Lets talk politics

[Terr]

In theory yes, but laws have been built on a foundation of religion. for gods sake, we legalised homosexuality about thirty years ago!

Still a work in progress. Consider Lawrence v. Texas 2003, and the kind of penalties that existed in state laws before that. (Technically still existing, but pointless.)

 

[Terr]

Creationism is something you can't prove with science, it's something you believe through faith.

No, the literal interpretation version of creationism makes some very explicit and scientifically-testable claims, and unless you think those dinosaur bones were "planted by the devil"...

If evolution is true then why is it still the THEORY of Evolution?

Because people who repeat that shitty semantic argument don't understand scientific terminology. For crying out loud, we still refer to things like "the germ theory of disease", but I don't suppose you believe that disease is spread entirely by bad smells, do you?

If man doesn't get his morals from God, or his religion, where does he get them from? From man?

The phrase for this malarky is "God of the gaps"... particularly because you can't get everyone to agree on what the correct morals are, let alone whether certain things are actually morals in the first place.

Can you imagine what the world would be like without religion? If we lived in a world without religion, then there would be nothing stopping anybody from doing anything.

So that's why all those nations with the highest amounts of people who practice secularism or are atheist are always on the news! Wow, now that explains why Sweden and Denmark are in the middle of a constant bloodbath, killing the men, raping the women, and eating the babies in their conquest.

Good to know!

That's called eugenics.

Yeah, we never had anything like that back in the good old days... when polygamy was designed to yield disproportionately more children from more successful parents, or back when babies with congenital disfigurements were put to death. That only started happening very very recently amirite?

 

[WastedMeerkat]

1. No, the literal interpretation version of creationism makes some very explicit and scientifically-testable claims, and unless you think those dinosaur bones were "planted by the devil"...

2. Because people who repeat that shitty semantic argument don't understand scientific terminology. For crying out loud, we still refer to things like "the germ theory of disease", but I don't suppose you believe that disease is spread entirely by bad smells, do you?

3. The phrase for this malarky is "God of the gaps"... particularly because you can't get everyone to agree on what the correct morals are, let alone whether certain things are actually morals in the first place.

4. So that's why all those nations with the highest amounts of people who practice secularism or are atheist are always on the news! Wow, now that explains why Sweden and Denmark are in the middle of a constant bloodbath, killing the men, raping the women, and eating the babies in their conquest.

Good to know!

5. Yeah, we never had anything like that back in the good old days... when polygamy was designed to yield disproportionately more children from more successful parents, or back when babies with congenital disfigurements were put to death. That only started happening very very recently amirite?

1. I use "creationism" as a term to say that God created the earth, plants, animals, and man. I'm not going to deny the existence of dinosaurs. I'm just not going to say that God created monkeys and then after a few million years, man evolved from them.

2.

(n) theory (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"

(n) hypothesis, possibility, theory (a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena) "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices"

(n) theory (a belief that can guide behavior) "the architect has a theory that more is less"; "they killed him on the theory that dead men tell no tales"

3 & 4. Man's nature is to sin. Say there is no God, and no afterlife. What's to stop you from just doing what you want all your life? There is no consequence to what you do whatsoever. After you die, that's it. So why would you even care what other people do as long as you get what you want? Why should you care what you have to do to get what you want? Everything is just an obstacle in your way. Thankfully, most every religion in history encourages good behavior so that you will be rewarded in the afterlife.

Atheists and secularists still have morals. I, as a Christian, believe that God gives people morals, no matter what they believe. It's honestly a miracle that people aren't killed more often. Think of how many people might want to kill famous and influential public figures, and how rarely they actually act on it. Are you surprised that we don't have more assassinated presidents than we do? I am.

5. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Polygamy was mainly a practice of kings and emperors and patricians centuries ago. If you could afford to feed and house more wives and more children, then you could go right ahead. And yes, babies with birth defects have been killed for a long time. I'm not saying this is a new issue. I'm saying it's a system of thought that leads to horrible things, and is a result of a lack of morals.

The ideology associated with eugenics is just evil. Take the playwright, George Bernard Shaw, for example. He was part of the Fabian Society started in the late 1800s. There is a clip of him saying that there should be a committee that decides whether or not you contribute as much or more than you take from society, and that if you didn't you should be killed. He was the one who dreamed up the gas chambers used on the Jews, blacks, homosexuals, and gypsies in the Holocaust, and wanted to use them to kill those who couldn't justify their existence to the committee. He also said that eugenics was the way to save the human race, and that the government should pick mating partners to make sure that the gene pool stayed clean.

 

[Numerous]

Going through and ripping the sh** out of the stuff I know is complete BS and have the facts to show as such:

I didn't address the points with facts because they honestly wouldn't be worth arguing. Those topics are never settled, and any argument about them only ends with frustration on both sides.

1. I'm not going to get argue with someone who believes that the free market system always results in failure. If he would look at a list of free market systems that no longer exist, he would see that they all became command economies and thrived while they existed.

It becomes pointless to argue about points 2C and 2D when you account for 1. Creationism is something you can't prove with science, it's something you believe through faith. If evolution is true then why is it still the THEORY of Evolution? Because there is still not enough evidence for it to be concrete. Again, I'm not looking for counter-arguments for these topics because I can't very well present you with evidence.

According to that, all we need to do is push through legislation that gravity is illegal, and we'll get a zero-G environment on earth. Perhaps you got your terminology wrong? Also, learn the scientific definition of theory, hypothesis and law.

And hey, your link to the definitions of "theory" actually includes the one used in science. Y'see, words are context sensitive. Anyone who paid attention in year 9 science class would be able to tell you the scientific definition of theory is most similar to the first definition you cited. You may have noticed that the common usage is closer to the meaning of the word "hypothesis".

Now, onto 2A. I actually admit that I don't know much about this topic, and I would be open to any statement that someone can make about it.

Now, Absurdist, that article is dumb. It completely overlooks the fact that if someone owns a company, they are entitled to do what they want with their money. Keep in mind that if a business owner owns all of the money he receives as a result of his business but has to give it to his employees because they signed legally binding contracts that promise them a wage. A business owner doesn't pay themselves more. They just earn more money, but they still give a percentage of that to their employees. If an employee is unhappy with his salary, he should ask for a raise or leave. If the boss doesn't give him a raise, then tough. If he signs a contract, then that means he agrees to the salary he would receive.

Strikes are logical, too, because if all the employees leave a company, then the company is rendered useless; inoperable. But the business owner can only give their employees so much before they can't make a profit. Would you have the business owner pay his employees the same amount regardless of their work? Would you have the owner earn the same salary as everyone else that is a part of the company? Would you make it a law that the business owner has to give the employees a certain percentage of their profit in order for the company to be "fair"? That wouldn't be fair for the business owner at all. He came up with the idea, he started the company, and he profited off of it. If you take away these principles, then that would not be capitalism.

On the subject of secularism:

If man doesn't get his morals from God, or his religion, where does he get them from? From man? Can you imagine what the world would be like without religion? Most religions are peaceful and uphold good values like respecting your parents, not murdering, not stealing, not lying, not committing adultery. If we lived in a world without religion, then there would be nothing stopping anybody from doing anything.

This is just plain ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy eating minced baby just as much as any other godless amoral atheist, but I have a question for you: what makes you inherently moral? If you're only a good person because otherwise, sky daddy will punish you, you aren't a good person at all. Using this logic, if god told you to horribly torture then kill everyone you know, regardless of whether they've been absolute saints or horrible sociopaths, then doing that would be the moral thing to do.
It also doesn't really work, because in practice, while atheists/nonreligious make up maybe 10-20% of the population, we make up only ~0.1% of the prison population, compared to the majority percentage of the christian population. Christian morality gets you a VASTLY HIGHER prison population per capita, not to mention higher teenage pregnancy, abortion, and crime rates. So basically, start looking at the world around you.

Besides, if you're a complete asshole to other people, and expect them to be civil with you, you're ultimately the biggest hypocrite of them all. Despite common misconceptions, all huans share the quality of human nature, and being human. Not to mention, maybe we actually WANT to be good people? You don't need to believe in god to empathise with people in serious shit, as indicated by the fact that the amount of aid countries give per capita is on average, inversely proportional to the number of religious believers per capita.
And honestly? "most religions are peaceful" is BULL SHIT. It's the people who tend to be peaceful, and selectively read their holy book to match their morality. I'm pretty sure it's 2 Corinthians 6:14-6:17 that tells you not to associate with unbelievers, and if you honestly think that religion itself tends to be peaceful, just read the holy book, starting with Leviticus, for christianity.

Swordfish brought up the story of Noah and the Ark. Do you know why God flooded the earth? Noah was the LAST follower of God. The last one. The entire world was just plundering and pillaging and raping and having orgies. There were no morals. Noah's life work was building the Ark; he spent hundreds of years building it because it had to hold 2 of every animal. The entire time he was mocked. He warned people of the coming flood and nobody listened. When it came the only people on the Ark were Noah and his family. Even after the flood, the only ones with morals were the Jews. Just compare Hebrew society with the Greeks or the Arabs.

Because if you're all powerful, and all-forgiving, the obvious thing to do is kill everyone except the person you agree with. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

My point is that without religion and morals abortion wouldn't be contested, rape would be legal, theft would be legal, and murder would be legal. There wouldn't even be law. So you think secularism is the way to go, but would that mean abandoning all morals for the sake of logic? If you become pregnant and you don't want the responsibility of a child, then the easiest way to avoid that responsibility is to kill it. If you want something, then the easiest way to have it is to steal it. If you don't like someone, the easiest way to get rid of him is to kill him.

See the above, specifically the part about BULLSHIT. I don't believe in any god whatsoever, and I notice there are plenty of sincere believers who are much, MUCH worse than me. Also, despite having plenty of chances to be entirely selfish, which I could easily have gotten away with, I notice I haven't. The people who come up with this bullshit are the same people who claim that there are no atheists in foxholes, then cause an angry outcry when the Atheists in Foxholes association starts advertising their presence.

Also, abortion is the woman's choice, the fact is that until the brain actually starts developing, the foetus isn't much more than a natural, self-curing type of cancer.

If you want to be rid of the undesirables in society, the easiest way to get rid of them is to control human breeding and only breed those with the best of genetics, like breeding cows and pigs and sheep. What do you do with the runts? The ends justify the means. That's called eugenics.

First of all, the "undesirables" aren't purely a result of their genetics, and therefore eugenics would be pretty useless. Second of all, the part above about hypocrisy would cover this, and the fact is that this would only really work if you essentially dehumanised anyone less-than-ideal, it hasn't worked in the past, won't work in the present, and most people can see past the BS and see that the people in question are just as human as the rest.

Numerous, that is dangerous thinking, sir.

I hope you realise it was sarcasm.