Rationality

Martin, that's a great idea:)

Burton, while I appreciate you friending me, I have to confess that I do not know why you did so. As I think you can tell, I'm all up for debate and have some pretty strong opinions. But you seem far more focused on posting things to "laugh at" or "put down" those who don't subscribe to your beliefs or views with other ppl's junk, rather than ... See Moreactually offering a debate, or your own commentary. I've looked through your posts, hoping you were just going through a phase and might ahve some personal views of your own that would actually give me a reason to remain, but I didn't see anything within the past few weeks that struck me as that. Frankly, dude, I have a son getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan, some liberal socialists to push out of office locally, and just reading other ppl's ridiculing of me and mine is so far removed from "good debate" that it's just not worth my time, nor the energy I expend reading it or replying to it, you know? Since I don't "friend" just so I have tons of friends, the only reason for me to be friends with someone I don't really know is if that person provides something that I find intelletually or spiritually invigorating or... fun. I'm not finding ridicule either invigorating or fun. I don't know if this will show up on your wall anymore, but you'll get the message via your mail, I suppose. Peace :)

Lori unfriended me. I am disappointed. Seeing her very lengthy opinions defending positions that others did not hold made me think that she is part of the rabid right, misnamed, I know, when they should be called the rabid wrong. I wish her well in this journey of shared ideas.

Exactly!

"Does a man on an island own a fish he caught and cooked? Case closed.", says Dustin and misses the point totally. A man in a island does not need the idea of ownership at all if he is alone. He can of course freely use that fish if he is alone, but he has the need to "own" that fish only in relationship to other people.
If there is more than one people the idea of ownership is however suddenly relevant and he can "own" that fish, given that the society he lives has not for example decided that fish of the sea are common property and asks him to share it with others.
The whole point here is that ownership is a always just a commonly agreed social relationship and there is nothing absolute in it.
In the end we have just decided that it is beneficial to let individual people to have sole ownership of also of common resources like land and water.
History is however of is full of instances where this ownership of land is partially overturned in due process of law and land has been distributed more fairly, when ownership of land has been concentrated too much in too few hands and this has caused the society to dysfunction.... See More

Jaako: my conviction is to scientific scrutiny and respect for science, more generally. But, to answer you directly, NO, agw science has not been scrutinized like other science, and anyone paying attention knows that.

That is not a conviction?

The best way to insure against the continued injustice of those books is for the people to read them within the context and time frame in which they were written. When the authors wrote to, "bash the babies heads against the stones" it was not a metaphor. They meant it literally because those books were produced, in part, to breed hate and they succeed quite well.

Oh it's such a wonderful opiate and don't ever forget it.

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I love Festivus! I even madea Festivus pole for my office . It's a role of tin foil standing up in a flower pot. Nothing says " holidays" like a good Festivus pole!

lol Yeah I love that episode! Kick ass.

An evil & outdated custom !!

And yet we (westerners) regard Genghis Khan as a villain. I'm sure the attitudes are vice versa in Mongolia.

Alexander was a brilliant military genius not a shady dirty don or Islamic terrorist !!

Ah, you finally agree with Bertrand, then. There was btw. no value judgment in the original quote, but it is all about the system of deduction, where new things like new court decisions or stands in moral issues are derived from existing texts.
The quote does not say at all that having laws would be a bad thing as such, but it is about the way the... See More legal system inevitably always works, as it is the only way it really can work.
In a democracy at least laws can and are of course be altered if they are found to be unjust. Until they are changed laws however bind the legal system to, as there would not be any point in having one in the first place. Again Bertrand is not demanding the abolishing the system of law, but just pointing out that the way how it inevitably works deductively using the existing laws as a basis for decisions.

No. The quote plainly says jurists refer to inspired books, and that is erroneous.

I just cut my ties with people who have wronged me (in a really bad way) so I can continue my life..why should I bother with them..i will not waste my time on people I do not like..i do not hate them -just won't entertain them anymore...I will do what is always best for me..

just ignore them... as if they don't exist...

Question: Shouldn't people fight in war not from hate but rather from love for everything they are ostisensibly figthing to protect i.e. one fights because he loves his family and country and wants to protect them, rather than fighting because of any particular hate for the enemy.

Marcus is absolutely right. It makes no sense for someone to hate ... See Morea person because they took your iPod for a day and then left it uncharged. It makes no sense (though out of fear or some other emotion, people do) that people hold grudges. There's a reason everyone from Confucius to Jesus to Marcus Aurelius to Kant has said that we should forgive wrongs.

Another interesting question: Is the cycle of holding wrongs against one another perpetuated by a fear that one's own wrongs will be held against him?

Fine observations Luke, indeed. Marcus Aurelius would surely have applauded especially on your ideas on hate, as he really thought that controlling one's negative emotions is one of the most important things in life.

This fan page is meaningless if it claims that following a set method for arriving at conclusions is dangerous "dogma". The question is not dogma versus reason, but irrationality versus reason. Either we defend reason consistently or are hypocrites with nothing to stand for and little more important to say.

if u meet the Buddha on the road kill him

A wee bit of unfinished business. Instead of cremation, I would prefer the Jewish method of prompt burial without cremation in a box that is designed to deteriorate. Cremation adds to global warming. Burial is absurdly expensive so I will not go that way.

I already have my urn, cremation bench and memorial, so I think I have already made a ... See Morefirm selection for how my remains will be disposed. The one precedent is that I wish to be a donor of my skin, bones, organs and eyes should they be suitable for donation. My brain is available for research too. Even in death we can be thoughtful to others.

Now, how about the smell of a hot fire. ;o)

Remember from an earlier post that I remarked I would not want to be in "captivity." Remember the Aspen trees? No box urn or memorial for me Burton...just need a grove on the side of a mountain. The aside is done now and now to continue with the rest of the play...

NOT A PROBLEM THE CATOLICS AND THE ORTHADOX CHURCH HATE EACH OTHER..THEY WILL CRACK UNDER THE STRAIN ...
BITCH SLAP EACH OTHER TO DEATH

Norma, You crack me up!

well, there've been lots of "gods" born on december 25 of virgins. this time of year, i like to celebrate mithra, horus, dionysus, krishna, heracles, and the like...i celebrate by driving down to florida and jumping in the gulf of mexico. and avoiding 'christmas' as much as i possibly can...

Jesus was actually supposed to be born sometime in the spring. We celebrate Christmas when we do because of the Roman Saturnalia.

It is funny how some people derive pleasure of divulging even ancient slander on other people. These has never been any real proof of any real wrongdoing in the case of John Ruskin and you can rest assured that in Victorian world one did not look lightly in any suspicion on differing from the sexual norm in any way.
On the other hand it seems that... See More he was interested in young women, but he did not evidently implement that desire in practice. I cannot fathom why would you dismiss the whole lifework of a creative and insightful person because of the desires he was given by a accident of nature and nurture, if he was able to live a full life in control of these desires.
This is on the other hand of course the very thing this quote is all about; it as also about the pending question that f a person should be dismissed totally because of desires he or she is born with, if they differ from the social norm of the day, but which she or he is able to control so that they co not cause anybody any real world harm.