Vera Mont

Well, if all the Palestinians have to die in order to stop one terrorist organization out of the sixty or so designated by the CIA, why should we ques...

The people are loyal to the monarch and aristocracy, the pope and high clergy, the populist demagogue, the warlord, the caliph, the ayatollah, the gov...

Now I understand you a little better.

Political idea. Right.

I would appreciate if you refrained from telling me what I mean. I disagree that "the issue" of religion is ethical. In the wrong context, I have no w...

No. The people, collectively, exist to serve the nation. As for the empire, the people who live there are of far less significance. Individually and i...

Okay. But some are more fantastical than others. The answer to this particular one: Yes, he'd probably use whatever means he considered effective; he ...

No. It's about awe and wonder. Too big for us, and we don't like to let go. That's all. Ancient prelates built on that to control the masses.

If you already believe you have a firm grasp on what you consider the essence of religion, why did you ask? I happen to disagree, but I do not have an...

Incredible! The thought-experiment gets less plausible by the minute.

Then how would it stop the enemy, who would presumably be more prepared for gas attack than the local peasants?

It didn't start with all that knowledge of the universe or planets genetics or evolution. It started with "Where did I come from?",a question every fi...

Short and simple: The bigness of the world, the sky full of stars, the power of elements. They could not control or escape storms, floods, wildfires a...

There was a great deal of mysticism and spirituality and superstition long before the organized religions, with sacred texts and a hierarchy of clergy...

Yes, I see that! Somebody found yet another way to extract money from defenceless people. Another problem with downloads is that sometimes the vendor ...

Sorry I missed this yeasterday. There is nothing wrong with using reason and craft to perfect a creative effort. How about a little nitpickery? I like...

That's the existential danger to Britain - massed units on a single unpopulated beach? Such an invasion could be repelled or contained by land/naval f...

How do you use poison gas on an enemy incursion by sea and air, without affecting a large portion of your own civilian population? You can't. Just hav...

Whoever engineers the war sells it to the people who have to fight in it as self-defence (Israel's right to exist) or liberation (the American states'...

How many of those bridges can be crossed safely? Why take that sick child to a hospital if you know that God can make him whole? And if He doesn't, we...

That would - or should - also apply to war? If you behave in such a way as to make enemies, or force other people into untenable positions, sooner or ...

And humans aren't?

No, they don't. The other antelope are lucky to escape, for the moment; they don't 'work with' the loss of a herd-mate. Vultures, bacteria and grass b...

Yes. Thank your God for creating it, since you consider pain good. Job questioned it and Jehovah told him : Because I'm bigger than you. He accepted t...

Argued like a scholar and a gentleman.

It's coherently and consistently dismissive of the idea of intelligent design by a benevolent deity.

We humans invented story-telling long before we invented writing. A good story-teller or reader is far more evocative than anything on a printed page....

Predation, parasitism and disease are. I was responding to specific posts. The discussion is not under my control. That pain causes growth or that all...

Having read it twice more, I still conclude that it differs from my experience of the last hundred years. I agree up to :the same basic education, and...

I'm sorry if you didn't understand it. I'll try to be more clear next time.

Of course not. Dictatorships own or control all news outlets and entertainment media. In 'democracies', the press is free op to some point - it varies...

Just as well you didn't live in India or Africa during the heyday of the British Empire. Yessss!!! Nuclear missiles, too. And all of them are always j...

Agreed

In nature, yes. In intelligent design, not so end of. No, it isn't. It is a side-effect that does not invariably occur. If that is a 'given', it was g...

No, you said that debt was transferred to working-class taxpayers, which is not the case. I can live with that.

Not I; everything. The alternative to your personal existence is your never having been born, which was an option for the universe. You can contemplat...

Well, yes, but it's about money, money, money. Local constituencies don't want to lose their federal subsidy for producing something destructive, so n...

I was responding to: I do not believe there is anything "purely" human.

That's worth a shot. You can read a menu outside on the restaurant wall; that doesn't mean the food's any good.

Not about outcome. About precondition for question. Question chases own tail. Therefore question silly.

I think those questions have all been answered. About the yeast, what with its lack of brain cells, you're right. Breathing, for some organisms, can b...

Where "should not" isn't an option, there no alternatives; therefore the question is meaningless and pointless.

It doesn't actually answer the question; it gives you a menu from a 101 textbook on philosophy or art theory. To that extent, it's useful.

That was the burden of my comment. How is there a "discussion" without the given that preexists any possible question of "shoulds" ?

How so? It is a fact that people commit suicide. Some do it for reasons that other people consider irrational. Some do it as a form of escape when the...

You can't assume anything unless you already exist.

So, it's all just fate or happenstance; we have no control? I can't go along with that view, seeing how many different kinds of social and economic or...

I meant that on the present model, no economy is sustainable, not even if waste were reduced (on the present model, it cannot be eliminated), not even...

Why? Because existence already is, we're in it, and we want it going? But by what standard is an "is" a "should be"?

Yes, that too. Also, the simple inability to dig up fossils and turn them into plastic. The fact is, they don't and can't trash their environment the ...