Recent posts by Pleasedonot5 on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / My Opinion About Evolution

@P5
Link and details please!
Also, what you call speciation.
I’m talking about visible (morphological) changes, not whether they can interbreed.
(Dogs can’t interbreed either, but this is not due to genetics, but rather other “technical” reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciation

(Further sources listed in wikipedia article, along with other types of speciation listed as well)

Speciation: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/speciation

“noun Biology .
the formation of new species as a result of geographic, physiological, anatomical, or behavioral factors that prevent previously interbreeding populations from breeding with each other. "

What macroevolution does is take proven speciation and proven microevolution and use this to suggest that if two or more new species are formed from a preceding population and are isolated, their changes take place independently of each other. In different environments, different characteristics are desireable, so if the two new populations are geographically isolated in different environments, different characteristics become present over many generations to fit the demands of the environment. This is natural selection. Macroevolution occurs when the populations no longer can reproduce with each other through reproductive isolation (incompatible physical genitalia due to naturally selected mutations or some form of allele variation, zygote mortality, hybrid sterility (as is present in a mule), and etcetera).

Dogs can’t interbreed either

Yes they can. Have you ever heard of a “mutt”?

Topic: Serious Discussion / My Opinion About Evolution

@somebody613:

Can you RECREATE any of those in a lab?

Actually, yes. Studies have shown that the male Drosophilla fruit fly has been observed in lab to undergo speciation and undergo variations indepedent of eachother, thus making macroevolution observed. This, along with other evidences for the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution lead scientists to believe that evolution has occurred in the past as well. Evolution, as a process, is proven by scientific standards. The Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution simply applies this knowledge to the past and has multitudes of evidence to back it up.

Topic: Serious Discussion / My Opinion About Evolution

@ somebody613:

BIG-SCALE EVOLUTION
BIG BANG
– are all “THEORIES” that CAN’T be observed (due to them being either “too long”, or simply PAST events that don’t happen now anymore).

The theories listed above are measureable and have multitudes of evidences for them. Science is based on observation through experimentation and measurement — it follows the scientific method, obviously.

(and aliens)

I have never heard of “aliens” being a scientific theory.

Topic: Serious Discussion / My Opinion About Evolution

@somebody613:

All of the other religions today have not died out either. Did you take that into consideration?

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

Not transitional?

Besides the obvious similarities in structure, carbon-14 dating (of relatively recent species), cytrochrome-c DNA base pair comparisons, and the fossils within the soil layers all agreeing with eachother, microevolution and macroevolution being observed to this day, etc, I guess you’re right — we’ll never prove it to you.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Nice attempt at a red herring.

Europe has nothing to do with this argument and neither does your “Arab/Chinese invasion…”

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

Fossilization is a relatively rare process. It is absolutely absurd for you to expect us to find every single transitional mutation that occurred in the DNA sequence of every organism known to have existed.

Your argument is as follows:

“There aren’t any transitional fossils!”

Transitional fossils are shown

“Show me more otherwise I won’t believe!”

…and so on until infinity.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Cause I consider that if GOD made men, manly, and women, feminine – it was done with a purpose.

There’s nothing significantly wrong with your personal belief as long as it isn’t pushed on society as a whole. However, unfortunately, the aforementioned pushing of religious beliefs onto society is an atrocity that occurs on a daily basis.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Man and woman are NOT equal, cause they are DIFFERENT to begin with. And so are ALL people on Earth! Each one has HIS/HER personal ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES, and thus NOT “equal” in ABILITIES

Everyone may be different in their abilities and bodies, but that doesn’t mean we should treat them like less than they are: human beings.

And every child needs BOTH a MOTHER and a FATHER.

For a child to be concieved a sperm and egg are needed, yes. But to be raised? Your claim is false.

Feminism made it that sometimes they switched roles, and that is definitely WRONG.

You stated that men and women were different — that they all had their own roles — but then went on to say that everyone is different with their own advantages and disadvantages? That’s a contradiction if you take into account what you’re arguing against.

Sometimes, men are better off staying home and women are better off working. Feminism is/was meant to give those women the right to work as equals next to the men of equal skill.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Feminism WAS all about “the woman is the better MAN than the man himself”.

I believe feminism was about equality for women. A lesson on the basic history of feminism would have told you that.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

@P5
3. YES! It doesn’t leave offspring to begin with.
Unless you don’t consider children to be a value…
Well, can’t help you then.

I value human life, but not necessarily potential human life (which isn’t human life).

Uhmm, how does having children make you more healthy than not having children? Smoking damages your lungs so it is less healthy than not smoking in most incidences. Gay marriage damages your…?

(By the way, I would appreciate it if you addressed all of the points I provided, not just number 3.)

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Would you give “same rights” (to do THEIR type of behavior) to maniacs (killers and rapers), cause they feel it “naturally”?

No, because this violates the basic rights of others. Gay marriage does nothing of the sort.

smoking advertisement.
Do you know, HOW MANY teens started smoking ONLY due to these advertisements?
To “look cool”.

Problems with your comparison:

1) How many children did smoking influence because of advertisements or sightings and not peer pressure?

2) Does gay marriage have nicotine — an addictive drug?

3) Is gay marriage inherently less healthy then straight marriage?

Feminism fought for the woman’s “right” to make a career.
Thus leaving zilch time to raise her children, or even have them.

Why do women need to do what you want them to do? Why is the result of feminism in your post even that bad?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

If its not the case then its not communism. State Ownership=/=Communism. Communism is when everyone the whole society shares the ownership of the means of production. If only a part does and is allowed to profit from in it in the way you described you have a State Capitalism(close to how china is now).

Eh, okay. I suppose my main argument was meant to contradict the state’s ownership of the economy, which is most often how communism will occur in a society — with an organizing body on top and a consuming population below. I still feel that there are other significant problems with the economy owned by society as a whole, though. I feel that it impractical to try in the real world because of the existing governments’ desire for wealth, power, and control in society, but even with the abolition of all government in a state using communistic philosophy (anarcho-communism) problems exist because regulations in the economy cannot be made without some form of governing body (hence we would have anarcho-capitalism and eventually monopoly rule), which I’m sure you disagree with. The whole concept cannot be applied in the real world because according to the aforementioned reasoning, we would get either anarcho-capitalism with monopoly rule, or state-ownership communism, which I’ve already refuted as more ineffective than capitalistic economies. Correct me If I’m flawed in my reasoning here, though.

By the way, I just looked up the definition for communism, and it fits both the definition I was using (with government ownership) and your definition (with society as a whole), but we can use the definition that you’re using to avoid an argument over semantics. xD

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism

Yes indeed it has the reverse effect…well sometimes and sometimes it still has the effect you said and maybe but probably not the effects will control each other.

Other variables would be at play in the real world, but there would be a general tendency to follow the law of rational choice which would, even if practiced in a single market, cause welfare loss to the society. Of course, since a general tendency is present due to the law of rational choice, the practice would hold in way more than simply one market. With the markets closer to perfect competition, less welfare loss is present and thus is why monopolies are often broken up by the government.

Where lots of consumers agree you would get a low prices and overproduction where only a small amount of consumers desire the product you would get high prices and underproduction.

I disagree. The law of rational choice contradicts you significantly on this point.

No i am not arguing for total government control.

My bad. I misunderstood.

If you present the models without such a modification or at least without noting that such a modification would be necessary as an explanation to the workings of a playing field people(like me) might not be able to resist pointing out the resulting flaws.

If you felt I didn’t explain things well enough, then you should have asked me to go into further detail, and you still can.

However, the models exist using shifts that generally tend to describe how monopolies base their pricing decisions and how it causes welfare loss to society. I drew the models myself because I know that it can be difficult to understand; I tried to make it easier for everyone here, ironically enough. Modification is not explicitly necessary in this case because of the meaning of which the welfare loss-monopoly model was posted. Really the only significant modification that can be said to be made in this scenario from the transition from the model to the real world is that the law of rational choice may not apply in every case. That’s why I stated that rational individuals follow the laws of rational choice. If the monopolist was rational (and not a monopolist in the rare cases of a natural monopoly), (s)he would follow the pricing decision shown on the above graphs, thus causing welfare loss to society.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

Hold your horses. It seems you overlooked that the consumers now own the company. Following the economic law of rational choice this means….

He implied that the government controls the economy as a single corporation would.

EDIT:

the consumers now own the company.

Even in this hypothetical case, the same happens in the above monopoly graph except it has the reverse effect. Prices are held low and output exceeds the socially optimal level, causing welfare loss to a given magnitude, multiplied by the fact that the consumers would control all of the markets of the economy.

EDIT 2:

Sorry but the doomsday prophet way you wrote made it practically impossible for me to guess that you knew that there are other significant incentives to motivate people. From what you yourself say you are choosing your career options first by interest and then by pay. At least it sounds like that to me.

Doomsday prophet way?

Dude it’s just a debate, no need to insult me xD

There is not any order to my career choices as of now though. Interest plays a large part, but I tend to look at all of the variables stated, including other ones such as all of the costs of schooling of the fields and etc. The law of rational choice plays a significant role here. I measure all of the costs and benefits and am largely influenced by them. Assuming people are well-informed, the rational ones will tend to do so as well.

I would also like to point out that the labor market is quite a bit different than the general market. Its a hell of a lot more consumer unfriendly. Partially due to Regulations but also very importantly since its generally very hard to measure People and their work output.

You’re arguing for total government control over the economy but make stabs at government regulations?

I agree though; the labor market is more complicated than the microeconomic models I provided. However, such models give us something in which to base our knowledge and decisions upon. I didn’t state that it wasn’t more complicated than the models I provided, but instead pointed out that labor demand is largely derived from demand by consumers in the goods & services market.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

@OmegaDoom:

in capitalism, the rich earn 10000 times as much as the poor, and this difference has been steadily climbing forever.

This is a generalization, but the rich do earn more than the poor in capitalistic economies. Remember, I’m not making a case for laissez-faire capitalism — I am very much against that — I am simply arguing against communism. When I say “capitalistic” I am not referring to a completely government-free economy. Perhaps I should have made that a bit clearer, so I apologize.

i’m pretty sure their contribution is not 10000 times more. in fact, a lot of them, there is no contribution at all.

I didn’t say that capitalism is a perfect system and I think there should be government regulation to a degree, but I am against the whole “total government control over the economy” that seems to be the antecedent of communism. It sucks that people can make a lot of money from other variables such as family inheritance and not work for it, but hey, life isn’t fair sometimes, and it may not be practical to try to control this “fairness” more than we are effectively able to.

also many other jobs out there have none or sometimes even negative contribution. a psychologist for instance,

Don’t tell me you are ripping on psychologists as ineffective. If they were not in high demand and generally not effective, then psychologists would tend to not exist as prevelently as they do now. Do you remember the derived demand for labor that I referred to before? Demand for a good or service tends to translate into demand for labor in the same market.

this would make society a one single collectively owned corporation.

This is where red flags go up in my head, though. Following the economic law of rational choice (MU > P) as previously explained, the government acting as a huge monopoly over all of the markets would have a huge incentive to restrict output and raise prices, maximizing their profits. The antecedent of a monopolist maximizing their profits, however, is economic welfare loss to society on top of us consumers losing a large portion of our personal surpluses as well. So what we get from this situation is that the government is better off, consumers are worse off, and society is worse off — most importantly of all. One could argue the the government could be benign and hold prices and output to a socially optimal level where market supply equals market demand, but let’s be honest here — governments do not have a perfect history of benevolence and tend to do what will benefit them most. Why shouldn’t they? They have the ability to do so and they are acting as rational individuals; the cost for them not exceeding the utility they are getting from maximizing their economic profits.

The below is a basic microeconomics monopoly graph which shows what I’ve explained above in an economics-graph format.

So monopolies tend to set a higher price than a pefectly competitive firm.

ATC: average total cost
MC: marginal cost
MR: marginal revenue
D: demand
P: price
Q: quantity (output)
subscript M: monopoly
subscript PC: perfect competition
Green dot: socially optimal condition
Blue dot: Profit maximizing condition (MC = MR) (remember, the law of rational choice that encourages this greatly).

Socially optimal market supply and demand graph:

S: supply
D: demand
Cs: consumer surplus
Ps: producer surplus.

Reason why monopolies cause welfare loss:

DWL: welfare loss

Thus showing how monopolies are detrimental in the terms of societal surplus (Cs + Ps) in a single market. Now, this isn’t necessarily the worst case scenario, especially if one looks at cases such as the postal office or computer programs where monopolies may be the most preferred by society and cause the least trouble. However, if the government were then to control all markets, even ones in which monopolies are not preferable, there is a plethora of welfare loss that can be very detrimental to an economy. Economics is not necessarily about looking for the perfect system, but the least detrimental system that we can pursue. I feel like it is quite obvious that communism (and thus a totally socialist economy) is not the least detrimental in this case, but rather a balance between capitalism and socialism is desireable. Government intervention and regulation should depend on the situation at hand and not be ever-present nor non-existent, in my opinion.

in pure free market capitalism, the employee is completely dependent on what the employer offers. if you make agreements as to salery, you, the whole ceo or whatever the hell the acronym is, then you’re putting on paper, through debate, the conditions of the trade between employee and employer. that is a degree of democratic regulation of the economy, taking power away a little bit from a control-free economy

I agree that communistic organizations are beneficial to society at times, but just because F is good for X, does not mean that F is good for Y. Just because something is beneficial on the smaller scale does not mean it applies to everything in the economy.

I also do not support laissez-faire capitalism and believe that the government should regulate to a degree, depending on the situation.
___________________
@JohnnyBeGood:

You made a general claim about equal pay eliminating the incentive to preform above others in the occupation. Not a incentive but the incentive.

Ehh, I apologize then. I figured you thought I knew that there were other variables other than money that drives people to compete. xD I was simply meaning to argue that the desire for wealth is the main factor that drives competition; removing such a factor from the market would tend to deter individuals from competition significantly.

Take, for example, I, myself, am naturally a very competitive individual with a desire to win for prestige. However, while I would love to be the best linguist in the market, the average linguist does not make very much money, so I am probably going to try to go into a higher-paying, related job like speech pathology or cognitive psychology that I am equally interested in.

Regards,
Pleasedonot5

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

@JohnnyBeGood:

That removes one incentive of many and certainly not the most important one.

This is where I disagree. I feel that the aforementioned incentive is a significant attribute to a free-market economy.

Which can easily be observed in the fact that some very highly demanding jobs(amount and straining of work as well as qualifications needed) are not paid very well

What are these jobs, and are they of any significant use to society (are they highly demanded)?

And some relatively easy low qualification jobs can pay very very well.

Are these jobs in high demand? The answer I’m expecting you to give is, “yes.” Taking the above section into account as well, jobs tend to have high wages when they are in high demand in the market. There is something called the derived demand curve in which society demands good X highly in the goods & services market, which in turn causes a high derived demand curve (for labor) When this curve is increased, demand for labor and thus wages tend to be higher.

In essence, the amount of difficulty a workplace possesses does little to their wages. The wages of the workers are highly dependent on the goods & services market and government intervention (if present).

Other and generally more important incentives to work harder are for example fun, prestige and job security.

Interest in a career is an incentive, and so is prestige, but I feel as if job security falls under the total pay one would get in a command economy. Correct me if I’m wrong though.

Anyways, this is again where we differ. I feel as if competition as an incentive is one, if not the most significant factor in determining the motivation of the general work force.

And that incentive of higher pay with better work/more effort is not even present in many jobs for various reasons.

Well, obviously it will not be true in every case that hard work pays off, and that is the cruelty of life. Generally, however, I would argue that competition in the factor market brings out the best in both society as a whole and those willing to work to make themselves appear as the most skilled to the employers and firms, allocating comparative advantage factors efficiently. Removing this incentive I feel would decrease the motivation to innovate and compete with other employees, firms, etc for the top spot.

I don’t think a free market economy is perfect, but I feel like a command economy is a step in the wrong direction.
_____________________

@OmegaDoom:

well, you used the so called communistic countries as the example for socialism, totally ignoring a bunch more appropriate examples

I used the phrase total socialism. Plus, has there ever been a truly 100% communistic country? What other examples do we have to draw upon?

also communism is not necassarily “to each a fixed amount of credit” or “to each according to their needs”. usually, communism means “to each according to their contribution.”

That sounds a lot more general of a term than the former definitions though. I could argue that capatalistic economies generally use the latter philosophy of, “to each according to their contribution.”

the essence is that, instead of using ‘offer and demand’ to determine by what price everything is sold, we determine the price as the sum of all the raw material and labour that went into it’s manufacturing.

Actually, in economic theory, both communism and capitalism use the same methods for determining their prices and outputs. MR = MC (marginal revenue = marginal cost) is the profit-maximizing condition on a microeconomic graph for all types of markets, ranging from perfect competition to monopoly. With the government in control of everything in a command economy, the government becomes the entire market, and has a large incentive to hold prices high and quantity low for the market, increasing producer (government) surplus and largely decreasing consumer surplus. Now, one could argue that the government could hold prices at an allocatively efficient level, but that doesn’t mean they will in all markets. Note that this also results in economic welfare loss for the entire society, government included. This is another reason why competition under watch by the government is very important, following the law of rational choice. Governments with free markets and thus competition can set price floors and price ceilings, holding the price at an output at which society demands, without themselves controlling the entire market.

basically labour unions and workers agreements (what’s the acronym in english?) are an element of that.

Can you expand on this further please?

Regards,
Pleasedonot5

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

@Redem:

There are no “laws of rational choice”.

False. The law of rational choice is MU > P, or marginal utility is greater than price (or cost such as time). It says that if the pleasure you get from doing something is greater than the cost of doing it, rational individuals do perform the action. It’s basic logic — so let’s not make claims that we don’t really know about.

Regardless, why work harder? Because you would lose your job if you don’t, to meet the goals you set yourself or which have been set for you, etc.
The idea that communism implies that people don’t need to work hard is just silly.

When the ideas in Communism call for equal pay for everyone, they eliminate the incentive to perform above the rest in that occupation. Not, “not work hard,” but not work as hard as you potentially could due to a massive decrease in competition incentives.

As is the idea that capitalism pushes people to work their hardest, it really doesn’t.

Free markets generally push people to work harder than command economies do, though.

Well, bluntly, the vast majority of countries have failed, or rather they’re not around any more. Many of them were capitalist to some degree, probably most.

That’s like saying, “The majority of car crashes happen within five miles of your home.” when such a fact on the surface does not take into account the fact that generally people are closer to home than farther away.

@OmegaDoom:

in fact i’ll take Sweden before any laissez faire country

I don’t support laissez-faire economies. I probably would too — I’m a tad left on the economic scale.

so can we please stop with the false examples?

I never gave any specific examples?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Communism

Originally posted by Redem:

I think it is an ideal, but VERY naive and impossible ideology, and as such no country should try to implement it.

The zeitgeist is grossly mistaken on this one. It is as workable as any of the other systems we’ve tried, the vast majority of attempted capitalist systems have failed too, afterall. This is mostly an excuse, I think, from people who agree with some of the ideas but can’t rationalise that with the USSR and the cold war propaganda against them.

The ideas of total socialism as are embedded in the philosophies of communism do not work largely due to the law of rational choice. Why work effeciently when working less is easier and you can recieve equal pay for working less?

the vast majority of attempted capitalist systems have failed too, afterall.

I disagree. I would agree that laissez-faire economics tend not to work successfully (i.e. precursor to the Great Depression) but capitalistic countries, taken proportionally, have not failed as much as socialistic (antecedent of communistic systems) countries have. Please correct me if I’m wrong, though.

Regards,
Pleasedonot5

Topic: Serious Discussion / The Backfire Effect, or why we can't agree on anything

@OmegaDoom:

i think you’re looking at it too black and white. noone will ever change from one to the other. however, if you look at the exact shades of grey…

Well, kind of. Check the link that I provided and my post above.

The OP fails to take into account the areas of strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, strongly agree, and everywhere in between. Truthfully, there are many spectrums of belief that are held in the minds of those who debate about a certain topic; there isn’t just, “agree” and, “disagree” which is a false dichotomy.

Topic: Serious Discussion / The Backfire Effect, or why we can't agree on anything

As a counter-anecdote to the original poster, I was a gnostic Catholic before posting in the religious discussions on this forum. After having my flawed reasoning exposed to me, it took me a while but I slowly transgressed the plane onto agnostic atheism — where I reside now.

A counterargument against arguments simply, “preaching to the converted.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H57Z0yE3Qgw
_________________

I for one am pretty demotivated, so this will probably be my last post in SD.

As explained in the video that I provided, there are more reasons to debate than simply trying to alter the opinions of others. This is, of course, assuming that arguments only “preach to the converted,” which they don’t.

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

@S11008

“I’m sorry, you have found demonstrable proof for a divine creator?”

In Thomism, yes, I believe so. I’ve worked on my own philosophical proofs too, but I still hold to Thomist arguments chiefly.

I looked up the Thomist arguments and realized that I have dealt with these before. They are inherently flawed in that even if a divine creator existed, that in no way indicates the existence of any specific creator. This is stated many times below.

“1. Argumentum ex motu, or the argument of the unmoved mover;”

“the first three arguments are essentially the same, and rely upon the idea of a regress to which God is unjustifiably immune; the fourth argument is equally applicable to many unrelated concepts; ‘Therefore there must exist a pre-eminent stinker, and we call him God’ the fifth argument claims the necessity of a designer, considering that biological life looks somewhat designed, whereas evolution by means of natural selection explains its complexity and diversity"

~Richard Dawkins in: The God Delusion

“2. Argumentum ex ratione causae efficientis, or the argument of the first cause;
3. Argumentum ex contingentia, or the argument from contingency;”

What created this supreme being? If the supreme being could have always been there, then some form of the universe could have always existed as well. Also note that, if true, this does not indicate any specific deity’s existence.

“4. Argumentum ex gradu, or the argument from degree;”

It is not evident that simply because we can conceive of an object with some property in a greater degree, that such an object exists. Plus, it leads us to a subjective understanding of a maximally great being. How is one to know what is a better quality over another quality?

Note that this does not point towards any “religious” god’s existence.

5. Argumentum ex fine, or the teleological argument.

Argument from complexity; this is invalid. It’s also worth mentioning that again, even if there was a divine force that stated the universe, that this does not hint at any specific divine force.

Here we agree, but come to different conclusions. Yes, if religion did not exist, these problems re: religious opposition to science would not. Just the same, if you want to solve crime there’s one hell of an answer— make everything legal (or, kill everyone, or insert any other odd solution). Rather, I think they’re problems that come with abandoning reason for faith, rather than holding to both reason and faith. Basically, fideism is undesirable on my view.

Wait, you think an abandoning of faith would render society morally obselete? Please answer this question because I need to be sure of what you are arguing before I make my rebuttal.

The ideas of fideism also astound me with their lack of reason — one can be secular and still serach for knowledge and understanding. This quest for knowledge and understanding goes on to this day with both science and philosophy. A truly secular world may still reflect upon religious teachings and cherry-pick the moral teachings they like and perhaps even develop their own. I mean, unless you are calling all of us skeptics idiotic or immoral… xD

As far as I’ve come to realize, in my newfound Catholic faith, if you’re abandoning your intellect or going contradictory to reason for your faith you’re doing something wrong.

Agreed.

I’m divided. In one sense, I agree that the secular world qua secular morality would be happy to be rid of us, for their benefit as the wolf wants the guard dog to be rid of, to get to the sheep.

That is just absurd. Secular morality can differ based on the environmental or even childhood conditions that one is brought up in. Society A and Society B can have conflicting moralities on some issues even if secular (i.e. abortion). Getting rid of religion would not change the fact that there can be disagreements between groups. Ridding of religion would not necessarily cause the breakdown of justice all over the world either. My point is that it is already a dog-eat-dog world out there. Why would getting rid of religion cause that to change in a negative way?

Of course, the benefit of the secular world, as my position tells me, is the detriment of mankind. Ultimately, I feel out of place with the way the world is, or is going— most of my views are out of line with secular and liberal politics. So for me, the destruction of religion would create severe problems— first, that there is no institution which might help contain the disease. Second, it would create an existential problem (the death of God, even if you need no religion to be a theist).

With your first problem, you are using circular reasoning. “Getting rid of religion is bad because it will cause the spread of secular belief.” Why is that bad?

In your second argument, you are actually using circular reasoning again. “Getting rid of God is bad because even with theists the belief in God is diminishing.” Why is that bad?

Regards,
Pleasedonot5

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

Originally posted by Winnabago:

is that religion or merely a belief without evidence?

You could call it religion, just not organized religion.

Really? I feel like faith is a better word to apply to this situation.

2) n. “belief that is not based on proof.”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith

To my current understanding, religion relates to explaining the ultimate cause
What if I believe in gods, but didn’t bother to explain where they came from? No longer religion in your book?

If people no longer use faith to explain the ultimate cause of everything, that likely wouldn’t change too much. Maybe it could spark a general doubt about the rest of religion, but that’s pretty unlikely

I think you left out the whole “(with other specified variables such as regularly-performed rituals, mixed in)” part. The definition I am going by is listed below.

“1) n. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion

---

For the first— at least as a Catholic, I don’t think we argue for these things without evidence. There are a few a priori proofs available, and by definition those are without evidence, but most of the proofs I’ve seen and defended use proof in the world— change (as a reduction from potency to act) applied to the real world, for instance.

I’m sorry, you have found demonstrable proof for a divine creator?

For the second— you wouldn’t be getting rid of those things if our faiths disappeared— you would still have these things.

Ah, but I did state, “to an extent,” did I not? I acknowledge that these would still exist in certain forms if religion became a thing of the past. Perhaps I was a little biased with the closed-mindedness and indoctrination points, but the barriers to education idea is still completely valid.

Take a look at the opposition to teaching evolution in science classrooms and offering up intelligent design as an alternative theory, even though the evidence for the former exists in abundance and the evidence for the latter is nonexistent. Getting rid of the belief that Yahweh created the earth in 6 days would essentially reduce the opposition to demonstrable teachings in the science classroom. A decline of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East would probably also do the people there good, I would assert. Especially with the whole “I won’t share this land with you because it’s my holy land,” between the Israelis and the Palestinians in Isreal at present.

Even conceding that (which I don’t), you only focus on negative aspects of religion.

The question was, “What would losing religion get rid of?” I answered. Of course there are positive aspects for each belief according to each individual. In the long-run, however, I do not believe a secular world today would lose any significant “benefit” of religion for society as a whole.

In any case I did not mean to come off like an ass, but merely was stating a few quick, brainstormed ideas for Winn. I would appreciate to hear your thoughts on the matter :)

Pleasedonot5

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

Isn’t religion by definition evidence-less beliefs?

The belief that your friend Suzie just came from your other friend, Eric’s house, is that religion or merely a belief without evidence? To my current understanding, religion relates to explaining the ultimate cause, without evidence (with other specified variables such as regularly-performed rituals, mixed in).

I think the word you are are mistaking me for using is “faith.”

If it isn’t, what would losing religion get rid of?

Close-mindedness, indoctrination, barriers to education. To an extent, I would argue, of course.

Topic: Serious Discussion / World without Religion: Better or Worse?

3. Everyone knows the same thing, and thinks that it has to be proven to be true, everyone agrees.

Not necessarily. A world without religion would not stop many from holding evidence-less beliefs.

Tails
1.People rely on religion, as their way out, something to believe in, that when they die they just don’t get buried in the Earth. Suicide?
2.People can’t express themselves through religion anymore, so another door just closed, they can only express themselves through art or music, ect.
3.Nothing to be hopeful for, no one to need to thank/pray to/trust, no one to hold them back, no Heaven, no Hell, more crimes being commited due to lack of someone they feel they need to please.

Why live? Check out the link to become aware of a few secular reasons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU6bc_Gsp7s

Also, I would like to say that the threat of eternal punishment does not dissuade many individuals from criminal behavior, so that argument is pretty much moot.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Gays, Yay or Nay?

Originally posted by DarkBaron:

Pro, of course. See, just because someone else is pro-whatever I am pro for does not mean at all that I will blindly support whatever they say.

Ah okay, and of course not. I viewed the comments on the previous pages, compared them to the comments on this page, and was unsure of whether you were playing Devil’s advocate or not. I felt like I wasn’t the only one confused by the arguments you were making and just wanted some clarification. >.>