Written by: Simian
ah, israel. Just another justification for my thesis that religious belief should be treated the same as any other mental illness. But that's another discussion entirely...
-Mike
Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella
A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura
Written by: jeff(fake)Written by: Patriarch917
I would express it differently. There is not ethical problem with killing someone, if God has ordered you to do it.
One word for this: sickness
After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
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I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Written by: Patriarch917
Your analogy is fine, but it needs details to make it closer to what actually happened with Abraham. Implicit in my “jumping” example was the promise to catch the child. There is an analogous promise by God to Abraham.
God did not simply ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. There was a lot more going on. God had promised Abraham that Isaac would be the son to carry on Abraham’s lineage, that Isaac’s ancestors would become a great nation, and that through Isaac eventually the messiah would come who would save the entire world.
Remember, Abraham’s context was not the Ten Commandments (which had not been given at that time). The question Abraham was facing was not “isn’t it wrong to kill my son,” since it is obviously never “wrong” to obey God. Abraham’s issue was the seeming contradiction between God’s promise that Isaac’s children would become a great nation (Isaac had no children at the time), and the order to sacrifice Isaac. How could Isaac go on to produce a great nation if he were dead?
Abraham had to have faith in God that God would still be able to keep his promise, even if Abraham were to sacrifice his son. Abraham had to believe that, despite the death of his son, God would still somehow keep his promise.
Thus, onewheeldave, your analogy would be closer to the truth if I the parent were to tell the kid not just “turn the microwave on,” but rather “turn the microwave on, and I promise that I will make sure that the pet will stay alive.”
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."
--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!
Written by: onewheeldave
Personally, I think that your addition makes the analogy less exact. God did not tell Abraham to kill his child whilst promising him the child would survive.
You seem to think that Abraham deduced from other words of god that the his child would remain unhurt- I question this on 3 grounds-
Written by: onewheeldave
1. It attributes a fair degree of rationality to Abraham which he may well not have possesed- the fact that he was willing to kill his child on the strengh of voices in his head puts it in doubt
Written by: onewheeldave
2. God promising that Abrahams children would become a great nation is not grounds for deducing that one particualr child (Isaac) could not be killed- if Abraham did sacrifice his child successfully, he could simply have had more and the prophecy could be fulfilled
Written by: onewheeldave
3. Nothing in the tone of the story seems to suggest that Abraham was in any doubt that he was about to kill his child- given that part of it's 'message' is obedience to God, presumably it would be weakened considerably if Abraham was simply going through the motions and was actually sure that God would stop the sacrifice?
Written by: onewheeldave
For me the point of this is that, if a parent did indeed command their child to kill their cat using a microwave, regardless of any intention the parent has to stop the child doing so, regardless of any intention of it being a lesson in obedience or trust- the fact is that it would be bad parenting and an act of cruelty, which, in all likelihood, would psycologically damage the child.
Written by: Patriarch
I would express it differently. There is not ethical problem with killing someone, if God has ordered you to do it.
the best smiles are the ones you lead to
Written by: Stone
To me, the abortion debate is just more of the Christian double standard on morality. Like changing the intention in the bible from though shall not kill, to though shall not murder, when it suits them.
Written by: Richard Dawkins
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
If we as members of the human race practice meditation, we can transcend our fear, despair, and forgetfulness. Meditation is not an escape. It is the courage to look at reality with mindfulness and concentration. Thich Nhat Hanh
'If your deeds shouldn't be known, perhaps they shouldn't be done, if your words shouldn't be shared, perhaps they shouldn't be spoken. Act with attention, for all your acts have consequences" (Rabbi Judah HaNassi)
Written by: Gremlin_Lou
Richard Dawkins is an arrogant, up his own ass, angry little man.
Written by: Gremlin_Lou
Can we please have some unbiased sources
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
'If your deeds shouldn't be known, perhaps they shouldn't be done, if your words shouldn't be shared, perhaps they shouldn't be spoken. Act with attention, for all your acts have consequences" (Rabbi Judah HaNassi)
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
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Maybe actual scientists. Evidence, from an unbiased experiment. Bear in mind, Richard Dawkins 'idea's' are merely his opinion and hold no more weight in the scientific community as any other opinion.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
'If your deeds shouldn't be known, perhaps they shouldn't be done, if your words shouldn't be shared, perhaps they shouldn't be spoken. Act with attention, for all your acts have consequences" (Rabbi Judah HaNassi)
Written by: dream
All experiments are necessarily biased though. They are universally conducted by humans who are subjective and partial creatures (EVEN SCIENTISTS ARE HUMAN... though they often pretend that when they walk into a lab and put on a white coat they somehow transcend their status as a glorified chimp and become an objective being). While some papers may be more heavily influenced by their authour's subjective biases, all papers merely express subjective opinions.
"Moo," said the happy cow.
Written by: Gremlin_Lou
And while we're at it - on the program 'the virus of faith' or w/e it was called, Richard Dawkins didn't even mention Islam.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
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nobody seriously thinks scientists are somehow immune from bias, but the scientific method does act to minimise this as much as possible.
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1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses
7. Publish results
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by:
There was a big hubbub about potential bias in the scientific method a while back. It was know as the Science Wars (wiki link).
Unsurprisingly, science won out in the end in terms of respectability,
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
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As a scientist myself I see it as vitaly important to rid myself of any potential biases before performing an experiment.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
"Moo," said the happy cow.
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How many times do you see a post-modernist documentary?
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Bunch of pretentious tossers really.
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Have you read Intellectual Impostures by Sokal and Bricmont? It goes into much more detail about how much of a load of utter crap a lot of post-modern "thinking" is, funny in a sad way.
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Having read some of the post-modern attacks on science, I'm not surprised the scientists didn't understand what the attack was -
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how many people are that fluent in Gibberish
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this is a quotation from the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, one of many fashionable French 'intellectuals' outed by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their splendid book Intellectual Impostures, previously published in French and now released in a completely rewritten and revised English edition. Guattari goes on indefinitely in this vein and offers, in the opinion of Sokal and Bricmont, "the most brilliant mélange of scientific, pseudo-scientific and philosophical jargon that we have ever encountered".
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Written by: Gremlin_Lou
And why should Islam be given any less respect than say, Christianity.
The insults of your enemy are a tribute to your bravery
Written by: dreamWritten by: jeff(fake)
Bunch of pretentious tossers really.
yep. and arrogant about it. unfortunately they're also quite bright, and have some fairly good arguments.
(that last comment leaves me feeling strangely reminded of someone else)
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
If we as members of the human race practice meditation, we can transcend our fear, despair, and forgetfulness. Meditation is not an escape. It is the courage to look at reality with mindfulness and concentration. Thich Nhat Hanh
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dream...your not a post-modernist are you?
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Post-modern really is a horrible word though... it means so many things in different contexts that it has become largely meaningless.
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People use the word postmodern to describe things that they dont understand.
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my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse -- and more generally a penchant for subjectivism -- which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left.4 Alan Ryan said it well:
It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth ... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess.5
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Capitalism is defined by a cruelty having no parallel in the primitive system of cruelty, and by a terror having no parallel in the despotic regime of terror. Wage increases and improvements in the standard of living are realities, but realities that derive from a given supplementary axiom that capitalism is always capable of adding to its axiomatic in terms of an enlargement of its limits… But within the enlarged reality that conditions these islands, exploitation grows constantly harsher, lack is arranged in the most scientific of ways, final solutions of the Jewish problem variety are prepared down to the last detail, and the third world is organised as an integral part of capitalism. The reproduction of the interior limits of capitalism on an always wider scale has several consequences: it permits increases and improvements of standards at the centre, it displaces the harshest forms of exploitation from the centre to the periphery, but also multiplies enclaves of overpopulation in the centre itself, and easily tolerates the so-called socialist formations… There is no metaphor here: the factories are prisons, they do not resemble prisons, they are prisons.
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their arguements don't really make logical sense
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So far what I've heard from post-modernism is that science has trouble with fluid dynamics because most scientists are male and of course males understand hard things better than fluid things which women understand better because of the physical differences in their physical sexual responces.
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New concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our worldview; from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton, to a holistic, ecological view.
Ultimately – as quantum physics shoed so dramatically – there are no parts at all. What we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. Therefore the shift from the parts to the whole can also be seen as a shift from objects to relationships.
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What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Thus the ‘method of questioning becomes an integral part of scientific theories
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Ross may object that I am rigging the power game in my own favor: how is he, a professor of American Studies, to compete with me, a physicist, in a discussion of quantum mechanics?14 (Or even of nuclear power -- a subject on which I have no expertise whatsoever.) But it is equally true that I would be unlikely to win a debate with a professional historian on the causes of World War I. Nevertheless, as an intelligent lay person with a modest knowledge of history, I am capable of evaluating the evidence and logic offered by competing historians, and of coming to some sort of reasoned (albeit tentative) judgment. (Without that ability, how could any thoughtful person justify being politically active?)
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I think Sokal understands post-modernism better than the post-modernists do
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Written by: Stone
Zauberdachs, I don’t think it’s about Christianity being the true voice of God over Islam. I believe in Jesus, but all the prophets of the Abrahamic religions have important messages for us.
The insults of your enemy are a tribute to your bravery
Written by: dream
Written by: jeff(fake)
So far what I've heard from post-modernism is that science has trouble with fluid dynamics because most scientists are male and of course males understand hard things better than fluid things which women understand better because of the physical differences in their physical sexual responces.
not sure who wrote that... haven't heard it before... but I'm fairly certain its a wind up. I hope so anyway.
Written by: dream
With regards to science this is more the kind of thing which I've been looking at recently
Fritjof Capra (PhD in theoretical physics)- the web of life - p5
Written by: Fritjof Capra
New concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our worldview; from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton, to a holistic, ecological view.
Ultimately – as quantum physics showed so dramatically – there are no parts at all. What we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. Therefore the shift from the parts to the whole can also be seen as a shift from objects to relationships.
which he follows with a quote from Heisenberg
Written by: Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Thus the ‘method of questioning becomes an integral part of scientific theories
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The bits Sokal fills in around largely pertain to quantum gravity... something that as a professor of physics he would be expected to know a hell of a lot more about than the editors of Social Text. That he abused his position to try and score points in a personal vendetta has been criticised from both sides of the science wars.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: Zauberdachs
also, can the postmodernist discussion form it's own thread?
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...