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Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown or unknowable.[\\
I am kidding no one when I say that everything you say about your god is unknown and unknowable, just as all other gods. I believe all the religious beliefs likely to be untrue and purely a result of the evolution of intelligence as a trait, which does not preclude an unknown power in the universe that neither of un understand.
I think that is pretty clear.
I dont believe in your christian god. That doesnt make me an atheist.
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http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.htmlThe STEP team, composed of investigators at six academic medical centers, including Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida; Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C; and the Mind/Body Medical Institute, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications. The study also found that patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse. The paper appears in the April issue of American Heart Journal. There are folk who can testify that they have had prayers answered. Others testify that they have not - and lets face it, the testimonies do not conflict. Unless you have some universal law you can point out that everyone or no one should get their prayers answered. Which means...........nothing. If a billion people pray for shit....like food......and half a billion get food......were a half billion payers answered or did they just get food ? It stands to reason that things peoplel want will sometimes come true all on their own. Believing that god does this is the work of a feeble mind, not a superpower. Still waiting for evidence. |
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zolace is on a "mission" to somehow convince others that people who are not brainwashed supistitious belivers in his version of a "creator", are bad people.
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Odd request, given the link in the OP. Feel free to read it.
The OP link is the issue. If I wanted to debate the person who posted the wiki link, I have no problem with it. The more local problem is with the idiot who posted the wiki link in this forum. You post the words/beliefs of others and somehow believe YOU are intellectually sound. You are not capable of original though. You are a brainwashed fool who believes repeating the beliefs of other people somehow makes you likable. Can you honestly say that you are any different from someone living in North Korea who MUST ON PAIN OF DEATH, declare Kim Jong Un is "God"? You spend a lot of bandwidth posting the words of other people, but are you actually capable of HEARING what you are saying? |
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zolace has yet again fallen under his own sword.....
zolace has confused "Anti-Religion" as "atheism"..
zolace doesn't know his ass from his elbow about "religion"; ergo, zolace wouldn't know his right nut from his left about "Atheism".
Float zolace in a deep pond with a rock zolace would not let go of the rock that is dragging him down.
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Well, all that seems a bit weak, but, regardless, did not address at all this question (that I asked to address something you had posted earlier):
the article linked in the OP differentiates between atheistic and secular states, correct?
That's it...all that seems a bit weak? That's all you've got? North Korea didn't become North Korea because they decided to be atheists. North Korea (the dictatorship) decided that they should worship the dictator more than god. So the state atheism has no bearing on who they are as a country, its part of the symptom of who they are under a dictator not the cause. Spurious relationship. Not weak. painfully obvious to most idiots but yourself. Its even more obvious when you consider other data such as nations that are made up of atheist people (hard data exists....not weak) are generally happy and have a higher quality of life than even us. You can lamely call it weak without any rationale, or you can do some research on the rate of belief in god in scandanavia and their quality of life. Clearly, state atheism isn't what causes a north Korean situation....it is a result. A god-like dictator existed first....then religion had to go because it was in conflict with dictator-worship. Atheism itself has nothing to do with Korea's status. That's nice. Of course, does not answer or address this simple question:the article linked in the OP differentiates between atheistic and secular states, correct? zolace......why do you keep asking that question? I assume you think it has relevance, but all it tells me is that you completely missed the point. Do you think that by defining "state atheism" this means it cannot be a spurious relationship with poor behavior as I have described You can define state atheism all you want. In fact the definition in the OP is accurate. A state that promotes atheism. So the fuck what? I know where you think you are going. When you have atheism then you have bad stuff. That is total bullshit. I have proven that to you. It is not because all the people don't believe in god, its because the dictator doesn't want them to worship anyone but himself. Hence, it is not a state full of atheists that results in poor behaviors, it is the dictator. I have also shown that the regions on earth with the lowest belief in god have the highest quality of life, proving the spurious relationship N. Korea. Google "spurious" zolace. Actually,you have proved nothing. The states noted in the OP link were atheistic states. Now, do you have a link describing the nations you refer to as atheistic? Not secular, but atheistic? Having alot of atheists in a secular state is not the same as having an atheistic state. Do you have any links to any nation-state claiming to be "atheist"?There are no nations/states on the planet Earth claiming "atheism" in any way shape or form ! |
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but, he had no problem sending air support to Libya, and Egypt, where we had no compelling interest......wondrous strange.
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zolace believes that EVERYONE must have mindless devotion/"faith" in whatever is presented to him, or he will go to Hell, or be killed by a dictator. Similar to the people of NORTH Korea....
zolace exists in the "North Korea" in his mind.
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...and at least a million radical towelheads intent on destroyer Israel and the USA, aka the Little Satan and the Great Satan....
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is what is going on in gaza, and the conflicts israel has participated in historically, a good message to be sent out to the world ?
is the israeli bombing of gaza "leading a righteous life" ?
are israelis happy with their militarised society, conscription, nuclear weapons, berlin walls, and hatred of those in gaza
is this model of society one bright torch shining a special light of goodness to the world ?
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Technicalities like these are what bugs me about organized religion. The books have been translated andinterpreted so many times, who know what the original text said. What I can safely assume is that the intentwas to feature stories and lessons to live a righteous life and not for legalinterpretation of the wording.
The Hebrew Tanakh is in its original Hebrew text. It was never a translated version. Some argue the Greek text came first, but I think it was just compiled first and created to fit in with Hellenism; the Tanakh books came first but were just compiled later. Nevertheless, the Hebrew version is the correct version. The moral is to lead a righteous life. So you are correct there. But science does the same thing. They have technicalities in their books as well. But we don't discredit science for it. There are differences in the Hebrew language though, so it will also depend on what era of Hebrew you read it in. Please elaborate. As far as I know, there is Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. Israelis use modern Hebrew, but Israelis can read the Tanakh in Biblical Hebrew text. So again, please elaborate. It is like how Spanish speakers and Italian speakers don't usually speak Latin but they can understand it. Edit: We know the Israelis read the Tanakh in the original Hebrew because they found 2000+ year-old Dead Sea Scrolls that pretty much match what's in the Tanakh. I don't want to tangent off to a differnet discussion, but all things that are absolute in science have been proven and can be replicated. Anything that have not been fully vetted but have gone through the scientific method are call theories which are open for discussion. So for our discussion above, the equivalent to a scientific theory would be to show the current text compared to the original text but without the original framers dictating what to write and what they meant. |
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Technicalities like these are what bugs me about organized religion. The books have been translated andinterpreted so many times, who know what the original text said. What I can safely assume is that the intentwas to feature stories and lessons to live a righteous life and not for legalinterpretation of the wording.
The Hebrew Tanakh is in its original Hebrew text. It was never a translated version. Some argue the Greek text came first, but I think it was just compiled first and created to fit in with Hellenism; the Tanakh books came first but were just compiled later. Nevertheless, the Hebrew version is the correct version. The moral is to lead a righteous life. So you are correct there. But science does the same thing. They have technicalities in their books as well. But we don't discredit science for it. There are differences in the Hebrew language though, so it will also depend on what era of Hebrew you read it in. |
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A theocracy may not be "worse" than a state atheism, but, the problem is, that in a theocracy the common people will suffer more at each other's hands than they do under state atheism. State atheism, once it has weeded out the clerical type, doesn't need to foment hatred. But a theocracy, in order to maintain power, must ALWAYS foment hatred against those who are different than the ruling religion, and moreover must push constant memes of intolerance and hatred to maintain the support of the populace.
Atheists generally don't go hating on religious. They may feel contempt for them, or pity, but not hatred. But religions hate each other, and killing in the name of a god justifies any behavior.
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In-state tuition and fees at the University of Oregon are less than $10,000 per year and more than half of the student body receives aid grants, averaging about $7,000 per year. I don't see how that's a problem.
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Let's talk about the Haiti Earthquake of 2010...
Yeah! More than 4 years ago. About 250,000 people died intitially. Over 1 MILLION are dead.
People are still dying. Cholera and disease running ranpant... no clean water....
The majority of the population of Haiti were Christian!, zolace?
Where was your "creator" ? Was his answer, "no"?
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In short: deliberately killing innocent civilians, even if they are being used as human shields, may very well still be a war crime if the military threat does not outweigh the threat to said human shields.
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Has war officially been claimed here? If not then I don't know how it could be deemed a war crime. Even of war was called it would be difficult.
War crimes don't require official declarations of war, they require conflict. In any case Israel has always had responsibilities with regards to Gaza under the Fourth Geneva Conventions. interesting Is this going to be another case of "guilt due to outcome" against Israel regardless of why? There have been at least 2 other school related incidents over the last few years where Hamas fired mortars from inside or near a school which resulted in return fire and kids/etc hurt. This seems to be quite a common occurrence from a leadership who hides beneath a hospital. War crimes are war crimes regardless (to some extent) of the motivation behind them. Israel has a responsibility to minimize civilian casualties, bombing a school full of civilians doesn't do that. As far as your comment on motar fire from them: 1.) The burden of proof for that is on Israel and if you are defending the action: on you. So prove that each case involved Hamas fire from that location. 2.) Even if you can (which you can't and third party testimonies in several of these cases have indicated limited to no militant activity in the area), it could still very well be a violation of the rules of war (thus a war crime) as the perceived military payoff in military strikes has to outweigh the threat to civilian life (the threat to civilian lives in these cases being extremely high), and there is little reason to believe that such would be the case in these scenarios. Mortar fire (especially the kind we see here) generally doesn't represent just cause for the deliberate killing of civilian human shields. |
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How/why are you so well versed in modest politics, noviapriani?
Well thank you for the compliment, but I wouldn't say that I am well versed in modern politics per say, I don't tend to be very up to date on domestic US issues for example despite living here, when it comes to international affairs / international economics / conflict and terrorism, those are simply my primary areas of study. But even there I specialize regionally (specifically in Africa, and to a lesser extent MENA). I know little of South American or even European Union politics, and while I have taken some time to look at East and Central Asia, they generally fall outside of my area too. As far as my target areas: I took the time to get my masters in them, i read the news and all of the reports from thinktanks on them that I can, I pay money to be part of certain intelligence gathering organization so that I can analyze data, and I watch for and read books and academic papers written by experts in specialized fields. As for why? It is the field of work that I would like to end up in with regards to my career, and I find it fascinating which means that much of my research and work is enjoyable and recreational for me. |
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i should have just kept the mortgage. i know im gonna kick myself a few years from now when interest rate goes back up.
I originally planned to keep the mortgage while saving up cash for down payment of the next property. but it hurts to see 4.4% mortgage interest going out the window every month while a bunch of cash is sitting doing nothing in the 0.5% saving account. so i chickened out and decided to pay off this mortgage first. now i have $150k sitting there doing nothing.
You made the right decision for several reasons. First, based on the price of the home and your mortgage interest rate, there is almost no way it made sense for you to itemize, unless you had some massive additional deductions. So, you were getting zero benefit from the mortgage interest tax deduction. Even if you did get a benefit, unless your income is very high putting you in one of the higher marginal rate brackets, the benefit was likely de minimis. Second, your rate, although low by historical standards, is actually very high when compared to the return on savings and low risk investment at the moment. By paying off early, you got a guaranteed 4.4% return with essentially zero risk, something you would never find in the current market. Third, this will positively affect your ability to borrow in the future. A fully paid off long term debt is something lenders like to see even more than outstanding debts that are current. Moreover, you have cash now and as they say cash is king. This will allow you to make a larger downpayment, reducing the debt to equity ratio on your next house purchase and thereby reducing the risk to the lender. The lender will offer a lower rate for a better loan to value ratio. You will also be in a position to consider paying points to reduce your rate. |
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Has war officially been claimed here? If not then I don't know how it could be deemed a war crime. Even of war was called it would be difficult.
War crimes don't require official declarations of war, they require conflict. In any case Israel has always had responsibilities with regards to Gaza under the Fourth Geneva Conventions. |
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