Mr. Cooley - I see you're trolling again. Wonder why you haven't replied to my post in your "PROOF THAT GOD EXISTS" thread. . . could it be that you can only repeat the same claims over and over without all that bothersome thinking that would go into formulating a rebuttal? Oh, here's that evidence you wanted: Link
Nevermind
jetblackstar - While being made of dead stars might be cause for wonder, in what way is it cause to believe in God?
shadesofgrey - If that's your (very broad) definition of murder, which includes self-defence killing, please tell me what a fetus could possibly do that would make it worthy of being murdered.
BakerStreet - If we're going to go about making mistakes, why not do them as slowly as possible? This gives us opportunity to fix them before things get too bad. Having things be slow, like they currently are, allows for greater control of the processes of government, which at this point are immensely powerful. The people still have just as much input - they get to vote for representatives, and they can vote for someone else if they aren't happy wit
ShadowWar - Fantastic answer! But you're wrong Here's why: The Government can print a symbol of a religion without endorsing it. The issue in the Constitution on religion is to prevent the government forcing one religion on the people. I don't think t
shadesofgrey: The death penalty debate is really silly too, yeah, for numerous reasons. The case for it is so massively weak. And ya know why? Because when it all comes down to it, you're debating when it's ok to murder someone. If you want to have that discussion, and take the pro side, I can show you what I mean. About the poll - you'll note that it splits up the pro-lifers and pro-choicers by percentage wrt who holds what terms are acce
Yeah, BakerStreet, such a thing is unconstitutional. Which is independently a good thing for the reasons I provided. Having taken some stat classes myself, I know about the importance of the MOE, but Gallup is not very widely considered to be partisan or issue-biased. I don't have access to their polling data (you have to pay), but a 10% MOE is somewhat unlikely. But hey, even if the difference is within the MOE, that doesn't answer the question of
shadesofgrey: Debating when murder is OK is really silly. I guess I overestimated the thread, then. On the other hand, I'm having a fantastic debate with BakerStreet, so maybe not.
If it's really an issue of murder for these people, you'd think that they'd have their priorities straight. Or is there more murder happening somewhere else that only the Democratic party is addressing? As for public opinion on the subject, people clearly do not care enough to get the necessary majorities. According to a year
I guess the ethics things is more for other posters than for you, BakerStreet. But feel free to address it if you like.
BakerStreet - Extraordinary majorities for amending the constitution are necessary to protect minority rights and to ensure that the government changes slowly, which protects us against ourselves and rash decisions we sometimes would like to make. If there were a majority of people in 3/4 of the states and 2/3 of the house and senate states and districts, then hey, abortion could be made unconstitutional. Lemme know when that happens, ok? The proces
Saiyan Robot - They are. And give me a good reason why the federal government isn't violating the establishment clause of the first amendment by putting "In God We Trust" on dollar bills.
Wow shadesofgrey, I was wrong. I totally missed the part of the thread where people backed up their assertions that fetuses should count as people. Nevermind, there isn't one. All that people seem to be doing is saying things like I make no exception for rape. Abortion is murder. As
The issue is one of metaethics. Do you define a fetus as a person, or not? If so, why? At what point is a collection of cells a person? These are questions that need to be answered before you can even have this debate. Hope I've clarified the issue.
The issue is that the cross is Christian, and the state that is prevented from establishing any religion by its constitution. The rest, well, who cares? If you want to change that constitution then you have to go through an amendment process, as detailed in that constitution. These processes require large majorities, among other things. Since there isn't a large majority that would support such an amendment, there isn't an amendment. It's not like
My replies will come from talkorigins.org, because they are very comprehensive. CREATION IS THE PROOF OF GOD. The creation around you does provide scientific proof of its Creator. The evolutionists attempt to explain a creation with no Creator. Yet, they offer only unproven t
First, Selene is a total troll. They oughta ban that IP address from posting. Back to the fun stuff: So yeah, I'm not really prepared to debate the values of postmodernism. It's a whole movement, so it's a very broad term. I'd also agree that a lot of it is silly. But then, it has many persuasive arguments. Many many. One of the arguments that I find persuasive is that terms like "civilized" are basically colonialist residue. So chuck
And while I also disagree that "right" and "wrong" do not exist objectively, that is an entirely different subject. I don't think it is an entirely different subject, but yeah, that will probably come up quite a bit if we keep chatting. It's a metaethical concern, and should probably be part of the dis
On the main issues it apears we basically agree. So hey, cool! The rest of this post can be disregarded unless you have an interest in hashing out where our confusion came from. I think it's worthy to look at, and so I will. Follow along if you want, and I'll try not to be too personal about it. As for what I mistakenly perceived as a personal comment, I apologize. Something very similar to what you said was said in another thread, and I over rea
If you want to broaden the definition of ethics so far as to make it completely meaningless, well, that's another debate. What I'm talking about, MasonM, is ethics meaning right and wrong. But that's not how societies work - they work by effective and ineffective. I hold that civilized societies are in fact possible without ethics. I think that the term ethics is masking the reality of the situation, which is that people do what they want t
BakerStreet, I actually do take offense. I take a different position than you do - this doesn't mean that I haven't read and understood your posts. But I don't want it to get personal, so let's drop that completely. I think we can have good, civil debate, and the rest of it doesn't matter to me one lick. 1. The issue is harm reduction, not completely irradicating diseases. Since we know that p
P.S.: Yummy children. Mmmmmmm. I like kaiser rolls, but prefer a horseradish sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. P.P.S: All rolls should be Amorosos rolls. If you are from the Philly area I know you will feel me here.
Quite right, MasonM, I too like civilized society quite a lot. There's all this stuff I enjoy about it, and so I am moved in my own interest to sustain that society. But not by ethics or morals. Enjoying something like society doesn't mean that society is right or wrong, or that acting so as to uphold society is right or wrong. Further, I've been socialized to enjoy certain behaviors and disapprove of others, but I'll get to that later. Yo
The problem is one of metaethics, not ethics. Almost all moral systems are basically the same, except for definitional (metaethical) issues. For example, you can share the belief that killing people is wrong with someone on the other side of the abortion debate, but not hold that fetuses are people. So hey, what do you know, there are two sides, and it's basically impossible to debate the definitional issue, because the criteria for the debate are n
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