Yes, I quite agree with your controversial stance. Raising your kids to know the difference between right wrong is better than protecting them indefinitely. But since I’d rather ignore obnoxious people who are selfish enough to do what they please without respecting the common space between people, I’d appreciate it if they kept it private. For example, if you’re one of those people who likes to get obscene in front of kids, I’d rather someone puts you away than having to go out of my way to avoid you.
What do you mean by censorship? If you’re talking about taking provocative art out of the public arena and making sure that nobody that can be negatively affected, such as children, is the audience, then yes, art should be censored. If you mean censoring art in a selective forum that has a mature audience only, or an audience that is fully aware of the subject matter and will not be offended, then no, that would be awful. For example, I damn well appreciate it when a sleazy scene in a movie is left out of family entertainment on television. People who want to see it in full can rent the DVD or subscribe to an adult channel and view it in private.
Being an ordinary person, putting your faith in prayer is different from pressing a button.
That way I see it, God is all-knowing, wise and ‘listens to all your prayers’ - how and when He chooses to answer them is His decision. Like your prayer, your patience will be rewarded. The same way as a good child would respect his/ her parent’s wish to, I don’t know, not eat too much ice cream and grow up not obese.
At the same time, if you pray with true conviction, would you not agree that the effect your love for the patient and for God would have is a medicine for the soul (which in fact, I consider the true self)?
To me, it’s not wasted time at all, unless you were too busy praying to attend to the physical needs of the patient, which would just be shirking.
I suppose my minimalist statement didn’t come across as clearly as I thought it did. The atheists can whine all they want about how there’s no God and throw tantrums to say that God is a foolish, silly concept but in the end it doesn’t make the slightest difference – the atheists will continue arguing, and believers will continue to hold on to their beliefs.
However, and the reason I’m on this side along with others who say that god is fake, is that God is too easily attributed to anything and everything. I mean, you have sensible people who worship everything from idols to animals as well as people who call a human (who was no doubt a manifestation of God), God Himself, so I guess pasta can have its merits too.
Anyway, I’d just like to add that God is above petty spaghetti, invisible pink unicorns and the like. Anyone who’d like to fool around with noodly appendages is free to do so on his/ her own time, but all that silliness doesn’t get more than a smirk.
I find your argument spot on, but it does not provide a solution.
Your concept of human understanding of truth as a Boolean that goes through algorithmic processes effectively turns humans into robots. However, I believe that there is a path to understanding the truth for humans.
Rather than a simply a human process, finding this path is more likely a spiritual process – to bring us face to face with the final, pure, absolute truth that transgresses the limits of our mental cognition – that can be nothing that we would have ever known before, or anything that needs further elaboration.
This enlightenment has been referred to in many religions – as nirvana, or in the case of monotheistic religions, as heaven – though your argument still holds true as by then we would be likely far from human (condition).
As for those who would rather limit themselves to being robots, the ‘truth’ is lost to them as they are unable to grasp anything beyond their immediate, inadequate perceptions.
I believe that divine revelation regarding this path to enlightenment for mankind has been conveyed through prophets as a guide for those who seek it in earnest.
These enlightened messengers of God with divine inspiration in their understanding of the truth were able to achieve a level of perfection that is not commonly known to humans – an essential quality to lead the way to enlightenment.
If humanity would be put on a scale ranging from barbaric animalism to saintly virtue, these messengers of God were considered the highest on the scale, so much so that many humans went as far as to deify them.
Through this ‘agency’ of God (that has prevailed in all adversity) I believe there is way out of the finite, limited possibilities that humans can ever know, to the infinite boundless universe beyond – and a final, complete, perfect understanding of the truth.
That’s another reasons that its impossible to discuss religion with a bunch of new age self-enlightened individuals who are suckers for consensus with the scientific community and think that they can, or have, defined everything in the universe and completely ruled out that there is a God - the creator of the universe in which they are no more than tiny pip-squeaks: they’re so goddam inebriated most of the time that you can’t even make out if they’re rational enough to realize the truth if it was spilling over them like hot coffee. It’s rather difficult to find out what God is and what the truth is (which I believe is the highest form of knowledge that humans can ever know) if you’re not even letting yourself use half the mind that God gave you in the first place.
I didn't really get the discussion I was looking for in my last debate about fav role-playing games. What I really meant was action-adventure. Or what-ever. So this debate's less restricted by semantics: Your bestest video game please, and why.
Hey, not that I'm Christian, but just bein' the Devil's - er, God's, - er, Jesus' - er, Bible writer's advocate here for a cotton pickin' minute: It don't say you go to hell, just says that its dirty, y'now. You should know, you water fowl you.
Okay, I confess. While always having been a big fan of story telling games, I never really got around to the sophisticated industry-standards - homebrew was always good enough. When I was making this debate, I was really thinking about the wonderful third person action adventure / shooter games I’ve played on my PC and on various consoles.
While this includes the more RPG-oriented Vampire: the masquerade type games, I wouldn’t mind it one bit if the lot of you tell me all the juicy details about why you love GTA. I dunno, 3, or RE4 for example, or in my case how I just can’t get enough of action-packed GOW2. Tell you what: Blood Omen 2 is still one of my favs, though playing it several years later and sober just wasn’t the same, though the camera angles that you can maneuver for the perfect perspective of some very romantic vampyric imagery is still hard to compare.
Reminiscing about all the wonderful RPGs that I’ve lived in is quite a trip down memory lane, even if I never got around to some of the most popular titles.
One of my all time favs is years old now, but still deserves one of the highest ratings for an overall gaming experience: excellent gameplay, an unlimited universe to explore, a fantastic, immersive story line with intriguing characters, themes and plots and breathtaking challenges. But maybe one of the best things about it was the soundtrack, as I remember the thrill of flying low over the parched desert sands on my dragon as the beats to some strange outlandish music colored the drama that eventually unfolded.
Drakan: the ancient gates takes my top spot.
Yeah me too. 'Cept I gotta drive around the city with some revs under me or I'm gonna get left behind. Suprisingly, a 125cc cruiser motorcycle, that really just looks like a macho Shadow, is more than enough vroom to get me there, in style, in league with the big boys, and at a fraction of the consumption and cost you get on twice the wheelage. I don't even need to bother too much about traffic! (Just wear as much armour as you can and drive carefully).
I also remember my days back in the woody subs, with my fixed up Trek 700 trail bike (reclaimed from a dumpster) that got me off- and on- the road as I rode the wind.
I like companies that say no evil, do no evil (do we hear no evil?). And jack up the internet till you wish you could install 'em in yer brain.
Anyway, I also think that Microsoft is so last decade, even though you gotta hand it to them, they made computer geeks out of a bunch of nobodies.
So I'd pick GOOG. How about you?
I agree with Nikobelia completely.
I have two arguments to prefer 'politically correctness' over and above our god-given right to free speech.
The first is an observation that human interaction is only fruitful through mutual respect. Thus the situation, the audience and other factors influence the appropriateness of the spoken word. For example, between friends who have an established relationship and mutual understanding, strong or colloquial language may be mutually permissible but may not be so with the general population that includes strangers or people likely to be offended. A person who is not conscious of political correctness in his/ her interaction with other people therefore risks being obnoxious or abhorrent. The interaction is no more productive for either party (unless the purpose is to be offensive) and only serves to create barriers.
Secondly, the purpose of many discussions is, in fact, to attack other peoples’ opinions, ideals or beliefs simply because it does not appeal to the speaker. This is an abuse of the right to free speech, and is anti-social in nature. Such bigots should find an appropriate forum that is not aimed at attacking others who are the subject of their intolerance and ensure that people who are likely to be offended are excluded, rather justifying it as ‘free speech’. It is natural to have conflicting beliefs but it is the hallmark of a civilized nation to be able to co-exist in harmony.
A wonderful debate! While ‘Sure. Absolutely’ may not sound exactly what I mean, I would like to propose two views that conclude that you really can know.
The first is that if knowledge is a result of your beliefs and perceptions, then you ‘know’ what you know, therefore you know, and have no reason to believe otherwise.
The second one, that is my personal belief, is that the human soul is in pursuit of knowledge that it senses somehow, but knows is out of its reach due to its human constraints. The personal search for knowledge thus transcends worldly limits and seeks communion with divinity in a state of being next to Godliness, though the “I”, or “you”, ceases to exist.
This is of course the spiritual path that one cannot ‘know’ without the knowledge that they know nothing, and take their first steps towards enlightenment.
So if this makes any sense, I guess that you can know without knowing anything, or you can know that you know nothing. In either case, you know and you don’t know at the same time.
LOLS! Told you it would get you squawking mad! Okay here's what you'd really love to hear, before you start writing me another essay. And I'll try not to make any spelling mistakes this time, though I try to focus on the message not the spelling. But yeah, here it is: "YOU WIN". I don't expect you to be able to grasp anything that science can't prove (you might want to try this debate: “Does all the scientific evidence we have today prove (or disprove) every damn thing?” (http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Does_all_the_scientific_evidence_we_have_today_prove_(or_disprove)_every_damn_thing ). Neither do I expect you to be able to accept there’s a universe out there waiting to be discovered, with tons of stuff you can’t explain with documented proofs on the internet, such as spirituality, religion, metaphysics, philosophy and the likes. Well, it’s nice do go out and do a study when you are bothered enough to do so, but in my case, I take a debate on the internet only so far as I can afford to. Good luck with your skepticism, I guess I am pretty simple compared to your superior intellect and reasoning. But thanks for reading so far. Now will you please go away and get on someone else’s case? (Here, you can try this guy: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/
The Neumann's were silly to depend solely on prayers to restore their daughter's health. At the very least, I hope the Neumann's really do have enough faith in God to be able to trust his decision to take their daughter from them, in his infinite wisdom.
‘Prayers work’, you can’t always understand how so with your limited understanding of the universe, so it really comes down to a question of belief. It would be unrealistic to try and prove it, the same way as you can’t make a blind man see.
I punch you hard on the head. You lose your memory, it slips out of yer head, u dont remember a thing. However, in history (001, for kindergarteners), I punched ya.
You haven't seen me (probably). You don't know what I look like, but I exist. When you do see me, your brain will create an image of me in your head through your vision (duh) and a memory will be created. I think I got that even if I can't take out time to read through each of your repetetive lines and the links you send.
"The memory encoded within your brain exists" - you said it, the encoded memory exists in yer brain. The memory itself, or the instance, did not oringinate from yer brain, which is what I'm sayin.
So supposing for a second 'we' did operate within our bodies, like those japenese robots in cartoons. Your brain will create memories that your senses perceive in this world. And when you die, your brain will stop creating any more memories.
But I'D SAY, heck, who needs to create memories when you die? I'm talking about a state of being that obviously doesn't need a body, or a brain to create or process memories.
However, since I haven't taken this site up as an occupation, I don't have the motivation to post detailed discussions that invlove my personal research. There is, however, a wealth of knowledge available, though not nearly on the internet. May be I'll share it sometime, but its futile if you're thick as a walnut. (I'm gonna love it when you start squawking mad now)
The topic of the debate is whether prayer is nonsense. You're out to prove that God doesn't exist. Not the same, as I argued from a psychological perspective aside from religious views.
However, I do trust in God. My ultimate objective is to do things right, rather than just get what I want. God helps me with that, so my prayers aren't futile in any case. In your case, however, your objectives come before your beleifs, it seems (since you don't have any).
When a child throws a tantrum, a wise parent doesn't always gratify his whims. God is all knowing. You can be sure you'll get exactly what you deserve.
Maybe that's how it works for you. When I pray, I feel that I am increasing my chances of being successful so I know I can't go wrong. I also feel better in case it doesn't actually work out since I know my intentions are pure (since I could put prayers in to the equation). Either way, makes me feel good about life, so its not nonsense for me. Depends on how you pray, what you pray for and to whom you pray I guess.
Also, I feel a need to pray and remember God, irrelevant of whether I'm begging for something or not.
So you think a majority view is irrelevant because it may not be the truth. That's what I say too, but you disagree when it comes to arguments that "are widely accepted facts" in other debates.
Fact is Jesus is among the best humans in history to be considered as 'the most respectable person', whether you like to believe in him or not.
I vouch for InvisiaWoman.
Aside from arguing that 'God answers prayers', I'd just like to say that there's a lot of psychological advantages to believing in prayer. Confidence, committment and the power of vocalizing your ultimate objectives that you want to see through would definitely improve your efforts. Of course, you gotta work it, not just say it, then 'God' may help ya.
Thanks for being one of the first to bring in a discussion from other belief systems, such as the hindu religion. 2 things I could dispute: 1) the self may infact not lose realization of itself (I think this realization will be amplified) 2) self-realization in the worldly sense may not be the same as in the afterlife. There are many different states of conciousness, the Buddhist concept of 'nirvana' is close to what I believe may be the applicable state of realization you are talking about, provided you have walked the path in search of it, rather than being bound to 'this life'.
I'm sorry I didn't realize there was a qualification requirement to this debate (I didn't set one). No I'm not a neurobiologist, the same way as you aren't a religious scholar, a philosopher or a sea monkey. I am an ordinary guy, who has had a lot of questions, and satisfied himself to the answers, while retaining a healthy scepticism and logical base.
I'm pretty sure that conciousness and self-awareness are seated in the brain (it's pretty damn obvious). But that just proves that there cannot be any mental activity related to self-awareness and conciousness in the physical realm, since our brain stops functioning when we die.
I'D SAY that yes, we do continue to exist when our bodies die, not only physically speaking because our 'atoms get recycled' like someone else here has said (meaning 'we' is not just what you see in the mirror), but also because I believe that the 'self' is occupying our human form for this instant, and using this organic machinery to operate in the physical realm (which includes the complex processing unit we call the brain). When we die, we discard our shells, like the driver that steps out of her car when the destination has arrived, and get on with the rest of our existence. O and I'm not speaking of science, not just, which by the way is an opinion (or hypothesis) through good observation taken to the next level and considered in detail. You should also check out my other debate: Does all the scientific evidence we have today prove (or disprove) every damn thing?
Yes, I guess you're right. The burden of proof does lie with me. At this point we're only debating. And even I don't have a complete understanding of it myself, though I have spent years trying to understand what it really means.
How it works though is: 1) You start believing in what your heart tells you, not your head (allegorically speaking, of course) and 2) You begin a long journey to realization (some may call it nirvana), where you leave the physical boundaries of the universe and seek a path to enlightenment. Hey, if it takes volumes to prove something scientifically, you can't expect an ordinary person like me to prove this just like that do you? I wish I had something zennish I could tell you right now, but maybe later.
Thanks for proving one thing though, that till I show you the platypus, you won't accept it might exist, which says a lot about how open you are to considering anything outside the box, if I'm not mistaken.
You're not simply an atheist, you're a hateful wretch.
There, I'm blatantly saying it. You're debate is nothing more than a pathetic attempt at anti-islamization, devoid of common sense (you say a prophet that brought civilization to a land of revelers is amoral?) or concrete facts (you have no real knowledge of the Quran and the hadith or the life of the prophet - you just love to bitch on whatever information you can conveniently mistrue).
Well, you’ and me agree on one thing: that the truth will prevail and all illusions and lies will be shattered.
The prophet is known for the purity and goodness in every aspect of his existence. He lived a simple, exemplary life and no other person can compare to the perfection he attained and passed on to his true successors, paving a straight path to divinity and godliness for all of humanity. His deeds and actions are remembered as the most noble and ideal centuries after his death and will continue to be held in close regard by the righteous till the end of time, for he is the last of the prophets of God to have walked the earth.
And you have the audacity to think that he would have engaged in such a repugnant act? Either you and your interpretations are just plain stupid, or, which is more likely, your cause is to put down the Prophet and all things related to Islam. Why don’t you go ahead and bring your sources to light instead of just making generalized statements so we can all see for our selves?
For all your hate filled lines and petty insults, you are a vile creature that has chosen a cursed path. You can rot in hell, that’s where you belong.
Which also brings us to the topic of my other debate, that I do hope you'll participate in: "Does all the scientific evidence we have today prove (or disprove) every damn thing?"
