baker

See, you're just looking for a scapegoat. Instead of acknowledging the complexity of the situation, you opt for a simplistic outlook which makes it ok...

But public policy is the problem. For one, the official government outlets are offering simplified and thus misleading information about covid and abo...

See, that's just it. _I_ wouldn't tell you "I told you so". But you don't care. You just put me into the same category with anyone who isn't all that ...

Here making a note to myself to reply to these posts. I need to think some more to make my reply concise.

You speak like a true believer. Now, the question is how come some people are bothered by this. (For they are bothered, given the extensive critical c...

The God of the Taliban. That it's impotent. At the end of the day, life is a struggle for survival. If a concept of God doesn't reflect that and doesn...

Well, this is why people quit philosophy, no? Through the Socratic method, under the guidance of the teacher. Not at all. The above claim probably bes...

No. But desist from making many judgments to begin with. Obviously, this wil make one unpopular in certain circles where having a lot of definitive op...

Why?

Perhaps not deliberately. This is also how the practice of koans works. Namely, contemplating a koan is supposed to bring one's mind to a halt, from w...

But then again, it's possible to be so open-minded that one's brain falls out.

Not under the Socratic method. Inherent in the Socratic method is the inequality of the teacher and the student, and the student's submission to the t...

Are you familiar with Alain de Botton? His Consolations of Philosophy was quite famous.

I personally don't know God's mind. But threatening others on the account that that one knows God's mind can be a very powerful tool in social interac...

If there is objective morality, my decision about morality is moot. If there is no objective morality, my decision about morality is irrelevant. You'r...

Exactly, which is the justification for a Social Darwinist monotheism.

Maybe you in particular don't know God's mind, but who's to say nobody else does either? The power of God belief, as far as it concerns interpersonal ...

Oh, the irony! Philosophy is overrated anyway. At the end of the day, philosophers, too, are "just people". And forum moderators at a philosophy forum...

It deserves such attention? "Deserves" by whose standards? Waiting for others only makes one a victim, and if persisted in, eventually, a martyr.

Of course, which is evidenced by asking questions such as, "How do the scientists know they are not brains in vats, themselves, being controlled and e...

List 3.

Interesting how? Unless we're talking about a simple curiosity (or more like: attempts to relieve one's existential boredom), the pull one feels towar...

IOW, you're someone who wants to read and understand the Bible on his own terms, quite cut off from the religious tradition it is part of. Why on eart...

Take the No True Scottsman fallacy, for example. In most cases of it, which concern terms that denote national, racial, political, ideological, or rel...

I am confident that actual religious people will say it's the other way around.

The Middleness of the Path

This is a romanticism that someone living in the real world wouldn't indulge in.

No. What you're failing to acknowledge is that in your quuest for egalitarianism, you're bulldozing over the opposition, or at least trying to do so. ...

It is vital to read the Bible in the right spirit, with faith and humility. Understanding specific old words like "ephah" is, for the most part, irrel...

Exactly. Which is why outsiders who are not thusly embedded cannot hope to have a meaningful experience with the Bible. Similar goes for other ancient...

Indeed. So why do you feel pressured to read them? Can you tell?

No. The reason why God cannot be held accountable is because he is God, not because he is a Social Darwinist. God couldn't be held accountable even if...

Not by human morality, but by humanist morality. Sure. But again, it's not supposed to be goodness by humanist standards, but by God's standards.

Thank you, but I have to unplug the computer and all electronic devices now, because we have a storm coming.

So? There is no need for such demonstration. How can you possibly know that?? How can you possibly know it's merely a conviction? You're taking for gr...

Thank you, this will take some processing.

It's not clear this is the case. Ideally, it should be the case, but I don't think it is, or only rarely. It seems that most people who believe expert...

Whose problem is that? Why should we try to have a certain understanding of what ancient texts say?

You're lucky that you're a moderator, so I can't report you for misrepresenting or anything like that. You should be ashamed of yourself. But just vot...

The Talibans are taking life seriously and they don't fool around. This is what makes them so different from many, if not most people.

Your words. That is your view. Surely you're aware that other people don't think this way. It's safe to say that most people don't believe that your v...

Oh, and I obviously mean Social Darwinism. When your buddies talk of this or that being "Darwinist" or "Darwin" this, "Darwin" that, you correctly und...

No, such a claim of the total incapacity of humans to comment on God could be overreaching. Perhaps some humans in fact do have the proper knowledge o...

While all along, you get to be the arbiter of truth, eh?

God cannot be held accountable to us. Because God, by definition, precedes us, contextualizes us, and makes us possible in the first place. My point i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20religious%20practice,all%20physical%20and%20mental%20activities.

Why should they?? They are your enemies. Why should they care about seeing things the way you see them?

Boredom is terrible, isn't it. People should be sent to manually work in crop fields again, manually digging and pulling weeds.

Right, Jains. People who make a point of eventually slowly dying of starvation. Your reason for taking up arms might then be gone, indeed, but not you...

In everyday use, I notice that many people operate poorly with if clauses; ie. they tend to omit the if altogether. So that to the above question, the...