Dummkopf! What you took as some sort of attempt at obfuscation was support for immigration. Yes, I am against open door immigration, but the point I w...
What is different is that we are witnessing this wave. We weren't around when Eastern Europeans arrived in New York City in 1897. True -- people are o...
This simplistic formulation could be applied to railroads in Germany during the Nazi era. If a given rail line was used to deliver Jews to Auschwitz, ...
True enough; nations may engage in actions which are not moral. In this discussion, I am asserting that the creation and maintenance of nations for th...
If this is so, then why don't the majority Buddhist Burmese people (Myanmar) have the right to discourage Moslem and Christen people from living there...
"Power" does not exist as an abstraction. It resides in or through something real. "The government" is not a paper abstraction. It was established and...
I eat saltines--preferably with butter. I hope you are jesting. No upright son of New England's rocky soil and fishy waters would defile an oyster -- ...
I am inclined to favor experiments like Milgram's and Zimbardo's, as long as they are well designed, have some level of institutional oversight, conse...
Plato said the U.S. Administration was horribly heterosexual and woefully short--really just tragically short--of attractive young men. "Here, Donald....
A god capable of creating the universe in 6 days could certainly manage --on this one small celestial ball--to make complex layers of folded rock, sca...
Deciding that logic trumps reality is one of the ways we go astray. But in any case, supposing that the universe was made on purpose by some agent is ...
By arranging to have a lot of ocean between them and everybody else. You'll note that very few refugee boats are making it from Africa to Florida. Sam...
So, what were the building blocks that had to be in place to enable otherwise good German people to do horrible things? The drive of National Socialis...
Well, the switches referred to the behavior of very simple animals, and reflexive responses in higher animals--like a literal knee jerk. When we have ...
The trouble with dividing the brain up into brain stem, reptile brain, limbic system, neocortex, and so on is that brains developed as integrated stru...
Organisms of all kinds (paramecium on up) have to act, or not act, to survive. Maybe the decision making is hard wired so that choice is nothing more ...
I frequently make that mistake. Maybe our choices were poor, but at the time (since the industrial revolution began up until about 1960) our exploitat...
Well... Sure. I do not doubt geology and paleontology. All those big bones, big teeth. Do you doubt it? Now, as for free will, we dispute whether we h...
I won't fault you for suggesting such a thing. To us, we are infinitely more important and valuable than algae and cockroaches (especially cockroaches...
Dinosaurs were imminently successful by all counts for 100 million years and, as far as we know, they didn't have free will. We haven't been successfu...
God said we had more important things to worry about than whether He was timeless or eternal. Based on His infinite knowledge of all that will come to...
Excellent topic and excellent responses. I myself have secret desires to conduct manipulative experiments on people, do very intrusive observations of...
It's a conundrum. If we eliminated the last century of medical progress, what would be different? Many people would still live healthy long lives. Bet...
This all makes total sense. It has been my understanding that abrupt withdrawal of antidepressants -- or abruptly switching from one type of antidepre...
I have a 30 year history of taking antidepressants and benzodiazapine for anxiety. i've tapered off 3 different benzos without any difficulty, and I t...
Another thing, there are a lot of named groups that barely exist. Take "sex workers" -- ameliorated from "prostitute" and "whore". I rather doubt that...
Politics is about individuals forming groups to represent their peculiar interests. There is nothing new about it, and nothing special about it. Wheth...
My son, this is not a sin and therefore can not be forgiven. You are being too sensitive. Now, get out of the confessional; there is a long line of pe...
We are not machines, either. We are organisms, and more, beings. We are born, not manufactured. Our biological design incorporates a billion years of ...
He/she is new to this kind of activity; Qope will get much more social involvement with short posts than long posts. Too long and too little. Like, "H...
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum. I want to encourage you to participate in the forum, so please don't take what I say here as a "get lost" response. a...
I would say that the use of drugs in our time has been de-ritualized, compared to what the Greeks were doing at Eleusis. The "Mysteries" at Eleusis wa...
Where I mentioned drugs and meaning, I was speaking of drug use in a ritual context where there was more than mere drug-taking going on. The drugs wer...
American democracy was still born, so it's questionable how alive it ever was. One might like to blame the flaws in American democracy on our current ...
I have far too little experience with marijuana, and none with the other popular mind-altering drugs to say anything about it. I can say this, however...
Extremely crowded. There have been maybe 50 to 100 billion people born since we became Homo sapiens. It isn't, and you identify the difference. Well, ...
Biology -- and the HUGE everything that biology implies. Computers are contraptions that carry out logical operations designed by humans. On their own...
There is a difference between "ego-centric" and egotistical, self-centered, narcissistic, and the like. We must be ego-centric, focused on "I am" beca...
Oh, reality. I suppose. I'd love to talk about reality but you know, it's past 1:00 a.m. and the noetic fluids are coagulating for the night. So the w...
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