Political Whiplash: From banning to legalizing 6 months

[Traitorfish]

It's weird to me that God is going to smite us for letting gays marry, but was pretty much cool with Hitler killing ten million people. Guy needs to get his priorities in order.

 

[say1988]

It's weird to me that God is going to smite us for letting gays marry, but was pretty much cool with Hitler killing ten million people. Guy needs to get his priorities in order.

He smote Hitler, with the Allied armies. It just took F years and tens of millions of deaths. Remember, every sinner so far has died. God is batting 1000 with his smiting.

 

[Cutlass]

He smote Hitler, with the Allied armies. It just took F years and tens of millions of deaths. Remember, every sinner so far has died. God is batting 1000 with his smiting.

He's just really slow about getting around to it...

 

[Traitorfish]

I echo the sentiment to read Kropotkin and Bakunin. They were surprisingly readable and overall entertaining (as far as political theorists/radicals go.)
Plus, if you are going to be banging on about the Church of St. Ronald of Paul you should probably have a vague understanding of Classical Anarchism.

Blast that God- he's always two steps ahead!

 

[El_Machinae]

Remember, every sinner so far has died. God is batting 1000 with his smiting.

Only about 93% of sinners have died so far!

 

[say1988]

Only about 93% of sinners have died so far!

Those 7% of cases are still in progress. We cannot draw any conclusions based on them.

 

[peter grimes]

No robust evidence. There is evidence, it is just not very convincing

Go on...

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

The whole concept of sin is a christian fabrication in order to trick you into thinking that you need to buy their product. That's also why they do baptisms so early - if you wait until the child grows into an adult who can think for themselves, they'd never buy the product. But religions have a deviant interpretation of 'consenting adults'.

Oh come on! It's entirely reasonable that God would elect to cast dead children into an eternal pit of fire unless they have had water splashed on their heads by a pedophile wearing a dress.

 

[El_Machinae]

Go on...

People reporting visits by ghosts. People reporting visits by angels. Near-death experiences.

These are verbal testimonies, and a portion of the people are reporting honestly. These reports are consistent with the idea of live-after-death. Like I said, it's neither robust nor convincing, but it is evidence.

We might be using the word differently. It's a fact that these reports exist, and that some of these reports are made honestly. That makes them evidence. A portion of this evidence is not casually dismissed, even if we don't believe it, because we don't understand the mechanism by which the witness became confused.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

You truly are the best El Mach. I would readily dismiss such claims and be certain I was the rational one. Then you put it like that and I feel silly for being so irrational in my dismissals. Thanks man , I've learnt something today.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

There's a thread for that as well

 

[El_Machinae]

You truly are the best El Mach. I would readily dismiss such claims and be certain I was the rational one. Then you put it like that and I feel silly for being so irrational in my dismissals. Thanks man , I've learnt something today.

That said, I believe that 'delusion' is the more parsimonious explanation. Either a mental misfiring or some type of illusion generated by circumstances. For similar reasons, even though there are a LOT of UFO abduction stories and UFO sightings, I don't believe in UFOs.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

That said, I believe that 'delusion' is the more parsimonious explanation. Either a mental misfiring or some type of illusion generated by circumstances. For similar reasons, even though there are a LOT of UFO abduction stories and UFO sightings, I don't believe in UFOs.

As do I. But if I understand you correctly, those making many of the claims are acting honestly so in order to genuinely refute the claims one must be able to genuinely explain the cause of the delusion.

Until a solid explanation for why the claims made are consistently delusional, the claims remain evidence, though admittedly weak.

Have I got you correctly here?

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, that's a reasonable summary!

 

[peter grimes]

People reporting visits by ghosts. People reporting visits by angels. Near-death experiences.

These are verbal testimonies, and a portion of the people are reporting honestly. These reports are consistent with the idea of live-after-death. Like I said, it's neither robust nor convincing, but it is evidence.

We might be using the word differently. It's a fact that these reports exist, and that some of these reports are made honestly. That makes them evidence. A portion of this evidence is not casually dismissed, even if we don't believe it, because we don't understand the mechanism by which the witness became confused.

Ah, I see what you mean.

I guess you're right that these unsubstantiated reports are indeed a type of evidence.

I think I disagree with you about not casually dismissing some portion of it - just because we don't yet understand a phenomenon doesn't mean that we should assume that it's evidence for such an extraordinary thing as life after death. Instead, we should assume that there is an explanation that's compatible with our understanding of physics and biology. For NDE's, specifically, this would mean an emergent phenomenon resulting from anomalous patterns of states of neurons. There is, indeed, evidence supporting this interpretation - though it's also tenuous:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/science-on-the-brink-of-death

EDIT: just saw your continuing posts with RLF. Apologies for not reading ahead