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...this cannot work. You need to understand that putting up a flyer endorsing fifty faiths is still an endorsement of those religions, and therefore cannot be allowed in a public school. There are private schools and home teaching for people who want a religious education.

Also, the ceremonial exception doesn't work the way you want it to. It's there for things that are significantly important to the country's history or a large portion of it. I'm sorry, but there is nothing important about this motto. It's just a stupid prayer that endorses the Christian faith. Because it's a prayer, and because it endorses Christianity, and because it isn't historically significant or ritualized (it's ONE piece of paper), it doesn't fall under the exception. This isn't a difficult concept to grasp, and I don't understand why you don't accept it.

Now for all of you morons out there who say, "It wasn't hurting anyone, and now it's a mess," two things. First, it's a mess because the town is blowing it out of proportion. Not the girl, the TOWN. Ergo, it's their fault. Second, it doesn't matter if she wasn't forced to recite it, it reflected the school's mindset and it needed to go. We do not live in a democracy where the majority rules. We live in a REPUBLIC where everyone has the same rights. Ask yourself, would you be raising this fuss and demonizing this girl if a Hindu or Satanist document were removed? Most certainly not, and chances are you would be lying if you said you would. That's indicative of a bigoted mindset. Furthermore, modifying the document is inappropriate because it's modifying an original work that belongs to someone else, as well as because it is religious in origin and therefore inappropriate in any form.

This post has been edited by Carcharocles: 28 January 2012 - 06:36 PM

I wonder where the kid from 50 years ago is. He was probably all proud of his little banner being on the school wall and everything. Or maybe he was a GOD MODE troll and knew this would cause such a shitstorm. That's a fun thought, I'm gonna keep entertaining it.

My biggest problem here, the only reason I'm not giving all my support for having the prayer taken down, was that it was student work. The school didn't pay for it or point it out or do anything overly religious with it, it was some kids work that some people really liked 50 years ago and it just stayed there because why not. I feel like this means I should go to my college campus and demand artworks depicting religious beliefs be removed from the gallery because they make me feel uncomfortable (they don't, but apparently I'm legally supposed to object anyway).

Also, let's try not to bash Toracat so much, he makes sense. Belief and Fact aren't the same thing, that's all he's saying. I'm having more issues with people like Titanium Dragon who insist they're right and call everyone else stupid for not agreeing. I actually agree with him, but that doesn't mean he can tell everyone else that they're somehow worse people because they have a belief that isn't Empirically sound.

EDIT: Car...what? Even if they took the religious parts out (the four words) it would still be religious and not be allowed? Why?

It's also very disrespectful of everyone saying "I BET YOU WOULDN'T EVEN CARE IF IT WAS ANYTHING OTHER THAN CHRISTIAN", as if anyone who opposes your view has to be Catholic or something. I'm also pretty annoyed at people saying "furthermore, 'In God We Trust' is illegal, the Pledge is illegal, so this is certainly illegal". How could you even make that argument when they're very obviously happening all the time legally?

This post has been edited by Bourbon: 28 January 2012 - 06:43 PM

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Does a plaque on a wall really establish a national or even school religion? I don't think so. Do you want to expel every student who goes, "oh my GOD!" DO you? No. They aren't "establishing religion," are they? But many Atheists use that phrase. It seems that only written religious references get noticed and yelled at...

That raises another question: if the judge forced them to take down the prayer, wouldn't that be "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?" Does the Atheist automatically get the right of way?

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

It's not an endorsing of any. Most religions are mutually exclusive, if there would be an endorsement of a religion there wouldn't be endorsement of the others. What I mean is that the perceived endorsement or feelings of being "left out" would be gone with the plurality.

Private schools are most likely of one religion, so it's not like what I'm suggesting at all.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

We went though this in the first part of page one. Here are the main points of my position on this:

• It can not be considered historically significant for the whole country clearly, which is why it's not in the whole country. It's historically significant for the school, which is why it's confined to the school.
  
• "Ceremonial Deism" is not ritualized in the sense I think you're referring to, being a big ritual or celebration. It's more of a ritual in that it's something people will do without the intention of promoting religion, instead, it's just something repeated over and over until it became a motto or guide.
  
• With ceremonial deism what I want to bring to attention is that it's not an official position or religious statement or endorsement by the school, even if it may be seen as one if it's the only one standing.

Bourbon said:

Yes, this is basically what I'm trying to say by stating it's not a religious statement or endorsement, and I think the relation to religious artworks is pretty valid. The difference I think is that this was the only religious reference and it was pretty big, so it gave the feeling that it was a religious endorsement, which it was not.

Pants, on 28 January 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

I know I'm thinking in direct absolutes. If anything implies cause-and-effect one can give a douchey reponse that might even simply exploit a mistake in sentence structure.

I'm not really here to argue about the validity of this matter since my opinion has been clear since the beginning. I guess what I'm doing is mostly trying to point out how silly I think the whole matter is and possibly to insult a few people.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

It's not an endorsing of any. Most religions are mutually exclusive, if there would be an endorsement of a religion there wouldn't be endorsement of the others. What I mean is that the perceived endorsement or feelings of being "left out" would be gone with the plurality.

Private schools are most likely of one religion, so it's not like what I'm suggesting at all.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

We went though this in the first part of page one. Here are the main points of my position on this:

• It can not be considered historically significant for the whole country clearly, which is why it's not in the whole country. It's historically significant for the school, which is why it's confined to the school.
  
• "Ceremonial Deism" is not ritualized in the sense I think you're referring to, being a big ritual or celebration. It's more of a ritual in that it's something people will do without the intention of promoting religion, instead, it's just something repeated over and over until it became a motto or guide.
  
• With ceremonial deism what I want to bring to attention is that it's not an official position or religious statement or endorsement by the school, even if it may be seen as one if it's the only one standing.

Bourbon said:

Yes, this is basically what I'm trying to say by stating it's not a religious statement or endorsement, and I think the relation to religious artworks is pretty valid. The difference I think is that this was the only religious reference and it was pretty big, so it gave the feeling that it was a religious endorsement, which it was not.

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No, it's not. It doesn't address a specific event or time frame, and it isn't irreplaceable. Furthermore, it being significant to the school is irrelevant, because it MUST be more significant than that. Seriously, Arthur Bryant's Barbecue is more historically significant than this prayer is. Nothing of this level has ever been upheld by any federal court as historically significant.

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What I mean is it was not made a big part of the school. It was posted on a wall somewhere. Someone ELSE pointed it out to her. Therefore, it's not ritualized at all, it was pasted up there and forgotten. It's like if a kid wrote "fuck you" on the wall and it stayed up there for 40 years because they thought it was kind of cool. Schools change decorum all the time, hell, they change official things like colors and mascots. This isn't even on that level.

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1. It's not ceremonial deism, it's a prayer t the Christian God.
2. What you're doing is akin to me saying, "My poptart is a blueberry scone, because it's got blueberries and bread on it. Clearly blueberry scones are delicious." While the second sentence is true, you backed it up with bullshit, which discredited your comment. Because you SAY it is ceremonial does not MAKE it ceremonial. Furthermore, when confronted with the facts about why it isn't, you instead go on a little rant about how "Oh, it's important to the school and that's what matters," despite me flat out telling you it DOESN'T matter. The ceremonial exception does not exist to give such trivial things as a piece of paper on a school wall an exception to the first amendment. The only reason "In God We Trust" and the "Pledge of Allegiance" got this exception was because it was a widespread custom spanning the entirety of the nation. THAT'S what the clause is for. Not some school that says "boo hoo they're taking an easily replaceable piece of paper away."

As for your comment about the first page, don't talk down to me like that. You didn't win that argument you simply annoyed me until I went away. The entire argument was me saying, "It doesn't work. It's unconstitutional. It's not ceremonial because it isn't historical to a significant portion of the population as required, it's clearly a prayer and it specifically is addressed to the Christian god, and therefore not allowable under any form," and you saying, "Oh my, what an idiot. It's important to the school, so that's all that matters (despite me pointing out that it DOESN'T multiple times), and it expresses the values of the school so the prayer form doesn't matter (despite me pointing out that it DOES) and they should just put up hundreds of different faiths' versions of the poem (despite this being a violation of the constitution; it's an endorsement of these faiths whether they are contradictory or not.) So please, stop acting like a stuckup ass. Bring a new argument to the table, or give in. Your old ones DO NOT WORK.

It's a generic "Heavenly Father." While it does imply the Christian god, it could mean any monotheistic god.

Except that's almost exclusively a Christian way to refer to a god

That's where the "imply" part comes in...

Still, would taking it down be "prohibiting the exercise thereof" of religion?

Christianity is, as far as I know, the only monotheistic faith that uses the phrase. It's also the only one that refers to its deity as a father figure, since this position is rooted in the new Testament. For Islam, he is "Allah," and for Judaism he's "Yahweh." Heavenly Father is especially used in Roman Catholicism.

And no, it wouldn't be prohibiting exercise. I really get annoyed by Christians who make this leap of logic; there is nothing stopping you from praying in a public school, but that prayer cannot be written down and placed on a wall.

This post has been edited by Carcharocles: 28 January 2012 - 07:45 PM

Interestingly enough, "Allah" really is just the word "god" in Arabic. When translated, Muslims usually just say "god," unless they want to people to be sure of which one they are talking about.

I see your point about it not prohibiting exercise. Still, though, Ayn Rand had no qualm with things like "God bless America." She accepted phrases like that for their sentiment, not for their political correctness.

But it's ALL about political correctness nowadays. It's the only correct left apparently.

Enigggma, on 28 January 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

"God bless America" is wrong in so many ways it's not even funny

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

I love the smell sound of napalm people shouting axioms at each other in the morning afternoon

I really want to start quoting Kuha. in all-caps now

Supah, on 28 January 2012 - 04:02 AM, said:

You made the statement that the law is essentialy what determines morality. I gave a hypothetical scenario (denoted by the word "if") akin to a more.... oppresive version of the Blue Laws of the 20th Century. The purpose of the hypothetical scenario was to showcase the absurdity of the claim that law determines morality. As such, your "it's not a real law, so it doesn't matter" defense is irrelevant, aside from showing that you entirely missed the point of my question.

As to the relationship of law and morality, I think that law stems from morality and not the other way around. Of course, this is only a simplified answer; the subject itself is more complex.

P.S. Suggesting that I am retarded doesn't help your case at all. Rather, it makes you seem like an ignorant buffoon who cannot logically back up his argument. Of course, whether you are in fact an ignorant buffoon is of no relevance to the topic at hand.

Let's start the "no name-calling/intelligence questioning" game!

Reeeeady...


GO!

Let's start the not being a white knight without contributing to the conversation in any way and making useless posts game!

Reeaaaady...

GO!

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

What I mean is, the scope is the school, so for it to be significant it has be significant for the school. If it was a prayer put in every public school then yes, it should be significant in the whole nation to support that. I'm sure you already knew I was gonna say this.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

It's been hung for 49 years in the auditorium. I don't think it's hidden at all or forgotten. It was presented by the graduating class too, it's something important for the school, and it was presented as a moral guide, not as a religious statement.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

It's Ceremonial Deism in the sense that it has lost the little (or maybe none) religious weight it may have had when it was written, and has become more of a tradition to be read exposing the moral ideals of the school. Being a prayer and being ceremonial deism are not mutually exclusive things, especially in this case were the only things making it a prayer are the reference to god at the beggining and the "amen" at the end.

I don't see what you're trying to say with the metaphor, really. And since the argument began you can't help but show your anger. It's kinda bugging me at this point.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

Relax. I never tried to imply I won, I was just saying that we got stuck in an argument where both positions were clear and we weren't giving in, which will probably happen again. I can say the same thing as you about "bring a new argument to the table", but I don't because I recognize we're both just repeating ourselves without reaching a conclusion.

Feel free to continue the debate about whether it's better to address the pluricular nature by allowing widespread expression or just removing everything and leaving a blank slate. I feel not everything has been said about that.

This post has been edited by Itu: 28 January 2012 - 11:26 PM

On a side note, it's always funny to see people's over-reactions to these sorts of things (The news article, not the thread). I mean really, people are losing their little minds over this.

Also, you all seem to be arguing as if this things was up since 1920.

From the Article:

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So yeah, it's been illegal since...it was put up.

Please continue.

This post has been edited by Pants: 28 January 2012 - 11:24 PM

The Supreme Court barred sponsored, organized prayer, not having any kind of prayer anywhere. It happened because a kid was being forced to participate in prayer.

This post has been edited by Itu: 28 January 2012 - 11:32 PM

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You don't really understand how science works, do you? You don't -prove- anything; rather, you do the opposite. Moreover, there IS nothing that exists outside of science, in the sense that if science cannot describe something, ever, then it means that it does not matter. Anything which can be observed can be studied by science, and thus made a part of science, and anything which interacts with the universe can be observed.

As such, only a deific god, or a FSM type deity is beyond the reach of science, and a universe with those sorts of gods would be indistinguishable from one without a god. Which is to say, it does not matter if those gods exist. If a god is beyond science then it does not matter if they exist because they have no bearing on the universe.

And which is more likely: that a god that never interacts with the universe exists, or that they don't exist at all? The latter is the default, really, per occam's razor, much as we don't believe in the invisible pink unicorn (May her hooves never be shod). In any event, what is "god" anyway? A powerful alien being?

Regarding deific intervention in the creation of the earth, there is no evidence that any sort of deity did intervene in its creation, or in abiogenesis, and abundant evidence to the contrary - there are no signs of design in nature or the Earth.

As for Madison: that doesn't change the fact that he was right, just as the 14th amendment took a long time to truly percolate through the system.

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Thing is, religion by definition relies on faith, and faith is fundamentally bad. Faith is about denial of reality, not accepting it, not learning more about it, but rather pushing it away. You BELIEVE in the place of UNDERSTANDING, of KNOWING. That's what's wrong with religion.

As Voltaire said, he who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

I don't think that anyone actaully advocates a further separation of church and state than was intended from the Founding Fathers; it is blazingly clear that Jefferson and Madison believed that the state should have no part in religion and vice-versa. School prayers in public schools definitely goes against that. There is no question at all. There is simply no justification for it. Your only justification is "well, it doesn't -really- mean what it says." That is what you're saying.

But Jefferson spoke of a wall between the two. That's pretty seperate.

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Except this is blatently the opposite of reality. This is the very problem with faith; it is abundantly clear from looking at who the Founding Fathers were that they were very much opposed to governmental involvement in religion. Several of the most important fathers were atheists, and many more were deists. They wanted religion out of the government, and government out of religion.

Moreover, the point is not what the majority decides, but rather what the law dictates is right. The purpose of the constitution is to protect against the so-called tyranny of the majority; indeed, the US was designed NOT to be a democracy, but to be a democratic republic precisely to protect minority groups from majority groups, and even to protect the majority groups from themselves. Democracy is not a good thing inherently, and it has to be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner, which is what you seem to believe it is.

No, it doesn't matter what the majority wants. What matters is what is right. And what is right is the separation of church and state and secularization. If you like religion in government, move to the middle east.

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Of course they're mutually exclusive. The reason why religion has reacted poorly to science in recent times is because science has shown religious beliefs to be outright wrong in many cases. The earth is more than 5000 years old, for example, barring a literal reading of genesis and basically all other religious texts, and a great deal of "religious history" has been shown to have been distorted, which creates rather hostile reactions at times.

Faith is the opposite of science; science kills faith, because it can treat it as a hypothesis then test it in many cases - and then it doesn't pan out. For instance, "the earth is 5000 years old" is a testable hypothesis, and has been falsified - the Earth is much older than that. "Man was created separate from animals" has again been falsified - humans are animals, and were not created at all, but rather were the product of evolution.

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Which means that God doesn't exist, as if it cannot be proven, then it has no interaction with the universe in any way. And it is far, far more reasonable to believe that God doesn't exist than to believe in the IPU.

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You can't believe that god created man and understand evolution properly, or how humans came to be. The two are mutually exclusive, because evolution has no place for God.

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we can observe love, hope, right, wrong, justice, and truth. Love is actaully pretty easy. Hope is much more complicated. Right and wrong are value judgements, which is to say, they are dependent on what we value. They are not scientific, but science can help us determine what is right and wrong for a given value system - for example, if I want to lower crime, I can look at studies and see whether the steps I am contemplating have been taken previously and what their effects are, and see whether it would be effective or if there is no evidence of efficacy. Justice is a very complicated value judgement. Truth, however, actually is something that is a part of science, if you define "truth" to mean "what is", which is the usual definition.

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Uh, except that faith is by definition illogical, because logic is all about proving things, while faith is all about -not- doing so. Being wrong, likewise, is generally seen as a bad thing, because being right has value - you can build on right things.

Finally, if we want to talk about being immoral, it is almost universal that lying is immoral, and yet, religious folk lie about their beliefs all the time, acting as though they were certain truths, as opposed to unproven suppositions or just outright wrong. Likewise, indoctrination is generally viewed as wrong - but religious folk do not see that they participate in it themselves in many cases.

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Yes, which means that religion is immoral, because by definition they believe that they are correct in their beliefs - that is what faith is.

And there isn't an innate tyranny in it. Tyranny is when you take a poor approach to it.

I personally advocate the game where we just systematically destroy religion via early diversity education and early exposure to science. It is entirely effective and requires no indoctrination or otherwise "immoral" actions on our part, it has real, clear benefits to everyone (early exposure to religious diversity in a positive light, as well as to science, results in people treating other people better in general, as well as more intelligent people) and will simultaneously have a negative effect on religiousity, all while not hurting anyone. I am content letting religious folk die of old age.

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Its kind of a bullshit distinction anyway.

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Thing is, it is explicitly barred by the Constitution. You simply cannot have any endorsement of religion whatsoever. Everything must have a purely secular purpose.

You could write a motto or something similar on the wall that was purely secular; it should not be in the form of a prayer.

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Its because the Supreme Court justices are religious. That being said, it also probably isn't correct, and will likely fall sometime in the near future.

It is worth recalling that the whole "mandatory pledge" thing was not heard by the Supreme Court because they ruled that her dad didn't have standing, most likely because they knew if they did have to rule on it, they would have to rule against forcing people to recite the pledge.

Also, to be fair, its not a Christian motto, but a Judeo-Christian one. Still obviously illegal, though. But the truth is that the SC tends to move a bit slowly at times. It will come around.

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Except they're not. And indeed, the current wording of the pledge was pointed out to be illegal in the 1950s when the idiots put it into the pledge. "In God we Trust" is likewise an illegal endorsement of religion.

Titanium Dragon, on 28 January 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Well, ouch.

I find it to be a huge distinction. Whether or not you can assert that the statement "at least one deity exists" is false separates the atheists in 2, and that's just atheism.

For agnosticism you can have positions like "I do not have belief in any deity but I don't reject the possibility outright" (atheist agnostic), "I believe in a deity but I can not hold it to be true" (theist agnostic), "It doesn't matter whether a deity exists" (apathetic agnosticism), "We can't know" or "We don't know right now" (Strong and weak agnosticism)...

Then you have ignosticism ("Every other position assumes too much"), Post-Theism ("Theism has not been so much rejected as rendered obsolote"), Anti-theism ("Religion is evil"), naturalism & materialism, and several to many other positions.

These are out there for people to use so you can really express your belief system succintly and thoroughly and not just say "atheism" and be surprised when other atheists disagree with your beliefs.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot, here's more info on the issue at hand for the thread. Apparently there's gonna be public debate on feb 16. There's also a poll down there, it was something like this like 20 minutes ago.

33% - Yes, it should be removed.
19% - It should be altered, not removed.
40% - No, it's history.
8% - Undecided

I'm expecting the real statistics to be something like 50/50 for removing and keeping, the other poll had something like 80 removing/20 keeping which seemed kinda biased, maybe because of the support from r/atheism, or maybe it does have that kind of support and this one's biased towards keeping it, even though it was posted on r/atheism as well. It's not really relevant, just thought I'd bring this up.

This post has been edited by Itu: 29 January 2012 - 12:23 AM

Itu, on 29 January 2012 - 12:11 AM, said:

Thing is though, about half of those distinctions are basically either saying "I'm a pussy" or "I masturbate to my own thought processes". A lot of agnostics are in fact atheists who just don't like upsetting people or who are simply intellectually dishonest with themselves about their own lack of belief, out of some misguided attempt to be "open minded". Also, thiest agnostics aren't atheists. While stuff like ignosticism and post-theism are just people trying to make themselves sound intellectual.

I am myself anti-religious in addition to being an irreligious atheist; I do make sure to note the "irreligious" part sometimes to make sure that people realize that there are in fact religious atheists.

Naturalism and materialism are not really called out as being separate to everything else. I am a scientist, and ergo am a naturalist and by some definitions a materialist (though physicalist is actually more accurate, as there are things which are not made of matter, though I would also hold that to some extent these are also tautological, but that is neither here nor there).

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Titanium Dragon, on 29 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said:

Citation needed.

TD is wreckin this thread

Titanium Dragon, on 29 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said:

Wow.

And here's a good point to cut off this line of debate, because it's not relevant to the thread and it turned into bashing other beliefs again. Encouraged pluricultural environment versus blank environment, anyone?

This post has been edited by Itu: 29 January 2012 - 01:02 AM

SuitCase, on 29 January 2012 - 12:43 AM, said:

This post has been edited by Pants: 29 January 2012 - 01:04 AM

Titanium Dragon, on 28 January 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Dude
I have been searching so long for a way to express this thought. Thank you.

guys guys

what if god is what caused the big bang to happen assuming it did

what if that is what god is

then what

esalaka, on 29 January 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:

This is known as the "god of the gaps"; basically, god is everywhere science isn't. God didn't create man? Well maybe he created life. God didn't create the Earth? Maybe he created the Universe?

Its a rather dishonest, goal-post moving argument and you should always be wary of making this sort of argument, because it means that as we find out more things, your god gets smaller and smaller still. It also leads to another obvious point:

If all these things that God was claimed to do were found not to be his doing, why would these other things be likely to be caused by him as well? We've not found one thing that God did so far, and plenty of things that God did not, so the argument that he caused the Big Bang rings a bit hollow in that light.

In any event, even assuming some sentient being caused the Big Bang to occur, that does not make them a "god". Is there even a difference between God an a sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial, or some sort of extrauniversal creature? If we were all part of a computer simulation, would the scientists running it in the "real world" be "God"?

no I mean literally what if god is the thing sentient or not that caused the universe to exist

what if that is what god is

Fuck.

Well at least I know you're all wrong because YALORT is the one and only god.

what if god caused everything we perceive as natural order to happen

what if god is the reason our world developed as it did

what if god is a driving but invisible force on the quantum level

what if

what if god is the so-called god particle

if youve ever read pullman you know about dust and thats interesting what if that is god

maybe god is what causes this

perhaps there is a destiny and destiny is god

perhaps there is a separate metaphysical soul and god is like these

perhaps there is a phenomenon or few in the universe that work as they do only because thats what god does

perhaps dark matter is god or perhaps it isnt

perhaps physics is just how we understand god

it could be that this is all just a game

or that its all just a cave

if it should be the case that titanium dragon is in fact possessed by the devil what then

if it should be the case that i am in fact possessed by the devil what then

there is no proof that there is a god and there is no proof that there isnt a god and there is no definition of what god is and there is no definition of what god isnt and as long as this is the case god could be anything or everything and if god is beyond human perception or understanding humans can never adequately describe god to such extent that we could properly understand more than the limited concept of god everyone forms in their own mind

Dragon, at this point all that remains to be said is that you are vehemently against religion. You have quite succinctly demonstrated this. You have also demonstrated that you are personally intolerant of religion, and think less of others who do not share your religious views.

I will simply state that Science does not yet explain everything in the universe. Without absolute knowledge, one cannot truly say that Science covers everything. You believe science can explain everything. And this is your faith.

In addition, you have missed my point on Tyranny, almost amusingly so. My point was that whenever you have anyone espousing that their belief is empirically true and are willing to go to any lengths to prove it, this will lead to Tyranny. You are presently arguing that your beliefs and your beliefs alone are true. Do you understand now my point? Religion in and of itself is not evil. It is when people decide that their views alone can only be correct, and go out to "prove it". When people seek to impose their belief set on others by completely obliterating what others believe, we have tyranny.

Let us say there was a militant Atheist who hated the concept of God so much, he decided he would prove it by killing every christian he knew, to prove that God would not save them. Does this mean that Atheism (his religious viewpoint) is evil? No. The act of evil came because he wished to empirically s prove his belief was correct.

However, it is obvious at this point that you simply do not follow with any of this, and hold that you and you alone are correct. And this is unfortunate.

Back on to the original topic, I believe an enforced Pluricultural environment would best help those of all faiths understand there are other faiths than their own, and to be more tolerant of them. The blank environment being so vehemently defended by one who views it as a legal vehicle to the destruction of all religious views but his own make me leery of it. But I have severe doubts that would ever happen realistically, so cheers. At least this is constrained to our Public Education system, which is rapidly detereorating anyways.

God is, in esalaka's sense, religion's word for "We don't know what the fuck it is so we pin it on a supernatural concept."

You know what science does?

"We don't know. So we admit that we don't know. Then we try our darndest to figure it out. We don't blame it on something. We simply call it 'unknown.'"

That's what makes science so great.

I agree with Dr. Klaus.

Can we please get back to the main topic?

Just alter it.
We'll all debate about this, so why not just compromise?

It's sort of evolved. The main topic has mainly run it's course, it's only natural that it morphs into a related concept later along the line.

TD is a man after my own heart.

(Also deleted a few shitposts from Hinochi, Eniggma, and Itu responding to Hinochi. Itu's post was not a shitpost, but Hinochi's post being deleted removed the context. Stop being dumb, guys.)

TD is straight up ridiculous amounts of science lovin' and faith hatin', and no matter how much I share his goddamned viewpoints on reality I still lose a lot of respect because of his attitude. I am ALL for science over fairytales, but you'd think someone as smart as he is could think a teeny tiny bit outside of the textbook. I'm not even talking about having a faith, but at least try to understand the human condition here. When people have questions, they will make up an answer until they find a better one. Shout 'logical fallacy!' all you want, they're still gonna do it. There's nothing wrong with that, it's that very drive for answers that led to science in the first place. Not every religious person is clinging to literal interpretations of the Bible where you could actually prove they're wrong (you ranted a couple times about the earth not being 6000 years old). Eselaka was saying 'hey, what if God is just the concept of the Big Bang and the causation of existence?', and you slammed a big ol' 'NO' on it so fast you ripped your lab coat in the process. 'God' as a label for a series of concepts is about as basic a faith as you can get, and it still accepts every single scientific explanation. We're not even considering a conscious entity anymore here. Why is that still so wrong?

Also, I kinda stopped taking you seriously after 'all agnostics are just whiny babies who are lying to themselves, they ttly know God is a lie. If you're smart you can't entertain the idea of religion'. That's just some wacky absolutes being tossed around.


TL:DR-

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"When you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

This post has been edited by Bourbon: 29 January 2012 - 07:55 AM

Bourbon, on 29 January 2012 - 07:47 AM, said:

To be fair, I mostly go off on this because it has been debated a million million times uselessly and pointlessly, and you really stop seeing new points after a while, so its mostly a bit rote.

I understand why people do it; its just that I like to think people should be better than that. I'd rather people actually think logically than make up bullshit to make themselves feel better. Are you familiar with delusional parasitosis? It is a disorder where someone BELIEVES they have parasites, but it is all in their head. Some people with this claim they have Morgellon's Disease, and resist any treatment that implies they might be delusional and it is all in their head... even though it is.

This is exactly why it is bad.

As for why I rip on "God" being the Big Bang - words have meanings. God with a capitol G represents a monotheistic deity, not the laws of physics. Yes, Einstein referred to the laws of physics as God, but I feel that is a distortion of the word and is deeply confusion, as witnessed by the huge number of morons who think that Einstein was religious.

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Thing is, agnostics are a type of atheist - they don't believe in God. Some of them are a little wishy-washy, but most of them are either about intellectual penis size (oh, you're no different from the religious people! I am clearly better than all of you) or simply are trying to avoid offending people (Darwin cited this as his reason for using the word). Yeah, its dickery to call them on it, but its dickery to be that way in the first place. I prefer honesty.

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This isn't faith; it is simply understanding what science is. Science is about observation, about making predictions, then comparing those predictions to your observations. If something is observable, then it can be described in scientific terms. If something is NOT observable, then it may as well not exist because it has no influence on the universe and, indeed, in all probability does not exist - while Occam's Razor is not a law of any sort, it is a good rational tool.

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Religion is and of itself BAD. Whether or not evil is really the right word for it is debatable, but religion is probably that as well - the purpose of it is ultimately selfish, an unwillingness to come to grips with reality for whatever reason. This isn't a good thing, and taking things on faith is bad because it leads you to deny how things actually are when conflicting data comes around.

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Hey, he's testing his hypothesis! You're acting like this is a bad thing. They say that they are God's chosen, he goes and kills them, bam! Falsified!

To be fair, this is completely horrible and wrong.

And in my experience atheists don't think that way anyway. It would be more likely that he'd be doing it because he felt they were spreading intellectual poison, or, most likely of all, he was just mentally ill.

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Because of people like you. I'm all for enforcing public education on everyone. If you force the rich to send their kids to the same schools as everyone else, they will most certainly not tolerate those schools sucking. It also prevents religious fanaticism, or at least makes it more difficult to create - if you force those religious folks' children into public schools then they are exposed to more viewpoints outside of the corrosive ones that belong to their parents.

I don't understand what side you're on for that last point, TD. Are you now agreeing with the idea of a pluricultural environment?

Also, hardcore with the 'hey, he's testing a hypothesis by killing those Christians' viewpoint, haven't seen such callousness towards human life for the betterment of science since Portal. I can dig it.

I get the words have meanings, but a capital G only makes it a possessive noun. Without context the ideas behind the word are pretty lost. Like, I could thank Jesus for my meal because he blessed me to eat today, or I could thank Jesus for my meal because he's the Mexican waiter who served me. Likewise, to me at least, God could be either the name of a deity/deities OR the title given to a collection of concepts and unanswered questions about whatever caused existence. The fact that God the deity is almost always "whatever you imagine 'Him' to be" helps make it either to imagine a force rather than an entity.

Oh jeez, imagine if they discovered some new quantum mechanic that just changes everything we know about the universe and scientists deem it the Force of God. That'd be pretty friggen' cool.

Bourbon, on 29 January 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

The government cannot endorse religion. Ergo, the proposal that they put up prayers from every religion is unconstitutional (and also impossible, because there simply isn't room). It would also rather obviously violate the clause even if it were possible because it would discriminate against the irreligious.

This post has been edited by Titanium Dragon: 29 January 2012 - 11:35 AM

Itu, on 28 January 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off that way. I did contribute before, but I didn't want this threat to become too serious. Things were starting to look ugly... Excuse me, things ARE ugly. My page didn't refresh properly.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

Kinda' reminds me of a quote from a movie...
"I know you have only one god, but we have need of many. I will pray to all of them for you. Please do not be offended."
As I have stated before, people should appreciate stuff like that for their sentiment.

Carcharocles, on 28 January 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

Consider this: ONE student complained about it. That would make that student a minority, eh? Would that constitute the rest of the student/teacher population (the ones who like it or don't care at all) the majority, making it "historical to a significan portion of the population, as required?"

Titanium Dragon, on 29 January 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

Just put up a science poster

This post has been edited by Enigggma: 29 January 2012 - 01:41 PM

Dr. Klaus, on 29 January 2012 - 03:35 AM, said:

what

did you not read my post or something

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It doesn't matter what they think, because it is still unconstitutional. Them's the breaks!!!

I feel like such a broken record, but it's like just a losing opinion battle against pretty obvious law.

Taeshi, on 29 January 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

But the whole "In God we trust" stayed on for that reason, and isn't declared unconstitutional.

Enigggma, only one person out of several thousand complaining doesn't mean it's historical. It just means that only one person spoke up about it.