BEAR on 21/12/2008 at 05:44
Quote Posted by paloalto90
While knowing you won't go there if we have a replica of our body but vibrating at a higher frequency, out of the range of our senses with itself having eyes,ears and such we would be able to pick up stimuli from the environment.but it is only one possible explanation.
I tried to link to the wiki sight about the woman with the anurism but wouldn't let me link.
I don't even know what this means I don't think you do either. I'm not going to try and disprove you or argue with you now that I see more where you are coming from. I don't believe that what you think is happening and I don't think there is any reasonable proof of it, but it doesn't bother me because you are probably better off and it isn't worth the time.
Enjoy.
RavynousHunter on 21/12/2008 at 10:05
Quote Posted by D'Juhn Keep
Maybe you're the one that needs to learn to read, his whole scenario was just to point out how stupid those things would be
Didn't sound like it. Then again, it can be difficult to discern from those spouting hyperbole simply for the sake of doing so, and those who do it because they honestly believe it to be so. Then again, I may be partially to blame as I did write that when I was asleep at the wheel, so to speak. Misunderstanding
do happen, in which case I recant my earlier statements.
Gambit on 21/12/2008 at 15:57
The point of the original letter was that religious fundamentalists often blame criminal activity, natural disasters, diseases, hunger, war and a lot of other things on the fact that humanity lost faith and morality. They believe that if humanity acted according to their religious values the world would be better.
So the writer showed an "utopian" case of a theocratic regime where liberties are censored in order to only prevail the theocratic way of life. And then the point becomes that adopting ideologies will not stop a criminal, or a force of nature, or diseases, or diplomatic problems...
As Machiavel pointed out in the Prince: more pragmatism, less ideology. Goverments can´t be based purely on ideologies, they need to address problems with pragmatism. It´s not "this is how things should be" but "this is how things are and how we must deal with it".
Let´s just look at the fall of Neoconservatives. They believed fiercely on the spread of democracy through military force. Bush should have been pragmatic and understand the limitations and burdens of spreading american ideals without diplomacy and negotiation. But instead of moderation he adopted the neocon ideology and instead of utopy he met reality´s ugly face.
Now Obama seems more pragmatic and moderated. He is even willing to negociate with Cuba and Iran.
Some people view it as a "selling out". I see it as a more realistic way of dealing with global conflicts without burning even more human and economic resources on war.
Matthew on 21/12/2008 at 17:25
Just now that you've mentioned it, what is the current stance in the US towards Cuba?
RavynousHunter on 22/12/2008 at 10:27
@ Gambit: Yeah, its much the same philosophy behind the Oppression in Ultima V; codifying ethics into law doesn't make evil people good, no matter how badly you wish it to be so. In the end, good must come from within, and the person in question must actively want to be good, otherwise no amount of lawmaking or agencies can stop him from not being good.
I do sincerely hope Obama does take a more pragmatic approach to government, maybe then we can begin to fix some of our (very serious) problems.
Thirith on 22/12/2008 at 12:50
Quote Posted by RavynousHunter
@ Gambit: Yeah, its much the same philosophy behind the Oppression in Ultima V; codifying ethics into law doesn't make evil people good, no matter how badly you wish it to be so. In the end, good must come from within, and the person in question must actively want to be good, otherwise no amount of lawmaking or agencies can stop him from not being good.
I agree to some extent, but I think that people are like children sometimes in that you first have to communicate very clearly that something is wrong (which you can do via punishment) and only then, once they've been introduced to that concept, can you start talking to them about *why* something is wrong. It shouldn't be like that, but it can be downright destructive to overestimate how intelligent and aware of ethics people are. You can't make evil people good by codifying ethics into law, but sometimes you can get ignorant people to take the first step towards ethical behaviour.
However, there are so many caveats to this that by and large you're still right IMO. ;)
Peanuckle on 23/12/2008 at 07:06
Is there a way to limit the amount of posts in a thread? Because I'd like to see a religion thread that was capped at 10, maybe 20 posts, just to see how much more information people would try to cram into their arguments.
RavynousHunter on 24/12/2008 at 15:25
I think its in your control panel somewhere... I never bothered to look... :erg:
Trance on 24/12/2008 at 16:05
I think he means a thread that locks itself after a certain number of replies.
