Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
It's not anti-terror, it's anti-religion. It seeks to confound the murderous religion of Islam with the peaceful Christian religion.
There is quite a difference between between a religion which spread itself by love and sacrifice and one that spread itself by murder and rape. Americans have a hard time realizing that a religion could be so evil (and of course the commie press tries to hide it). However, were we see the evil and true intent of Islam is not so much in the murders and the terrorism itself - but in the approval such murders and such terrorism receive from the muslims that dare not commit such acts.
I would say you are completely on the wrong track with that. Problems arise when people want to subjugate and dominate others. It has nothing to do with 'subjugating reason'. Nobody goes to war and kills others to 'subjugate reason'.
I don't know if you really need to prove such a thing - it's pretty much true by definition...-you-
If that is the case then you must agree that atheism is based on faith, not reason.
In that case then, it seems to me that 'natural selection' is also nonsense. You cannot see it, touch it, feel it or make love to it.
I think you are taking reason way too far when you say you can use it beyond the boundaries of our universe. How can one 'know' something which no one has any experience of? You can use reason and mathematics as science does to verify experiences, but reason alone cannot provide knowledge of something so foreign that no one has any experience of. In other words, knowing that 2+2=4 does not tell you what's for dinner.
I am not sure if I would say that man rebels against his environment, but more that man seeks to control and turn his environment towards his purposes. Man in a great sense, creates his own environment, animals are more or less tossed and turned by it.
Alamo-Girl, this is probably the most aggravating "expert public pronouncement" ['anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything'] that I have ever had to endure in my lifetime so far.
Sadly, it appears there are quite a few who cannot accept that anything exists beyond the ability to observe it. IMHO, that is the most destructive form of arrogance.
Can't they can see how wrong-headed it would be for a starfish to have such a notion about his "world?"
And yet there are many who truly believe that God cannot exist because they cannot measure Him, weigh Him, subject Him to trial and punishment --- or lookup the registration of His copyrights --- or even because He doesn’t give them a bag of M&M’s on demand. I am not kidding.
[It is] a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31
Or in the case of a starfish, a seine...
Seems pretty true to me, reason is limited and those who claim one can arrive at the ultimate truth through it are wrong.
What you say is true concerning the physical environment. It was my intention to include the other environmental aspects as well - God, family, society.
IMHO, man can be so rebellious as to put his own desires above everything. For instance, selling national security secrets that could cause the death of millions including his own family - or raping and killing a young girl and posing her body in a "suggestive" manner.
Man is the only creature known to me that is capable of such rebellion.
I agree that ultimate Truth is beyond the reach of rational thought. Hugs!
You remind me of what I see missing in this thread, a discussion of human passion. It is not so much faith that is opposed to reason, but passion and human desires that are opposed to reason. Is murder reasonable? Is any sort of destruction reasonable? Does not seem so to me, yet it is passion and desire that most often leads to such actions.
Now this, bb, is right on the mark IMHO. And the universities are just filled with these people, insecure, adolescent in the extreme, pining to give unfettered expression to their every immature sexual urge, to alter their consciousness with drugs. So what do they do? They justify, they excuse, they explain -- they paper everything over with WORDS, endless treacly words, as though words had some independent existence and power all their own. And when their deceptions are made plain, they adopt and twist another word or concept (self-esteem!) to deceive (You don't like "liberal"? How about "progressive"?). It is an endless game, signifying nothing. And they are ALL liberals. Well, hey, "Intellectual Elite", grow up first, THEN lecture us as to how to live!
Here's hoping Ann Coulter lives forever! There now, I do feel better ... ;-}
it is passion and desire that most often leads to such actions.
I agree! The motivations for murdering innocents, particularly in large numbers, include hate, greed and lust for power. Islamic fundamentism is the only significantly large religious movement that breeds such hate. Putting all the other religions in the same bucket is wrongful and divisive.
tt...
Things like logic, which is grounded purely in mathematics, are transferable to all spaces and would work as well outside our universe as inside it. The presumption that most people have that mathematics only extends as far as the boundaries of our universe is wrong, and leads to idle speculation of dubious value.
g3...
I think you are taking reason way too far when you say you can use it beyond the boundaries of our universe. How can one 'know' something which no one has any experience of? You can use reason and mathematics as science does to verify experiences, but reason alone cannot provide knowledge of something so foreign that no one has any experience of. In other words, knowing that 2+2=4 does not tell you what's for dinner.
246 posted on 10/28/2002 7:44 PM PST by gore3000
lsd 'science'---evolution!
Nonsense aside, natural selection and evolution by itself is a rational belief. It may not be correct, but it is definitely rational. It has no null priors, unlike a number of other theories positied on this board. It does compete with other ideas with no null priors in specific cases, but not being able to touch something has absolutely nothing to do with anything, nor did I make any such claim. But as usual, you apparently didn't read what i wrote.
2+2=4 doesn't tell you how to design a piece of good software either, but the proper application of mathematics can get you there. Just because you don't understand how something works doesn't mean that no one does, or that someone couldn't. For example, I can easily discern the fallacy of "argument from incredulity", but many people quite apparently cannot (hint). It doesn't mean that this fallacy doesn't exist or that it wasn't used.
And for the last time, mathematics is not bound by the same constraints as science, nor is "reason" if you qualify it appriopriately. Intermixing the two as though they are interchangeable is a hallmark of fundamental ignorance on the matter.
Evolution certainly does have null priors. The a priori is that everything results from materialistic causes. That is an a priori. As to its being rational, I don't think so. It seems pretty laughable to think that one species transforms itself into another. No one has ever seen it happen and all the 'proofs' of it are highly questionable and of course based on the a priori that everything results from materialistic causes. That is why when questioned about their 'science' evolutionists eventually start attacking religion. They cannot rationally prove their beliefs.
You are turning my statements around to attack them. I did not say that mathematics cannot help in certain applications. What I said was that mathematics, logic and reason are useless and can tell us nothing new about reality if we have no facts about that reality. Such a mode of thinking, that you can deduce through math, logic or reason a lot from hardly any facts is in fact irrational. Reason not based on reality leads to insanity.
Yep, the power of rhetoric over reality. The power of "incantation." Words are "magic," you see. I think it all heakens back to Hegel's Zauberwerte -- the "magic word" that -- Presto-Changeo! -- makes the entire objective world disappear....
What a primitive mind set!!! And yet these are the people who are supposedly ushering in "Progress."
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