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RSS Erewhon

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10 most recent arguments.
1 point

I think that religious beliefs have always been, and continue to be, the result of creativity and imagination. This does not mean that religious thinking is random and pointless though - the source of the creativity and imagination might very well be spiritual. Lower creatures, with no access to these attributes cannot reason beyond what they sense and so the average racoon doesn't spend much time thinking about religion, or art, or the value and usefulness of 'i', (the square root of minus one), I suppose.

We are not 'getting too intelligent for religion:' We have become intelligent enough to refine our beliefs; to update them. There has always been an element, in every culture, of people who are pleased enough to live at the level of racoons, I suppose. My guess is that the proportion of these folks to folks who search for a deeper meaning to human life, remains, more or less, the same over time.

3 points

I think we should probably keep in mind that, innocent or guilty, we all suffer the 'death penalty' ultimately. When we decide to save a violent criminal's life and keep them in jail instead, we are not sparing them death - they are going to die anyways. By executing them, we are just moving the 'penalty' date up a few years for someone who has demonstrated a disregard and respect for life. This doesn't seem to me unreasonable at all.

I do understand and appreciate that the legal system has made errors in the past, and probably, innocent folks have been executed pointlessly. I hate to sound crass, but this is bad luck and there is plenty of it everywhere - we are more likely to die in an automobile mishap than from being yanked into a horrible crime we did not commit.

1 point

I am surprised at people who oppose the death penalty but are quite content to lock a human being up like an unwanted pet rat, for a lifetime. I am not opposed to killing off people who commit loathsome social crimes but I do resent the American concept of a death penalty - decades of imprisonment, sprinkled with very expensive legal hope, followed by death, often many years after the actual crime.

In any case, I think we should reserve our sympathy for the surviving families of terrible crimes. It seems to me that, in the flurry of pretentious moral posturing on behalf of criminals, we often forget the people who have to live with the great pain of loosing precious, innocent lives at their hands. These people are not criminals but are being punished anyway, often for the remainder of their lives.

I know that someone is likely to think and write that the execution of a criminal does nothing to dull the pain of a personal loss at his hands, but I don't think this is true for most people.

1 point

I am not sure what side to enter this comment on really. I am not a vegetarian and, worse still, I am a hunter. Every year I kill a deer, at least, and often a deer and a moose. I feel terrible about the pain and death but I do have a big and happy family and I like the idea that they are being sustained with antibiotic-free meat. And, I confess, that I like to think of myself as a provider in these shaky times.

I have lived in the north long enough to realize that nothing in the woods - no deer, no moose, no wolf, no muskrat - lives to a happy old age or dies a pleasant death. When creatures age, they are tormented and die terrible deaths - natural predators do not share our sensibilities. My bullets are true - I have, after years of hunting, never killed anything gratuitiously or irresponsibly. Still, I do feel that, somehow, we should be evolving away from administering death this way. But, there is no easy answer for this - we are six and a half billion strong now - there is no room for everything to survive anymore.

1 point

Boy, do I have egg on my face! A billion. A million. I re-read your post and you are right. I have been slapping myself in the forehead all morning.

Let's see, 5 million or 0.005 billion - is this right or have I made another elementary mistake? So, the age of the earth is 4.54 billion, plus or minus 0.005 billion. (I hate to harp on this so much but I do want to take advantage of your careful thinking). The range for the age of the earth, according to your last post is 4.49 to 4.59 billion. That represents a difference of 0.1 billion, or, an absolute error of plus or minus 0.05 billion, which is 50 million, plus or minus - am I right? Things aren't coming together for me, I'm afraid. I am so terrible with zeros.

I would appreciate an analysis of this. Meanwhile, I find your comment about being marooned on an island a little puzzling. If I were your age (from your photo I see that you are a young man) I would chose neither the bible, nor Wikipedia for company - I would chose Pamela Anderson. But there you are. And....I still have that headache - I should probably check with a neurologist to see if I really have one. Thanks for your indulgence, Markml0528.

1 point

Thanks for the information. You know, when I feel tired, I sit down to rest and expect no one to do the same. When I feel God, I respond and don't expect a similar response from anyone. You are absolutely right about there being no credible evidence for God - there is no credible evidence, that I can pass on, for the headache I have this morning.

It seems odd doesn't it that the age of the earth is given in three significant digits, 4.54 billion, but the absolute error is given as one, plus or minus 5 billion, not plus or minus .050 billion? So the age of the earth might be as high as 9.54 billion or as low as minus (!) 0.46 billion. Imagine, the earth might not even be here yet. Wikipedia is wonderful; another bible you might say.

1 point

I'm not sure that the earth is 4.5 billion years old but I am damn sure it is older than 6000 years. Why? Because I am older than 6000 years! Just kidding.

There is good reason to doubt the abolute accuracy of carbon dating and other methods of calculating the age of things, but there can be no doubt that, give or take a few hundreds of thousands of years, these techiques are valid to some extent. 4.5 billion years is a little too tidy a number, but I believe the earth is around this in age. The scientists who work with the wonderful machines that sense extremely tiny concentrations of isomers are on the right track, in my opinion. God has given us these complex problems to solve and I can't help feeling that He is not disappointed when we solve one.

3 points

The most obvious person to focus blame on is the extortionist; the person who was blackmailing this poor girl. I keep chickens and when one of my hens gets a slight wound, the others, instead of comforting her, attack. We haven't really evolved that much - all of her friends are to blame as well. They are all chickens. Round all of them up; send them to the nearest KC for rendering.

1 point

I'm not sure where this argument is going really but everyone on earth is probably richer than someone else on earth, somewhere. I pity the guy right at the very end of this series, incidentally - the poorest guy on earth, who, I suppose, everyone on earth should be helping then. But if this happens he is not likely to be the poorest for long. In fact, he is likely to get quite a bit of attention and could end up wealthier than all of us. Maybe this is Donald Trump's story.

As silly as all this sounds, it is probably happening to some extent right now - wealth trickles down following a gradient from rich to poor.

1 point

I hate to appear on this side of the board really, but evolution is only a theory - a compelling and much-supported theory but still only a theory because we have no actual proof. All theories are not created equally though, if you will pardon the expression: the theory of creationism, for example, is clearly silly - there is no evidence at all to support that one while the theory of evolution has much support. The actual mechanism of evolution and some other details, namely probable ancestors, causes, time, and so on, are hotly debated and are likely to never be resolved, but the notion that species evolve over time is only really questioned by folks who dislike the idea that our ancestry has been guided by rather random environmental pressures and stresses. This is fine with me. I am not embarrassed to admit that I pray at times and my prayers aren't directed at Darwin.

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