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Paulm12

['Member']Joined: April 12, 2022 at 01:27Last active: October 08, 2022 at 19:2711 discussions105 comments

Discussions (11)

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I think you bring up a good point about the fine tuning argument, but I also get the impression you misunderstand it. The fine tuning argument is used...
September 07, 2022 at 22:26
I appreciate both of your perspectives, thanks. I understand why the government has a desire to be involved in marriage because married couples tend t...
September 03, 2022 at 18:42
Thanks for your perspective, this makes a lot of sense and is a good answer. As you said I think what the government (and what most people think) is b...
July 24, 2022 at 20:30
There’s lots of interesting work like Theistic Evolution, things like that that try to synthesize natural selection with the idea of a transcendent cr...
July 20, 2022 at 05:52
In: Bannings  — view comment
I do appreciate the quality control here. I’ve been using the site less recently because I’ve been encountering low quality posts, insults, extreme pa...
July 16, 2022 at 22:34
I'm one of those people (along with Augustine, Aquinas) who thinks the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one. Some atheists (like Alexander Rosenberg) seem...
July 15, 2022 at 21:32
To be fair, I've never personally met a theist who has said that God/gods is/are a mystery. Most (usually Christians) argue that one can come to know ...
July 09, 2022 at 03:34
I agree that avoiding harming others is indeed straightforward and practical, and I think it serves as a good guide for our own behavior. The issue I ...
July 08, 2022 at 21:30
I don't need God to act "morally" in the sense that I think plenty of people who don't believe in God act morally. But personally, I need God as an ex...
July 08, 2022 at 21:01
Personally, I'm committed to moral realism. And this led me to theism, or the belief that God exists to explain moral realism. Of course, there are th...
July 08, 2022 at 20:47
Yeah, this is how I see it too. Hopefully there are some basic principles most people can agree on, and then build a society off of these principles t...
July 08, 2022 at 19:05
The issue I think is that while we are indeed “hard wired” for empathy and compassion, this doesn’t tell us why someone who isn’t hard wired for empat...
July 07, 2022 at 19:51
Both sides think they have the moral high ground in this debate, and are protecting human rights. Unfortunately, I don’t think either side will be hap...
July 07, 2022 at 01:55
Personally, I don’t think it makes sense to only allow abortions when rape is involved, and this is because people may falsely accuse others of rape i...
July 07, 2022 at 00:12
I think a closely related concept are things like human rights/natural rights. What does it mean to be born with “human rights” and who gets to decide...
July 06, 2022 at 02:19
One of the tricky things here is individualism itself is a very western idea, influenced a lot by Judeo-Christian ideas. For many religions, life is s...
July 04, 2022 at 18:40
The interesting thing here is that the main people arguing these cases (admissions, etc) are Asians, as they are claimed to be overrepresented, even m...
July 04, 2022 at 04:51
I’d chime in to say the US isn’t a direct democracy and wasn’t designed to be either. The founding fathers were wary of the common man’s ability to vo...
July 03, 2022 at 00:31
In: Bannings  — view comment
I don't want to derail this thread too much, but Is an excellent question. In my view, Einstein could have still contributed by submitting papers, as ...
July 01, 2022 at 23:06
In: Bannings  — view comment
I agree. While I didn’t appreciate his anti-theistic posting and general rhetoric, I figured it was something I’d just ignore. Whether it was ban wort...
June 30, 2022 at 23:02
I think it’s possible to both sin knowingly and unknowingly. The standard position by most Christian and Catholic Churches is more similar to that of ...
June 30, 2022 at 22:10
I think you both have a good point. Indeed I think it's totally fair to say what the praying coach was doing had nothing to do with the teachings of J...
June 30, 2022 at 21:35
Creationism? How did that get mentioned? I agree with most of Tom's sentiment, but I think he misses the point, which is that for some of these evange...
June 30, 2022 at 09:03
I think it’s a bit more technical. I can’t imagine anyone arguing that he was praying “alone” as other students clearly and visually joined him. The q...
June 29, 2022 at 22:49
I agree; in fact the more options there are, the better. I'm sure there are people who are either resistant to religion or have had a bad experience s...
June 29, 2022 at 07:44
This is a good point. Many recovery programs (AA) along with groups like Boy Scouts have references to a "higher power" or some idea of "god/God," tho...
June 29, 2022 at 04:37
This is true. But effect prong of the Lemon Test (Lemon v Kurtzman) states and the entanglement prong states So it seems up to interpretation whether ...
June 29, 2022 at 03:44
I don't disagree that it is unprofessional. In fact, I'd go farther and say if Kennedy is a Christian, it is contradictory to the teachings of Jesus (...
June 29, 2022 at 03:26
I agree; the issue comes down to whether students were coerced into participating/ostracized for not participating. And it seems like the facts from e...
June 29, 2022 at 02:15
I hadn't ever thought of an evolutionary debunking argument against reason itself, but I think you present a good case for it. I posted here a while b...
June 29, 2022 at 02:03
Perhaps. But even so, does that mean the government has (or should have) the right to intervene in these cases?
June 29, 2022 at 01:21
I agree, especially about the part about church and state being separated (and I imagine most Americans would as well, religious and non-religious). H...
June 29, 2022 at 01:13
I think with a more conservative court, both Dobbs v Jackson and Kennedy v Bremerton (which you brought up) tell a similar story of reducing the feder...
June 28, 2022 at 03:14
I wonder if you're familiar with Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. He follows a similar line of reasoning as you do, though he mak...
June 28, 2022 at 02:42
Wow, that’s actually a lot more people having abortions than I would have expected. Pretty surprising to me. This is how I see it as well. The Supreme...
June 26, 2022 at 01:36
For your first question, the court was able to overturn Roe v Wade because the reasoning behind it was (in their eyes) legally dubious and arguably un...
June 25, 2022 at 01:43
I read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind which makes a case for why conservatives may have an advantage over liberals when it comes to many peoples'...
June 24, 2022 at 23:58
I agree. At the end of the day, most people care more about the economy than ideological issues, especially one like abortion that doesn't really affe...
June 24, 2022 at 23:42
Ahh yes, I realize I was being too loose with words in this case. Even Jesus is quoted as saying “Do not think that I have come to abolish Law or the ...
June 23, 2022 at 23:11
I think a good case could be made for early Christianity adapting ideas (thus a "stew") from Cynicism, Stoicism, and Judaism (Stoicism in particular b...
June 22, 2022 at 22:21
If you look at the core teachings of Jesus, you have things such as Love God. Love your neighbor and enemies. Treat others the way you want to be trea...
June 22, 2022 at 20:58
I think the two main reasons Christianity spread was 1) because of Jesus and 2) (whether or not Christianity is “true” in the sense that Jesus rose fr...
June 20, 2022 at 20:54
I think this approach to ethics presupposes a metaethical view. In particular, it assumes the value of life and perhaps the value of complexity as you...
June 14, 2022 at 06:17
I see what you mean. My concern is that (at least in the US), K-12 education isn’t exactly preparing students with the tools to live in a somewhat dem...
June 12, 2022 at 01:36
In my experience at a small private university, student "comfort" is prioritized (though I had professors, especially in the humanities, really try to...
June 08, 2022 at 21:45
Very good point. As a matter of fact, what about any conspiracy theories or fringe theories, like the Christ myth theory? If we take the criterion of ...
June 06, 2022 at 18:58
I actually think the main objection to anything supernatural occurring is actually a statistical argument. There's an implicit assumption that whateve...
May 26, 2022 at 00:09
A better title for this thread might have been 'Intelligent design - a reasonable hypothesis?' I think about that too, but in my experience hypothesis...
May 25, 2022 at 19:23
I agree. In fact, my guess is the ID movement specifically avoids explicitly referring to a God (capital “G,” as in the Abrahamic sense) so it could b...
May 25, 2022 at 07:25
The whole conversation about physicalism and metaphysical naturalism is a very interesting one, and as mentioned is very much ingrained in our culture...
May 23, 2022 at 21:26