BC

What about the Kurds? 90% are in favor of nationhood. Identity has ambiguous, maybe paradoxical consequences. But most people like their identities, d...

France IS a nuclear power, after all, so I would guess that the territorial integrity of France is secure.

A lot of philosophical writing strikes me as "clunky" or "klunky" and a lot of it segues into "murky" and finally, the kind of writing that one would ...

Have you read the Dune series by Frank Herbert? It's all emperors and various competing power centers having no similarity whatsoever to democracy. Th...

ILP stands for Industrial Lighting Products? International Language Programs? Industrial Liaison Process? Infant Learning Program? Independent Living ...

We really would prefer something we can disagree with -- preferably, strongly disagree with. You say, 2+2=4, and all we can say is, true. You say Karl...

I doubt if there was ever ONE standard by which to judge the meaning, value, interpretation, or efficacy of a given biblical passage. I am guessing th...

No, wasn't being disingenuous, flippant, ridiculous, or anything else. You tell me what you think it means.

Pedantry comes naturally to me. I am an authentic pedant.

Can't someone be authentically bad? Even if it is risky judging somebody else's authenticity, I suspect at least that Donald Trump is congruent -- he ...

BS is piled up, composted and hauled away, but never in crocks. As containers go, a crock is too small, too heavy, and too fragile to be a good contai...

Let's get Pedantic, yeah yeah yeah Authentic: late Middle English: via Old French from late Latin authenticus, from Greek authentikos ‘principal, genu...

That's very true, and good for them. But those creatures are not humans. Diplomacy and negotiation is our best non-lethal means of resolving conflict....

I suspect everyone here knows the difference between reading and interpreting--though sometimes interpretation is concurrent with reading. One reads t...

Sure. A 'worldview' is a big complex thing to capture in a few words, without a lot of practice. My first effort at stating my 'worldview' was a mess....

We are better at predicting what will happen to groups of people, than we are predicting what will happen to individuals, but groups are made up of in...

Your reputation as an educated intelligent man or woman would have been better served by keeping your private opinion private. Uneducated? No Harvard ...

I believe Heinz is owned by Kraft, foods. Kraft was part of Phillip Morris for a while, but the smoke folks decided it didn't make sense for them to o...

'' Good post, as usual. The Cohens, Kahns, Cahanes, Levites... these Jewish names are connected to the priestly caste of Israel, and there are genetic...

Ahh, the chutzpah, the effrontery, the gall, the delusions of grandeur... literally >:)

At the very beginning. How do you think the Bible came into existence? You must think the High Priest of the Temple went into the Holy of Holies one D...

It's like the Protestants bitching about the Catholics doing away with the Latin Mass. Or the lapsed Catholics complaining that the priests are not do...

Your question is valid. The Divine speaks, we hear it, what's to interpret? But your view is that of the outsider. For the insider (the believer in th...

Well, I don't think that proposition is valid. Most of the Bible is quite clear. How can I say that? Well, you can take the liturgical books: The Psal...

I hadn't heard that Paul invented Jesus, but in certain circles it isn't surprising that somebody would claim such a thing. Could be, I suppose, but I...

I think what they call into question is meaning. If it wasn't the valid word of God, then there wouldn't be any reason to struggle to get it right for...

One reason is that God has spoken over the course of many years, in disparate circumstances. As the years and the reasons pass out of immediate memory...

What is one to believe about the Jesus Seminar findings? One could certainly believe that they don't know, either. By the time the Gospels were writte...

You think there are problems with the Old Testament! Have you heard of the Jesus Seminar? It's a group of people--some of them actual NT scholars--who...

Not at all. What I am suggesting is that you make a real commitment to something--a cause, a project, a reading program (whatever you like to read), p...

The point was that you might find their accounts interesting. You might find them ridiculous or compelling.

Reece confesses, "I Need Help On Reality". Well, don't we all. You are suffering from late onset Holden Caulfield Syndrome. Everybody is a phony and e...

Have you gone back to look at testimonials about the spirit world? In the mid to late Victorian period a lot of bright, educated people were very inte...

Indeed there might be one ethical position that is best. However, whether TR is trying to be too pure or not... well, some of this is an effect of age...

They may be wanting, but why do you think they will be found deficient?

Obviously. But in discussion, calling someone's ideas stupid and a waste of time is a "terminating response". Calling out "stupid" and "waste of time"...

I think you two have passed the point of diminished returns for this topic.

In what way are you exempt from your own judgement? Look, the point is that telling someone that their ideas are stupid and a waste of time doesn't ad...

Hmmmm, yes, I've read that too. Everybody is stupid except me and thee, of course, but even thee is as blunt as an ox at times.

The reason why everything got underlined here is that you are missing a "" at the end of what you wanted underlined. Every "u, i, and/or b" in bracket...

Yes. When we are walking through our personal valleys of death, the horror of it is pretty much 100%. But then, with any luck, we come out of that dar...

It's murder because persons have rights that are protected by a host of conventions (legal, ethical, social, moral, religious...). Whether a person is...

Of course you are right about that, and then where would we be?

The whole argument about free will and predetermination of an act is a waste of time IF we can not distinguish between acts that really are freely cho...

No smoking Edit: Everything is perfect.

I like your idea of consciousness 'dissolving into the lower levels' much more than Blue Banana's 'ceases to exist'. To play off your idea of the orch...

"Consciousness" and "self-awareness" are features of mind of which we are especially fond, but they are not the only components of a person. The brain...

Killing a sleeping person is eminently murderous. You'll hang for doing so. I don't know about you, but I don't stop existing when I sleep.

If biochemistry didn't apply to the gods, why were they drinking on Mt. Olympus? (granted, they were drinking nectar -- but what was that? High fructo...

The last time I checked, murder means killing someone who actually, decidedly, and emphatically exists. Your pronatalist argument is as weighty as the...