrified of having things taken away from you, most of the time, this is because you are either guilty, or paranoid. This isn't to say the government, which is composed of imperfect people like you and I, is incapable of injustice. Far from it! But most injustices seem to me as simple mistakes and flaws, not intentions to destroy the lives of innocent people for no logical reason.

how funny. for the longest time they said the same thing about gay sex. As a person who is close with a few gay people, i personally take offense to that statement.

And why does that correlate into me hating gays? I don't. Being gay does not automatically equate to being a harmful, self destructive person, so why would I suddenly think that being gay is evil? Because you don't agree with me, and because you say so? Someone you don't agree with needs to be demonized for you to be able to make a point, huh? And somehow this all magically allows you to instantly get offended?

I mean, you do realize, you're just imagining this hate for gays I have, right? It's not real, and you had no way of knowing if it was real or not. So you're getting offended at your imagination. But I thought you said you don't have a deity or spiritual belief... but you believe things your imagination tells you to the point that you can actually feel offended? At your imagination?

I'm not sure at this point if you're drunk, or just a presumptuous douchebag while sober. I really am not sure.

When government passes these types of laws, they are attacking and stealing from people... so that's why i find it wrong.

What exactly are they stealing? I get how the analogy fits, oh yes, but the trouble is the credibility of it's application.

Children not having the freedom to do things that would be bizarre and suspicious for them to do in the first place, which they would probably not even have the capability to do in the first place, but they simply aren't allowed just by virtue of being better safe then sorry... what is that, in this analogy? What could it possibly be?

Because it seems to me like air is being stolen, or something. I dunno, it just doesn't have a lot of credibility, even though the analogy goes with your point.

Keep in mind, i'm the person who believes that all drugs should be legal.

As do I. All major drugs should be legal, as well as taxed and regulated, like alcohol.

So should prostitution. Legal, regulated, taxed.

But my stance comes from the very fact that you have no real reason to show that restrictions are beneficial... they are limiting freedom for the sake of limiting freedom.

No, they limit freedom for the sake of being anal and prissy. While being prissy and nitpicky can have it's benefits, it can be annoying for people who aren't as obsessively concerned with helping people as the person whom is being an anal nitpick.

But the problem with your stance is that you fail to say why the restrictions being lifted would be beneficial. Why does some ambiguous tie to freedom make it a good thing, automatically? The United States was free to join the slave trade, and freely own slaves, but was that a good thing when it was going on? Absolutely not. That's why we fought a war over it. Because it was an unjust freedom.

Saying the quality of freedom is good thing is to say that the freedom to help people and the freedom to murder people are both inherently good, just because they are both freedoms. Um... no, they are not both a good thing. One harms a human being and another helps a human being. Thus one is wrong is one is right, regardless of being freedoms.

Taking away liberty isn't okay just because you think it is.

Giving freedom away isn't okay just because you think it is.

I suppose you know all of these teachers who know better than everyone else?

I'm pretty sure I was referring to the environment teaching us this, not anyone in particular.

And again with this crap 'you don't know better then me'.

If you're harming yourself, harming other people, or are just generally young or ignorant or inexperienced, I know better then you. Egads I'm getting tired of seeing that.

If your ass is in a bar drinking yourself to death instead of trying to fix your life and yourself, you better believe I know better then you.

And I'm going to help you out whether you want me to or not.

What math are you basing this on?

Well, math is the wrong word.

I mean logic.

Math and logic are basically the same thing, except I know logic, and not so much math.

It's makes perfect sense to me that if you take two grand ideas, each having it's own faults and benefits, and then try to tie them together so that they have each others strengths and none of the weaknesses, then you've achieved something better then both of them stand-alone.

And while it's not realistic, it's a good thing to work towards. Perfection isn't obtainable, in my opinion, but trying to become perfect for the sake of others is a great thing to aspire to. Getting better, creating more happiness, less death, less suffering, more love, etc.

Laws against drugs, however... it's government saying "well, you go to jail because drugs are bad for you... and jail is good for you." Or better yet "you go to jail because you allowed for someone to do something to themselves" like Jack Kevorkian. A man that is a victim to Statist logic.

If I gave any impression that I believe in stuff like this, then I apologize. I am a potato. I find the war on drugs (and prostitution) to be quite wrong.

Though, I don't believe in allowing people to harm themselves. Letting your teenage son kill himself because of some principle where you think he should be freely allowed to is completely absurd. If someone is harming themselves, they should be made to stop so they can achieve a happier existence.

That's right skipper. I'm going to force you to be happy, or else. ಠ_ಠ You get no say.

I am not familiar with Jack Kevorkian's case, though all I know is that he allowed suicide, or euthanized people? If I knew the specifics, I'd have a more developed opinion on it. But as it goes... if the people who died because he let them die, died because they were undergoing incurable, unmitigated suffering which was going to eventually result in a long, slow fatality, and if this is how all the euthanized people passed, then I'd agree, this man is being imprisoned unjustly.

However, if these people were euthanized because they just gave up, even if they could have made a comeback, even if they could have had more hope, but instead just didn't want to continue on... then no, I don't think this man is necessarily imprisoned unjustly.

Ah yes, like you, I dream of this future where laws are perfect.

Until then, however, I'd like for no laws to restrict personal freedom. or, at least, as little as possible.

I'm not sure if you were mocking me or being serious. But oh well.

Laws don't have to be perfect. I'm not sure there is such a thing as perfect, in anything. But we should be trying to get as close to it as possible... and suddenly abolishing all restrictions isn't really going to help us get there.

But then again, you implied earlier that you are not necessarily an anarchist, so I'm not sure anymore if you advocate no restrictions and the such...

But if we're talking on terms of the debate subject, then we've both gone off-topic at this point. Oh well.

You know, without a doubt, that no one addicted to cigs or alcohol are living decent lives.

I know that without a doubt, their lives would certainly not get worse, even if they were happy. Unless the process of helping them out of their addictions would cause more struggle then they could handle, or more struggle then what is worth weening them off of, then I have no problem trying to get them out of the habit.

In fact, most smokers I've known (close friends, actually), even if they're living happy lives, don't generally hate the idea of getting weened off their addition. They just cannot accomplish it is all.

You know that it is JUSTIFIED to limit our freedoms just because you fear that human beings are just too stupid and careless to make decisions for themselves.

Not at all. I am not certain of anyone's decision making abilities. I am simply not willing to risk letting people suffer on the hunch that everyone knows how to intelligently care for themselves and not-hurt/care-for others around them.

I can consider people, or I can ignore people. If I were in government, I'd be forced to do either one or the other, not pick and choose whom my laws effect and help. Since that is the case, if I were in such a position, I will always choose to consider people, and make the laws extremely carefully. I would rather take a very long time to create a law that helps as many people as possible, then not make a law and let people try and solve their suffering on their own. It's courteous to give people space and privacy and independence and the such, but I'm not going to NOT help people if I have the power to help people.

Even if it means pissing a small minority off. I would not carelessly make laws, nor abstain from making laws. I would do everything I can to make sure as much suffering as possible is mitigated and that things are better then they used to be.

The lobbyists and politicians and YOU know more than me or my family.

Lobbyists are evil. I don't need to spell that out. Corporatism is the biggest problem in this country, yadda yadda yadda.

Politicians don't, but they still just try to help. You argue they should stop altogether because them trying to help doesn't work. I argue they should reform how they do what they do so that they vastly help more then they harm.

Both are valid positions. Inevitably, I think things should just continue to be worked on and improved, not brought all the way down to an all-or-nothing state of existence. I'd rather us all work things out together then just say 'fuck it' and start from scratch. We are a social organism. Progression on a scale of populations should not involve backtracking. Not if backtracking would cause more suffering then continuing on.

It does not make it right to FORCE her to do something against her own will.

There's a vast difference in logic in between thinking someone has a problem because they have a quality that correlates with a religious belief, and thinking someone has a problem because they are drinking themselves to death, or injecting drugs without any consideration for their or anyone's safety.

Harm is relative to the person whom is being harmed, but only on the basis of what they can perceive. Someone might not feel sick, but still be sick. And to that end, people outside of that singular perspective can be credible in things they perceive as issues, so long as it's a logical association of what's harmful and what's helpful.

So really, it depends on whom is doing the forcing. If it's your buddy who sees you almost kill yourself at the watering hole, it's just for him to force you to get better. If it's a parent who sees their teenager cutting, it's just for them to force their child to stop so they can get them help. And if a governor sees a huge portion of his civilian population suffering over an issue, he's just in trying to get that issue solved somehow. If he makes a mistake, he has that on his conscious, just as a parent who's child successfully committed suicide has that on their conscious, or how your buddy would have on his conscious the scene where he turned the other cheek to you drinking way too much then you should have.

There's just, and there's unjust. But when all is said and done, someone trying to help or protect you is someone that is trying to help or protect you. You can be insulted and tell them to stop, or you can try and help them understand how to help you properly.

Who, to you, tells them what they can and can't do, OR ELSE SUFFER THEIR WRATH.

You think that I think that a government should behave that way?

Absolutely not.

Not unless you're a truly bad person guilty of immoral things.

(I had to split my reply into two parts. This is the first half of it)

And your answer is "coercion to the rescue?"

Provided that you haven't already coerced yourself, why not?

And your answer is, let them run around with no incentive other then their own?

Hardly the point, though. My point is the ability to choose for yourself, regardless of the danger. Your Statist logic put Jack Kevorkian in prison.

You presume yet again that I take a one-sided position, like you do.

There is a difference between allowing someone to get away with driving drunk and allowing an inscrutably suffering person to end their lives. The first one is obviously a stupid as hell freedom to give someone, while the second is merciful and should be allowed.

So many presumptions, so many! It's almost not fun replying to you because of all these presumptions you make and all the leaps you take.

Hegemony is psychologically abusive.

I never advocated hegemony. You like making stuff up in your head about me, don't you? Do you presume this often when debating with other people?

And it is a problem when your subjective "stupid shit" gives you due cause to tell Americans what they can and can't do with their own bodies.

I'm American. I find it odd that you wrote this sentence in such a way as to imply that you don't think I'm American.

Furthermore you can do whatever you want with you body, there should just be laws that give you incentive to not to things to your body that harms you. Like how there are laws regarding being drunk in public or while driving.

Anal sex is dangerous, I suppose you support the sodomy laws that include anal sex?

Sex strengthens bonds between couples. Education on what consequences and benefits can result from sex acts is the only thing needed to give people incentive to make responsible sexual choices. For the most part, anyway, because I can't really imagine it being helpful to try and regulate sex down to specific terminology.

But then again, if you pass an STD onto someone, you should be fined. How that would be managed... I'm not sure though, because it's a really messy, private thing. So other then it as an idea, it's not really something to pursue by someone like me who doesn't know how they could possibly enforce it.

Good ol' statist logic.

You're the only one that's been using it this whole time as you imagined things that had nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Why am I not surprised you complimented it?

the point that legislation aimed at protecting us from ourselves is already retarded. The government is not smarter than the individual.

Not really. Regulations on alcohol are pretty good, I'd say. People get drunk in bars, and have their drunkenness be dealt with only in bars. Otherwise, ticket/fine/prison. You can freely drink alcohol, as long as you don't wander off somewhere that you could hurt someone.

The government is made of individuals. Why are they not exactly as smart as the individual, on average? Again with this dichotomy between government and civilians... it's getting old. But I've already explained why that's silly, so, moving on.

The government is separate from the individual and does not know what makes the individual happy or healthy.

I agree, which is why they should focus on issues that are extremely generic to the point that legislation focused on them would help more people then it would harm.

Such as, issues that are all about direct harms and dangers which are obvious, like murder, rape, drunk driving, hate crimes, etc.

it only knows what ever random bullshit a lobbyist presents to them.

Then the problem is obviously the lobbyist.

Though, you're also wrong. People in government are human beings like you or I. Therefore, it's not totally bizarre for them to make decisions based upon their own perceptions as human beings, because they aren't special. On the other hand, too many of them are rich white men, which limits their perspectives to that experience as a person, but since this is the case, you can only really get mad when these rich white men make decisions on issues they have absolutely no context over. That's when it stops being basic human flaw and/or disagreement and becomes unacceptable stupidity and/or arrogance.

To pass legislation on special interest is not only sick, it's unconstitutional.

You and I don't decide what's Constitutional or not. Judicial review does.

No, leave it up to the individual. Some people enjoy drinking heavily, and if they suffer from the consequences that is their life.

What if I don't want that person to ruin their life, skipper? What if I don't want them to ruin other people's lives?

Alcohol shouldn't be outright prohibited because people will always enjoy drinking it, and all Prohibition did was cause the creation of the North American mafia. A blanket ban is not a solution, as it's obvious that it harms people. But alcohol regulations that penalize you for doing the wrong things when under it's influence doesn't harm anyone. In fact, it prevents a lot of suffering, which Prohibition utterly failed to do.

You're acting like we should all either live the same lives or we should be threatened with the removal of property or even freedom

If you wander out while drunk, thereby possibly hurting or killing someone, you deserve to be fined (property) and possibly jailed (freedom), the severity of the punishment being based upon how much damage you did, the minimum being a fine for being irresponsible, as well as an escort home somewhere you aren't a risk.

It's not about living the same life. It's about not harming others or causing suffering. If your lifestyle has to deviate from the norm in such a way that it causes you to harm someone, well, tough shit son, you should be punished for harming that someone. And if your actions directly correlated with you harming that person, that action should be regulated, provided it's a common enough action for it to matter and not just be a freak accident.

just for OUR PROTECTION

Yup. Alcohol regulations aren't meant, inevitably, to stop you from getting drunk in a bar, yourself. Alcohol regulations are meant to stop another person from getting drunk, going out to their car, and killing you, plus another dozen people.

I suppose kids being forced to major only in subjects that will get them a job isn't evil or tyrannical since you know what's best for the students and not them.

Your imagination over my opinion is quite charming. Though to a degree, children are already forced by our corporate society to become educated in meager jobs due to the fact that only luck helps you acquire your dreams, thus indicating that they can't really pursue something that makes them happy because the chances of them getting lucky enough to succeed is slim to none.

I didn't do that. Your 'freedom' did that. And I hate nothing more then children and other youths having to suffer on the whims of someone else.

After all, choosing a major that doesn't get you a job HAS THE NUMBERS to show that I may be ruining my life by picking a Liberal Arts degree

If you think doing something you love is worth the possibility that you will become homeless, I think it's within your capability to understand the situation.

However, if you have a child to care for, and you'd rather take the risk of doing something you enjoy at the risk of not having a stable job to support the child... and the child is harmed because of this... then you should be punished by the law.

Which you would be, given the circumstances of how those real-world laws work.

Because if they DO wish to purchase a gun and the merchant is willing, the voluntary, non-coercive exchange should occur. you do not know what's best for them.

Not directly, no. But, I don't really care. I don't know what it's like to be in a murderers shoes, but I will still quickly outlaw murder and never support capital punishment. Using the argument 'you don't know what's best for them' is thus, silly. We are all human. We all experience pain and we can all be damaged or harmed similarly to other humans. Therefore, I can make an educated guess on what harms people and what helps people, and I will never make a decision that risks having the former happen over the latter.

I was a child once; I am not special. Why would a child need to purchase a firearm? Unless their parent is standing right next to them and hands them the money to buy the weapon, thus making it not even technically a voluntary exchange between just the child and just the seller, then what point is there in the child doing that? It seems fishy to me, while unlikely to ever happen.

Are you truly willing to simply be principled to the point of allowing a child this freedom when the entire situation is barely applicable unless something strange is happening? You're willing to bet principle over the risk of lives? Are you?

Considering a child has no need to buy a weapon, when a responsible parent could simply buy the weapon for them, and that children do not usually have any money to buy things on their own, making this restriction almost never applicable and probably never inconvenient for anybody with good intentions, I am not willing to take that risk simply on principle. There's no reason to. My principle is to limit as much suffering as possible, and in this case, having the restriction is inconvenient to nobody with good intent.

What is the problem, other then you are stubborn and seemingly would rather risk horrible incidents happening at the expense of nothing, instead of 'breaking' your principle?

Self-regulation, and once again, if they wish to drink excessively it's their choice.

So then you really don't give two shits about drunkards driving around killing people in semi-trucks? You can talk about self-regulation all you want, but self-regulation is not enough to ensure innocent people die in smaller and smaller numbers.

And yet you have the audacity to seemingly compare me to evil, while you're sitting here thinking there should be no regulations that prevent people from killing each other? I'm not sure whether that's hypocritical or just fucking sick.

yet we do not pass laws against these things because we know how "ridiculous" it is to regulate self behavior.

No, we don't pass laws against them because sexual education, as I said before, that is accurate should give plenty of incentive to be responsible, sexually.

But there should also be regulations that gives incentive to prevent the spread of STDs, but I can't really think of how that could go about, unfortunately.

not everyone wants to live your mainstream, family valued filled life. some people wish to enjoy whatever they have.

You can fuck yourself up as long as it doesn't fuck up other people's lives.

The problem though, is that most of time, you are fucking up other people's lives when doing a lot of things. Which is why, like with alcohol, there should be regulations on things that have a high potential to destroy people's lives, whether outright and brutally, or slowly and subliminally.

Some, like me, are fuckin' poor and don't have the luxury of belief in some kind of deity or spiritual meaning

So, because you're depressed and down on luck, regulations should be abolished so you can do things potentially dangerous to people around you?

Mmmmmhmm. I think I'd rather give you entitlements so you can get up off your bad luck. That's helpful to you and less dangerous to people around you.

But really, you're acting, once again, like removing coercive laws is somehow bad for these people... yet have provided no evidence for this 8l

Keeping them in place isn't bad for people, either.

The difference is that removing them has an inherent risk.

It's a very small risk, but it's still there. And since having the restriction in place doesn't hurt anybody, it's preferable by a teensy tiny margin.

That removal of laws will create some epidemic of children making "bad choices." What kind of arrogance is this? That YOU know what is and isn't a good or bad choice.

Adults know what's better for children then children do. If children knew what is and is not a good or bad choice for them, we wouldn't nurture our children for 16 to 22 years. We would have them, and then leave them to grow up and fend for themselves.

It's not arrogance at all. I am a human being, and so is a child. What's bad for me, I can generally assume, is also bad for a child. If I drink myself into a stupor and get alcohol poisoning, it's just as bad for me then if a child did it. The only difference is that a child does not know better, and thus have as much incentive to not do that, because they are growing and learning as they take each step. It's a good idea to provide an environment for children that doesn't pamper them, but isn't so open-ended that they can stupidly ruin their lives before they even grow up.

And to top it off, to just shorten my point, I think the restrictions should be in place so that there is less risk then if the restriction was removed. Just like with my argument upon guns earlier in this reply. Having them in place hurts nobody. Taking them away may not change anything, but the remote risk of something terrible happening is still there, and I am not willing to risk people unintentionally suffering on basis of a principle, no matter how remote, ESPECIALLY if the restriction doesn't hurt anyone.

So you're just hoping for tyranny to let up a bit in hopes that e-cigs will dominate the market? Why not ask for tyranny to end now? What are you afraid of?

What are you trying to do, bust my brain? I have no idea what this reply even means! I can only assume that when you say 'tyranny' you mean the government, since you hate them. But then your second use of 'tyranny' relates to my view of tyranny? I'm confused as hell... I don't find the government tyrannical, I find corporatism tyrannical. So asking me if I want 'tyranny to end now' does not relate to your earlier use of the word tyranny, for me. Since those two sentences do not correlate, the last question makes no sense.

Waaaagh, my brain. ಠ_ಠ

Tehpgi pls, y u do dis?

Assumption. I have seen little to no legislation written in favor of my or any of my peers' interests.

Then maybe you and your peers are in the minority, on whatever legislative level you're referring to. Also, if your interests are hazardous to other people, I don't blame legislation not being geared for you.

It's not really an assumption, otherwise. It's within the best interest of the state to keep it's citizens docile, and if it's not doing what North Korea does, then it has to do it by means of making us healthy and happy, lest we rise up and create chaos, chaos which renders the power of these politicians valueless.

I resist unjust and immoral laws, like Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi. One who submits to a tyrant is a slave

There is nothing immoral or unjust about preventing children and teenagers from buying guns, alcohol, and tobacco.

Try again, before you compare yourself to people like that. You just reverse-Godwin'd your argument. ಠ_ಠ We shall now call this a Niwdog, the act of doing the opposite of a Godwin (comparing yourself on the internet to amazing people instead of accusing someone on the internet of being like Hitler).

Prove it.

How? By creating a micro-universe which I control that is the same as ours, except I test my point by having the United States lift these restrictions for a couple years, and so I measure the results? Huh?

The ultimate point of my entire disputation in this entire debate topic is that age restrictions on guns, tobacco, and alcohol do not hurt anyone. The slights you are speaking of are principle-based and are imagined. The slights you speak of do not inherently harm people, mostly because they only exist in your head.

How does a restriction preventing a child whom has somehow gotten hold of some cash, by himself, being able to walk into a gun store and buy a gun harm the child? Answer me that.

Please explain how.

Remind me what I was talking about, I don't want to open another window to see my previous reply. Unless you don't want to. If so that's fine.

Freedom of speech. And so? Are you saying that... you know more about what's best for children than the parents?

Influence children into wanting things that are dangerous is evil. I don't really care if it's freedom of speech, allowing it alongside a lift of the age restriction is just another thing that has the potential to hurt a lot of people, and having the restriction in place, I will reiterate yet again, does not harm anyone.

No, I don't think I know better then the parents, but parents are voters, and voters vote on politicians which maintain the restrictions. Why? Because almost no parent wants their child smoking cigarettes or being told by advertisements that smoking cigarettes is something they should be doing. So, in hindsight, I'd be doing what people want (since I've seemingly been arbitrarily thrown into the position of a politician in some of these hypothetical arguments).

Really, if you wish to give government more power, you're going to have to do better than just fear and paranoia.

I don't necessarily want the government to have more power. I want the right amount of freedom and the right amount of order that prevents the most amount of suffering when used together. Are you drunk? Because that might explain all your presumptions.

No reason to believe that children would become significantly damaged.

You mean by other then the fact that that shit is unhealthy in bad doses, and children don't know the difference between a bad dose and a dose that's not bad?

Better off safe then sorry.

What innocent people are being risked?

Children. Since they're the premise of the debate.

Did you know, that um, when people aren't aloud to choose for themselves, their innocence is being risked, so ha! it is in fact YOU who is willing to risk innocent people, not me.

I don't know how not being able to choose to harm yourself correlates with loosing your innocence. Unless you mean that legally... as in people risk doing things illegally and thus risk their 'innocence'. But that's not what I meant, and I think you know that.

Now, please, spin this one with more of your rhetoric instead of providing... evidence, or something in favor of your coercive and violent laws.

Yeah, you're drunk.

That's the only way you'd think I support violence. If you intoxicated.

Because I certainly don't think you're necessarily close-minded or an idiot.

Hey, exactly what I believe. so let the people choose. Some will make bad decisions, some won't

You should have the choice to do stupid things, but not without the presence of an environment that would prevent said stupid thing from totally destroying your life. In a totally free society with no restrictions and planned order, such an environment would not exist, and therefore suffering would vastly increase.

Considering that not everyone in the United States of America is Christian and believes in Jesus, I think it's only appropriate that Christmas is about Santa Claus, whom is not a mythological figure that is intrinsically tied in with Christian mythology. That way, more people then just Christians can enjoy the holiday.

This is not true of weapons in general, at least as it pertains to humans. Weapons were first invented for hunting.

You just contradicted yourself within your first two sentences. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hunting, by definition and as a prerequisite, harms other creatures.

However, this point does not lead to the conclusion that guns cause more harm than good.

They were invented to kill people, not point at people so they will leave you alone.

I am not attempting to measure the exact amount of harm and good done by weapons and guns because it's pretty self-evident. They kill people. Easily. They were invented to wage war.

If a weapon was originally created to do good, then it would not be a weapon.

Armor is what is meant to protect you, usually from weapons. Armor is inherently good, as it is created only to mitigate death by those who wear it.

Saying a weapon can do good because you use it protect people is a fairytale. If you want to protect someone, use yourself as armor for them or give them armor. Literally shield people. You don't need to be able to kill people to protect people.

People will always find a way to obtain weapons, and this being the case, people will need to defend themselves. This is the primary reason for guns today, as statistics show (see Scout's post).

Was it not apparent that I was speaking hypothetically?

Pulling the metaphor back into reality doesn't really dispute the meaning of it. If people could never have weapons again, violence would significantly decrease, perhaps onto oblivion. If everyone in the world had a weapon and couldn't get rid of it, violence would, at least, not decrease at all, and that's the best case. Moreover, people being able to easily kill each other would result in, duh, people killing each other more often, because it would be easier.

This is because the very nature of a weapon, any weapon, is to kill or hurt things. They are not meant to protect people. They can be used to protect people, but they were not made to protect. They cause violence, not mitigate it. Armor mitigates violence, because it's not designed to hurt people, even though armor can protect someone that hurts another.

Yet you are sure that the only violence would be a "few panicked fist fights" if weapons didn't exist? History claims otherwise, as does the nature of humanity. Never underestimate humanity's depravity.

My point was that weapons make killing each other easier.

When you take away the ease, it the killing is reduced.

That's just logic.

Death and destruction will be present whether weapons exist or not.

Sure, but it would be lesser. And destruction would be limited to tools which are not weapons, and therefore it wouldn't be violent, making it stupid, but not violent (aside from non-human destruction, but that's beside the point).

Guns are used as a defense against the horrible nature of some people in our world.

And they are also used by people with horrible natures as an offense against others.

But you know what guns and weapons in generally are primarily meant to do?

Violently kill people.

If weapons did not primarily do harm, they wouldn't be weapons. If weapons were primarily used to prevent harm, then their primary function wouldn't be to kill and harm other living things.

Only a few use guns for terrible reasons, but many use guns for protection against those few.

Everyone uses guns to kill and harm other people. Other then that, 'protection' and 'terrible reasons' are subjective, and based upon your view of most guns being used to protect, I suspect you and I differ upon what we define as 'terrible' and 'protective'.

I was pointing out that the fact that animals form social groups is not an argument FOR forming a government, because the animals formed these groups without forming government; that these groups and orders form in a state of anarchy.

Touche.

I am a vegetable. You'll have to bear with me if I miss subtle details. Or even blatantly obvious details.

It also allows an individual to exercise authority that is divorced from the actual value that person has demonstrated to society.

I'm not sure I've interpreted what you said here properly, but I'm not sure I haven't either. I could be just other-thinking it because you aren't using a simpler wording.

I'd say a flawed democracy does this, but so what? A better, or perhaps I should say ideal, democracy would create a balance between elected and elector in which it doesn't matter whether the elected official is experienced or inexperienced, because it would give incentive to the politician that guarantees they don't deviate away from helping out the people whom elected them. Education or experience should just assist them in having credibility that gets them elected, while someone exceptionally intelligent or charismatic, but not educated or experienced, would need to prove themselves in some other way that isn't deceptive to have the same credibility.

The point being, in a proper democracy, an elected official would not exercise authority directly related to their past value to society, because the power of the elector would be so great that the elected wouldn't have incentive to become corrupt.

Furthermore, why should pre-established value to society automatically equate to having more power? We are all human beings. This isn't Beowulf. You shouldn't necessarily have more societal power just because you have done great things. Nor does the act of doing great things automatically mean you are fit to have societal power.

Pure democracy is slavery to the "general will". Representative democracy is only slightly less so.

In it's current, manageable state, it is. In the design we should be trying to achieve, everyone would be comfortably accommodated locally, and more generally accommodated the higher the scale of law being created.

Furthermore, if most people disagree with you, you may want to rethink your opinions. Though, you moreover refer to the bullshit involving 51% over 49%, and with that, I agree it's stupid as hell.

But to rectify such things on a national level, national lawmaking should simply not be extremely severe and frequent. Important things that relate on smaller scales should be the most important things to vote on, while unimportant things that don't have positively tremendous bearings on people's lives should be what's nationally voted upon.

This isn't how things are currently done, but as I said, current democracy is not perfect, and we should be trying to constantly make it better. Getting rid of all order or all freedom is detrimental to our progression. We should be trying to build up to a utopia, not breaking ourselves down to a dystopia.

Such a democracy encourages corruption by making the position of the politician dependent upon pleasing only the majority of voters (not producers), even to the detriment of the remaining minority.

Not if the power in the elector is such that they have the ability to replace politicians they elect with the snap of their fingers.

Like, say, take a senator from a state. The senator from the state does something that most people in his state disagree with. The people in that state immediately have the choice to pull him from office and replace him.

In a democracy like that, no, corruption would not be encouraged. Not if each elected individual is at his or her wits end from trying to make sure they represent the their electors properly, knowing that making a mistake will cause them to be out of a job and paycheck that feeds them and their family.

And if they would representing their electors on such a precise basis, it would be up to the electors to make sure that society is improving overall on every scale... unless an elected official wants to greatly risk loosing his job just so he can do something contrary to his reason for being elected. And hell, in our age of technology, I wouldn't be surprised if it could be possible to meaningfully vote people in an out of office at a convenient fly! And if that were to be done, then that further eliminates the power of the elected to contradict their electors.

Furthermore, as long as nationally elected officials are not creating and voting upon laws that significantly change individual lives, then the worry of the majority opinions hurting the minority is a non-issue. If the smaller the scale, the more laws effect individual lives, then that just means people can conveniently live in cities, districts, and states which better accommodate their opinions on how the law should effect them.

--Elmer T Peterson (disputed)

This man's quote is absolutist. Since I fundamentally disagree with absolutism, I'm not going to bother picking apart his quote.

Moreover, I think most of what I've already written throughout this reply already picks it apart. Plus it's fairly self-evident that speaking absolutely about something that is not absolute is a sign of someone foolish, misguided, arrogant, or some other some such trait that would cause them to illogically speak absolutely.

I would argue that the goal of a society should be the greatest liberty, not the most order. Prisons are relatively orderly.

The goal of society is to advance our species, like just about everything psychologically healthy humans do. I don't advocate more order, I advocate both freedom and order being properly applied in proper amounts as to create the most prosperity.

And the complete elimination of either order or freedom is not conducive to this. Anarchy does not abhor order within itself, but it itself is not orderly. Order created within it was not orderly created, it was chaotically created. It was chance. It was not planned. And that's why it's unfavorable to me and what I think is best. If you have only order or only chaos, people are going to suffer, every time, and the more people that suffer, the less our species progresses. This is why the United States is a country preferred over some primitive tribal society or North Korea... because we don't eliminate one side of the spectrum or the other. We try and have a balance of both that creates as much prosperity as possible.

You must've not read what I wrote if that's where your thoughts led.

It's the fault of international government because international government freely trades, for the most part. Aside from totalitarian regimes scattered randomly throughout the world, international trade is basically unmitigated.

Since it's moreover unmitigated, greed is unmitigated. Since greed is unmitigated, corporatism ruins the global economy and causes suffering all across it, not just here in the United States.

Meaning, the problem isn't too much control, it's the lack thereof. Abolishing all government has nothing to do with solving this.

Paid for by everyone who pays taxes. So... everyone.

But considering taxes are just national rent since the state owns the land, it's not really everyone paying for it. It's the state. They're just using the income they receive from their 'tenants'.

Except instead of using it for themselves, in this case, they're using it to make their land more habitable for people. Then more tenants pay more rent and then they use their additional income to make more habitable for even more tenants, and so on, and so on.

I'm for everyone being equal and free as long as nobody is getting harmed in the process. That's sort of the point of law, at least in the United States. To stop people from suffering in wake of everyone being so incredibly free. We kinda fought a war over this issue; you know, the Civil War? A war fought between the freedom to harm people and the order to stop people from harming others.

Wealth does not always directly cause suffering in this country, but wealth is directly related to the severity of an individual's suffering. If someone is homeless, they generally did not choose to be. If someone whom is very wealthy gets severely ill, they have the wealth to get better fairly easily. Middle class families constantly suffer the stress of either trying too become wealthy or trying to not become homeless. I don't think a protection of rights should be different between the classes, but I think the mitigation of suffering should be made up to bridge the gap between people who can pay to not suffer and people whom cannot pay to not suffer.

Nothing about what I said above seems to conflict with the 14th amendment. But, neither you or I are Judges, therefore neither of us can really judge the 14th amendment properly. So, I don't really care about what the amendments specifically say, since I am not on the Supreme Court. I care about what seems right and what seems wrong.

So I do understand that I dont speak as good than you, but therefore I accompplished what many people did not, and speaking 4 other languages!

Good for you. However, my point was that you shouldn't be debating with me if we cannot communicate properly, and confusing English may result in this.

Though, I perpetuate the problem by replying to you... so, shame on both of us.

This is the typical answer of an evolutionist

There is no such thing as an evolutionist or evolutionism. These words imply evolution is some sort of belief or religion, whereas it is not. It is a scientific theory of development which happens on both a small and grand scale, testable and re-testable, all resulting in one basic conclusion time and time again.

pretending that humans ancestors were mammals then they metamorphose to primates, and then they metaporphose to anthropoids and so on..

Humans are mammals, and our ancestors were mammals. We also had pre-mammalian ancestors as well. Technically, all life converges down to one microbial beginning which eventually flourished into the entire biological Domain known as Eukarya. But the point I'm trying to make is that mammals are a classification of creature. Humans are mammals because the classification of mammals is that they are warm-blooded, give birth live in most cases, and have mammary glands.

You know, titties.

Whatever gender you are, if you take a look down at your nipples, that is the entire reason you are a mammal. Mammals are named after mammary glands, which your nipples are apart of. Mammals, for a time, even required the strict prerequisite that the creature give live birth to young, but the platypus as well as other more bizarre mammals broke this prerequisite by having mammary glands, to which the mammal classification was designed upon.

Also, there is no such thing as an 'anthropod'. And if you mean 'arthropod' then you are a complete moron, because arthropods are invertebrates and mammals, including humans, are vertebrates. So I'm going to assume you mean 'antropoid', or in other words, simians.

you are very creative!

It's not 'creative'. At least, it's not anymore. Now, on the other hand, we have a fossil record to show us past evolutionary progression, and a tremendous amount of present examples of short term evolution, which gives us educated reason to believe that processes observable in the present also took place in the past and never changed... since the laws of nature never inexplicably change. Ever. Unless it's because we are ignorant, ha!

Give us a source, or explanation.

That would take a long time, manually, so I will instead give you a list of all the individual extinct species we have discovered using the fossil record that connect humanity to simians, which is more or less in chronological order based upon what layers under the fossil record's timeline that they were found.

From the earliest human-like simian and up:

Australopithecus anamensis

Australopithecus afarensisr

Australopithecus africanus

Australopithecus bahrelghazali

Australopithecus garhi

Australopithecus sediba

Kenyanthropus platyops

Paranthropus aethiopicus

Paranthropus boisei

Paranthropus robustus

Homo habilis

Homo gautengensis

Homo rudolfensis

Homo georgicus

Homo ergaster

Homo erectus

Homo cepranensis

Homo antecessor

Homo heidelbergensis

Homo rhodesiensis

(Insert homo sapiens here)

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

Homo floresiensis

I could go on, even farther BACKWARDS towards the diversion of the homo genus from the other great ape genus's, but I hate browsing the internet for articles.

what I do know is that several time, the archeologes pretended having found transitional skull after it has been revelead to be a lie, that they used some some sort of "superglue".

Of the extinct species listed above, all of them have had significant, in-tact finds to the point of them being classifiable as actual individual species.

Also, saying that scientists cheat to prove people wrong is idiotic. Some do, but you need democratic consensus from all scientists for something to be true, and the thing about science is that... it's about finding the truth through evidence. People wouldn't go out and dig on their hands an knees in the middle of nowhere if all they intended to do was cheat.

By the way... fossil skeletons commonly break and shatter because they are so old. So paleontologists will take both fossil molds (the imprint of what was dug up) and fossil skeletons (the literal fossilized skeletal structure composed of rock) so that if one version of them breaks, the paleontologists can put it back together by using the example of it's counterpart fossil. They don't use super glue to fake shit. They use plastic mixtures to recreate was broke.

Furthermore, scientists never create things in a fossil that were not there before. If you have any such credible evidence towards such a bullshit accusation, I'd suggest you link it.

therefore they need always to present a famous missing link!

As I listed above, there are 23 known links between humanity and other great apes, aside from the obvious physiological similarities.

How many 'missing links' do you need to be convinced? Because scientists are almost never truly convinced. Which is why they are still trying to search up missing links, so that they may connect every single last piece of the puzzle together that they can.

It's all about the truth, baby.

The National Institute of Genetics in Japan and Scientists at Penn State, philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarinihave and many more demonstrated that the natural selection is wrong!

Show me. Not that showing me would necessarily prove anything.

Also, nothing in science is empirically wrong or right unless it's unanimously decided.

A few scientists in the middle of nowhere that support your idea of creationist bullshit doesn't mean you suddenly have empirical evidence that you are right. That's not how science works. For something in science to be true is for the majority of the scientific community to agree upon it. And even then, it's subject to change unless countless generations renumerate that truth as still being true, like Newton's Laws.

The rest of your points in this section is completely illegible. I don't understand what you were saying other then the end...

we share 50% of the dna of a banana, perhaps we use to be banana?

No, but Kingdom Plantae and Kingdom Animalia both have a common ancestor. You just need to go far back enough.

Think of evolution as an internet download. It takes a certain amount of time for the download to reach 30%. In the case of evolution reaching '30%' in a species, this is the point in which the common ancestor of two separate Eukarya kingdoms split off, or began to split off.

Which is why 30% of our DNA is the same as a banana. Because, at one point... we were indistinguishable from bananas, if it can be so retardedly worded that way and still be accurate.

There are many innumerable cases when when nuclear intervention has been abroted only moments before launch.

So what? That doesn't refute my point at all. We could have destroyed ourselves, but we didn't. It being at the last second doesn't mean anything.

Is this not happening?

No, it's not happening. You apparently did not understand my point, because your rebuttal has nothing to do with mine in any way.

When I said 'threaten our dominance' I meant in relation to other species of creatures.

Humanity is the top species on our planet. It doesn't matter if we rule each other in cycles if our dominance isn't threatened to drop below the dominance of another species. Of course, if we drag this out for a long enough period of time, we will eventually drop below the bar and become a prey species again, but it would require either a LONG period of time, or a TREMENDOUS amount of stupidity... stupidity we have yet to reach, since we have yet to destroy ourselves to this point even though we have the power to.

Most of the people are like that, only a minority has woken up and try to help the rest of the world

Ah, but the people who have do profound things.

Just look at this technology we have! The freedom to speak to anyone, wherever they are in the entire world?

If we can do things as profound as the internet and the atom bomb, we can do things profoundly helpful for others. All we need is time... and for people like you to not attempt to stop scientific progress in it's tracks.

I ment that people are changing, but the elites are still ruling the world

These 'elites' have approximately no power if our numbers grow to the point that they cannot sustain their power.

All the money in the world isn't going to stop entire civilian populations from dethroning you. And while it's not out of the question to consider the possibility of a tyrant being powerful AND insane, it's extremely hard to have a person whom is greedy, but cannot reason that hurting others enough will eventually hurt them back, a dozen times over.

What is wrong with it, if that person comitted a crime, which is under the law of that country. You find it choking because of your ethnocentrical group, and your believes.

Capital punishment and torture are wrong because it's a quintessential standpoint of a good person to be a better person then someone whom is evil.

If you torture and kill a man for torturing and killing a man, you are no better a person just because the person you tortured and killed was a torturer and killer.

This has nothing to ethnocentrism. It's logic. If you solve violence with violence, you accomplish nothing. Only whence you solve violence with something better then violence have you created a better solution to problems then violence. Justifying violence through righteousness is a child's fairytale where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. But here, outside of your fantasy world, people are all people, and the only way to be intrinsically good is to acknowledge that nobody is truly evil.

So if we want to have a better world, we cant act as individual.We must all be modest, we must all care for each other

I agree. But, you can be an individual without the sacrifice of selflessness.

even if on one country they stone to death if someone commits a crime of 1 degree, and other culture they just jail that person, we must still care for each other.

Well... yes. But both nations, if they truly care for one another, will eventually have to come to terms with differences in opinions like this.

If the point is to care for one another, then it's fully within our right to care about the fact that you murder people, and then stand up and claim you care about people. What? That's contradictory. Either our cultures are going to clash on that issue, or one of us is going to change.

And when it comes down to murder, I can guarantee that the country that respects life more isn't going to change into one that respects life less, like one that stones people to death.

Furthermore, we can be modest in the sense that we are not prideful, but modesty in the sense that we hide ourselves from each other is another contradiction to helping one another out. We should be modest in the sense that we are respectful, not insufferably separate. We should try and respectfully change one another for the better, not stubbornly and begrudgingly tolerate what we don't like about each other. Conflict is important for developing people, on both a massive and personal level... so as long as conflict does not involve violence and inescapable suffering, there is nothing wrong with it.

So when I say human being is still brutal..etc I mean that most of us we are just individualistic. Therefore we can be very dangerous

Individualism does not necessarily correlate with selfishness.

You can be individualistic and selfless, you know. Having the choice to choose for yourself does not automatically lead a person into choosing to serve the self. Selfishness is not the oppressed underdog mindset in humanity, it is the ancient way of doing things that we are struggling to shake off of ourselves.

The only reason economic policies fail time and time again is because international government allows free market to run rampant without any regard for all the damage caused by someone gaining hundreds of billions of dollars.

Ours is no different. They want to protect it, and while it's not all a bad idea to protect, it doesn't have enough inhibitors to prevent unmitigated greed. Thus, people go homeless and starve to death, and Africa remains socially unchanged while foreign companies strip away all it's resources.

Is this appeal to your own form of idealism inherent of just giving up on people whom suffer? Absolutely not. People aren't suffering right now because the big bad 1st world government is a horrible, terrorizing thing. People are suffering right now because someone, somewhere, made a mistake at some point. It doesn't matter who or what did it. It's just the job of a morally sound state to prevent the suffering that was caused.

And groups and orders within the right government doesn't happen within the system? Today's democracies are by no means perfect, but the entire structure they are meant to convey is that everyone is within the system that forms the authority. If the point of anarchy is to give individuals influence upon the order they live within, then why prefer that over a proper democracy? A truly proper democracy prevents corruption by giving enough power to individuals to the point of politicians and state employees having their own power hanging by a thread held by said normal individuals.

This basically ensures that everyone shares power and has a direct influence upon their life and order. The difference is that it also guarantees order, as where anarchy does not guarantee order.

I don't even notice them, so I'm not really against them.

Sure, but not all of them will. It takes a really bad seed to steal alcohol or a gun. It takes a relatively normal kid for them to go, 'eh, why not?' when all those things could be legally obtained at their age.

There are always some people willing to break the law, but what about the vast numbers of people who would have incentive to do stupid, dangerous, or immoral things if the laws weren't in place?

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.

4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.

5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.

7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

9. Do not harm little children.

10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Those are, to my knowledge, some teachings/commandments of Satanism. They're kinda immoral, just a tad, but otherwise, they look pretty cool.

Gooby pls

I don't think it would be a bad idea, but people who hate the government on every level wouldn't like it.

I think it would be prudent to not only have heavily-trained guards at schools put there by the elected officials of cities or counties (and I mean like, Rambo-bad-ass in how trained they are), but I also think there should be a tight surveillance system put in place so that the school guards have eyes and ears on every instance of there being someone with a weapon.

It's tough when it's such a fundamental difference in definitions and when he feels he's doing what he's doing for humanitarian reasons.

You can't know how to help starving Africans if you don't understand their word for 'food'. ;P

But to each their own.

And people wonder how I can possibly care about synergistic order and freedom instead of being an outright anarchist or totalitarian. ಠ_ಠ You saying what you just said is how. Nobody should have to suffer such a thing, and yet most are caught bickering in between the positions of 'all-or-nothing' or 'all-or-nothing'. PAH! If they weren't such fools, you'd have never needed to suffer through what you did.

What makes you believe incentive to make "healthy choices" outside of voluntarism is necessary?

Because prosperity and freedom makes our civilians inherently vulnerable to unwise choices. Why do you find it unnecessary? We don't want people to make a single choice that ruins their lives, do you?

A law making it illegal for you to buy something isn't incentive. It's coercion.

As long as you aren't psychologically abusing a child, there's nothing wrong with coercing a child into not doing stupid shit as a last resort. And considering children are ignorant of their environments and greatly depend upon their parents for context, the law is a last resort.

Now, if you mean actual neural development, yes.

That's what I meant. Good to see you're not intentionally complicating this.

All of these things could actually be better for them if used liberally than if used conservatively.

I am going to assume you mean 'used responsibly rather then if used irresponsibly', because I don't otherwise understand the context of your use of liberal and conservative in this.

With that said, there is nothing healthy about tobacco products. I'd like to see evidence that there's any such thing as a tobacco product being healthy in any amount for any significant group of people.

Though I could agree with you on the use of alcohol, as it could strengthen your body if consumed very sparingly, but the only way to ensure this is what would happen with children without damaging them would be if there was a regulation on it, which you could construe as a restriction, which means it's not an all-or-nothing solution.

As for guns, I'm not certain over whether or not there should be a restriction on whether or not children can purchase firearms, mostly because children don't usually have any money... so how is them not being allowed to buy them an issue anyway when they don't have money? Perhaps such a restriction doesn't necessarily do anything, but whether it's there or not is a non-issue. So the way I see it, there's no reason to get rid of such a restriction because it's just local governments playing it safe, and it's not harming anything by being in place since children don't go out of their way to buy guns in the first place.

2-4 alcoholic beverages a day (beer, wine, or liquor) is correlated with better health, lower cancer rates, lower dementia rates, lower diabetes rates, etc.

In some people, and not necessarily children. Their smaller bodies would handle the alcohol differently. And, since the chances of it being an unethical study are probably high, I doubt there are many legitimate studies upon the long-term effects of alcohol on children. I could be wrong, however. I would not mind a link if you have the desire to look one up, but I won't ask for you to find something on my behalf.

Though really, this whole thing about moderation you're spewing is a contradiction to your idea of there being absolute freedom. If all the restrictions are lifted, what makes you automatically assume that the majority of children will drink alcohol responsibly? Because their parents will moderate all their consumption? What about gullible parents, mischievous children, or negligent parents? What about accidents due to being uneducated?

There are so many dangerous holes in the idea of absolute freedom that it just further reinforces the ridiculousness of all-or-nothing positions like this.

Cigarettes are known to help with many digestive issues.

There are plenty of things to help with digestion that don't near-perfectly guarantee addiction and severe long-term health issues.

You know... like Raisin Bran cereal. Or... any food with fiber that isn't a cigarette...

And now with electronic cigarettes, we've found ways to keep nicotine but eliminate tobacco all together. Maybe the age restrictions will adapt, but I doubt it.

If electronic cigarettes end up dominating the market, I suspect the age restrictions will be changed so that they do not apply to electric cigs. The only slowness in change I suspect would be dependent upon the process involved with acquiring scientific results on the long-term effects up pure nicotine on children. Nicotine by itself in very small doses isn't largely dangerous, to my knowledge, but you never know what will happen to a child when they are exposed to a drug. For all the fuck we know (or I know, I haven't seen a child study with nicotine, if they exist), pure nicotine is one of the worst things you could possibly give to a child. But maybe it's not. Either way, we should make sure.

Government, and you, still feel that you know more about our individual best interests than themselves.

And instead of working with the government, you resist them, when it's in their best interest to keep you healthy and safe? What? Instead of screaming that you're being damaged and that the government is evil, why don't you try and assist the government in helping more people, more efficiently?

That would be a much larger contribution then taking these all-or-nothing bullshit stances.

All state and no freedom is stupid. All freedom and no state is just as stupid. This is my stance which I keep reiterating to you, as well as others, and yet you, as well as others, keep assuming I believe in totalitarianism or some retarded thing. At least, that's the impression I get. I'm sort of a potato.

Prove it.

If there are absolutely no laws and restrictions involving them, it would be disastrous. I can't see into the future, but I can see it now on basis of logical presumption. Companies would target children in adds, create subsets of product to attract children, and significantly lie and cheat all they could to make sure that children start drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

Parents would need to adapt very quickly, possibly at the sacrifice to their sanity, to prevent their children from being significantly damaged. How many innocent people are you willing to risk just to have valueless freedoms that allow children to damage themselves and require parents to work harder then how monumentally hard they already work?

You are saying that choice is dangerous. You aren't saying that tobacco is dangerous. You are saying that giving someone the ability to choose FOR THEMSELVES is dangerous. Statist logic.

Now now, you are mixing terms as you go through these sentences that aren't the same thing.

Yes, some choices are dangerous.

No, the ability to choose is not dangerous.

See the difference? Just because I think people shouldn't be allowed to hurt themselves or each other doesn't mean I suddenly want them to be unable to have the ability to choose anything. Those are two separate intentions which are not necessarily connected.

And since you seem to believe so devoutly in individualism, surely you can trust me when I say that? I mean really, come on now. I trust people, but not to the point I will assume they always know to not harm themselves. You trust people, but not the point of them telling you they think structure and control and law is a good idea for preventing people from hurting themselves and each other?

Waaait... huh?

but still, would be nice if you proved that our children are in danger if we eliminate laws barring them from buying things...

Well, just as I spoke about what you said about guns, I suppose that could be the same truth with alcohol and cigarettes. They may not have the money to buy such things, so eliminating the laws may mean absolutely nothing.

But, as I also pointed out with what I said about guns, if it's a non-issue due to children not carrying around any personal funds, what's so wrong with the restriction? If it's not harming anything by existing or not existing, then why not just keep to as to be better safe than sorry?

Furthermore, since you spoke of ALL age restrictions, and not just restrictions from children under 15, well, that's a whole 'nother story. Teenagers can get jobs and make money. Teenagers have more independence then younger children, so an elimination of restrictions that effect teenagers is far more complex then eliminating restrictions that only effect children. But I won't get into that unless you have a direct point addressing it.

Not in my state.

I hope your state acquires such a law. Or, uh, lightens the current law so it's more akin to that one.

There are always limitations

I know. Allow me to clarify what I meant: Limitations outside of personal and locally social incentive.

And what makes this right is because it is not coercive and violent like government legislation

If you need to be intimidated or forced into being told to not harm yourself, others, and/or the future of you and others, then there is something wrong with you and you deserve to be intimidated and forced.

This isn't to say it should be done if it's an assumption that you intend to harm yourself, others, and/or the future of you and others, but when it comes down to helping people and being moral, I, personally, would only work with it based upon facts. Government isn't perfect, because people are not perfect, but the general intention inevitably is to help people, because their power is dependent upon our well being.

People's lives aren't ruined and we are still allowed to enjoy ourselves without the fear of government saying "FOR YOUR PROTECTION, NOW BEND OVER"

People's lives are largely ruined due to their own mistakes. Creating an environment where our mistakes do not obliterate our lives, but still teach us a lesson about living, is quintessential to having a healthy, happy civilian population.

And while government has made mistakes trying to reach such a system for time and time again doesn't mean they should suddenly neglect trying to get to that perfect point, as you are suggesting. The mathematically best amount of order mixed with mathematically the best amount of freedom. That's about the closest we could possibly get to a utopia while we are still homo sapiens.

Absolute statism and anarchism are completely contrary to achieving this, because while what I describe is a hybrid compromise taking the best of both worlds into one system, absolute statism and what you suggest are all-or-nothing, which have all the benefits and all the faults of that one system and doesn't try and eliminate the faults of that system... which is so incredibly stupid I practically take offense to it.

Ah, so your answer is MOAR LAWS AND MONEY SPENT ON ENFORCING THEM. got it.

Not at all. My answer is better laws, not more thoughtlessly shitty laws.

You are in fear, I get it. You fear that human beings can't make decisions for themselves.

No, I fear humans beings making mistakes they cannot learn from before said mistake destroys their entire livelihood, which is what addiction to cigarettes and alcoholism does to people. And for it to happen to children? Pah!

The idea of it happening to a single child is unacceptable.

You can tell me I'm evil and want power and hate others all you want, but ultimately, I believe everything I do and will because I care about others.

They need a mast-ah to make the decisions for them. and yeah, a Shepard may break the leg of a lamb, but it's only so he wouldn't wander.

People don't need masters to control everything they do and will do. They need a guardian. A protector.

Why be so nasty as to insinuate I'm evil? Is it just because you are as narrow-minded as a Nazi and cannot associate people disagreeing with you with being at all good?

How could you possibly become such a hateful person? I think you're misguided at this point, but hardly evil. Why place that assumption onto me?

Also, your analogy has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, unless you're completely stupid. Taking away from you the freedom to damage yourself is like taking nothing away from you at all, because why the fuck would you want to damage yourself unless you are misinformed or insane? There is no reason, that's why. But people do it all the time anyways because they are misinformed, or like you, principled in exactly the wrong way and would harm yourself just to prove a meaningless point.

You say I break the leg of the lamb. You suggest that, instead of torturing the lamb, I should let it wander off and get killed by wild beasts. What makes your suggestion most invalid isn't the fact that it allows the lamb to come to harm, but that you fail you realize that I never broke the leg of the lamb in the first place.

How about, no?

All or nothing positions are still silly no matter how you intelligently articulate them.

People should be free enough to give themselves incentive to do responsible things without fear of the law, but law should be strong enough that people who don't give themselves incentive will have further incentive from outside their own judgement.

When it comes down to age restrictions for the things you listed, it makes plenty of valid sense to have age requirements, because children, teenagers, and even young adults are still developing a sense of reality and understanding of their environments and existences. Allowing them to possess certain things may cause them to grow up with less incentive to be responsible and safe with themselves.

Smoking and drinking alcohol is eons worse then simply eating candy or fast food. Cancer and liver disease are eons worse then mild obesity. And one of the biggest reasons we don't see people dying from liver disease and tobacco-related cancers as often as we see people die from heart disease is because tobacco products and alcohol are so incredibly fucking dangerous that natural education of their dangers combined with legislative inhibitors give people a fairly good amount of incentive to not irresponsibly deal in those products.

Children already spend a huge amount of time learning about what to and to not incentivize when they're growing up then is safe. Letting them suddenly be a legally targeted audience by tobacco companies would be disastrous to their health. The same is true with alcohol. Children are already legally allowed to drink alcohol as long as they have consent from their guardian. If they could drink alcohol without any limitation, it would easily be disastrous to their health, especially considering that alcoholic beverages can be made to taste good to suit a sweet tooth, or a weakling who can't handle bitter pure-alcohol taste, like me.

So, to answer your ultimate questions, yes, parenting is not enough to guarantee children will incentivize being responsible with alcohol and cigarettes. Hell, man, these things are illegal for children and they already still deal in them, illegally. Obviously, the incentive from parenting AND the government even NOW isn't enough to prevent them from harming themselves.

And you think things wouldn't be even worse if all this shit suddenly wasn't legally limited? Are you nuts?

I see. That sounds like quite the chore, so I appreciate the heads up.

Ultimately, if this is his wording, he's completely correct. But he's correct in a manner that is blatantly obvious and completely stupid. It's obvious to everyone, even mongoloids, that people do everything based upon what they know, and what they believe about what they know. This isn't rocket science.

This wouldn't even be a debate if he hadn't redefined the word 'religion' to fit this very simple fact into something confusing. I don't WANT to say it's intentional, and deceptive, but if it's not, what is it? Stupid? Idiotic? Philosophically bizarre as fuck? I'm not sure. Maybe he wanted a laugh? I truly cannot guess with any accuracy.

This is only a debate because everyone is confused and not even speaking on the same idea as he is. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Is it supposed to be a stupid test? Because if he wasn't changing the meaning of the word religion in his argument and in his debate, everyone would pass this over as common sense truth, because how he means it, it is. But what religion usually is defined as makes this debate thrilling and crazy. His absolutism is correct in the term he is being absolutist, but the problem is that his term is different from the norm.

Surely he knows this, yes? You cannot debate unless both people debating know what the hell is being said at every turn of the debate. So the very creation of this debate is misleading because he made it on a premise that a minority of people would interpret it.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, my brain. ಠ_ಠ It dun went broke.

Being able to pick and choose seems quite the advantage. I wouldn't say it's a detachment, but moreover a simple flexibility. I'm not sure if it's better or worse in the long run then how I am, but I do somewhat wish it were so easy for me to do the same. I welcome shouldering the agony of strangers, but I'd be a liar if I said it was totally enjoyable in every way. :P

While I strive to try and pick and choose who I care about, I find myself either able to totally care or not care at all. It's a flaw of mine. I can only be totally empathic or totally apathetic.

And though it's unfortunate to be had, I ultimately choose to be empathetic. I can be nasty, but not without a hidden avail of regret that I may be being offensive. But I'm just fine with that, anyway. Better I give a shit about everyone then not have a single care in the world for anyone.

I actually read some of your back and forth with him after I wrote the above wall of text and I soon came to the conclusion that wording was the biggest issue I was having with him.

In that regard, I agree with you. You can be a philosopher, thus having beliefs of any severity, but not be religious. Categorizing 'religion' and 'belief in general' as being the same thing strikes me as confusing, and while I understand the possible of him wanting to be politically correct in every sense, he at least has to make his language understandable from the start.

Saying something like 'Separation of Church and State is a myth' and then basing your arguments with others on a basis of a difference in how we view the word 'church' and 'religion' is... I won't say deceptive, but if not deceptive, then I don't really know how to describe it... other then it being bizarre.

They pick and choose what 'words of God' are relevant to their own beliefs based upon what is most convenient for them. Need to justify slavery? Need to blame someone for your own problem? Point to your holy book and say that your bigotry is a-okay.

In truth, this is hypocritical. They should not pick and choose what is most convenient for them, but rather what is most convenient for what is core in their religion. And in most theism, the idea of an almighty, supreme deity is meant to invoke feelings of parentage by some higher power, the idea that you are being watched over, loved, and protected by at least one intelligent person in existence. It's the grace of that idea which originally was meant to inspire people to treat each other as this parenting deity treats people, and to punish those whom are evil just as any parent would punish a misbehaving child. But in the end, your mistakes are forgiven by respecting your parent, or in this case, your deity.

So when theists deviate from this idea and use their religion as a means to justify bigotry, they violate the entire theme of their religion. 'I did it because dad says it was okay,' is a justification that either implies the child is lying about what their father said, or, it implies their father is a bad parent. Either way, it goes against the point of monotheism, and perhaps all forms of theism.

Rebelling isn't the problem. Rebelling just for the sake of rebelling is a problem.

Science and religion are two sides of the same coin.

The only difference is the individual reasoning.

A religious view is a logical thing to have because giving yourself a strong mythological belief will allow you to have incentive towards living your life well and not be distracted by certain things that would otherwise limit your existence.

A scientific tendency is logical thing to have because the desire to learn the truth greatly contributes to your ability to serve the advancement of the human race, or perhaps just simply serve others by making them happier because of what you discover. (After all, Albert Einstein didn't want the theory of relativity to have irrefutable evidence, but he did not deny the evidence because he wanted to serve others, not himself)

Because of the nature of these two things, I possess both. No need to have a conflict between the two. They both help, in theory, and they both have the potential to limit our advancement. We don't need to eliminate either for the human race to prosper, we simply need to use both wisely.

The funny part is that my username is contrived from a 2001 Nintendo Gamecube game called Eternal Darkness. I had a basic avatar for quite a long time because I like being anonymous on a website where people getting any real-life dirt on me would render me emotionally compromised.

I suppose I'm much more comfortable these days, since having this avatar can now give the inference alongside my username that I am some sort of gamer, which could open me up to presumptuous attacks over possible age, lifestyle, worldviews, habits, etc.

Oh well, though. I love the art for this avatar. It was gifted to me by a friend, so I feel quite vain over it.

Obviously he is not. Not only is his datapad showing simple texts, probably for work, but he is also obviously sophisticated as implied by his flannel shirt. ;) And what sophisticated individual settles for anything more or less risque then a classic peep show?

Science won't necessarily allow us to eventually understand the whole of universe's details, but basic philosophy already does. ;)

Srom is strictly better then sunialpani. Sunialpani is one-sided and totally close-minded when he creates debates. Srom, while a devout Christian, actually has learned (in my experience) to thoughtfully consider others views, at the very least.

Humans have their limits too and one cannot fully understand the universe unless we get over such weaknesses.

This implies, therefore, that evolving past these weaknesses will yield greater ability to understand the universe, no?

This reply is half disputation and half support, since I'm arguing on both sides, but I decided to dispute just in case you don't agree with me. That way, you wouldn't end up disputing me towards a position you don't agree with, ha ha.

Excuse me if my following disputations don't accurately address your points, because your English is positively atrocious and I may have misunderstood the things you said.

Also, there is a 'too long; didn't read' at the bottom of this response (tl;dr).

Did we use to be pigs in the past? Or monkeys? Surley this is the must naiv believe and the dumbest also.

Our earliest, truly mammalian ancestors actually were sort of like piglets. The dug around in the ground and ate roots of plants.

Naive and dumb? How so? It's obvious that the animals closest in appearance and anatomy to humans are simians. Scientists long ago asked why this was, and now today, we have evidence suggesting a direct evolutionary connection in our recent past to simians.

If you accept what charles darwin said decades ago, and most of his theories are getting refutet day by day.

Natural selection is nowhere near being debunked, you mongoloid. It and the extended theory of evolution are still considered the primary, unchallenged scientific theories of the origin and advancement of life. You cannot simply make up things to say to make your argument valid, fool.

We will never be Smart inoff to understand the hole universe, cant you see allready the mess in which human being is

You apparently did not read what I wrote.

I said understanding the universe is simple in because all it requires is that you understand that you will never understand it.

I don't know if you're a foreigner or simply an idiot, but if you plan to debate with an English speaking adult, I suggest you learn how to read and write the language properly. Communication is hard enough between two powerful minds without someone like you being incomprehensible and blinded by an inability to even properly use and interpret the language the debate is in.

always the same, he is individualist,arogant,brutal,destructive...therefore I believe the human being will destroy the world, and as anyway the suns light will shut down one day, we will face the end of this world

The nature of evolution is that we grow and change so that we may survive. Do you think it's logical for a species to destroy itself? Of course not. Lesser creatures the humans scramble frantically to survive catastrophes and predation and starvation. They kill each other to survive and are territorial with each other to survive. Why would humanity be any different, when we are as much nature's children as any other life form?

Humanity could have destroyed itself by now five times over, because of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. So why hasn't it? Because we are adverse to destroying each other, like every species is. We separate ourselves into nations and other social groups because it's within our nature to act like lesser animals and compete with one another, territorially. But to eliminate each other to the point of threatening our dominance on the planet? Are you a fool?

This isn't to say it's impossible. I suspect that one great challenge of our current state of evolution is culturally growing past the need for violence. If we cannot make that adaptation, surely, we may destroy ourselves, perhaps into extinction. But, destroy the world? It may be possible, but I am more optimistic then you.

You say humanity is the same and unchanging. Wrong. Every generation born is more empathetic and social then the last. Every generation strives more for peace and less for war. Isn't such a thing obvious? 3rd world civilians in totalitarian states have been rebelling, 1st world citizens challenge cultural and societal injustices. Human society is changing, even in places where you wouldn't expect change. People want wrongs to be right. If humanity is a constant evil, then good would not exist, but it does. If evil was a constant, it would be the majority, but it's not. What is the point of good then? Why are we changing?

Because unlike lesser life forms, we don't need to kill each other. We are the dominate species upon this planet. So, like any other creature, we are changing, adapting, to survive better. Humanitarianism is something people turn to because it's logical for us to survive together as a species then attempt to kill one another and thin the population out of all the bad genes.

If humanity was a constant evil, then we wouldn't be adverse to murder. We would be okay with people being stoned to death. We would be as brutal as lions, a species whom will kill their runty young and enforce pecking orders among it's males and females without any care over the suffering of members of their prides. But it's obvious, we are not as brutal as they, because we are an ever-changing creatures, like bacteria whom adapt to medicines in a few mere generations so they do not go extinct.

Thus, we change in the short-term, now evolving culturally and through technology so that we may adapt more quickly and reach better states of survival more quickly then simply waiting upon our DNA to change. (In fact, there's no need for our DNA to change much right now because we already have the intelligence to solve almost every natural problem on Earth that would otherwise make us extinct, like harsh climates, predation by other species, famine, disease, etc. The only thing we can't totally solve yet would be global climate change or world wide natural disasters, like a super volcano eruption or a mass drought/ice age)

So. You are not totally wrong to think it possible that humanity could destroy itself or the world, thus causing it's extinction. But, my argument is that, we are like every other creature, and we can adapt to changes when we need to. So, like every other creature, we will either adapt to survive new challenges, or we will go extinct.

Since we don't want to go extinct, like any other creature on Earth, I'm putting an optimistic bet upon us surviving. ;) After all, the only global things we need to survive now would be:

1. Each other. I think will be easy, just because we are not totally illogical at base, and desire to survive as a species, like any other species. Since we naturally desire to survive, I think we will continue to culturally adapt until we learn to stop being territorial and violent with one another. If this doesn't happen quickly, it will either happen very slowly, over some odd centuries, until we survive to solve number two and three, or until number two or three causes us to revert back our evolutionary progress or go extinct.

2. Global catastrophes; massive volcanoes, climate age change, asteroid/comet impact. I think solving number one will render these things easy to solve, and the best part is that things like these are rare to happen in the first place, so them happening during our relatively short time here on this planet is unlikely, giving us PLENTY of time to solve them, and since our intelligence is unlimited due to our ability to discover and store new information, and thus improve technology.

3. Overpopulation, which would lead to starvation, which would lead to mass death, which would lead back into overpopulation again, which would lead to starvation, etc... this would be easy to solve, just like number two, if we are able to solve number one.

Tl;dr: If you want to make up stupid excuses out of thing air to say that an argument is invalid, you shouldn't be debating. 'Evolution is being refuted by scientists' is made up excuse to dispute my position, because it's not true, and thus invalid as an argument. If you want to spend your next disputation arguing for on the position that natural selection is incorrect, you better be prepared to make an argument that is not contrived, unless you intend for there to be a shitstorm of logic and reasoning sent your way by me.

Even animals have social groups with complex roles and pecking orders.

I think going back to anarchy could be the stupidest reverse in our evolution we could possibly make.

I'm not even sure what my reputation is other then the fact that I was put up on the Spotlight Series.

Since I'm not sure what my reputation is, I don't know how to feel about whatever it is.

People can be stupid in general. It's not really limited to theists, but they are not immune to becoming this stupid.

Well, if you have evidence to the contrary of something that is popularly believed, why would you want to sit still and let people keep believing it if you have evidence that points to it not being true?

This is a childish way to be empathetic, of course, but it still makes sense.

Achieving understanding of the universe is easy. All you have to do is understand that you will never fully understand.

For every state of evolution we survive past, we will encounter new answers, new questions, and new problems. Even if we become supposedly 'perfect' I think we will simply then have a new level of living to deal with that could only be comprehended once we are 'perfect'.

So in that retrospect, we will never fully understand the universe, and yet, it's quite easy to fully understand the universe.

For every state of evolution we survive past, we will encounter new answers, new questions, and new problems. Even if we become supposedly 'perfect' I think we will simply then have a new level of living to deal with that could only be comprehended once we are 'perfect'.

So, achieving understanding of the universe is easy. All you have to do is understand that you will never fully understand.

In that retrospect, it's quite easy to fully understand the universe, and yet, we will never fully understand the universe.

If a person does dangerous things after watching TV, then they were already psychologically messed up. That's not the television's fault, unless watching the television directly gave the person some sort of brain defect. If there was any such evidence to suggest that this happened, and that it happened because the technology in the TV caused it, only then would it be the fault of the television company and not the person who did the insane thing.

If they want to voluntarily join, why not?

If they need the help, yes.

I am glad to see, srom, you actually hold true to your Christian ethics in this case. Too many Christians would want people like this to suffer and yet call themselves Christian at the same time.

This leads me to believe that you think that since we live in a Republic/Democracy that it will always be that way...

The only deterrent I can predict to our early resistance to tyranny would be corporate-funded government propaganda. Other then that, what would possibly not work? I know enough soldiers personally to know that even the rigorous brainwashing they go through isn't really enough for any of them to totally loose their individuality and come out the other end with no ability to think for themselves. So government tyranny would not be followed necessarily by severe martial law, considering, based upon what I know, the military would likely have too much internal conflict within itself to efficiently comply with tyrannical orders.

Furthermore, even if martial law did ensue, I will reiterate, what does that acquire for our politicians? If we don't give them power, they have none. The value based upon their power is dependent upon us. If they plunged the nation into chaos, they would just be men in sitting in fancy chairs with gunfire and riots happening right outside. Without consent to have power in the United States, the populace will destroy you.

It's not like we could become North Korea over night without a massive amount of chaos ensuing beforehand. And in the end, I don't think enough U.S. politicians will ever be greedy enough to come close to thinking that the risk of destroying the country is a good enough risk to take to gain them an ambiguous amount of undefined power.

There is a large difference between the voter and the government, also, not all democracy is direct.

There isn't much a difference between me and and a senator, other then the senator has a lot more responsibility and a lot more pressure on him. That is it. Maybe that's not how it is in other countries, but that's how it in the United States. Our government is not designed to be able to be turned into a monarchy over night.

Most politicians are not sloppy when it comes to corruption. You have to remember, this is a democracy where most of the voters have no idea what is going on, the name of the game is deceit.

It's easy to find out what's going on in politics if you pay attention. The voters don't really know these days because they are comfortable jumping on bandwagons. But that comfortability is a weapon by the populace which could be turned into an advantage against any whisper of oppression. The second someone can give factual, convincing evidence that something terrible is happening in the government, and they don't have their head up their asses and are lazy, then they could easily cause organized riots and protests and chaos.

Because as I said, evil in this country cannot be accomplished unless it is very subtle. And if it is very subtle, and doesn't hurt people hugely or obviously, then it's a non-issue in comparison to more obvious, massive evils. (Which isn't to say it's totally a non-issue, but it's child's play in comparison to resistance against big business, or dictatorial regimes in other countries)

The only way you could make it seem that all power trickles down to civilians is with that naive 2nd grader argument of, "but we can vote"

As I said above and will reiterate again, we are only uneducated because we are comfortable. We are comfortable because government does not commonly attempt to do things so horrible that they are obvious and will destroy our livelihoods.

We can whine and complain about our government all we want, but unless they are directly responsible for you being homeless, or for your family member suffering right now, then you don't really have anything to complain about in comparison to, say, a citizen of China.

This isn't to say we shouldn't always be trying to find ways to improve things, like ridding the government and free enterprise of greed, corruption, and evil. But antagonizing the entire system, which is so far the best system possible in the known world, is not what's going to give them incentive to not attempt to be evil.

Also, what did this paragraph have anything to do with your statement that their incentive is very different?

You see, when a business makes a ton of money, it didn't go around mugging people, people willing bought their goods.

When you monopolize a good, of course people 'willingly' buy them.

I laugh at this pathetic justification for robbery. 'Willing'? No. Nothing about corporatism in the United States has ever been willing. The only time there is willingness is when a town is dominated by a friendly community of small businesses, and such a town these days is harder to find then the Eastern North American Cougar.

As for "free-enterprise" you understand that no corporation wants a Free Enterprise, right?

'No' corporation?

Absolutist statements are idiotic. You should try avoiding them better.

Corporations constantly lobby for and and promote higher minimum wage and more workers benefits. Why would they do this? Because it kills competition, the biggest threat to any corporation or big business is competition and a Free Enterprise system is full of competition, it drives quality up and costs down.

As logical as this is, by no means do all, or even most, corporations do this.

They don't think in these terms. They only think of getting as much power as possible and crushing opponents. And rarely do they do it by making their workplaces more habitable and preferable to labor forces.

Indeed, they do it by reckless, morally ambiguous means. If they don't have to help people to kill competition, they usually won't, because giving has significantly higher profit margin risk then simply taking. If you give people things, but it wasn't enough for them to give back to you more then before, then you just lost out a huge amount.

Because of this, corporations, as demonstrated by the first corporations, the robber barons, are more likely to be morally ambiguous, subtle, and low risk then high-risk and moral. They will not treat their labor forces well if they can hold onto their laborers with force or necessity. They will not treat their labor forces well if loosing a few workers is a lesser loss of production then changing their work ethics.

And furthermore, even if they do lobby for higher minimum wages and laborer benefits, that doesn't mean it's to any ultimate benefit to the workers. I know this from personal experience growing up. My father was forced to work at a very specific factory because no other factory in our city had the same pay and benefits that could support our family in our situation. This is how it was for every other veteran worker in that factory. And because the people running the plant knew this, they had no issue with treating their labor force to physical and psychological abuse. Because they mistreated their workers, their work force was damaged to the point of being inefficient. Because their work force was inefficient from mistreatment, there were dangerous machine failures COMMONLY. Workers were commonly injured near-fatally.

And who was made responsible for these disasters? The work force. And they had to continually put up with it because they had no choice, because that corporation had locally monopolized 'labor benefits'. There was no competition that could support these workers. The choice was to have your family starve to death, or to incredulously suffer the rest of your days.

Inb4 'Lol so you're just arguing based upon personal feelings.' No. I have the opinion based upon experience, and approximately 0 evidence pointing to the idea that most corporations behave differently then this.

Let alone all of them. Ha. What poppycock absolutism. I believe in evolutionary morality, but that by no means infers that I am so naive as to believe that a system designed to allow greed to prosper is somehow not dominated by the greedy having absolute power within it.

(who provide goods, services and jobs through voluntary deals)

A corporate oligarchy is no better then a monarchy. The only difference is that instead of one corporation ruling everything, a group of corporations can form informal agreements that bypass laws and allow them to share power between one another while giving us the illusion of 'choice' and 'voluntary deals'.

This is a pathetic shame of an excuse. If I live in a small town and have to choose in between Burger King and McDonald's because both corporations have destroyed the small business restaurants in the town, I don't have a real choice in where I eat. Just because it's two corporations instead of one doesn't mean jack shit. Both are greedy, both are all-powerful. Both have enough money between them to control the eating habits of the entire fucking world. And instead of trying to destroy each other, they could just share power together and control us all together and eliminate all the struggle involved between them since they're so goddamn powerful.

Yes, it IS logical that the more people whom share power, the less power each individual has. I am not a fool to this fact. But the difference in power between a single individual and a dozen individuals whom collaborate together is approximately... nothing. The movie 'Thank You For Smoking' details this very blatantly and with equal logic. Why would greedy corporate CEO's compete with one another when they can share power and eliminate rising small businesses they don't want to let into their club? There's less struggle involved, and while there's less power per individual, there's more convenience and less stress involved.

And that's how the selfishness of big business works. It's a balance of maximum power versus the convenience of holding onto it. Why do you think Hostess liquidated? Not because of the unions, but because the CEO's of Hostess saw their laborers getting out of hand, so they decided to give TREMENDOUS bonuses to themselves and then file for bankruptcy. Then they blamed everything on their laborers. Why would they do this? Why would they destroy their business by paying themselves a huge shit ton of cash and then just letting everything fall apart?

Because the convenience of having ethical dealings with their laborers became too much of a chore for them, so they decided to just pay themselves the rest of the company's accumulated wealth up front and then let all those jobs disappear into nothingness while they retire to their dozen beach houses.

This is the problem with our corporatism. It's all about selfishness without enough incentive to balance out their selfishness with morals and ethics. It's a nice thing to think that they have the natural incentive to be moral, but then don't. It required government regulation to prevent complete monopolies and to prevent blatant abuse of workers. And even then... it still goes on, in the shadows, unbeknownst to far too many people because of corporate propaganda and the bribery of politicians into keeping quiet.

God damnit, my monkey man brain just went waaaaaaaaay off track there. My apologies. I my brain is tired, and while I am by no means an idiot, it is quite difficult for me to properly articulate and concentrate. ಠ_ಠ Thus I accidentally miscommunicate... perhaps quite easily. But I don't like going back and trying to change everything I've written, save spelling mistakes, because if I did that, I would obsessively do it and it would end in me being unable to write good arguments as a good rate. So... very simply, I try and remember to be clear and well-articulated as I go.

Exactly, however, the problem with your logic that you think that these evil corporations influence everything and they are pushing for a free enterprise system. If they were, they wouldn't be backing up the politicians moving towards a European system government.

I think they can influence everything, but that they are outside the system. They can own products and services and control things that way, but they cannot control laws unless the voters or lawmakers let them control the laws.

I don't think most of them are lobbying in support of a government that limits corporate freedom. If they are, I'd jump for joy, because it would imply they have a conscious. But I don't see it. What I saw in the last election was the rich man, backed up by rich men, wasn't voted into office. What I saw last election was corporations loosing, not winning. Perhaps the very few corporations lobbying a more European system are winning, but by no means are all or most corporations winning through the limiting of corporate freedom.

But I suppose, ultimately, you and I just may have two very different looks and definitions on what a corporation is.

Actually I do. However, I think that if you are going to buy an assault rifle there should be a 10 day waiting period.

A 10 day waiting period is a limitation.

But then again, maybe you believe limitations do leave people vulnerable and helpless, but believe that people should be vulnerable and helpless for 10 days when purchasing an assault rifle. That would make sense.

Your idea that me wanting an assault rifle to defend myself from an oppressive government means that I want to kill all voters and government officials is.. well, ridiculous.

That's not what I was trying to imply.

What I was trying to imply, I think, because otherwise I would have been hyperbolic, is that having the desire to defend yourself against the government is the same as the desire to defend yourself against any civilian, and wanting the freedom to easily acquire an assault weapon must be one in the same with being somewhat paranoid.

Let me elaborate.

If you want to be able to freely able to easily obtain a firearm, it's because you want to defend yourself. If you want to be able to defend yourself against other people, but need something like a military grade weapon to do it, then it may be because you are very mistrustful of others (I'd say paranoid, but that could be insinuative, and unless you seem like you are evil or ignorant, I don't want to be insinuative if I can help it). If it's not because you are very mistrustful, then why do you need an assault weapon? Because you want to be prepared? You can be prepared by training heavily, and having that advantage, because we cannot allow you to have an assault weapon without letting everyone have an assault weapon. And if everyone can have an assault weapon as easily as you, that will increase the number of illegal armed conflicts in civilian areas. And since everyone having an assault weapon will increase the number of illegal armed conflict in civilian areas... why would you not be mistrustful of others in the presence of people being allowed to so freely have assault weapons?

As you can see, my brain is leading me back to you either being paranoid, or not necessarily logical.

Unless, of course, you aren't mistrustful of others but still want everyone to be able to freely have firearms out of principle. But if you're holding yourself to such a principle, then excuse me, but I would be inclined to question your morals if you would hold such a principle above the safety of other people.

Since 2000 we have invaded Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan (some of the fighting spilled over into Pakistan), started a proxy war with Syria, passed the Patriot Act and NDAA. Please tell me more about how when the government does bad things that they are destroyed.

Those bad things weren't against the American people. Now YOU'RE going off track in the direction of this topic. At least I apologized for it, ba ha ha ha.

Joking aside, if American politicians required Middle Eastern peoples to hold onto their power, these wars wouldn't have happened. I thought we were speaking of national policies, not international ones... international ones are a far different topic that I would speaking of on far different levels.

We try to spread the word, however, anytime you take a political stance besides "legalize weed" or "legalize gay marriage" everyone puts their hands over their ears.

Because whomever is making a political stance that isn't a bandwagon just don't know how to turn their stance into a bandwagon. If they got help and spread the word in that manner, it would work. If people can jump on a bandwagon like Kony 2012 for a few months, and a bandwagon like the abortion stances for years, then they can jump on any bandwagon provided it is conveyed properly.

The voting body would have control, if most of the voting body wasn't politically retarded. Again, many of them just watch TV around an election time, don't really know to much about the candidates.

If the voting body can be swayed by propaganda funded by the rich and created for politicians, then they can be swayed by propaganda created and dispersed by other intelligent citizens that know what they are doing. Money is power in this country, but money is something from outside the system. We are within it. We, as well as anyone within the system, can say 'no' to money, if we understand that we should.

I hate the rich and think they are far too powerful, but I'm not a complete cynic on this. If I was, I'd be stupid, because if the rich truly had every last ounce of power, this country would be FAR more fucked up then it is. But it's not, because it's design is really quite good, even if it not perfect.

I see your point, however:...

And if you and your neighbors had weapons, you could also resist an oppressive government, together in an organized rebellion. How was your 1. here meant to differentiate normal civilians from government civilians? Sure, you can shoot a criminal directly, and not necessarily a political criminal, but it's basically the same thing, just on a different scale of chaos.

And a civilian hacker cannot have the skills to secure themselves against the government? Or, a civilian hacker cannot have the skills or tools to bypass whatever security there is that other civilians have?

The third one was about determining what you can and cannot do. Both normal and government civilians can do this. Normal civilians can use social or cultural pressure, and government civilians could write up laws which could be enforced. In fact, it's almost no different in any way... except that if you break a government law and you resist them, they can get as violent as you get. Or... well, then again, if you get violent when resisting a civilian, they can get violent back. So, yeah, no real difference.

The difference is scale. Proportion. That is all. One is an unexpected, violent conflict on a small scale, another is a war... which is an unexpected, violent conflict on a large scale.

The point is that both forms of civilians can force you to do exactly the same things. The difference is the scale of political responsibility and normal responsibility, as well as the scale of the consequences.

You assume that these "fuck ups" all eventually come to public knowledge and that they come very quickly. Thats just outright false.

I did not assume this. I said they have to either prepare to be punished, hurry to rectify their mistake, or scurry to cover up their mistake. The last of that list accounts for when they succeed in being not found out.

On the other hand, you seem to assume that it's easy to cover up mistakes. Well, in this information age, it's not. It's very easy for someone to find out somehow. Especially people whom are more paranoid then you and I.

Even if a politician wasn't corrupt, he/she could still make a good salary just sitting around doing nothing. If he/she wants to make an extra bit of money, a special interest group can give them some extra cash to vote a certain way.

Please, if you want to make a lot of money for doing nothing, just start a business with a few friends and write all the contracts. That way you could tailor the fine print to have it so you do none of the work except whatever is really easy.

Furthermore, the kind of stressful responsibility inherent with being an elected official is deserving of a fairly good middle-class salary. I won't get into explicit details, but as I have said in other debates, the quality of a person's reward and living conditions should be based upon their existence as a human being, the amount of work they do, and the amount of suffering their endure.

And take it from me, I know what it's like to be psychologically stressed out. For this very reason, being a politician is something that I imagine would be unimaginable. The pressure of serving people's interests, the pressure of serving party interests, the pressure of serving lobbyist interests, the pressure of balancing your political and social life. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if many politicians made the mistakes they make because they were simply too overwhelmed with pressure to know any better.

When the right goes to war, everyone is anger (rightfully so) when the left goes to war, some people are angered (even though it should be everyone)

This is another sweeping generalization that I'd rather not explicitly address.

Though, to be totally honest, the 'right', as I am assuming you are defining them, are supposed to be all about the reduction of government. So when they go to war, it makes plenty of sense that everyone will at least be mad that the right isn't being isolationist, and therefore they are being at least a little hypocritical.

This isn't to say I think war is ever justified, unless in the defense of innocent people, but this is to say it makes sense in hindsight of how the 'left' and 'right' function in the United States as parties, which is what likely would influence how people react to each party going to war. You can expect the left to go to war because they believe in no government intervention in anything unless it's for the purpose of preventing harm being done to innocent people... and since 'harm' is unfortunately subjective for most people, this ends in the left using government intervention in a wide variety of cases. What's fortunate is that these usages of government intervention are at least predictable and fall in line with 'leftist' views, as where going to war, as opposed to be isolationist, is contrary to the view of the 'right'.

They are not intentionally irresponsible, if you're going to be corrupt or do something bad you better work your ass off, or else you're getting screwed in the end.

Um... what?

So then... you acknowledge that many mistakes they make are unintentional and that they must work hard to cover up or rectify their mistakes like normal human beings?

I'm sorry, but you just broke my brain. This is one of the things I've been trying to across to you for a while now.

Sorry for the walls of text.

Imagine MY surprise over this... ba ha ha.

The best and worst part is that I changed my avatar a day or two ago. This is great, because I am secretly a vain person and absolutely love the prospect of showing off this new avatar.

Though, this is bad, because this is my first change of avatar and I doubt I will be recognized universally. HA!

How exactly did I get up here again? Not to be dualistic and ungratefully humble, but I actually am not exactly sure what I did to deserve this honor.

I think our priority is to worry about our species, and not show empathy to other species at the expense of being apathetic to our own species.

If we can help other species without harming our own, then there's nothing wrong with it. But considering the living condition of a dog at the same level of consideration for the living condition of your fellow man is... I don't want to say evil, but it feels wrong, in a way. Very wrong.

EDIT: It appears I made a derp and replied a debate I've already replied to. But then again, it's not really my fault, considering most debates over generic topics like these are beaten dead horses and it's impossible to differentiate between one debate and the other. So, of course I forgot I replied here... ha.

Weapons were made to harm before they were made to defend.

If we all suddenly had a weapon, I can assure you that death and destruction would follow.

If we all suddenly had no weapons, and could never acquire weapons, I can assure you that the only violence that follows will be a few panicked fist fights that don't end in people getting killed, likely. At least, not as likely as people dying from everyone suddenly having a weapon.

I worded my reply before this one improperly, and thus conveyed the wrong meaning in many ways. Unfortunately, I cannot simply mass-clarify everything, so I'll just try and be clearer in general in this reply.

I would disagree there. It is ordered according to individual preference, and is more or less meticulously ordered

Let me clarify. It does not necessitate social order. It generally is a personal order, which is the point of it, to give an individual clarity and answers over existence.

And while it does make sense that personal order leads to social order, this doesn't mean it happens every time.

As a general rule, people do things to survive, in the long run. Creating social groups because of shared belief is, therefore, not a constant or necessary factor in the creation of order.

I agree. Congratulations on basically stating the same thing I did in my first paragraph albeit in different words.

I am an evolved simian, separate from my ancestors by only few hairs on my neck. Go easy on me. ಠ_ಠ

A state cannot be religiously neutral in either sense of the word

Explain this to me in monkey-man words. How is it impossible to make decisions and have opinions separate from religious beliefs?

A personal belief system doesn't depend on the state, but the state depends on personal belief systems. A state is ALWAYS an institutionalized belief system. A religion CAN BE but is not always.

A personal belief system is not always a religion. Is believing in a communistic state intrinsically tied into any particular religion? Does a capitalist state require it's establishment be Christian to function? Did the rise of Feudal Japan require that everyone be Buddhist, Taoist, and Shintoist?

While we have a lot of evidence to suggest that many states rise and revolve around religion, I think it's a huge leap to make the absolutist statement that all states are directly connected to religion.

I'd say that everyone has a systematic set of very strong beliefs that can reasonably be categorized as religious.

I'm not so sure about that. I think you can believe something strongly without it being religious. With that logic of yours, atheists are religious, because they have a strong belief that there are no deities in any religious mythology in truth.

And even if everyone does have a strong belief, that doesn't mean said strong belief has anything to do with politics and statehood. If someone believes without a doubt that the Flying Spaghetti monster will return to bring peace on Earth long after said someone has died, why would they ever necessarily bring this view into play when writing up a bill about taxes? I mean, unless they were crazy, such a belief has no relevance to what they're doing. In fact, I don't think such a belief would have any relevance to what they're doing other then just being something they believe in without a doubt.

Let's take this on even more hypothetically. Let's say a group of primitive people with this belief about the Flying Spaghetti monster band together and form a clan, a state, a small government, because based upon their belief, they must create order and make the future as bright as can be in preparation for the return of the Flying Spaghetti monster.

Now, let's say they do this. How is that any different from a group of primitive people forming the same clan, except it has nothing to do with believing in anything strongly, and simple happened because they all wanted to survive together and have a community?

This is why I have a problem with your absolutist statement. Perhaps, again, there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest there has ever been a society that never had religious belief governing it from the shadows, but given our relatively short human existence, I don't really think it's called for to make an absolutist statement in this.

Like, a pecking order among a lion pride. That is about as basic an orderly community as it gets for us earthling creatures. Now, do the lions form the pecking order because they devoutly believe in something? Of course not, they're lions. They form the pecking order because they want to survive, because being together in a group is simply logical to that end. Why does the pride determine who is on top and who's behind in the pecking order? Not because they believe anything, but because they have the strongest lion among them 'lead' them, because it's logical for the strong to lead and assist the weak so that the group survives. You don't have a weakling at the very front of the pecking order, cause a weakling wouldn't handle the position.

But do you see where I am going?

Religious belief does not necessitate societal order, and societal order does not necessitate religious belief. You can maybe believe things, but that doesn't mean those beliefs are relevant to anything you're presently doing, nor necessarily religious beliefs. Furthermore, you don't need religious beliefs to have incentive to form a state. Perhaps you could argue that religious belief is a product of human development that is meant to give us incentive to form a state, but if you're going to make that argument, you also have to acknowledge that it's not an absolutist factor if we can go without that incentive and make incentive that is non-religious via logic.

A person, politician or not, makes all their decisions based upon their beliefs. If you think it's possible to make decisions that are not based on your beliefs, than this explains how you think separation of church and state is a realistic goal.

You know I was speaking of religious beliefs in this context. No need to be insinuative. I did after all clarify before even getting to this part of my reply that I understand the difference between religious belief and other belief.

Furthermore, yes, everyone does make decisions based upon beliefs, but these beliefs are not necessarily religious. Religion involves worship. You can have a strong belief without worshiping it. Which is why, again, you don't classify being a communist as being religious, because believing strongly in a communist state is not a religious belief, even if strong.

Arguing that it would be a religious belief, though, would begin to skew the definition of a religious belief, and my tired brain wouldn't be able to handle that. ಠ_ಠ This isn't to say you can't feel so strongly about communism that you could be classified as worshiping it, but it would take a lot to make such a classification because communism doesn't have an object of worship, or an idea that could be worshiped as some sort of singular thing. Buddhists worship kindness. Christians worship a monotheistic deity. Communism, and most statehood structural ideas, aren't really so simplistic, which is why it's easy to be religious from being just Christian and hard to be religious from being just communist, because they are separate ideas and things that do not necessarily correlate. Because a state does not necessitate religious belief...

What they think is best for the people who elected them is based on beliefs. The opinions of the people who elected them are based on those peoples beliefs.

None of which are necessarily religious beliefs.

If they happen to make a decision that conforms with what is objectively better for the people , it is because they just so happened to have a well formed belief, Not because the decision wasn't based on belief.

A belief that was not necessarily religious.

Sure if they don't have a strong belief on a political issue

A person can have a strong belief without necessarily having faith... or, perhaps I worded that wrong. A person can have a strong belief without necessarily having a strong religious belief. Yeah, that's probably better.

The biggest difference between a church and a state is how they are spelled.

You still have yet to convince me with apparent logic as to how this absolutism even remotely makes sense, considering you can form order and community, and thus a state, without the incentive from a religious belief.

A religion is not only defined as an institution. A religion is also defined as a specific cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith; an idea noun. Such a thing does not necessarily require humans to form a governing body, nor does it even necessitate order, for the same reason you can be, say, a communist, without living within a communistic society.

Because of this branch in definition, Separation of Church and State is not a fantasy or myth because religion is not necessarily connected to the state. It is not a prerequisite for an idea that is shared by multiple people to be organized into a governing body.

How is the state a religious sect? What state? A state, in the context I can assume you are using it, is an organized political community. Since a religion does not necessitate being organized and connected to an institution, a state is neither necessarily dependent upon being connected to a religion.

Just because everyone believes something doesn't mean everyone's beliefs are apart of a religion or religious view. This also doesn't mean that politicians are supposed to make decisions based upon their beliefs; if elected, they are supposed to make decisions that reflect upon either what's best for the people whom elected them, or, upon what the opinions are of the people whom elected them.

Since this is so, as long as politicians are doing things in this way (which is arguably the way it's supposed to be done), then they aren't necessarily making any decisions based upon any beliefs or religious beliefs they have, but rather based upon what is objectively better for the people being represented.

In other words, politicians can separate their faith from the state. Thus Separation of Church and State is not impossible, mythical, or fantastical, even if it's not guaranteed to happen during the creation of a government and state.

Even if Superman's near-invincibility and multitude of powers was a match for Vader's Force-mastery, cybernetic endurance, and Sith warrior skills, then when all is said and done, Darth Vader would cheat by bringing cryptonite with him to the fight.

Cause that's what Sith do. They cheat, especially against enemies that don't use the Force but are a match for them.

There could be a connection for certain people, but such a connection is totally arbitrary.

If a person kills another person because of the influence of a violent video game, then that person had preexisting insanity that had nothing to do with the video game that was played.

Because that's what you are if you cannot differentiate fantasy violence in a video game from violence in real life: insane.

And just in case it's mentioned, why would or how could a video game cause insanity? Any argument saying a video game could actually make someone insane is totally arbitrary, again, in relation to what is normal. If video games make you insane, I don't think you're going to play them until you become insane. Insanity happens from stress breaking the psyche in some manner, so if you're THAT stressed from playing a video game... then you'd have to have preexisting insanity to continue playing something that stresses you out that much.

Ignoring the fact that other English speaking countries have different spellings, definitions, accents, etc., no, Americans do not speak English better then other English speaking country.

Based upon how American English dictionaries are defined grammatically, it's fairly easy to see that we speak our English very poorly in concern with how we are supposed to speak our English.

Completely false.

Religion does not need to be organized to be religion.

Therefore religion and government do not need to be synonymously interconnected.

This isn't to say it doesn't happen, obviously; organization is popular for some religions.

But this is to say that separation of church and state is very possible, and by no means a fantasy or myth.

We either will or we won't.

We know that 90% of Earth's species have gone extinct, but we have no evidence suggesting there is a 90% chance a species like us will go extinct.

With that said, our chance to go extinct hasn't been eliminated, surely, but it seems to me as though our survival is almost totally assured on, at least, a global scale. Our population is tremendous and only bad luck and a lack of common sense between countries would cause us to perform acts of territoriality so terrible that would have no chance of recuperating as a species.

So ultimately, we will either live on to survive more and more things, or we will go extinct by something we could not scramble to overcome fast enough.

Either way, it's possible, at the very least. Evolution lets many things be plausible.

Not really, but it's not their fault either.

The school system is broken and teachers aren't being educated themselves in how to properly teach children.

They work plenty hard, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean they're succeeding.

Actually, I sort of want to get into the Spotlight Series greatly.

Why?

Because I am unfortunately quite vain and I would just love to see my new avatar up on that rack in the featured debates.

But as I said in my last reply, I won't be upset if it doesn't happen in the foreseeable future.

I suppose it would be nice, but I won't be upset if I don't.

It was supposed to be a comical acknowledgement that you were correct.

Though I suppose making it a disputation makes such context confusing.

My apologies. But then again, it's not really my fault my brain is tired and slow.

Every country the government plays by a different set of rules, in the United States, they have stomped on the Constitution for century.

This opinion is relative. The only opinion relevant towards what stomps on the Constitution or not is the Supreme Courts usage of judicial review. This is how it's always been. If you want to say such a thing is tyrannical, then our government has always been tyrannical, according to your view.

Also, when you say 'for century' do you mean 'for a century' or 'for centuries'? Because I can't tell. ಠ_ಠ

Government officials always favors its friends.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm okay with the double standard listed in this article. Oil companies dominate and have an oligarchical monopoly surrounding the energy business. As much as I care about the environment, I'm not really concerned with preventing animal deaths unless a species is about to go extinct. So, I'm okay with oil companies being bullied, provided them being bullied results in the higher-ups being punished and not just their laborers being punished (as much as I would prefer it just being the higher-ups being punished and not the laborers, it would require a ground-up rework of 'free enterprise' to prevent CEO's from making their laborers suffer before they let their personal profits get damaged)

So, wind power companies getting special treatment is fine by me.

In fact, saying the government 'favors it's friends' in this context is actually a bit incorrect. A friend in the context you use would more closely be an oil company lobbyist that bribes government officials. I highly doubt wind power companies are anywhere near the amount of power required to do a massive amount of bribing, thus I can only assume in this case, the government is actually turning it's back to it's lobbyist friends so that alternative power can get headway in the energy business that rivals, or perhaps overturns, oil.

That statement is truly absurd.

The government owns the land. To gain citizenry is to be allowed to legally live on this land. When you become a citizen, you get taxed, but can live here and do lots of things without being arrested.

A landlord owns property. To become a tenant is to be allowed to legally live on that property. When you become a tenant, you have to pay rent, but can now live on that property and can even personalize your living space somewhat without violating your contract with the landlord.

So no, the statement that taxes are like rent is not absurd. The government doesn't own everything we own and do for the same reason a landlord doesn't own your furniture when you move in.

Also, if government is improving the general quality of life, by building roads, infrastructure and security, why does it need the use of force

Because people should be forced to behave morally. What kind of question is this? That's the point of laws; to give people incentive to not murder and pillage and damage other people for no justification. If you break the law, you pay a price. This isn't to say that all laws are sensible towards how morality works, but generally in the Western world, laws are created on basis of what is considered right and wrong in an area. So even if a few laws relating to the public are morally ambiguous, most are not (as in, laws relating to harming other human beings).

all private companies improve the quality of life through many more examples than government, and they do it completely on a voluntary basis, plus those government services could easily be done by the market.

Again with this naivety. ಠ_ಠ

The government regulates corporatism to prevent greed from harming people. This is the entire reason for government regulation of corporatism. Even if a regulation is stupid, it's generally an attempt to prevent people from being abused by corporations, whether they are workers or consumers.

Sure, business improves the quality of life as a general rule, but the idea behind business is to serve the self by serving others. The intention is ultimately selfish, which at base, isn't necessarily evil. But caring more about the self can lead to a disregard for other people. Therefore, the unregulated ability of a selfish individual to gain limitless power through money will allow a larger business to get away with larger misdeeds.

So, big business is always a bad thing. Monopolies are bad. Oligarchical monopolies are bad. Unless the individual is the reincarnation of Buddha or Jesus Christ or some such nonsense, it is nigh impossible for a corporate tycoon to have gotten where he or she gets because they care about other people. And don't even mention voluntary philanthropy. Philanthropists either don't work for their money and therefore don't understand the kind of suffering they may be causing, or, they understand exactly the kind of suffering they are causing and are just trying to make amends.

With that said, leaving everything to 'free enterprise' is about as good idea as leaving everything to the government. Business is great as long as it's not harming other people, which is why government should regulate business where it harms people just like government regulates non-business civilian practices that could harm people.

This 'all-or-nothing' crap is starting to tire me. ~_~

Explosive growth in regulations has fueled criticism that the rulemaking process reduces the transparency and accountability of democratic government. Rulemaking was an delegation from legislative to executive.

The only true criticism there is about regulation is the possibility of them being inefficient and improperly written. If they do more harm then help, then of course they're a bad thing. But is this to say regulation should be done away with utterly and just let corporate greed permeate society and destroy people's livelihoods? Of course fucking not. The regulations should just be not made badly, obviously.

Do not question me, I control your arms! ಠ_ಠ

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

And that is basically what vulnerability is.

Right, meaning gun restrictions do not leave you vulnerable. Having an assault rifle doesn't make you less vulnerable to a drone strike and thus he had merit to ask 'what would gun restrictions leave people vulnerable to?".

And he is correct to point out that gun restrictions do not leave people vulnerable and helpless against a drone strike.

Therefore your downvote is fucking senseless, you mongoloid.

And for this reason i am downvoting you.

Well, fuck you to then.

You are being rude. Rudeness is not subjective to the speaker, rudeness is subjective to the receiver. You cannot define whether or not you are being rude if people you speak to feel like you are being rude... because that's what rudeness is. If it's not intentional rudeness, then you have leeway to say you were not intending to be rude, but you cannot say you are not being rude when you are the speaker, because that is totally contrary to how the perception of rudeness works.

To me that is equivalent to....If was poor, and i see someone's poor, i cannot give him money unless first i help myself out of my own poor situation.

And that was a completely logical train of thought. You cannot give if you have nothing to give. (of course, poverty doesn't actually work this way, but it's still a logical train of though)

And to be honest, i am on a mission to downvote with reason.

Your reason for downvoting him was senseless. If you didn't understand his argument and thus interpreted improperly, why keep the downvote there? The downvote isn't for disagreement, it's for saying someone's argument was bad. Now that you know his argument wasn't bad, even if you don't agree with it, why are you keeping the downvote?

However after reading yours, i still stand with my choice to downvote him.

What is that, spite? If not spite, you need to explain yourself for this to have any correlative sensibleness with your desire to reasonably downvote people. For as long as it doesn't make sense, it's a contradiction, and either it itself is nullified, or your previous statement was nullified.

No, I will not downvote you. It takes away my own points. I only downvote people who have arguments so invariably bad that I think spending my own points to lower theirs will teach them to write a better argument. But I've known you long enough, Thinker, to understand that this trend you have in your debates is unchanging and I cannot really influence it to be better no matter what I do.

They already tried that, and it resulted in the creation of organized crime in America.

How about no. The system we have right now for alcohol is fine. You get drunk and do stupid shit, you get arrested and treated to punishments. Thus, people have a good deal of incentive to not get drunk and do stupid shit.

Thinker, you missed his point.

His point is that having assault weapons is pointless for 'defense against the government' because the national military uses weapons which don't even require a manned assault. They could just inexplicably bomb civilian populations into submission, and an assault rifle wouldn't do jack shit against such a thing.

What the hell? Downvoting him, because why? He asked a question with merit, and his point is that assault weapons do not make anyone less vulnerable to stealth bombers and snipers then pistols. His first argument obviously has nothing to do with being vulnerable against criminals. If you couldn't see that, you must have some sort of communication impediment.

If you're going to talk about grammar, fix your own first.

Even though your disputation makes absolutely no sense, I'm not going to be rude like you and downvote you.

Ok so your saying You need guns because one day you may decide not to accept the governments authority and you want to be able to shoot the government agents when they come to arrest you?

AH HA HA HA HA HA!

Your bluntness is so brutal, I enjoyed reading it.

Actually, it is different, government is some 10 million employees whereas my neighbors encompass no more than 10 people. No comparison at all.

Because government employees are so different from employees of anywhere else?

The way you word this statement suggests yet again that the government in this country is somehow separate from the civilian population, when it isn't.

Your next paragraph doesn't even warrant a largely individual disputation now that I've reiterated this. The government doesn't truly rob you unless they take away something from you that destroys your livelihood, and even then, it's not unjustified if they did such a thing at behest of you doing something immoral (I'd say illegal, but many illegal things are very unnecessarily illegal, such as certain recreational substances).

If you think taxes are robbery, think again. Taxes are rent for living here. Except, unlike many landlords, the government takes your money and tries to improve the general quality of your life, by building roads and other infrastructures, and funding forces that protect your life from other people, like the police and military. (Not to say you were necessarily thinking of taxes in the context of your statement, but very often when I see an argument like what you made about being 'robbed', it leads into an opinion about taxes being unjust. So, my apologies if the proactive assumption was incorrectly applied here)

Government will do anything to destroy freedom, and it gain power.

Ours is about just as likely to behave such a way as your neighbor is.

What I probably haven't done is really state why this is.

To be very simple, they have the same incentive as normal civilians, it's just on a higher scale, and thus the responsibility and incentive to be responsible are both monumentally greater then when you or I simply make decisions about our families, or whatever.

True, but that wasn't the point in my previous argument, obviously, they are subjected to law just as anyone else, but the one key difference is they have the power to change the law at their discretion...

Um... no they don't. They change it at the discretion of everyone, not just them. If they did things based upon only what they wanted, they will, at the very least, be voted out of office and scorned by their peers. At worst, if they all tried to band together to take away freedoms, then they would simply be subjected to chaotic uprisings and resistances, and all of their power would then mean nothing. Their power has value dependent only upon our happiness and living conditions.

As in, they have incentive, vast incentive, to not be tempted into doing evil. In fact, probably more then you or I have incentive to not do evil.

If they didn't have such incentive, then that would imply we are as about free in this country as people are in Egypt, meaning that by now, our country would have already collapsed and reformed far more times then simply once in the late 19th century.

I suppose one could retort that we are no more free then the people of Egypt, and simply believe that we are the freest nation in the world, but that would be delving into some bizarre conspiracy theory that doesn't really have a place here.

I think it's the government's job to alleviate suffering.

So yes, it should be forced, unless such force would cause specific individuals to become impoverished themselves.

It should be free if you cannot afford it.

"WAAAAAGH BUT CHATTURGHA, THAT'LL MAKE PEOPLE MOOCH OFF TAXPAYERS."

I don't care. I'm a tax payer and I couldn't give two shits. If someone is comfortable living pitifully and miserably by my standards, it's not my place to judge them differently then anyone else. And for the most part, I don't think there is such a thing as a 'moocher' in the lower class even though I supposedly met someone like that in my childhood.

This is because I think that as long as you are homeless, about to be homeless, physically suffering, have loved ones whom are physically suffering, going hungry on some weeks, yada yada... then you'd have to be clinically insane to be comfortable living in such a state. And if you're not comfortable living in such a state, you're either presently trying to get yourself up to a more liveable state of existence, or you've already tried doing that so much that you are at your wits end and have given up.

Either way, I inevitably do not believe that the poor are moochers for getting handouts. I think quality of life should be determined by A. If you're a human being or not, B. How hard you work, and C. How much you suffer. Some people are all suffering and no work... can you really blame them? Suffering sort of, you know, takes away your ability to be psychologically and/or physically stable enough to work. And even then, people who have supposedly 'given up' are generally working to not suffer, even if they don't seem to be working to pull themselves out of poverty.

Now, you could retort by claiming that people who suffer deserve it because they made mistakes. Well, who are you to judge other people's suffering as just? It's not within our power as human beings to literally experience the same agony as other human beings, but we naturally make assumptions that said suffering is horrible; this is called empathy. Why develop feelings of empathy, even for complete strangers, if we were meant to judge people's suffering as being just?

Obviously, we weren't. For so many of you, if you made mistakes that made you suffer enough, there would always be a point in which would you break, and realize that you don't deserve the agony you are getting. So what you fail to infer is that other people are pretty much exactly the same, but indiscernible in truth. Since we can assume that people are the same as us, as in they experience suffering, but we cannot literally judge what their suffering is, we can only come to the conclusion that a person is suffering as much as they appear or say.

As in, we cannot judge how much a person suffers, and since it's very possible to suffer more then for what you supposedly 'deserve', we have no way of knowing if a person deserves a damn thing of what they have to put up with. Since we cannot judge the suffering of others by ourselves, that means we cannot judge what they may have done that supposedly resulted in their suffering.

Furthermore, we cannot judge how much someone should be punished for something. If someone does something wrong, and you cannot truly interpret by yourself how they experience agony, then setting a standard punishment is wrong, as it runs the very real risk of unjustly damaging someone. You don't imprison the murderer to punish him, you imprison the murderer to stop him from hurting other people.

In conclusion, if you have the audacity to judge others suffering and tell them, to their face, they deserve it, without any empirical context, then you are an apathetic faggot whom is a detriment to the human race. If ten people like you were to suddenly die, I would feel just as bad as if ten people like me were to suddenly die, because I am a better person then you, and I have the foresight to understand that caring for people is quintessential to human existence. You not understanding or agreeing with this doesn't make me care for you less, but it does make you a bad, or not very a good, person.

With that all explained, I will reiterate: health care should be free for people who cannot afford it. Why? Because they are not lazy, you douche pickle. They are unfortunate and suffering people who don't deserve to be treated like garbage by someone more fortunate then they. Also, they are human beings, and humans beings deserve a minimum quality of life... and if we are ever to become an empathetic, caring, loving society, truly, then we much start by improving the quality of life for the less fortunate.

I don't assume, I just acknowledge that it is possible for another civilian who is holding an office of power to be oppressive.

He was put in office because of us, and he can be just as easily removed because of us. This leads me to get the impression you want to be able to use an assault rifle against anyone, not just the government.

But if that's the case, why wish for everyone to own one? If you wish for everyone to be able to own one, then surely that's not going to make you feel safer. Unless you trust your neighbor more then you trust the government, which is again, silly, because the government isn't any different from us.

Waaaagh, my vegetable brain is sending me in loops.

Actually, its not... (con't)

No, it's exactly the same. Your goal is to do well and enjoy life as well. The same is true for politicians. Sometimes, they may think doing evil furthers that goal, and will attempt to do said evil. But, just as you are intelligent enough to realize that doing evil will have it's ramifications for you if you are caught, so do politicians have the capacity to be intelligent enough to realize that doing evil will have it's ramifications upon them.

Democracy is not flawless, because human beings are not flawless. But assuming that democratic governmental incentive is different from democratic civilian incentive is asinine. This is because every aspect of our government trickles down to civilians, one way or another. Not only that, but our government conflicts within itself so that it doesn't get out of line.

The right to vote does not ensure liberty and freedom for a civilian population that is stupid, no. This is why our country is both a representative democracy and a corporate oligarchy. Because the smartest, cruelest people among us had the freedom to take advantage of free enterprise, thus resulting in them accumulating enough wealth to influence the public and the state into being and ignorant system they apathetically leech off of.

My underlying point is that the government is no more evil then any of us, if we're smart. It's up to us to not be told by others what is what and instead give ourselves empirical evidence over what we are doing. Which is why I have a problem differentiating government and the citizenry... because they aren't really the same. They are cyclical, at least in the United States. We have the freedom to control what the government does, so if they irresponsibly make us suffer, that's our fault.

Or the fault of the rich who influence everything from outside the whole thing, but I'm trying really hard not to make this about the wealthy.

I do believe there should be some requirements, such as the 10 day waiting period and you would have to pass some sort of test to own an assault weapon.

Then you don't exactly believe that gun restrictions leave people vulnerable and helpless, do you? Because what you speak of is indeed a restriction, and while you probably aren't thinking that the test would be bone-crushingly hard, it is still a restriction nonetheless... perhaps a restriction some people would not be willing to undergo.

The government can change the laws, for example, if the federal government passed a bill that gave the government the right to execute anyone, they technically wouldn't be criminals, they would just be evil people.

The only way this would realistically happen without the entire country falling to ruin would be if the wealthy poured every last ounce of their wealth into making sure that not a single civilian learned of the contents of the bill. And even then, it would be pretty fucking hard to prevent at least someone from finding out... unless of course, people start inexplicably being murdered before they can find out, or get other people to find out. But of that happened, then local police officers and detectives would have to be bribed as well... and when it comes down to it, such a large-scale act of evil becomes cartoonishly unrealistic.

And that's because everything counteracts everything in this country.

Even the rich can be overturned by a simple politician being moral and refusing a bribe, or a single higher-up in their corporation having a change of heart and revealing rancid details to the public to alleviate his conscious.

Which is why this paranoia of presuming the government will do something so ridiculous, is... well... ridiculous. I believe in being better safe then sorry, but I can't take it to such an extreme I think that everyday, average people are out to get me life, like, say... every single person hired by or appointed to the government, ever.

A criminal is someone who breaks a law, an oppressive government is one that haws laws that allow for it to commit atrocities.

Again, our government simply wouldn't do that. It's not designed to. If there was ever a point when we came close to this happening, it was thwarted by the simple logic that if they tried to be oppressive, they would be destroyed by our unified will.

... There is a difference between the voting body and the elected.

One is a person who has incentive to not do wrong, and another is a person who has more responsibility, but also has exponentially far more incentive to not do wrong.

If you can call that a difference, then sure, there is a difference. But ultimately, it is balanced the best it can be... well, except for free enterprise. That unbalances the cycle in favor of nobody except individual scumbags. But I think a voting body can overcome such a thing by being intelligent and having strength in numbers.

And the intelligence starts with realizing that we can't just sit back and believe that the government is something out to get us. If it's smart, the voting body has more control then the government every time it votes on anything.

The true problem comes from outside the whole government/civilian balance. But as I said, I'm trying desperately to not make this about the rich. ಠ_ಠ

Some random stranger...

1. False. They can mug you. Repeatedly.

2. False. We have the technology to do this.

3. False. Peer pressure.

4. Not exactly false, but a random stranger can get into a fight with you for your life, which is similar to being drafted into a war, except on a less grand, organized scale.

There is a difference between a voter and a politician in a far distant capital.

No, there isn't. If you or I fuck up when we do our job, we have to scurry to either hide our mistake, rectify it, or prepare ourselves to be punished. In the end, we will deal with our boss and possibly our families being distraught with us.

If a politician fucks up when they do their job, they have to scurry to either hide their mistake, rectify it, or prepare themselves to be punished. Except, in the end, they have to deal with everyone they've ever known and represented hating them. At least, hating them for a good portion of time. And even if they live to see a day they aren't hated, they will be recorded in the history books as being hated, and their mistakes, abominable.

So... you know, sure, there is a difference... but not the kind of difference you're thinking of. You speak as if they have no incentive to be moral and ethical, because why, greed? What do they have to gain? An upper-middle-class salary? A salary that might be an Upper Class salary?

Well, that would make sense and all, if it didn't mean that being caught would ruin their entire life. Do you think George W. Bush is able to walk into crowds of people nonchalantly in the middle of a K-Mart? Of course he isn't, at least not usually. He's too busy living at home on the countryside, with his family, away from other people. Because, without a doubt, he earned enough hatred from his mistakes in office that walking into a crowded building would likely end in violence, or sorrow. Something negative.

With great power comes great responsibility. Yes, I am a nerd. But what you fail to seemingly understand is that a person dependent upon other people for happiness (like Spiderman, or a politician) can't be intentionally irresponsible, or the consequences are great for both parties... or in the case of politicians, the consequences are most heavily felt in their direction... because what does a suffering population have to loose other then their lives when resisting tyranny? They're already suffering.

It's like near the end of the Avengers movie. Do you really think oppression will result in the oppressor coming out on top? In a case of when the oppression is violently enforced and violently repelled? Of course not. History shows us this!

And the people who haven't figured this out by now are not the majority of people that work in, for, or with the government.

Did Jesus ever speak of a Judgement Day or Armageddon? I though that was in books of the Bible outside of Jesus' teachings.

Yes, I am obviously a cop killer because I acknowledge that government can be oppressive and that just because we live in the "civilized world" it doesn't mean it can't happen.

To acknowledge a government of our type could be oppressive is to acknowledge that your neighbor could be a sycophantic rapist.

Wanting to arm yourself against our government is no different from arming yourself against another civilian, so why differentiate the two?

The problem I have with this stance is that you assume the government is different from you or I. Not only is that asinine, but that is paranoid. That is not a way to live; both going to sleep and waking up thinking that a civilian in an office is somehow automatically more your enemy then your neighbor. It doesn't make any sense. Their incentive to do evil is no different from yours, so why trust them any less then you trust any other person you know?

If the government has powerful weapons, we should at least be allowed to have a firearm other than a pistol.

I don't see why not, but you should have to go through at least some loops and licenses so the public, whether government or civilian, can trust you with a powerful weapon.

If you're not willing to go through that, then you don't deserve to have a powerful weapon. You want to talk about this on a basis of trust? Well then certainly you can sympathize with county, state, and federal government officials also wanting to deal with this on a basis of trust. And a documented license allows them to trust you.

Just because everyone in society is given the same title doesn't assure safety.

That's the entire point of my disputation towards you. You held 'government' and 'criminals' in two separate categories. If someone from the government does something illegal, they aren't suddenly different from a normal criminal. They are just like any other criminal (except, perhaps, they have the unregulated wealth of the Upper Class to back them up).

So, this natural differentiation you make between government (which is a group of people) and a criminal (which is person), is totally moot, and implies an idea that the government is somehow different from us. That somehow, it's us against them, or them against us, etc.

No. We and the government are the same damn thing. If we fall into disarray, they fall into disarray. If they fall into disarray, we fall into disarray. That's now it works in the United States of America.

Wanting to defend yourself against the government is like wanting to defend yourself against your neighbor. Both are about as likely to do unjust upon you, which is approximately... never. Unless, of course, you consider petty things to be unjust, but I don't know you, so I can only make a generic assumption.

So I suppose then the question is, are you so paranoid as to want to carry a firearm because you trust nobody? Or, are you foolish and trust the government less then any random stranger you happen upon? If you are some combination of both questions, then why do you wish for everyone to have gun rights? I mean, if you trust nobody, and everyone has a gun just like you, then it doesn't change how safe you feel, does it?

The point is that civilians are not helpless against the government, because the government is them.

Creating a dichotomy between 'government' and 'criminals' is totally arbitrary, because an individual in the government with a gun who kills a civilian is literally a civilian criminal him or herself.

The separation of terms implies an opinion in whence you think the entire government is out to get you, and you need to defend yourself against them... which is, as I said in my previous comment, completely stupid. The government is us. Being afraid of the government isn't any different from being afraid of your neighbor.

And unless you know them personally, directly or indirectly, you have no reason to be scared or mistrustful of either your neighbor or a government employee/official.

On a side note, since the government is made of civilians and are essentially no different then you or I, then why advocate having the freedom to have a firearm? I mean, if you distrust the government, the only way to not be completely stupid in also believing in unregulated firearm usage would be to also distrust the idea of your neighbor having a firearm. So, then, wait... if you aren't totally stupid, and distrust both your neighbor and the government, then doesn't that mean you only believe in freedom of firearms for yourself?

So then if you're not stupid, you're selfish and paranoid? Hm... I could be mistaken, but it makes plenty of sense for a lot of folk I meet who believe in gun freedom.

As for who runs the government, 99% of all government employees are unelected officials where probably most of all government regulation is passed by agencies, just in 2011, federal agencies passed some 80,000 pages worth of regulations, this doesn't include state and local agencies.

So what? Whether you were elected or hired, our government is designed with a system of checks and balances to make sure nothing gets out of hand, which it hasn't yet. Bad things the government does directly correlate with basic human flaw, or, directly correlate with bribery - or, sorry, 'persuasion' - by wealthy citizens, monetarily or otherwise.

Point being, whether you are elected or hired, there is something else in tow in the system that keeps you in line, whether it be the threat of public hatred, the dethronement of your elected or hired office, or even the simple idea of being caught doing wrong... you have huge incentive to not do horrible things or make mistakes. About as much incentive as anyone else in your class bracket has, government worker or not.

All I ever hear from people, in general, is complete freedom of firearms... or the opposite, of course. Politicians don't concern me because they will either do what we want, or they will be voted out of office. Their choice, our gain, either way. Assuming people resist the propaganda of corporations, of course. I'm being a tad optimistic with that previous few sentences.

Lucky for people like YOU, politicians will never pass laws in support of my views, but you will be able to claim that they want to just because I have an argument.

Well, as I said above, I'm not concerned specifically with politicians. I see us as the basic will behind politicians, so when I ambiguously mention politicians, you can assume I don't mean the opinions of the generic 'politician' and instead the opinions the politician is meant to emulate: ours.

With that said, I care less about what politicians think and more about what you and I think. Politicians not having an opinion that relates to having blanket ban or complete freedom on guns is a good thing, because otherwise, that would mean that A. significant amounts of civilians actually believe this kind of shit, or B. significant numbers of wealthy people believe this kind of shit.

Or, C., Significant numbers and amounts of wealthy and normal people believe this kind of shit.

But based on what you say, this isn't the case. Good. Very good. If it wasn't that way, I'd imagine there would we far more violence and panic among our population if the real argument was, majorly, blanket ban vs. complete freedom.

So, whatever your next arguments are, I'll have to thank you for giving me optimism. If most politicians are centrist on this issue, then that means these debates are actually a non-issue in the big picture, and tragedies that happen are simply collateral while both parties try and figure out the perfect method to prevent as many tragedies as mathematically possible.

Thank you, Pyg.

Traffic regulation would be better handled if all roads were privatized, but I'm sure that you don't want to get into that argument since it's so off topic.

Oh no, we can get as deeply off-topic as you'd like. You've already rendered this a non-issue in relation to my position, with stating what facts you have stated, since I take the completely centrist position, and you have informed me most politicians are centrist on this issue.

With that said, privatization needs to be completely broken and rebuilt from the ground up with temporary laws and regulations before I'll even come remotely close to believing even more things in this nation should be allowed to be privatized. Especially roads... I mean, really? In our current societal state, the rich would likely cause traffic accidents on purpose so they can sue people using their roads and become even more absurdly, unnecessarily wealthy.

But government regulating traffic? Yeah, like that works greatly, having some of the largest car accidents EVAR.

And how exactly would car tragedies be not worse if there were no laws?

Sorry to say this, but your point in these two sentences strikes me as clinically insane. No laws stopping drunk drivers? No laws preventing semi-truck drives from speeding?

Either you are extremely naive to think that people wouldn't die in droves from such a thing, because normal people are perfect apparently, or you are insane. Or you just need to explain yourself further.

I mean, think about it, when the roads were made they were made for old ass cars and even buggies...

I'm thinking about it, and I've come to the conclusion that the rest of your paragraphs, starting here, has nothing to do with anything.

The roads were made for older cars, and then have been slowly built upon for decades in an attempt to keep up with the technology in cars.

I never said cars should be banned. You misread what I wrote if you think I said this. Or perhaps I am misinterpreting what you yourself mean, but if you didn't misread what I wrote, then what does asking me if a ban on cars is justified have to do with anything? Perhaps you are posing the hypothetical question that because roads can't keep up with the technology of cars, you wonder if this justifies banning cars? Well... again, how do those things correlate? If cars are too fast for the roads, then the government closes the roads and builds on them. They hire people for a public works project, which stimulates local economies. Bam, boom, problem solved.

As for the last sentence of your paragraph... I don't know where the hell you're from, but where I come from, local laws change all the time when an issue arises. Shit, even when I was growing up, I'd listen to my parents discuss semi-annually on something they were going to vote on.

Perhaps on a federal level, laws take a long time to change, but that's why federal laws are supposed to be general and be able to accommodate most of everyone in the country, as where things like traffic should be regulated by the states and counties... because it's about the scale of things, yes?

I've yet to see proper legislation that would keep a psychopath from getting his hands on a gun other than an all out "ban"

Neither have I. What's your point? If it's a federal-level law, it's going to work slowly if it's going to be effective. This is why I don't let myself get so upset over the slowness involved in the federal legislature, executive branch, and judicial branch... because they are meant to go slow.

At least, I don't get upset over it when both sides are saying meaningful things. If one or neither side is saying something meaningful during a back and forth, that's when I start getting riled up.

(which would still do nothing, since there are a dickload of guns already in this country... what, are they going to create a task force that just goes out and finds all the guns?)

A blanket ban would indeed be a stupid idea... because, as you say, that would imply the federal government would need to devote resources to collecting everyone's guns, everywhere, and then an upkeep of resources rooting out illegal gun trade... which would be just as disastrous as Prohibition, more or less.

But I have yet to see why you think absolute freedom would be a good idea. So far, all I get the impression of is that you are naive and think that normal everyday people can be trusted with no restriction on military-grade weapon distribution. And while I think it would be stupid to not assume that a great deal of people have the qualifications to be safe when handling a firearm, this isn't to say there should be totally no regulations.

There should be somewhere that freedom and order can meet in the middle. Letting just anyone have a firearm is retarded. Letting nobody have one is also retarded.

However, if most people are armed, it would be a lot easier to cut these massacres short.

If most people are armed, the number of massacres will increase, while their durations will decrease. To think otherwise is naivety.

So, I would rather meet complete freedom and complete control halfway, and propose that we do something that outright prevents deaths instead of making the death proportions per massacre different.

A ban on guns would equate to massacres like the one recently which killed more then a dozen people. Shit, if guns were banned, the massacres would be likely to happen so rarely it would be almost never. BUT, the civilian population would be unarmed, so during a massacre with a gun-ban, the death toll would be incredulous.

An unregulated gun market would equate to massacres happening like with street gangs in metropolises, except they would happen more often, and every. Oh, but, they would be much shorter, and the casualties would likely be minimal... but there would still be casualties.

Looking at the above options, neither are acceptable. We decrease death, not shift it in the balance of one extreme or the other.

What you're saying is that "government is the answer... even if they're wrong most of the time." I'm saying "whether government has the answer or not is irrelevant, because they're still not going to do shit in a free society."

If the government didn't 'do shit' to protect us, then we wouldn't have the police, the national guard, the armed forces, etc. Legislation is the same as those things... laws are meant to stabilize society so people don't riot and murder and pillage and rape. So we're protected from things more basic then a nuclear strike or invasion from another country.

This society isn't totally free. If it were, slavery would still be legal. If it were, murder and rape and other evil acts would not welcome imprisonment or capital punishment.

What this society is, or what it's supposed to be anyway, is the freedom to do anything, so long as you aren't harming other people, directly or indirectly.

So your point is moot in this context. I don't care what the government does in a free society, because this is not a totally free society. Anarchy and totalitarianism are both bad things, so I want neither of them. I want something that is free enough, and orderly enough. Not something that is all-or-nothing.

Because the big bad government is 100% your enemy and you should be armed against them in case they come to get you.

Pft.

Where I come from, you'd be called a cop killer.

This isn't to say you are necessarily someone who would do such a thing, but this reply is meant to point out how stupid and irrelevant it is to point out that the government has weapons.

Really? R u srs? Gutrest dohg pls, y u do dis?

The armed government - the police, the military, the national guard, etc - is run by civilians. In fact, the entire frickin government is run by civilians... but whatever. I can see you didn't even properly dispute the first person to reply to you, so I don't expect different treatment.

If the restrictions are written poorly, yes.

Otherwise, no.

If restrictions were proper, they'd prevent psychopaths from acquiring weapons, and root out criminals dealing in illegal weaponry.

Unfortunately, this political debate has prevented our politicians from sitting down calmly and working out something proper and are instead screaming "BAN ALL GUNZ" or "COMPLETE FREEDOM OF FIREARMS!"

Um, sorry to say, but both of those positions are naive and foolish. One assumes we will always have the resources to root out criminal gun owners, and the other assumes normal people can be trusted to use firearms responsibly.

A total absence of regulation over guns would be like a total absence of regulation over automobile traffic. Sure, you can assume people will organize themselves without government aid eventually, but how many innocent people will die in the process before everyone gets the picture?

A blanket ban on guns would be like making cars illegal and forcing everyone to take the bus or walk on the sidewalks. Sure, people would be safer from their own mistakes, but how long before some psychopath illegally obtains a automobile and plows over 50 people walking on a sidewalk?

This is exactly why issue is so stupid. 'All guns' or 'no guns'; nothing in between with most of you. Both extremes of this argument are going to get people killed.

Which is why, again, I proclaim that no, gun regulations would not leave people helpless if they weren't written for shit. If they're too strict, too relaxed, or just bad overall, people will die. It needs to meet perfectly halfway in between freedom for responsible people to use them and control that prevents criminals and psychopaths from obtaining them.

That's it.

Does he even lift?

He doesn't even lift.

Empirical, tangible evidence.

'Experiencing' a deity in your daily life is ambiguous and not really conducive to convincing me, because 'experience' is a matter of perspective.

I 'experience' the direction of the universe pushing me towards tomorrow and unto the bright future. Does this mean I have tangible evidence I can show people to make them believe me? No.

Scientific evidence transcends experience. It allows for experiences to be empirically proven, or for experiences to be interpreted differently. Without it, your experience is only perspective, and nothing else.

If I were to witness evidence of his existence, I would accept the idea that a deity exists.

Otherwise, I do not know, nor is finding out necessarily relevant to my existence.

Evolution is a science, not a religion.

Religion is religion.

If we don't teach evolution in schools, we might as well not teach any science in schools. Because, almost all of science goes against religious belief in SOME religion, right?

How about, no, we'll teach science in class, because scientific theories and laws have repeatable, experimental results which give them evidence of being relevant to the truth of reality. This includes evolution. Don't want to accept that? Oh well. School is a place to educate children and teenagers on subjects which are truthful and relevant to reality, and evolution has more evidence that makes it true above many religious creation myths. Therefore evolution deserves a mention in science classes.

Oiden pls. Y u do dis.

Evolution has repeatable, small-scale experimental results that can be acquired over and over again.

Creationism does not.

If we're talking about both of these on the level that they are differing 'religious' ideologies, well, I apologize, but evolution simply has more evidence then creationism. In fact, creationism has no evidence at all.

Because of this, evolution belongs in basic education facilities, and creationism does not. You do not educate children on things that have no evidence suggesting they have any bearing upon reality. Math has bearing on reality. Language has bearing. Science has bearing, and so do all scientific theories and laws. But not creationism. Creationism is not a science, it's a belief, a speculation, and a philosophy. But none of those attributes of creationism belong in basic classrooms.

1.) Political Moderatism

2.) I will never take on an astute, unchangeable opinion regarding politics, as politics influence the lives of innocent people, and therefore I will never hold onto a belief that otherwise makes innocent people suffer. If a present opinion of mine were to turn out to be something that causes suffering in practice, I would pass it up and think of something new, unless there was no other choice which was better than it.

3.) I don't need to try and convince other people of anything. Humanity will either eventually follow this idea or we will eventually go extinct. I have empathy, but I am also realistic, and realistically, I cannot change most people's opinions. It will have to come naturally to others as it came naturally to me. And I suspect it will, since we collectively are concerned with advancing the species as a whole, even if we are selfish.

I prefer it over debilitating heat any day.

Also, I am naturally resistant to the cold. I have walked out in the snow wearing just my undergarments and jacket before, and I didn't mind the shin-deep snow, for the most part.

I have an uneven opinion of this clash because I know much more about the Harry Potter lore then I do about the Lord of the Rings lore. I read all of the HP books, and have seen almost all the movies. As for Lord of the Rings... I have read none of the books and seen all the movies but the Hobbit... though, I don't remember a huge deal about what I saw during the LotR movies. I only remember bits and pieces and the general idea of the overarching plot. Not a great deal of the minor details.

With that said, I'd have to vote on Dumbledore for this.

Based on what I know about both characters, and what I know about magic in both universes, I just think Dumbledore would win. I can't exactly articulate why I think this other then I know more about Harry Potter lore then I do LotR lore, and based on what I know, Dumbledore was tremendously powerful. He was more powerful then Voldemort in most ways, actually (simply, Voldemort was uninhibited by morals and ethics, and thus was able to equal Dumbledore, or outmatch him, in a battle because he was evil, and magic in HP was so incredibly prevalent that it's usage required restraint if you were as knowledgeable in it as Dumbledore or any elder wizard was).

Gandalf died fighting the Balroc, and he did so while they were both falling to their deaths.

Dumbledore died because he wanted to die. Because he planned on it.

Admittedly, Gandalf reincarnated... but still.

No, we do not really have a composed holy scripture. Our 'holy words' are the words of variously-affiliated philosophers and wise men which correlate with our ideals. For the most part, we haven't historically been an organized philosophy/religion until the modern age, because we haven't been able to connect together and communicate in a group until now.

However, do you believe that they will see their children one day?

I am not sure. What happens when you die is not something my faith addresses. Pantheism addresses the problems with living, not the literal answers of dying. So, I'm not going to pretend to them that I know what happened to their child now. I can only proclaim that they mustn't mourn or regret if they knew the child lived their life happily.

I'm not too familiar with pantheist?

It's the worship of life, love, and living in general. It's not about guessing answers to the unknown or creating mythologies to explain what is irrelevant to right now. It's about caring about right now, and not worrying about what is not within our human knowledge to understand.

What drew you to become a pantheist?

I've always been a Pantheist. I just didn't know I was for the longest time.

For a large portion of my life, I wasn't sure if I was an atheist, or an agnostic, or a Buddhist, or a Christian, or what. But, I never went out of my way to try and constantly figure out which I was. All I did was wonder about it, while I focused on other things, such as loving and living.

Then, when I heard of pantheism, I immediately had the realization that pantheism is exactly what I've always been, I just never knew the term for it until then.

EDIT: I didn't know why you wrote your reply as a disputation, so I accidentally wrote mine as disputation even though I should have marked it as clarification. My apologies. I have a slow mind.

I could go on all day about what I didn't like about that movie, but to each their own, ha ha.

Captain America fights with his brain as well because he is a soldier and he is a master of strategies on the battlefield.

From what I remember of Captain America, at least Steve Rogers, he isn't really a master strategist. He is more of the quick-thinking leader instead of one that sits back and plans out an entire battle strategy. He is a Captain, not a General.

So unlike Batman, Steve isn't likely to plan out an encounter. In fact, given the right motivation, Steve will heroically throw himself at an encounter without thinking. This was marvelously characterized in the newest Captain America movie where Steve, as a wimpy scrawny lad, jumps on top of a grenade which he and the other soldiers were fooled into thinking wasn't a dud.

Did he think about that? No. If it were a real grenade, he would have died. But instead, he went on quick intuition and did the heroic thing, not the smart thing.

Also with the super solider formula in his body he slowly can heal but batman is just a human and he heals naturally that can take weeks for him to go back to normal.

Well, sure, but is that pertinent to a fight between the two? Hm... well, maybe. Batman isn't going to go looking to fight Captain while he's injured, and Captain isn't going to go looking for Batman when Batman is injured either (not that an injured Batman can even be found).

But, I suppose in a long-term fight between the two of them, as in a fisticuffs skirmish that lasts... hours? I suppose in a situation like that, Steve would have more stamina, and therefore an edge. But the battle would have to drag out a VERY long time for Steve to receive a significant advantage from that over Wayne.

Captain America is much stronger than Batman because he is a super solider and its stronger than human strength and he also has more agility and knows all forms of hand to hand combat.

I'm not sure about necessarily 'stronger'. Captain is definitely a super-soldier, but relative to someone that trained in secret his entire life to be the strongest martial-artist and vigilante fighter there is, I'd say he and Batman are on equal terms when it comes to physical prowess... at least. I say at least because even though Steve is pretty trained, he hasn't trained his entire life... and you can pump yourself up on something that makes you a super soldier all you want, but that's not going to teach you all the fine delicacies of martial arts, especially when compared to someone who trained in said martial arts their whole life.

So Captain America could easily beat Batman and he has his shield that is made out of adamantium which is the strongest medal.

And Batman has a utility belt with every minor tool he could possibly need on it for a quick situation.

Are you really going to bring up Cap's shield? Because if we're going to judge this fight based upon tools, gadgets, and weapons, you're going to be very sorry to hear that Batman uses the power of money to essentially have every tool he'd need, ever... lol

Captain America would look for traps because he is a soldier and he would for that kind of things before he would go in to a building or when he is in the building.

Not if Batman tricked him. Steve can be easily swayed by his own feelings, you know.

If we're going to presume this fight happens on a basis of their usual style, we can only assume this fight will be fought on Batman's turf. Why? Because Batman is a trickster, shadow warrior, night warrior, guerrilla warrior, etc.

Assuming that Steve draws Wayne into broad daylight is completely uncharacteristic of Steve Rogers... but Bruce Wayne drawing Steve out into pitch nighttime is perfectly within Batman's characterization. Shit, it's even within Steve's characterization to spring traps just so he can try and overcome them!

So to assume that this isn't something that has a significant chance to work in Batman's favor is to assume the fight will not happen at all.

Captain America put his feelings behind as well because he is at war and must fight for his country and do what it is right for the country.

Lol, no.

Captain America does everything because of how he feels.

He has to pucker up and resist being sad when he looses a man because he feels things so powerfully that mourning a lost team member would disabled him for the rest of the mission... which isn't too different from Bruce Wayne.

But the difference, ultimately, is how they react to their emotions. It takes a LOT to provoke Batman. He has a heart, but he is constantly taking steps back when he feels something strong so that he can get an objective look at things. Steve? No... he does nothing of the sort. Steve presses on past emotions, of course, but he immediately acts as opposed to waiting, watching, and considering things.

If this fight were to happen for some reason, it would be within the boundaries of both characters for Batman to try and trick Steve into coming out at night, and then Steve falling for the trick because he easily is prone to act based upon how he feels.

Be it as it may, that just makes sense. It happening any other way doesn't make sense.

Indeed.

The Steve Rogers I know would likely valiantly throw himself into such a situation on the chance he would be able to overcome an ambush... which, while heroic, isn't smart. And since both heroes are almost exactly the same, physically, I'd say it would be close, but Batman would use trickery to his advantage to win.

Bizarre way to put it, I know. We don't think of Batman as a 'cheater'. But what else is he when paired up with Steve Rogers?

I'd say Avengers.

I have nothing against the Justice League, I simply haven't watched or read anything about them since I was a child, so I don't remember enough about the Justice League to say I'd prefer them over the Avengers.

Meanwhile, I've seen the cinematic adaptations of the Avengers in the past decade and I like them. So, I'm going to vote for the Avengers.

Also, the Green Lantern movie was absolutely horrible.

As long as you're not making an animal suffer for the purpose of making it suffer, it's not morally wrong. So, food and medical experimentation purposes are just fine. Torture, animal fights, unnecessary labor, etc., are morally wrong.

Both are great and perfectly matched in various ways, but there is a key difference that effects this outcome.

Batman fights with his brains, and Captain America fights with his heart.

Because of this, Captain America is a hero, and a protector, and even though he's trained to be just as much a paragon of martial combat as much as Batman, he doesn't automatically think of the smartest way to fight other then kicking ass with his bare hands in broad daylight.

Batman, on the other hand, is a much darker hero, whom has a heart, but restricts his feelings from getting in the way of fighting the most efficient way he can.

Batman would win in a fight with Captain America simply because Batman would cheat. He would attack the Captain at night with a sneak attack, or he would use his tools to set a trap, or something like that. If they fought in broad daylight, Captain might win because he's so much more direct, but the unfortunate fact about Batman is that he's a guerrilla fighter, and if he's not fighting you on his terms, he's not fighting you.

EDIT: Skip to the bottom for the tl;dr of this nerd essay.

As a personal note to the creator of this debate, it's possible to capitalize and put spaces in between the descriptions for each side's position in the debate. You don't have to fuse words together and not capitalize proper nouns.

But, onto my argument:

If we are assuming it's an even fight, we have to take both of them at the height of their power in this hypothetical match up. If we take both of them at the height of their power, it's a fairly even match; in Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is nowhere near the height of his strength by any means, and Luke is freshly on the rise as the only traditional Jedi Guardian in the entire galaxy (well, other then bullshit stuff that breaks the movie and primary book canon, that is).

So of course, Return of the Jedi wasn't a fair fight in regards to the duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader had more experience in the duel, and fear on his side, but Luke was still more powerful, even if he or the audience did not know it.

This is because, when Darth Vader was turned into a cyborg, he lost a portion of his ability to use the Force. BUT, he is still the Chosen One, and thus, as an educated Jedi/Sith Lord, literally has the power to practically be invincible and unstoppable, even if he had to be grafted with a large amount of synthskin and had all his forelimbs cybernetically replaced.

In the expanded lore, however, the Skywalker bloodline is considered is the 'Legacy Family,' and Darth Vader, as the Chosen One, is it's 'patriarch'. The lore is somewhat changed this way from the movies to account for Luke and Leia also being strong in the Force, more so then a normal person, but not as much as Darth Vader.

With that established, we know that at base, Luke and Vader are genetically unequal in the usage of the Force. But to be realistic, we have to take into account periods of their lives when considering the heights of their strength.

Darth Vader's height of strength was more or less the first 10 years he spent as a Sith Lord, probably somewhere 5 years or so into it. It wasn't closely around the time when he first turned, nor anytime during the Original Trilogy. This is because, even though Darth Vader wasn't a cyborg when he first turned, he was still newly turned and had no experience with how to use the dark side of the Force. Thus, he was basically an untrained Dark Jedi, which required experience with using the dark side of the Force to be powerful, in the lore. In other words, even though he was extremely powerful and not limited in his ability to use the Force, he didn't know how to use the dark side properly, and therefore had a handicap. This handicap of inexperience is why he was defeated early on by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

After Darth Vader was recuperated as a cyborg, this was when his power started quickly growing towards it's critical mass. Even though Darth Vader now had a new handicap placed upon his ability to use the Force, he acquired a tradeoff that, when coupled with a mastery of the dark side, ultimately made him deadlier then before he was a cyborg. As demonstrated with General Grievous in the original 'Clone Wars' cartoon miniseries, cyborgs in Star Wars can use the physical upgrades from being mechanical to give them nearly Force-trained like physical prowess. (The reason Grievous and Vader did not demonstrate such prowess in their respective episodes is because of physical factors that happened off-screen)

With this said, in Vader's earlier years as a Sith Lord and cyborg, his slight handicap over his force usage was easily overcome by the fact that he was the Chosen One, and that he was at that point very and properly learned in the Dark Side. With that limitation overcome by those factors, Darth Vader also had an additional advantage: he was cybernetic enough to be super-human at physical base, but not so cybernetic that he channeled the Force significantly less then he could before.

This, altogether, is why his younger years into being a Sith Lord put him at his most powerful, before he quickly began to decline in power when he slowly turned into a middle-aged man. He was a cybernetic death machine with his lightsaber, unmitigated dark side Force-use, and significant physical augmentations.

Now let's talk about Luke. As a Skywalker, Luke has a genetic boon to his ability to use the Force; not as great as Vader, but still one. If we go and look at Luke's height of power, this would actually be the opposite of Vader as it would be when Luke is old(er) instead of young(er). This is because of the nature of the Force. The dark side grants tremendous power, but it ages you very keenly, and in Darth Vader's case, aged him to the point of being much physically weaker then a normal cyborg. The light side, inversely, grants a moderate amount of power, but ages you very mildly, even allowing you to be physically more capable when elderly then other people whom are a proportional age.

Later in Luke's life when he was nearing middle-age, he at that point was probably at his critical mass of power. He was the Jedi Master of the New Jedi Order during the Vong War, the second Galactic Civil War, and several other conflicts. During these periods Luke not only mastered his ability to use his lightsaber, but he also reached the highest point of force usage he could possibly muster. In fact, by the end of the Vong War, it was actually established in the lore that the Force did not truly have multiple sides, and it only manifested as light or dark based upon the person using it. The result was that Luke Skywalker, at the height of his power, was a relatively powerful warrior, but he had the capability to use every Force technique, 'dark' or 'light', in combat without any temptations that would otherwise lead him to, or make him even think of, the dark side.

So, Luke at his highest state of power wasn't primarily as a warrior, but, say, a great wizard. A sage. He relentlessly would channel the Force as if he were Gandalf the White in Lord of the Rings, and resort to his lightsaber only unless it was necessary in the fight he was participating in. He was like Emperor Palpatine, except a Jedi and not hideous or evil.

With that established, pitting Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader against one another in their prime of power would likely result in Luke as the victor.

I surmise this for a few reasons (- is a negative towards the conclusion, + is a positive):

- Darth Vader's slight handicap at channeling the Force caused him to be more of a Sith warrior then an acolyte. He almost always got up close and personal, and only supplemented his combat with non-physically-augmenting Force powers. Even though Luke masterfully knew how to use his lightsaber, it wasn't his focus, meaning Vader's style of focusing on close combat has a good chance of breaching Luke's defense.

- Luke can think quickly in the fray, but Vader can think faster. The trained recklessness involved in Sith warrior melee combat would have it be that speed outmaneuvers cleverness. That, coupled with Vader's cybernetic augmentations, makes Luke offensively outmatched in melee.

+ Darth Vader and Luke are both experienced in combat, the difference being that Luke, nonetheless, keeps an objective tone with his strategy. He is experienced in fighting powerful melee fighters just as much as Darth Vader is experienced in fighting powerful defense fighters, but Luke can make better decisions that go towards his victory. Even if said decisions are slower then Darth Vader's, they still have a significantly higher chance of being the right ones, which could easily overturn Vader's speed advantage.

+ Luke Skywalker's melee defenses are balanced and stalwart. He uses the lightsaber combat forms of Soresu, Ataru, and Djem So. In other words, Luke's entire melee style focuses primarily upon some form of direct or indirect defense. That, coupled with his experience and type of strategy for fighting makes him probably good at, or at lease capable of, withstanding an impetuous melee opponent without totally loosing the opportunity to use his more powerful Force powers.

+ Finally, Luke's sort of dueling style is ultimately a detriment to Vader, because Vader is a cyborg. This isn't because droids or mechanics are vulnerable to the Force inherently, it's that flesh is inherently defended against the Force. Even a normal individual who is not trained in the Force is inherently less effected by it then a droid, because the Force flows through living things. Since Vader is a cyborg, even though he is the Chosen One and extremely powerful in the Force, a great portion of his actual body composition is significantly undefended against the Force. When Vader channels the Force, it does not channel through his limbs from the inside. When a non-cyborg Jedi channels the Force, it flows through their entire body. With this pointed out, Luke Skywalker at his height is powerful not because he is a warrior, but because he is sagacious and a Force sorcerer. Any opportunity he has to strike at Darth Vader with a power is proportionally more damaging then if Darth Vader were not a cyborg. It's essentially the exact reason that Darth Vader dies at the end of the Return of the Jedi; the Emperor doesn't even focus his Force lightning at Vader, but mere backlash from the lightning completely ruined Vader's cybernetics, which were apart of his body and were keeping him alive.

In conclusion, Darth Vader is extremely powerful, and if some sort of fight simulator like Deadlist Warrior were to take Darth Vader at his most powerful, and Luke Skywalker at his most powerful, calculated all of their combined strategies, defenses, and offenses, Darth Vader would certainly have SOME wins. He is, after all, Darth Vader, the Chosen One, Dark Lord of the Sith, the most powerful Force-user to ever exist in his era. But ultimately, I think Luke would win more then 50% of the time, simply because, even though Darth Vader's cybernetics are actually an advantage in every battle, they are also a disadvantage against Luke Skywalker's mastery of offensive Force-powers and melee defense.

If these two were to have 5 hypothetical battles, I'd say it would go like this:

1. Vader relentlessly shatters Luke's melee defense with an unmitigated onslaught. Vader wins.

2. Luke's defense holds out long enough for him to get in a decisive counter-attack. Luke wins.

3. Vader is able to use his greater speed to get in a decisive attack before Luke can counter. Vader wins.

4. Vader wastes his greater speed on a risky attack that allows Luke an opening. Luke wins.

5. Luke risks an uncertain moment to use a Force power on Vader. Vader looses the benefit of his cybernetic augmentation and is no longer faster and stronger then Luke. Luke wins.

Vader: 2, Luke: 3

Tl;dr: I think Luke Skywalker is the more-often winner of an evenly-matched duel with Darth Vader.

I am not an atheist, but neither a theist. I am a pantheist.

If someone were to use their own religion to console themselves over a dead loved one, I would say something to the effect of, "If you loved them so, their time together with you was surely not lived in vain."

I wouldn't try and invalidate their beliefs. If they were looking for me to contribute to consoling them, I would supplement their belief of comfort with my belief of comfort, my belief being they should not regret a death if the life before the death was not lived in vain.

Now, if they cannot take comfort in that because they expect me to be Christian and share a belief exactly the same or similar to theirs, then that is their fault. Not mine.